Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Ruth Hogan | Exclusive Excerpt: THE MOON, THE STARS, AND MADAME BUROVA
Author Guest / September 16, 2021

I want you to tell her to stop hiding my baccy!” Ernest Plumb was one of Imelda’s regulars. He was a short, stocky man with a bellicose air, who trailed a pungent whiff of mothballs and pipe smoke in his wake. Since his wife, Joan, had died, he had come to see her every few weeks to continue the constant bickering that had been the mainstay of their forty-two-year marriage. Imelda had tried explaining to Ernest that spiritual readings weren’t like telephone conversations. She couldn’t simply dial dead people and have a chat at will. Joan was no more cooperative in death than she had been in life. She only came through when it suited her, but today she did have something to say and Imelda struggled to suppress a grin. “Joan says that she’ll stop hiding your stinking tobacco when you stop living like a filthy pig and wash the net curtains at the sitting room window. And she wants you to stop smoking your pipe in the house. She says that’s what your bloody shed is for.” “It’s not like he uses it for anything else,” Joan grumbled. Imelda could see her standing behind Ernest with her hands…