Tagged: night-shift

"...and that's why we never open the day room curtains after nine, not since before you started." Pam says it over her shoulder, already halfway out the fire door with her coat on, car keys jingling.…

When a call goes quiet, you count to ten and you disconnect. That's the only rule Marnie ever gave me, back when I started at Riverside, and she never said why. She just made me repeat it back to her…

Denise told me this three times over about a year, and it wasn't the same story twice. That's the main reason I still don't know what to believe. First time, we were on our break in the staff room at…

My uncle Colm did fourteen years as a warden on the tidal defences out past Wells-next-the-Sea, walking the sea wall at night checking the sluice gates hadn't jammed. He told me this story maybe…

The first thing I heard was what I thought was the pallet lift, that low mechanical groan it does when the hydraulics are cold. Took me a second to place it wrong, because the lift was still switched…

It wasn't the coffee machine. I want that out the way first because everyone always asks about the coffee machine and it's fine, it's a normal Costa machine, it just runs all night same as everything…

We drain the pool the last Sunday of September, always, and for three nights after we don't go near the deep end. That's the rule. Dad never explains it beyond, "because your gran said so," and…

"—so that's rule four, and I know it sounds daft, but you'll understand by Thursday." Maureen hands over the laminated sheet like it's nothing. She's watching Priya's face all the same. The sheet is…

Marion heard the engine first. A narrowboat, she thought, some idiot running late for the Sallow Lock before the paraffin lamp went out at ten. The diesel chug carried flat across the water, the way…

"—no, the fourth one, not the second, the second one's fine, it's the fourth one that does it." Danny doesn't look up from his phone when he says it. I have to ask him twice which register he means…

The ticket machine on Level B2 had a laminated sheet taped over its screen, yellowed at the corners, held on with the kind of parcel tape that leaves residue for years. It hadn't been there when I…

"—and I told them, twelve. I counted twelve aisles every night for six weeks, and the store only has eleven." That was how Priya started, halfway through her second pint, like we'd been talking about…

"No, I said I'd be back by one, not that I'd left by one, there's a difference, Carol." I had the phone wedged between ear and shoulder, indicator ticking, and she was still going on about the…