I first came across this story in Parthian’s Rarebit: New Welsh Fiction, where it was for me one of the stand-out stories of the anthology. It is a beautifully constructed tale of the briefly intersecting lives of people at a music festival on the Isle of Wight. The passage across the water is significant in the story in more ways than one. In this as in other stories in her collection Ashfeldt examines the ways in which water and particularly the sea, and its power, has such a dramatic and often tragic impact on human life. But life goes on and sometimes people are, remarkably, re-energised by things they have to endure. I find Ashfeldt a compelling storyteller.

(In SaltWater, Liberties Press, 2014 and available to read on her website)