Multitudes

by Lucy Caldwell

  Thank you to Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White, to Liz Hudson at The Little Red Pen for her scrupulous copy-editing and to everyone at Faber, especially Kate McQuaid and Luke Bird for his beautiful cover design. The biggest thank you of all to my wonderful editor, Angus Cargill, who has worked on these stories with me for years, when the collection was little more than a handful of sparks and wishful thinking.

  Thank you to my parents and to my sisters, who have enjoyed (and sometimes endured) my stories for almost exactly three decades now.

  And finally to Tom, for everything.

  About the Author

  Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of three novels and several stage plays & radio dramas. Awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright, the BBC Stewart Parker Award, a Fiction Uncovered Award and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her most recent novel, All the Beggars Riding, was chosen for Belfast’s One City One Book campaign in 2013 and shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year.

  By the Same Author

  fiction

  WHERE THEY WERE MISSED

  THE MEETING POINT

  ALL THE BEGGARS RIDING

  drama

  LEAVES

  NOTES TO FUTURE SELF

  Copyright

  First published in 2016

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2016

  All rights reserved

  © Lucy Caldwell, 2016

  Design by Faber

  The right of Lucy Caldwell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  ‘Escape Routes’ was shortlisted for the 2012 BBC International Short Story Award and was published in the award anthology (Comma Press, 2012); ‘Inextinguishable’ was commissioned and broadcast by BBC Radio 3 (February 2013); ‘Through the Wardrobe’ was commissioned and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 (November 2013); ‘Poison’ was published in Belfast Noir, ed. Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville (Akashic Books, 2014); ‘Killing Time’ won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and Europe) and was published in All Over Ireland: New Irish Short Stories, ed. Deirdre Madden (Faber & Faber, 2015); ‘Multitudes’ was published in The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, ed. Sinéad Gleeson (New Island, 2015).

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–31352–5