“How can they enjoy this game?” a thin woman asks, sitting on a tablecloth with a friend. She has long blond hair piled high on her head, and she curls a stray wisp around a finger, over and over.She watches one of the players intensley.

Her friend shifts next to her. “It’s not so bad.”

The woman bites her lip. “All they seem to do is stand still, and occasionally run after a ball. They look like white statues standing there in the sun.”

– The Last Game, August 1914

Artefacts & Other Stories by Rebecca Burns

That dandelion. A flash of stubborn yellow in a dark box of space. It had promised sunshine but had tasted sour.

Artefacts.

A dandelion. A mayfly. A family, bereft.

Items and mementos of a life, lived hard and with love, or long, empty, bitter.

In these sharply drawn and unflinching short stories, Rebecca Burns unpicks the connection between the lives we live and what we leave behind.

Sound like your kind of read? Buy a copy now  – Paperback £11.95/Kindle £2.69

(All prices correct at time of writing.)