Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (Shortlisted for the Goldsmith Prize)

jagged paths it scissors through my wife’s brain, yet this doesn’t stop me wishing f

And then I found myself sketching new chapters in my journal and changing the endings of stories so that some of those female characters not allowed to make it in their original version did in mine. Mrs Manstey didn’t die in a fire, Firdaus wasn’t executed, and Magda never went mad. Ophelia didn’t go mad. Diouna didn’t go mad. Tess didn’t go mad. Nor did Jane Eyre or Antoinette Cosway. And once I’d breathed new life into a story I was