Between Us

by Mhairi McFarlane

Perhaps that was the magic of any holiday: it lifted you out of the familiar and gave you a brief aerial view of your life in progress. It made you confront your world’s smallness in a vastness of opportunity.

There being no correct and appropriate moment to raise any problem was one of the ways the game felt rigged. Pick an otherwise pressured time? She was thoughtlessly adding to it. During a nice evening out? Ruining it. Try to raise it on a quiet day? Ambush.

Roisin remembered thinking that the words my dad died were far too mundane and ordinary a statement, regarding its seismic impact and otherworldly strangeness.

Roisin needed to stop punishing the people available to be punished, who might’ve made mistakes, but sincerely loved her back.