A Faraway Smell of Lemon (4 page)

Binny stays beside this woman she doesn’t know and polishes her christening mug. Briefly, rain falls on the streets outside. There is much to do, much to prepare, much to mend, but it cannot be done in a day, and sometimes it is better to do one small thing. She will stay a while longer.

The angel sits with her tinsel wings. Binny wipes and she wipes and she wipes.

Photo: © Fatimah Namdar

RACHEL JOYCE is the author of the international bestseller
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, and for which she was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards New Writer of the Year 2012. Rachel Joyce lives in Gloucestershire with her husband and four children.

www.racheljoycebooks.com

Also by Rachel Joyce

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Perfect

Read on for an excerpt from Rachel Joyce’s

Perfect

The Addition of Time

In 1972, two seconds were added to time. Britain agreed to join the Common Market, and “Beg, Steal or Borrow” by the New Seekers was the entry for Eurovision. The seconds were added because it was a leap year and time was out of joint with the movement of the Earth. The New Seekers did not win the Eurovision Song Contest but that had nothing to do with the Earth’s movement and nothing to do with the two seconds either.

The addition of time terrified Byron Hemmings. At eleven years old he was an imaginative boy. He lay awake, picturing it happen, and his heart flapped like a bird. He watched the clocks, trying to catch them at it. “When will they do it?” he asked his mother.

She stood at the new breakfast counter, dicing quarters of apple. The morning sun spilled through the glass doors in such clean squares that he could stand in them.

“Probably when we’re asleep,” she said.

“Asleep?” Things were even worse than he thought.