The Retreat

by Mark Edwards

This was home. Why had I waited so long to come back?

Her voice was soft. ‘I’m working on my first novel. It’s a . . . picaresque, set at a university . . .’

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

In London, where I’d lived since my early twenties, there was too much to stimulate me on the surface but not enough to stir my deeper imagination. I needed darkness, but lived in a city where lights always shone.

I was in a pit, wallowing in self-pity, and I wanted to dig myself out but the shovel was too heavy, my limbs too weak. Everything was too much effort.

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

Neither of them saw the Stranger look over his shoulder and wink at her.

Un, dau, tri Mn yn dal y pry Pry wedi marw Mam yn crio’n arw.