Ali and I did the OU MA together and were in the same tutor group. When she emailed the first version of this story for feedback, it made me cry. In the finished version, her mastery of literary brevity immediately drops the reader inside the story which starts with a mum taking her kids to the zoo. “The children trail after her through the turnstiles. A cloudless sky like an insult, clusters of wooden pointing signs, a peacock dragging finery in the dirt,” and boom – there you are in place, time and mood. The heartbreak of what has happened to this fractured family and their relationships with each other, reveal themselves through deliciously insightful writing, helped along by the prosaic signs that detail information about the animals, signs that are laden with subtext.

First published in The Weight of Feathers, Retreat West Books, 2021