Every summer The Guardian publish a short fiction special collecting new stories from established authors. Alongside these there is always one piece from a new writer selected from responses to an open call which the paper puts out a couple of months before. This year was the third year I’ve entered and though I’ve never had a story selected (for either the magazine or the five extra spots on guardian.co.uk) I always enjoy writing them.

As this weekend marks the release of this year’s collection in the Guardian magazine, I’m putting my entry up here for your reading pleasure. It might be worth knowing going in that the remit was for stories less than 2,000 words in length on the topic of ‘journeys’. Here’s what I came up with: [PDF]