‘That night we spent hours at the dining table. Deep in familial conversation, we tried hard not to think about what was happening, but in the silence between my father’s stories my mother sat too still, and it struck me that she was controlling each movement with concentration, as though if she let her mind slip it would slide into whiteness and be lost forever.’

'I think back to the first time I knew she would leave. To a bonfire party two Augusts ago down on the riverbank on the outskirts of town, flames curling up to the stars. Still reeling from her brother’s departure, that night Sarah funneled half a bottle of Wiser’s into her lightweight aching frame, smashed the glass into the fire and swayed off in a loping dance into the Thompson shallows. Let me go, let me go, she moaned, spreading her vowels like tar over the broken surface; let me float, as we stumbled her drunkenly back to shore; on to Savona, on to Ashcroft, on to Lytton, falling on the cold, hardened sand; on to North Bend and Spuzzum and Hope.'