Sublime

Julia wondered if all four girls’ voices lived inside their mother.

Lughnasadh’s The Tale of John Barleycorn was entirely written in Glastonbury.

The Hathaways were an unworldly lot, eccentric and cheerful and preoccupied with books and art and music. They lived in a ramshackle cottage, but instead of repairing door frames or holes in the ceiling, they pruned roses and wrote poetry. If a chair leg broke off, they merely wedged a stack of books beneath it. Their priorities bewildered him.

like her child in a playpen in a distant part of the house, occupying her heart but not threatening to interrupt her dinner party,

Lydia huddled against her, listening to the deep, underground drum of her mother’s heartbeat. When her mother breathed in, she breathed in. When her mother breathed out, she breathed out.

‘You’re on another planet!’ Mrs Baker would cry as she turned off the gas or saved the bath from overflowing. ‘God only knows what you did before I came.’ ‘Well,’ Astrid would say, ‘I had Charlie, and before Charlie I lived in squalor.’