Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell

Agnes says nothing as he delivers this speech. She lets the words wash over and around her. She continues to let the slops fall from a basin into the pig trough. Such a simple task: to hold aloft a basin and let its contents fall. Nothing more is required of her than to stand here, leaning on the swine wall.

There will be no going back. No undoing of what was laid out for them. The boy has gone and the husband will leave and she will stay and the pigs will need to be fed every day and time runs only one way.