The night is cold, iced about its edges. In the stern, she hears him scrabbling himself upwards yet finds she cannot look away from the thing now reaching towards her. She feels a pull in her insides, that same pull she felt long ago – the tug on some internal bell rope. Somewhere low in her hips, an ache is spreading, though it is only the ghost of a pain, a shade of something already passed. She remembers it was a Tuesday on land when her first child bled out of her, though by the time the second came on the water, she was no longer very certain of time. I’m glad you came back, she wants to say, whatever day it is.
She can hear him somewhere near her, saying her name and scrabbling again for his oar, though she chooses to ignore him. Only shakes her head a little as she reaches away from him, leaning out over the side. The creature’s skin, where she touches it, is warmer than expected, its reaction slower, calm beneath her hand. The boat rocks, keeling closer to the surface of the water with every passing swell. The sky is gory with stars, like the insides of a gutted night.
Acknowledgements
Writing a book is an exceptionally bizarre thing that requires a lot of exceptionally bizarre people to act like it’s OK whenever you bring it up. To say I’m lucky in the people I’m surrounded by is like saying I’m lucky to have possession of both my hands – it would be impossible to do most of the things I take for granted without them, but specifically impossible to type or pick up a pen.
To the following people, I owe my entire ability to do anything:
My editor, Kish Widyaratna, for understanding everything on the kind of kindred level that, as a writer, you dream of. For patience and humour, for her fantastic company, and for leaving links to videos of glacier-calving in the margin notes, ensuring that what was work never felt like work.
Likewise, Caroline Bleeke at Flatiron (who one day I hope to actually meet in the flesh), for exceptional positivity, energy and input.
My agent, Sam Copeland, for the kind of sorely needed enthusiasm which simply isn’t in my DNA. For sending an email which changed everything and for blending enormous support and professionalism with an ability to talk about Lord of the Rings with the depth and gravity I require. I’m unendingly grateful.
The Editors at the White Review, for kickstarting an incredible summer and for making the whole process with ‘The Great Awake’ so seamless and enjoyable.
The Curtis Brown Creative group of 2011 – not the first, but certainly the most glamorous – and Anna Davis and Chris Wakling in particular, for seeing past my then twenty-one-year-old inability to construct a sentence that was anything under a page in length.
Various people who have stemmed the descent into frothing insanity simply by existing:
Nina and Sam Harvey-Brewin; Sarah Crowden; Lucy Quintin-Archard (Baraona) and the QAs at large; Emma Waring, Gabriella Shimeld-Fenn and Hannah Leach (hexagonally and with great love); Sophie Jagger, birthday twin preferable even to Sandra Bullock; Daisy Johnson, for kindness and enthusiasm in the face of a thousand other commitments; Lindsay Smith and Kerry Richmond, whose collective nickname I won’t put down in print; Eleanor Harris, Who I Met In A Queue And Accompanied Around The World; Cordelia Masters and Ed Harper, Jess and Ash Burton, Amanda Williams and Pete Quigley (hey GANG); Alex Wilson and Emily Down, fake brother and fake sister extraordinaire.
Izi Woodger, with whom ten years’ friendship has passed in ten minutes, despite the weathering of several peculiar house shares. For her humour and insight, for her time.
Rosalie Bower, for turning up at the right time and staying. For being able to read (contrary to popular opinion), for patience and love, for midnight chicken, for shark movies, for all that.
Sarvat Hasin, without whom nothing here would exist. For being the best, most talented and most utterly necessary of friends. I could make a list of the stories in this collection which wouldn’t have been written without her, except I already have, and it’s the whole collection.
My brother Nick, for doing me a solid and embarking on at least as economically precarious a career as writing, presumably to take the heat off me. Having a brother who is also a best friend is a particularly brilliant thing, and I’m grateful for The Simpsons, for Round the Horne, for The Santa Clause and for anything else with which we have ever successfully alienated people.
Lastly my parents, Polly and Laurie, who read to me before I could read and acted as though writing wasn’t a wholly ridiculous thing to want to go and do. I love them entirely and this book is for them, even the gross bits.
About the Author
Author photograph © Sophie Davidson
Julia Armfield lives and works in London. She is a fiction writer and occasional playwright with a Master’s in Victorian Art and Literature from Royal Holloway University. Her work has been published in Lighthouse, Analog Magazine, Neon Magazine and Best British Short Stories 2019. She was commended in the Moth Short Story Prize 2017, longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Prize 2018 and is the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018.
First published 2019 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2019 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-5290-1258-3
Copyright © Julia Armfield 2019
Jacket background © Shutterstock
Design: Ami Smithson, Picador Art Department
The right of Julia Armfield to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The following stories have been previously published in journals and magazines: ‘The Great Awake’ in The White Review ‘Smack’ in Lighthouse
‘The Collectables’ in The Stockholm Review, then republished in Analog Magazine
‘Mantis’ in Neon Magazine
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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