Bill keeps seeing the same woman on his way to and from the train - at least, he thinks she's the same woman...

If the public don't have the discipline to watch what they put into their mouths then the state is just going to have to do it for them...

A reunion with an old flame leads Meg into an adventure where she meets with both success and catastrophe.

An unexpected twist in the closing frames of an old home movie sends Rose hurtling back to her childhood - a time and a place where no one else's parents were divorcing, and where stepmothers were as exotic as shop-bought cake. Revisiting her memories of glamorous part-time fathers and fortnightly treats, Rose unpicks the unspoken adult acrimony, and the childish confusion: "Each time they were returned to her with their bounty she was tight-lipped and unimpressed, flattening their ebullience to a shapeless guilt, their double bind of love and loyalty teaching them early to suppress their enthusiasm in her company." Dual Carriageway is about parents and children, and how complicated it all is.

A woman waits for her friend on a station concourse even though she knows she will never arrive. Winner of the 2012 Waterstones' Crime in the City Competition

Everyone knows it will happen. But who do we blame? Ourselves? Each other? Me? You? Them?