Chloe Michelle Howarth

It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.

Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.

But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness.

Sunburn

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“Why not be honest? It is exhausting to haul secrets around all the time. Secrets that nobody is asking me to keep. Why do I weigh myself down so voluntarily?”

Storm

It makes perfect sense to want to be inside her mouth, to be torn to pieces by her; until I catch myself wanting it, and I am shocked, I am disgusted. I almost laugh at my own absurdity. That wasn't me at all, just a bad notion that got into my head to make trouble. That wasn't me who thought that. What a weird feeling. Very discreetly, I bless myself and hope to be forgiven, and I hope that I never feel anything so inexplicable or strong again.

One day, Mother will grow tired of me. This isn’t a worry or a guess, it is an instinct. Her affection will wane, and so I must absorb all the love she gives me while she is giving it.

When he leaves, I watch from the back door as he disappears down the garden, out onto the dark road, taking the last of today’s goodness with him. Then I am left alone with my family.

When we spend the evenings talking and playing in my garden, I feel so liminal. We are adults and children at once. 

Here, the days drip by as slow as half-melted candle wax. Time is hard and soft at once in Crossmore.

Right now we are between uses, and it is very quiet.

I always talk about leaving Crossmore like it's something I am definitely going to do. As if I would know how. I don't know where I would be going or who I would be going to or what for.

It's presumptuous, yes, but now that I'm getting older, I can’t help but wonder about her experience as a mother, and as a woman, and how different her life might have been without children or with different children or at least without a daughter. Who would she be with one less child standing between her and freedom? Would she be an entirely different person?

In this thin space between sleeping and waking, there is room for honesty

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