Done it

Almost.
I wrote "Redemption Postponed" in two or three days. "Panic in Islington" took, what seems like, that many months. Why!? I can't say it's a better piece of writing. Perhaps I wanted it to be a better piece of writing so badly, that I got  tangled into a proverbial mother of knots. Mother appears again, different sort of mother but not bad. Needs a little more, not another scene, but more development in the ones that she occurs in. No father again, hmm. Main character, Zosia (daring of me to write a female PoV:) is clear in my mind; she needs a bit of tinkering with in the earlier parts, I was writing a slightly different character back then, and never finished editing those parts. Fiat stays as is, minor tweaking perhaps.  Navajo Joe needs another scene to make sense; I deleted a weak scene with him -- never replaced it. Guido and Bolek: a little finessing, but no big alterations. Helga needs a little more. Terry and Jane stay as they are. Blitzie the dog needs a wee bit more description. Slow sections need some better composition here and there. Hard to break into them with additional material, but they could be made stronger. Action bits the same. Too many words, not enough meaning.

I hate to admit this to myself, but I can see the whole thing growing by about another thousand or so words (currently stands at over 15,000),. Still a short story, just takes a long time to spit it out.