She doesn’t eat she only craves a high amount of salted water. Leah spends most of the time locked in the bathroom with both taps running water. Miri and Leah start living in the same flat but in different spaces as Miri eats alone in the kitchen and spends the night in the spare bedroom. Even though Leah is still present, Miri still feels that the woman she fell in love with is slipping from her hand as things get out of control. Moving on with what may appear like a normal life, Miri finally comes to accept that their life with her wife might never return. Miri has lots of questions that Leah’s employer fails to answer. Whatever happened in that sea vessel they were supposed to be learning before getting stranded on the ocean floor, Leah carried a part of it home with her. Soon it appears that even though Leah returned as a whole, she is no longer the same. Her wife is a marine biologist on an exploratory submarine mission that was supposed to take three weeks turned into a mysterious disaster with no communication from the Centre for months. Miri thought she got her wife back when Leah returned from a deep-sea mission that led to tragedy. Her work appeared in Neon Magazine, the Stockholm Review and Lighthouse Analog Magazine. She later won the White Revie short story prize in 2018 and Pushcart Prize in 2020. Julia was commended in the Moth Short Story Prize in 2017 and longlisted for Deborah Rogers Award in 2018.

The author has been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the year in 2019. Born in London in 1990 she graduated with a master’s degree in Victorian Art and Literature from Royal Holloway University. Julia Armfield is an English author of literary fiction books and an occasional playwright.

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