THE WAX HAND ON FIONA’S DESK lies palm up across articles she’s ripped from magazines, leaflets for family days out, and to-do lists without everything ticked off. I’ve noticed that when the pile gets precariously untidy, Fiona bins the papers, and a new pile gradually grows. The fingers are slightly parted and cupped like they’re holding an apple. There’s only a couple of inches of slim, fair wrist before it’s cut off, smooth and flat. The nails are polished glacé cherry-red. A gold-coloured ring with a green stone sits on the index finger. Wrinkles and crevices have been crafted into the faux flesh to near realism.
Once, when Fiona popped to the loo, I touched the ring to see if it was real, to see if it would slip off, but it was wax, just like the hand, shiny and melded in place.
I’M NOT SURE HOW I RECOGNISED FIONA when she moved to our cul-de-sac. Her hair was brown, not blonde like it had been in the news footage outside the crown court, and she’d lost weight, which she’s kept off. Nothing about her face is distinctive, except perhaps her ski-jump nose. As I got out of my car on my driveway, I watched her take a box from her boot without looking about, like she’d already lived here years. In her position, I would’ve relocated to the middle of nowhere, rather than another suburbia. When our eyes met across ours and our neighbours’ driveways, she smiled, said hi, and asked
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Rebecca Klassen is co-editor of The Phare and a Best of the Net 2025 nominee from Gloucestershire, England. She has won the London Independent Story Prize and was shortlisted for this year’s Alpine Fellowship and Laurie Lee Prize. She has previously been shortlisted for the Oxford Flash. Her work has featured in Mslexia, Shooter, The Brussels Review, Amphibian, Roi Faineant Press, Ginosko, Riggwelter, Cranked Anvil, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Rebecca’s stories have been performed at numerous literature festivals and on BBC Radio.