Deborah's short stories are published in seventeen anthologies and online. 
Links to each can be found on the ​Home Page.

The Suitcase (excerpt)

A suitcase. Open it, says the voice in your head. And part of you wants to—it cries out for touching—but part of you can’t. 
See the worn fabric glued to its cardboard, the eight leather-bound corners cracked after all these years, the brass buckles? The leather handle has been repaired, a home job probably for the stitching is a different colour. Paper luggage labels have worn off though the glue still remains, long rectangles of powdery white. This suitcase went places, witnessed history, moved on. This suitcase once partnered a life.
 
You are imagining a train platform. Steam is rising from the engine, a whistle blows and folk scramble to board; heart-rending farewells. Felt hats and luggage, wartime serge suits, fierce dogs on short leashes held by black-gloved men in uniform. ‘Hurry!’ your heart calls to them, urging them aboard, ‘Save yourselves’, not quite aware that they would be saving you too, for they haven’t yet met, your grandfather and his bride; you are not even a possibility yet. And while you know he does make it, there is panic in your eyes. You search for him in the crowd, there he is thank god, hobbling along with his cane, dressed like the others, face inscrutable, suitcase in hand, stepping aboard just as the conductor blows the final whistle. You shut your eyes and will him safe.
 
The suitcase in your kitchen stands straight and firm. It has seen much but hasn’t bent, hasn’t broken. You are bent and broken, says the voice in your head. Take strength from this case. You too can endure. Step towards the suitcase, don’t be afraid. Lift it up; feel its weight. Open it. You know you want to… 
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The End Is Round (excerpt)

Her hands don’t work as they used to. Won’t work. But she’ll try again. She’ll concentrate harder this time, because Frank needs his pills ... or is it her?
She holds the bottle tight against her chest, tries to grasp the lid. But her fingers can’t do it. Her hand shakes, and the bottle slips and lands with a plastic thwack on the bathroom floor and rolls away.
She grips the basin, wrists wobbling. Silent tears splash the porcelain. When she looks up, it’s a face she doesn’t recognise. Who is this shrivelled grey woman, sallow skinned with frightened, watery eyes? 
She’ll fight it. This isn’t going to be the end of her. She’ll fight to the end like poor Frank is doing, bless his heart. Bobby, and Tom at the grocer’s, keep saying he’s in a better place now. But Frank’s in his rocker, so what do they mean? He can’t leave, anyway; his Sydney Swans aren’t up there yet, and what about his tea and Tim Tams every day at three o’clock? 
It might be three. If she keeps her head down, then she won’t see the clock in the hall. 
Leaning back on her heels, she lets go of the basin, takes hold of the door jamb, puts her other hand on the wall, and makes it slowly up the hall – steady now – around the corner, past that nasty sharp-cornered chair and into the kitchen. She clicks her teeth. Someone has left a mess again. 
These cupboards are something she can open. Bobby changed the handles. But then, someone called Susan (or was it Suzette? Sue-something) moved everything around. Said it’d be easier for her. Easier? It took her a week to find everything, and she had to drag that chair in, to find them. 
She’d taken Bobby to task when he’d next rung. ‘She hid the Tim Tams! Up in the top cupboard! How am I meant to fix your father his tea? I don’t like that woman; don’t like her at all. Who is she again?’ 
Bobby had said something she didn’t care to remember. Twice, when she told him about climbing on the chair.

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