The Retreat

by Mark Edwards

He was a writer of literary fiction who’d been talked about as a kind of enfant terrible a decade ago.

Like I said, it was a first-world problem. But it was my problem.

‘Then maybe you need to go right back. You need to fall in love with writing again. Find whatever, or wherever, it was that caused that first spark.’

That made Suzi laugh. She was, I realised, very young. Twenty-three, perhaps? I could hardly remember what it felt like to be her age. I seem to recall I was simultaneously lacking in confidence and thought I knew everything about the world.

‘But he has been helping me with my book, giving me lots of advice. I mean, there’s been quite a lot of mansplaining going on, but he has been helpful.

‘It’s bad luck,’ he replied. ‘If you move peonies, a woodpecker will come and peck out your eyes.’ Julia laughed, but Rhodri looked deadly serious. ‘Please don’t move them, Julia.’ ‘Okay.’ He nodded, satisfied, and headed off to the shed.

She’s one of those women who just gets on with it, whatever shit life throws at her.

‘Witches were just clever women that men couldn’t tame, weren’t they? Women who wouldn’t conform.

Max was clearly one of those people who loses the plot when their blood sugar is low.

‘The good news,’ she said, ‘is that Heaven is real. As soon as I realised that, I no longer feared death – and I truly started to live.’

‘A lot of men are drawn to women with emotional pain,’ she said.

If I enter a house with no books it makes me uneasy. I wonder what’s wrong with the people who live there.

Seven for a secret never to be told.

Dream Big What if I fall? Oh, my darling, but what if you FLY?

‘The damsel in distress.’ ‘Your gender

‘That Lily was a lovely girl, you know. I hope she’s still out there somewhere.’

She was painfully beautiful.

his mother told him the sacrificed child was always one who would be ‘less missed’ in the community. The witch didn’t like sick children – they taste bad – so the local people couldn’t give up a child who was likely to die anyway (he said this as if this was a terrible shame). Instead, they chose a child who had been orphaned, or whose parents were new to the area, or a bastard. The Widow particularly liked children with sin in their blood.

How brave the coward sounds.

Later, remembering Megan’s look of terror, the way she’d flinched, would make Lily feel bad. But in that moment, it was delicious.