Ghosts

by Dolly Alderton

The Schadenfreude Shelf was a shameful, private ritual we’d developed a few years ago, in which we collected stories of other people’s misfortunes to make us feel better about our own. The idea was, we would always have a selection of relevant anecdotes for us to reach for in any given situation that would put our disasters into perspective.

Slay

I had never known a feeling as unbearable – as sour, wrenching and unshakeably sad – as pity for a parent.