The second time we bring Danny home from the hospital, no-one brings us flowers. No-one texts, no-one calls. No-one sends baby hampers or little foil balloons that say, It’s a boy! Not even my own mother. But I don’t mind. Nothing can spoil this moment. In the hospital carpark I tilt the mirror down to […]

It night the insects. In the morning the birds. The shrill cries, their colonising shrieks. The darkness squeezed in between. Twelve years they’ve been in this place. They left everything to come here – now it’s hard to imagine having been anywhere else. It’s far too big for just the two of them, but look at this balcony that frames the tempers of the sea, the old wooden staircase that leads down to the rocks, the dense rows of pines that climb the mountainside behind them.