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Kate Lockwood Jefford

“It didn’t cry or make much of any sort of fuss all day, which was amazing really, considering.

After picking the baby up, I’d dawdled at the fag-end of a flea market behind the brand-new football stadium which loomed, vast and shiny as a spaceship, above the tangled heaps of clothes, sad shoes, scuffed plates and naked Barbies on their backs, arms and legs stuck out like marching zombies.

There was nothing there for a baby.”

 

From ‘Picasso’s Face’– included in the showcase

“My writing concerns attachment and loss in the context of family, work and class. The idea for a story is usually an encounter in day-to-day life when an image, a scene, a soundbite captures my imagination and sets off associations, memories, dreams, fantasies. “Picasso’s Face” started from witnessing a scene while walking in Valencia: a woman stuck her child down on a busy pavement and walked off. The little boy’s face reminded me of a photograph of Picasso I’d seen in an exhibition earlier: its expression both adult and baby-like. My fantasies about this scene, mingled with a conversation about marriage post-Franco, and a newspaper report of a woman found dead in odd circumstances – her age the only detail – seeded the story. A dark, surreal narrative emerged, inviting readers to interpret it – including the ‘baby’ – for themselves.” From the Introduction