Where I Found Rachel Joyce

Fruit trees stud the long, narrow yard in a sort of zigzag pattern, goal stabs of some long forgotten game, nourished by the rot of mallets, wickets and wooden balls, left in hast for cake and ice cream, branched now and rooted.

She sits beneath a young and budding plumb, drawn to herself as if the day were chilled and her limbs a shawl, hair gathered like a careless June wind in combs of tortoise shell.   

‘He did not want to die,’ she says of her late father, turning her gaze then down and away to where a clutch of plump hens, white and golden and speckled grey, rake and prattle over their findings. 

‘And we did not want him to die, as well.’