After the ceremony, she couldn’t decide what had been worse: standing in the cold, damp chapel while the priest was marrying them, or stepping outside in the sudden, overwhelming heat afterwards – people frantically speaking, grabbing her hands, clutching at her dress as she could feel herself falling, something breaking inside.

Elodie A. Roy is a French-born writer living in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Her short stories and essays have appeared in journals including The Stinging Fly, New World Writing Quarterly, The Oxonian Review, MASKS, The Drouth, and Scrawl Place. As a cultural theorist, she’s the author of two nonfiction academic books.