Learning To Swim

by Clare Chambers

But our feelings often know truths which our reason can’t see: I was crying because all my experience of happiness came through Frances, but the equivalent was not true for her. When the time came, sooner or later, she would do without me very well.

Mr Radley laughed – his usual response to any sign of delinquency on Frances’ part – not out of tolerance or good humour, but because there is a certain melancholy pleasure in having one’s low expectations confirmed.

for the briefest moment I experience with sudden clarity, and with every fibre of my being, the vastness of the universe and my own infinitesimal span on this tiny spinning ball of dirt and fire, and I understand at the profoundest level what it will mean not to exist throughout the rest of eternity.