Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

‘And you see it?’

‘It’s just in front of us.’

Something crunched in the undergrowth.

‘Should we run?’ I said, but I didn’t think we would.

It moved deeper into the woods and we stayed standing, watching and listening.

‘My god,’ said Lloyd quietly.

I looked down and saw that we were holding hands.

On the beach at low tide after a storm, the sharks that have washed up are the small ones that don’t need to be towed onto the sand spit first. They are just finned on the boats and plopped back into the drink. There is a blue with its long and pointed snout, looking like a worm without its fins, and I squint at it trying to imagine it swimming, ever.

Soon I will go home, and there’ll be Mum squirting cream into her drink. The place will smell of chip fat and laundry. Iris will be out the back in her version of a bikini, and the triplets will be complaining that tea is too far off and that what they need is chocolate milk, even though there is never any chocolate milk in our fridge. Dad will pull up in his car and there’ll be the sound of him dropping his keys on the kitchen sideboard. I might ask for a dog again, just to join in. Dad opens the fridge and takes out a beer and it hisses open and this is how life will always be, and I will always be here.

Thank you to Mary Morgan and the Hereford sheep farmers who generously let me watch them at work and ask boring questions. Also to Sally, Pig and Sir Colin McColl for looking after me so well.

To Nikki Christer and all at Vintage Australia, and all at Pantheon in the US for their hard work and very helpful edits. Special massive thanks to Diana Coglianese.

To everyone at Jonathan Cape and Mulcahy Associates, particularly Alex Bowler, Joe Pickering and my agent Laetitia Rutherford, for their exceptional skills and for being such kind friends.

Thanks Mum and Dad, Tom, Emma, Flynn, Jack, Matilda, Juno and Hebe, Roz, Roy and Gus.

Thanks Jamie for dealing with me and also for helping me write.