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Îles de la Madeleine (Magdalen Islands) Canada, 1771 The sea itself feared to swallow a race bold enough to unknot her watery roots… where the giant seaweed moors the horizon to the setting sun. Antonine Maillet, Pélagie la Charette   Marie-Andrée Le Blanc has never heard of the

It’s only a matter of time before someone gets killed, said Isaac, naked but for a pair of shorts and beautiful in the way that the young are beautiful, through the sheer fact and vitality of youth. He held a cold can of beer against his cheek. Please be careful, Sonia said. I worry about you o

It reached epiphany one bleak night, after months of waiting. Tormented by the drink and the absence of the cormorant; pushed to the edge.   *   In September, my godmother took me to a talk about the birds of the River Lea. I had accidentally told her about my watching the month be

It took a moment for Michael to realise that it was his doorbell that was ringing. He wasn’t expecting a visitor or a parcel and it was weeks now since any flowers had been delivered. His first reaction was dread. He was too raw and fragile to deal with anything or anyone unfamiliar. He even strug

LUNCH   ‘She’ll grow up to kill you, you know.’ That was what I wanted to say, but how can you say that? Every time I see them, and smile at that poor little girl, and she tries to smile back at me, I want to seize her mother and shake her, slap her, shout at her, do all the violen

BREAKFAST   ‘Well, my dear, I suppose that's the only promise you couldn't keep.’ I shut off the alarm clock and draw the curtain to allow the lazy dawn light to filter in. I gaze down at him, my dead husband. Somehow I always thought he would outlive me. He was always the strong one

At the Gilberts   The Gilberts were eating pasta with their three children in the kitchen-diner of their newly built red-brick house in West London the evening I met them for the first time. They asked me to join them but I said I had already eaten. Sarah Gilbert made me a coffee, using fre

She parked her car by a cavernous, derelict shed on the edge of the beach; an eye-sore, incongruous, like a war relic. The wooden end panels had rotted; she walked inside, squinting through the dim light. Damp fungal smells permeated the air. Sheets of corrugated iron roofing clanged infernally in t