'I Can’t Sleep for Thinking About You' by Shelley Hastings

Walk up a mountain on a remote island off the coast of North Wales, desperate for phone reception. Climb over heather, sheep droppings, boggy holes, until you reach the thick mist that obscures everything. You’ll be raging with love, praying for a miracle. When you reach the top, you’ll be gifted with one bar and your phone will ping. Don’t check it. Hold it carefully. Find your favourite mossy patch to lie on, so your body is floating in the clouds. When you are flat on your back, you can look. There will be a message. It will be from him. It will be more than you expected. Your heart will start crashing through your chest. You’ll stand up, giddy, triumphant, but it will start pelting with rain, so you’ll need to head straight back.

When you finally reach Ty Capel, sodden, muddy, your hood stuck to your face, then dinner will be ready, and the priest will be visiting, so you’ll end up silently dripping in the doorway, watching as your daughter stirs a steel pan of stew. And as the steam rises, the room will become a scene from a painting; the priest with one hand on his brandy, your husband laying out bowls, and your oldest sister, her hair orange in the light of the fire, staring at you, mouth open, knowing full well where you’d gone.