A story about the intensity of the maternal bond, as well as the torture of being awake in the night with a young baby. Wood plays that trick with second-person narration of simultaneously distancing the narrator from her own experience and bringing those experiences close to the reader. The interaction between mother and the baby is punctuated by passages describing what she can see, and hear, from her window. She has become a kind of voyeur – overhearing quarrels, watching drug dealers and listening out for owls. There’s a strong sense of danger in this story, especially when something happens that makes the protagonist want to intervene in what’s happening out onto the street. But then, in a coda that comes as a surprise, the final sentence brings home the primacy of the maternal bond.
First published online in the shortlist for the 2017/18 Galley Beggar Prize; collected in Animals at Night, Dead Ink, 2022 and also included in The Best British Short Stories 2019, edited by Nicholas Royle, Salt, 2019
A Personal Anthology 