Joachim Montgomery rubbed his ear, frowning.  He looked again at the list in front of him.  “World-wide unemployment; water scarcity; air-borne disease epidemics; oceans polluted.”  So many problems, no solutions.  There had been a time when he had had hope for the future.  But not now.

He hated the loneliness of it all.

A knock at the door and his secretary handed him yet another lunch to be eaten at his desk.

He forced a smile.  “This convention means a great deal to you, Mary, doesn’t it?” he said.

“It means a great deal to everyone, Professor,” she said brightly, “but no-one doubts that you have all the answers.”

“And what if I said I had none?”

Her expression darkened.

“Then I would say that humanity is doomed, Professor.”  He noted the tight line of disbelief around her mouth as she left the room.

Looking through the window towards City Hall, Joachim stared at the flags hanging  heavily in the heat.  Two hundred countries.  He felt stifled by the thought of all those who depended on him to clean up the world with a few clear-cut innovations.

The 2035 Convention on Global Social Problems would begin tomorrow.  He had been preparing for eighteen months but he knew his carefully prepared data was uninspired, useless. He also knew his associates, globally, were in the same position.  But because of his reputation as an innovative thinker and practitioner he was their unspoken leader.

If only he could step aside.   His assistant, Dr Michaela Guadalupez, was just the person for the job.  But where would she find the answers?

“Inspiration!” he said to the empty room.  “Just give me inspiration!”

“My research tells me you are the world authority on social problems.  Does anyone worry about your problems, Professor?”

Joachim stared at the slight figure seated opposite him, then pressed his intercom button.  The young woman shook her head.

“I switched all that off.  Mobile phones, too.  A very amateurish system.”

“Unbelievable!  You’re from the Press, of course.  You’d better leave before I have you arrested.”

“Oh man of little faith,” she smiled.  “Didn’t you call for inspiration?  Well, here I am to inspire you.”

Joachim felt light-headed.  Was it her unfamiliar perfume?

“May I?” She reached across, removed the list of issues from his desk, then took from her pocket a tiny, metallic object.  She ran it swiftly down the page.

“What the hell is that!” He reached for the metal object but she stood up quickly.

“A speculative scanner,” she answered. “It’s after your time.  Is this the complete list?”

“Yes, it’s all we could dig up for now,” he said sarcastically.  He closed his eyes.  Obviously he was hallucinating.

“No need to get upset, Professor,” she said.  “It will all be sorted in moments.”

As she spoke, the scanner whirred, producing what appeared to be a plasticised strip.  She tore it off, handing it to him.

“There you are.  I’ll read up about you in the sociology data of your time and see what happened.”

Joachim began to read.  Ten minutes…fifteen…he looked at the girl in disbelief.

“This is a plan for a Utopia for all humanity.  If we can put this into practice…”

She shrugged.  “It can all be put into practice, Professor, believe me.”

He groaned suddenly. “And if I give them this there will be more expectations, more questions.  More loneliness.”  He looked at her.  “Have you an answer to this problem, too?”

“Of course,” she smiled.  “If you’re ready to meet the future.”

It took Joachim only a moment to place the strip in an envelope and to write across it, in large letters, “Dr Michaela Guadalupez. Confidential.”

“Problems solved,” he said, reaching for her hand.

The coroner’s report stated cardiac arrest.  Dr Guadalupez, as she walked into the auditorium to present the opening address to the 2035 Convention on Social Problems, knew better.

The water slapped gently against the hull of our small dinghy as I put up the oars and reached over the edge.  Wow!  Two beauties!  As I hauled in the freshwater cray pots and rowed back to the mooring at the end of our garden I smiled, thinking how pleased Geoff would be.  And it hadn’t cost him a cent!

Thinking in terms of finance cast a shadow across my bright day and I chased it away.  We were so lucky; a dream home by the river, secure jobs, and each other.  Geoff, a science teacher, worked at the local high school.  He had recently been made head of his department, while I was a sales assistant at the local bookshop.  We’d been together for ten years now and really the only problem we ever had was over money.  Geoff was what my mother, in her soft Welsh accent, had always called, “parsimonious”.  The frustration was that if I sometimes longed for a nice meal out at a good restaurant, or a new dress with an expensive price tag, Geoff would always dismiss it as an example of my extravagant nature.

“You did a sensible thing when you agreed to having our two signatures on the savings account” he would say if he ever caught me so much as glancing in a dress shop window.  “We’d never have the house we have, or the fat savings account for our retirement, if you had sole signatory rights.”

Earlier in our marriage, I had tried to point out that we were far from retirement age and still had plenty of living to do, but the arguments that followed were so awful, and his comments about how little money I earned so disparaging, that now I said nothing.

I was being disloyal thinking like this, I thought guiltily.  Well, I’d try to make up for it.  Geoff was working late, as he so often did now that he had taken on his new responsibilities.  I would make a crayfish mornay and take it up to the school to surprise him.  There was a bottle of chilled white wine in the fridge.  We’d eat in one of the science labs – add a bit of fun and romance to that drab place!

Just after dark, I parked carefully outside the school and tiptoed through the back way, my feast-filled basket over my arm.  A bit like Red Riding Hood, I almost giggled to myself.  The building was pre-war with those awful high windows but there was a

glow of light in the corner above the science lab.  I’d make sure he was inside, then I’d tap on the window and he’d come out to see who the intruder was.  Surprise!  Surprise!  Putting the basket carefully on the ground and climbing up on the low wall that ran alongside, I peered in – and my whole world crumbled.  On a mattress on the floor, Geoff and Erica, his top Year 12 student, were making love in the arc light of one of the Bunsen burners.

I relived that moment many times in the agonizing weeks to come.  My habit of staying silent to avoid an argument now stood me in good stead.  Geoff, absorbed not in his job but, as I now realized, in a heady relationship, hardly seemed to notice my silence.  Little by little, I began to see what a farce our marriage really was.  Geoff was a control freak – he controlled me and now he was into another relationship where he had the power.  I desperately wanted to leave – but how?  I had allowed Geoff control over everything – even my wages were paid straight into our savings account.  I simply had no money.

The solution came to me in an unlikely way.  During one of our rare conversations, Geoff told me that a student at the school had been caught for signing his father’s signature on absentee notes.  When pressed, he’d boasted that it was easy: “You put the other person’s signature against the window and a sheet of paper over the top.  The light behind it shines through and you just trace the signature onto the paper.”

Geoff shook his head as he told me the story.  “A criminal in the making”, he’d grimaced, unaware of the escape route he had just given me.

The bank manager was a little taken aback when I handed him the transfer form, neatly signed by both signatories, together with my application for my own account.

Fortunately, I’d rehearsed:

“Geoff’s found some new tax loophole and I’m ‘it’”, I smiled, pretending to sigh.

He laughed and picked up his pen.  “Well, if anyone would find one it would be Geoff.  We’ll open your new account now and transfer the money straight away.”

I’d already resigned from my job, so I packed that morning.  The note in the kitchen was the cowardly way out but I didn’t want to have to listen to Geoff justifying his actions.  I knew I’d be the one to blame.  My note explained, very carefully, that if he pressed criminal charges against me for forging his signature or tried to contact me I’d expose his relationship with a student who was also under 18.  I didn’t have to point out that he would probably go to jail and that he would never get another teaching position.

Six months later I sued for divorce and received not only my freedom but half the proceeds from the sale of the house.  I have never seen Geoff again and that is the way I want it to stay.  I have my own home now, I buy the occasional dress without looking at the price tag, and I eat out often.  My only regret is that, no matter what I do, in one way Geoff still has some power over me – our secrets must stay just that, for a lifetime.

All the houses in Poppy Street were happy, but the happiest of all was the house at number 22. It was not the largest house in the street, nor was it the prettiest, but is had been built by the Pearcy family who had lived in it and loved if for six years. The family belonged to the little house as much, thought the house, as it belonged to them. So when Mr Pearcy came home one night with the news that he had been offered a new job, which would mean the family would have to move two hundred kilometers away, the little house felt its heart would break.

Soon the family had packed up and a large FOR SALE sign was placed on a board outside. Real estate agents began to bring people around to see the property, but the house glared at them.

“If my family can’t sell me, then they will not be able to move,” it said to itself and when people came to look at it the doors creaked, the drawers jammed, and the house looked dull and miserable.

“This is awful,” said Mrs Pearcy. “No one seems to like the house and it suddenly seems so sad and gloomy.”

“Yes – and I shall lose my job if we don’t move soon,” sighed Mr Pearcy. “If we can’t sell the house we can’t move.” He looked unhappy but the house didn’t care.

“I shall keep them here forever,” it said gleefully, and it encouraged the weeds to grow in the front garden.

So full of its own misery was it that it did not notice when, one morning, a small, red car drew up in the driveway.

“Oh, what a lovely house,” said a warm and friendly voice, “but how sad it is. It must be lonely.”

Startled, the house looked out of its windows, prepared to look fierce and unwelcoming. What it saw make it stop and forget to look cross. A small girl, her thin hands clasped together, was gazing at it excitedly, her body wrapped in blankets in a wheelchair. Beside her stood her mother and father.

“Well, it is an urgent sale, which is why the house  is so cheap, and it really is the only one we can afford – but it looks so depressing I don’t think you could ever get well here, dear,” said the mother with a sigh.

But you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” cried the child. “The house and I would make each other happy. Look at that lovely big window. I could sit there and watch all the children passing by. When I get better I could ask them in to play with me.”

The little house began to feel warm from its very foundations. How selfish it had been, trying to make the Pearcys unhappy. How it would love to have the change to make this small girl well again. It glared at the weeds in the front garden until they shriveled under its gaze, then it stood very straight and blew the dust from its bricks.

“There you are,” cried the child, “it looks happier already,” and she laughed with pleasure.

“Funny thing, but it does look more cheerful,” said her father with a grin. “I could put up a lovely swing over on that tree and…”

“It looks as though we have found ourselves a home,” said the mother, smiling through her tears – and the house at number 22 was once again the happiest house on Poppy Street.