"These Seven " by Ross Bradshaw (ed) (Five Leaves Bookshop, 2015)

Stories by 7 writers with Nottingham connections. Trams.

• "Ask me now" (John Harvey) - Tom (3rd person protagonist) is a policeman dealing with domestic crimes. His father died 10 years before. His wife left him 6 years before, taking the twins. He's involved with a case where Emma, a young widow with childen, is pregnant again thanks to a perhaps inappropriate partner Garry - an ex-squaddie. Tom chats to him. He seems to want to start afresh but rejects therapy. One evening a son turns up at Tom's door, claiming that his brother bullies him. He doesn't want go back. Tom drives him back the next day. Garry trashes the house. Tom tracks him down in the Arboretum. He'd had a Helmand flashback involving kids. Tom tells him he can't return to the house.
  I'd expected an ending where Tom reacts to his son's crisis in the light of the Garry case. Instead there's an open ending where Garry may be trying to stay in touch with Emma.
• "Here we are again" (Megan Taylor) - A young single mother (1st person protagonist) arrives in Nottingham with her toddler to meet her friend, but her friend's not at the station. The mother's been following her friend's progress online through university and relationships with girls. We learn how, after a spin-the-bottle game years before in the Arboretum, the friend kissed the protagonist who reacted by sleeping with a random boy. The friend had helped her decide against an abortion. The friend turns up. The protagonist now realises that their friendship was love, and that her friend's unattached.
  Too predictable.
• "Simone the stylite" (Brick) - A graphic short story about there being nothing wrong with liking your own company. The protagonist decides to live in the Aspire sculpture on campus, thus helping different communities to interact.
• "A foreign land" (Paula Rawsthorne) - Aziz (1st person protagonist) is a 10 year son in a Sudanese family about to be deported. Locals and friends support them, but it doesn't help. The surprisingly articulate boy manages to tick off far too many issues - "We've got quite a few asylum seeker kids at my school. You'd think that they'd all hand round together seeing as no one else talks to them but they don't, because most of them can't talk to each other neither"
• "Hardanger" (Alison Moore) - When Maureen remarries, she and teenage daughter Sue (3rd person protagonist) move from farm to coast. Sue's boyfriend goes to fanily holiday with them to Norway and spellbinds Maureen them when playing on a bought violin. Doesn't work for me.
• "Nimmi's Wall" (Shreya Sen Handley) - Nimmi (3rd person protagonist) arrived from India 4 months before to join her surgeon husband. She's pregnant and hasn't yet visited the foggy end of their long garden. Now it's the first warm day of the year so she down to see, which is (bizarrely) the last straw for her husband, who starts sleeping in the guest room. She interacts with ghosts - first 2 girls then a helpful gardener. She "gasps audibly" - is there any other way? Her husband's suspicious. The gardener drags her into another world. No.
• "A time to keep" (Alan Sillitoe) - Martin (3rd person protagonist) looks after his siblings while his parents go to the pub. He likes books. In a year, when 15, he'll have to leave school. His cousin Raymond, a scallywag, comes home with his parents. One morning Raymond takes Martin to his work - a newmotorway. Raymond kills a colleague in an accident. No.