Small Things Like These

by Claire Keegan

It was easy to understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind.

‘Haven’t I five girls and a wife at home.’ ‘Well, I’ve nobody – and all I want to do is drown meself. Can you not even do that fukken much for us?’