Small lives are never as small as they look from across the street.

Here, family Christmas dinner comes with a surprise worth more than a lifetime’s work; a mother’s “little challenge” with a locked door ripples out across three generations; an old house in Brighton may or may not exist, depending on which side of life you’re standing; a perfect photograph frames more than a landscape; and on a York street, gossip about a neighbour echoes a much older crowd, hungry for a woman’s public undoing.

These are stories of ordinary people on the edge of something they can’t quite name: grief, courage, fury, forgiveness, or simple, stubborn survival. A single choice, a missed call, a slammed door or a match struck in the dark can shift everything.

Small Lives, Deep Shadows invites you in close – to kitchens and chapels, market stalls and hospital wards, front rooms and back streets – and asks you to look again at what’s easily dismissed or unseen. What happens when the quiet ones stop complying? When the shadows lengthen, who steps forward, and who disappears?