'I remember the rain - how it hammered day and night against the windowpanes; how my grandmother left a hay bale outside the back door to act as a dam; how Mrs Maddox came to us for buckets when her porch began leaking... My grandfather's hair plastered itself down over his forehead, like weed. And I remember how, by Valentine's Day, the heaving ewes were huddled in the barn, the Brych finally burst her banks, and the mud came. Mud - such a small word. It looks weak, bashful, what harm can three letters do? The answer is more than you think. That mud was the start of things.'
Susan Fletcher, Eve Green
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