Room 2D

Story from Janus 27 by Johnny Chesham Penelope Forster sat in the railway carriage looking out at the Sussex Downs with a resentful expression on her pretty, freckled face. Tomorrow was first day of term at St Elia’s High School for Girls and any minute now she would be joined by all the other schoolgirls reminding her that her freedom was over. She had enjoyed the vac and met a super boy too, but now she was back to all the rules and discipline of a strict girls’ boarding school. As the train drew into the junction she saw hordes of girls in the blue and white striped blazers of St Elia’s swarming about in straw hats, navy blue gym-slips and white knee-length socks, waving hockey sticks and satchels, reminding her all too clearly of the school life she was so tired of. In a flash she saw the answer: ‘Of course,’ she thought, ‘I’ll get myself expelled!’ Why hadn’t she thought of it before? St Elia’s was full of rules and...

A story from Janus 26 by R.T. Mason. If you walked out past the holiday chalets you came to a stretch of beach where nobody much seemed to go although it was attractive enough, scrub land and the open sea with a narrow ribbon of beach be­tween. That Thursday afternoon, with a hint of rain in the brisk offshore wind, there seemed to be no one there at all and she had walked for perhaps half a mile quite alone. And then she saw him, a lone figure standing gazing out to sea. Afterwards, looking back, it was tempting to think she sensed something about him, some special quality, even then. But she knew that really that was merely being fanciful. She had been there almost a week, the first half of a two-week holiday with her parents and though she would never have admitted it to them, she  was  a bit bored. Due, without doubt, primarily to the fact that Bob wasn’t there. Bob, her fiancé (or due to formally become so in a month...