These stories take their cue from the Johnny Mercer classic 'One For My Baby' - made famous by Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and especially Frank Sinatra. Each of these specially-commissioned pieces tell of a 'brief episode' of the kind the song alludes to but doesn't describe. In other words, these are stories about doomed love: affairs that turned sour, were thwarted by circumstance or were never, ever, going to work.

Awesome Day by Shena Mackay

"Rick looked up at the clock above the counter. A quarter to three. It was always a quarter to three at the Wooden Nickel ... It had been quarter to three when he and Meriel first came to the Wooden Nickel and it was still quarter to three when they left." Meriel loves the theatre. Rick loves Meriel. Or is it New York he's in love with?

Shena Mackay was born in Edinburgh. She is author of two novellas, three collections of short stories and eight novels. Her novel Dunedin and the collection of short stories, The Laughing Academy, both won Scottish Arts Council Book Awards and the bestselling The Orchard On Fire was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize and the McVitie's Prize. Her most recent book, The Atmospheric Railway: New and Collected Stories was published in paperback in 2010. Shena lives in Southampton.

Reader: Burn Gorman

Producer: Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4. Show less