In the thin and colourless light of the early morning, drifting between sleep and consciousness, she heard him say her name… once… twice, the sound riding on a sigh, a huff of breath, held out, offered, taken back. And as she emerged into the tired flatness of another day, she tried to stay soft, slip back into sleep, remain oblivious of where she was. If she could just hear it again… May’s head pounded, her mouth hard-scrabble dry. She lay listening to the rushing sound, as a fast rain fell hard and steady in the area outside her window. She peered through the open curtains at the wet, grey, concrete stairs winding from her basement flat, the damp terracotta pots climbing up the first couple, then giving up. She could just make out the black glossed iron railings at street level, edges softened by the shrouding orange cast from the street lamp. Her eyes hurt. They hurt when she opened them and hurt when she closed them, as though her lids were a fine grade sandpaper. She lay very still for a moment, breathing, almost sucking in a deep lungful of air before letting it out long and slow and pressing the heels of her hands over her closed lids. She let go and stared up at the ceiling, motionless except for her eyes, which traced the watermark around the light fixture. She’d painted over it but still it worked its silent, persistent way through. ‘Do you want some tea?’ ‘Hmm?’ May glanced up as her older sister, Lallie, leaned through the serving hatch from the kitchen. She’d been scrabbling about, boxing up the things neither of them was keeping. ‘Tea,’ she said again. ‘Do you want some?’ ‘Okay…’ May murmured, looking back down. ‘Thanks.’ 12 It had been a slow and mizzling day, damp and grey, the earlier promise of a storm petering out and disappointing. She sat on the living room floor of the Shepherd’s Bush house she’d grown up in, the soles of her feet together, knees splayed, going through a box of letters and photographs. There was an aching chill in the still air and she reached for her wool knit hat, pulling it on and settling it low on her brow. ‘How can it be colder inside than out?’ she wondered, beginning again to sort through the tissue-fine airmail paper, looking at the stamps and trying to discern dates. ‘Bugger. There’s no milk,’ Lallie said. May reached for her scarf. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ She wound its length around her neck and yanked her long, dark hair out of the coils. ‘Listen to this Lal, it’s brilliant.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Did you know that Sarah and Dad ever went to Tunisia? Where were we do you think?’ ‘When?’ ‘While they were in Tunisia?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ May sighed and tried again. ‘There’s a postcard from them to us from Tunisia, I can’t see the date, but…’ She gave another quick laugh. ‘Listen, listen… Girl and Small Girl, We are being spat at by camels and I have sold Sarah to a very handsome Bedouin who liked her skills with the needle. Have decided to send for you and join them in the desert. I think this would solve the unbearable problem of school and Small Girl threatening to run away if I don’t Sort It Out At Once.’ Lallie, laughing, reached through the serving hatch for the postcard. ‘Let me have that… I’d forgotten you thought school was child abuse! “Look after Granny,” she read aloud, “and don’t let her out too often, it goes to her head. All love, Dad and Sarah x”. Oh my god that’s hilarious!’ Lallie handed the card back to May. ‘Honeymoon maybe? Shame the date is faded.’ 13 ‘I don’t remember them being gone.’ ‘Well,’ Lallie said. ‘We spent so much time just you and me, maybe you didn’t notice!’ She wrinkled her nose at May and turned back to the kettle. May thought about this. Before their father had met Sarah, it had been a quiet, sometimes melancholy home. Their mother had left almost before May could talk, and she’d always told anyone who asked that she’d never missed her as she’d never had her. But maybe it was me that was melancholy, she thought. As she looked around the room, her eyes grazing and glancing off familiar objects and paintings, she realised she rarely saw them; the Dufy print of some high-spirited little boats, in a sun-drenched harbour, the vibrantly quilt-draped armchair Sarah’s cat Orpheus had always hogged, the small collection of antique chandelier crystals that hung on a fishing line at the now dust-filmed living room window. These had been gathered and pieced together by Sarah. They’d become part of the house, bringing colour and light, structure even. To remove them now… It might fall apart. Blimey, it’s true what they say, she thought with a wry grimace. Grief really can make you a bit bonkers. She picked up a photo of Sarah and William sitting in the back of an open estate car, looking sun-browned and windswept and conspiratorially happy. A wave of loneliness, of almost unbearable longing, pulled through her. ‘Come on May,’ Lallie was saying. ‘We need to get on. I want some time with Sam, he’s going away for work tomorrow. Oh love… What is it?’ May found she was crying, an unchecked flow of silent tears. It was the way they spilled from her, undammed, that scared her. Lallie was quickly beside her, stroking a gentle hand across her back. ‘It’s shit, isn’t it?’ she said quietly. 14 ‘Yeah.’ May stood, knowing it wasn’t just about Sarah, but unable yet to make sense of it she couldn’t say any more to her sister and that hurt too. She padded to the armchair and reached a chilly hand to stroke the soft velvet nap on one of the quilted patches. Crazy. Sarah had always preferred that irregular, random form of quilting to any other. Not for her the neat precision and repetition of log cabin or birds in flight. But it’s not slapdash, she'd assert, stitching one of her exuberant pieces. It all fits like a puzzle. May had loved them because the colours and shapes always seemed to her to sing, or hum and dance a little as she looked at them. ‘There’s always something else to see if you keep looking,’ she said, stroking her fingertip along some feather-stitching. ‘I feel as though I’ve looked at every square inch, but I don’t remember this. Do you think she just secretly kept adding bits whenever the fancy took her?’ Lallie came across the room laughing softly and they sat together, touching random patches, playing again the game they'd shared so often. ‘Yours or mine?’ she asked, tapping a light finger on a patch of deep rose satin. ‘Mine,’ May answered without hesitation. Sarah had rarely sent any worn or outgrown clothes to the charity shop, preferring to use them in her textiles. There's always a story or a memory in a piece of cloth, she would tell them, why get rid of it? Lallie laughed as May jealously stroked the smooth cloth. As a six-year-old, she had loved that dress; the way it felt, heavy and substantial, shushing her softly as she moved. She’d like to be somewhere that sounded like that, she’d think, and imagined the rolling grassland and soaring skies of the prairie books her granny had sent. ‘Do you remember how furious you were when she cut that dress up? You insisted that you could still wear it—but 15 you couldn't even button the back up!’ ‘I wore a cardi with it to hide the gaping at the back.’ ‘No you didn't. You didn't care who saw.’ ‘Really…’ May hesitated, unsure now of her own recollection. She watched her sister’s face, so calm and assured. ‘Yours or mine?’ she said in a rush, moving on to an emerald patch of baby-cord. Lallie cocked her head for a moment, frowned squintingly, then burst out, ‘Ha! Trick question!’ She grinned at May before saying ‘both’ in triumph. They'd fought tooth and claw over that cloak. ‘Typical,’ their father William had muttered, clenching his jaw and leaving them to it. May moved to the sofa, with her cup clutched hot in her hands and sat, leaning her head back, closing her eyes. ‘Sis,’ Lallie said. ‘Is there anything else up? Apart from having to deal with all this I mean?’ May shook her head vaguely. ‘It’s been a long year,’ she said and felt strangely disloyal; they had always shared, but she had no idea where to begin, she barely understood herself what she was going through. After they’d decided they’d done enough for a night, May let herself into her flat, and stood motionless in the hall. Tired, she thought. Just so tired. She sat in the deep sofa, drawing one of Sarah’s soft velvet quilts around herself without bothering to turn on the lamp. Lallie had dropped her off on her way back to Sam and the kids, shouting through the open window of her car for May to come and have supper with them in the week, before bibbing her horn lightly and driving off into the oily-dark night. The growing silence swelled through the room, pressing against her as she sat in the dark, listening to the rain 16 drumming like so many fingers on the roof of the conservatory. She closed her eyes with a sigh; she could never hear a hard rain now, without remembering; remembering how there’d been no rain for weeks, how the parched ground had been so cracked, that the front yard had looked as if it was crazy paving, and how everything had opened up and come alive for her after that one summer storm in Vermont, ten years before. May flopped onto the covered porch, gasping for air and through the shimmering heat haze far down the road, saw her roommates emerge; Stella and Danielle were heading towards her. They were walking so slowly it seemed they were getting no closer, as though the heat was too thick to push through. Danielle had a sarong tied and twisted around her head and looked like a serene African princess, slowly undulating along the road. Stella, wearing only a swimsuit and someone else’s boxer shorts, kept pace, her usually sleek hair pushed back from her face, damp and sticky. As they got closer, May could hear Stella muttering, ‘God damn! It’s so hot the road’s melting.’ They made it to the porch and collapsed onto the floor, letting out great whooshes of air as they lay sprawled, panting rhythmically like dogs. ‘Man, I hope it rains soon, it feels like something’s going to explode if it doesn’t.’ The light was so white it hurt to look out without sunglasses and May stayed in the shade of the porch as her friends discussed the class they’d just had. ‘Are you done for the day?’ she asked. ‘Yup. No more classes now til Monday. Party time!’ Stella raised a single eyebrow at Danielle. ‘How can you even think of partying? It’s too hot to do anything. I’m still hungover from last night, anyway.’ ‘Lightweight,’ Danielle said, poking Stella with a bare foot. ‘Hey! Would you look at that! Where the hell did those come from?’ 17 Danielle jerked her head towards a bank of trees along whose edges thick, low clouds were beginning to ooze and jostle for room. The rest of the sky soared incandescent blue, dropping a hot shimmer onto the yard. May pushed her hair up off her forehead and let the sweat catch the air. She sighed. The minutes crawled by, heavy air sucked at her bones. Slowly, slowly the clouds built up, overflowing the confines of the horizon and occupying more and more space, bullying, cajoling. May moved herself to a half sitting position and peered out at the swollen sky. A long, low rumble tumbled towards them from beyond the river. Her skin prickled and she sat a little straighter. Another came, grumbling and complaining, rising reluctantly. And then a drop of rain fell. No one spoke. May held her breath, waiting for another drop. It came. Then another, fat and heavy drops that plopped into the dust. There came more fast and fat drops, steaming as they landed on the heaving ground, quicker and quicker. May was on her feet, poised, breathless, watching it come down in sheeting torrents. The ground sighed its gratitude and in seconds she was down the sagging wooden steps and out in the bubbling, pounding rain. Oblivious to the splitting, shattering thunder, she shook her head back and let the warm water pour hard as a massage shower onto her face. She was soaked in seconds, her skin tingled and her heart was pounding as all that energy that had been sucked up and stored in those clouds poured onto her, into her. She felt a great whooping shout of joy burst from her lungs and the others who had been stupefied, petrified, came to life and clattered down the steps into the rain as it went on, on, on. ‘Who wants a swim?’ May called out and ran barefoot and laughing down the middle of the deserted road, towards the Connecticut River. As she came to the steep sweep of road that wound past woodland and down to the river, she slowed her pace and they jogged steadily, three abreast until the road met the river and a series of floating jetties. 18 It was deserted and the rain continued to drum onto them, thunder and lightning crashing and cracking. Without pausing, May flung herself in, plunging under the water into a deep, full silence. She surfaced moments later to see the other two girls, one arching into a dive the other bombing with a great shout of joy into the water. Oh! What it is to be alive, she thought as the river swelled warm and held her body, and the rain continued its tingling strum across her scalp, its swift, prickling sweep across the surface of the river sending a constant rippling quiver over to the far shore. Stella struck out for the opposite bank and slowly the rain subsided, becoming thinner until gradually it stopped. From their shelter beneath the bridge, unseen until now, two canoes slipped, silent. ‘I didn’t know there were mermaids in the Connecticut River!’ one of the occupants called out with a long wave as they sculled slowly over to where the girls were treading water. May hung an arm over the edge to steady herself and opened her mouth as she was offered grapes and a morsel of soft, ripe brie. Stella joined them and someone else offered them a drink over the side. ‘With ice and lemon, no less,’ quipped Stella. ‘Classy!’ May swam off to duck Danielle. The canoes and their occupants slowly drifted away and the three girls swam to the shore. The air was still very warm, but had lost its aggressive edge and they slowly walked up the hill towards Main Street. Soaking leaves dripped from darkened branches and the sound of water rushing through the drains and gutters at the edge of the road was almost enough to drown out the first chirruping announcements of the birds, as they emerged from their shelter. ‘Oh my God—I can’t believe we did that,’ burbled Stella, ‘Tanqueray and Tonic in the Connecticut river in a thunder storm. It didn’t even occur to me how dangerous that might be. Lightening, alcohol, water. May, you’re crazy.’ She shrugged. ‘You loved it.’ 19 She lay, sleepless and exhausted, her mind grabbing at vanishing details that felt crucial to recall until she did. Eventually she got up and wrapping herself in her quilt, padded on chilly feet into the kitchen to make herself some chamomile tea. Standing on one foot, rubbing the other for warmth on the back of her calf, she stared at the pin board above the counter, layered with postcards, receipts, photos, tickets, eyes drifting, unseeing, the sound of the kettle, rolling loud, louder than it ever seemed to in the daylight. Something caught at her eye, whisper light but persistent. She reached out and pulled at the corner of a photo behind a postcard of The New Yorker. She laughed, then her eyes filled with tears. You’re a bloody wreck, May. Someone had taken it during her first year in Vermont, on one of the many days she’d spent by the river with Stella, Danielle, Courtney… It looked as though it was towards the end of a fine summer day. The angled sun slanted golden bright through slender, fir-fringed branches that reached towards the water’s edge, making this shallow, rocky part of the river look as though it had been embellished with silver leaf. In the lower left-hand corner of the photo, May crouched, bare-armed, bare-legged, hair caught up in a loose knot on top of her bowed head, as she looked down into the water. A box or basket of some kind sat just behind her along with a jumble of… what, clothes? It was hard to make out any detail because of the angle of the sun. It was the overall impression that felt important to May; it was why she’d kept this photo where she could see it, before it had slowly disappeared behind a steady build-up of the receipts and reminders of a life lived full of distracting activity. As she continued to stare into the photo, she felt a hard knot in her chest, twisting and holding fast. The tenderness of the warm air, the sun filtering through the trees and warming that body—her body, her skin—was unreachable 20 now. She looked at that girl and felt again that she’d left herself behind. How careless. Almost without thinking, she picked up the phone and dialled Stella’s number in Vermont, mentally counting backward five hours to reassure herself she wouldn’t be waking anyone. ‘Mayflower! Yay!’ Her friend’s voice came tumbling over the line, so warm and full of laughter she had to squeeze her eyes and draw a deep breath to stop herself from crying. ‘What time is it there?’ Stella sounded breathy, rushed. ‘Oh, late. One… something. Don’t know. I just wanted to see how you were.’ Stella laughed with her but May could hear the concern in her voice. ‘Are you okay?’ ‘Yeah, yes. I’m fine. I miss you. And we’ve been going through all Sarah’s stuff…’ ‘We miss you too!’ Stella broke off and May heard her muffled voice say something before she became clear again and said, ‘Honey, I’m real sorry but I can’t talk right now. I have a faculty meeting and Pete says he can give me a ride if we split now. How about I call you tomorrow, what time’s good for you?’ ‘Oh don’t worry,’ May wished she had not made the call. ‘You’re busy, I’m busy. It was just on the off chance.’ ‘Hey! Don’t be doing that! This is me you’re talking to, not some any-ol-body. I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Stella was emphatic. ‘I was going to call you anyways to see how you and Lallie were doing, but when I have time, it’s the wrong time for you—I can never get my head round the time difference. Go nowhere tomorrow. Call in to work “stupid” and sit by the phone until I call!’ May laughed and the tinny echo of the long-distance line threw her laugh back at her, making it sound forced and selfconscious. The voice in the background was more persistent and Stella said in a low urgent tone, ‘Quit, Pete, it’s May.’ 21
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A young woman takes the road less traveled from London to Vermont, in search of her spiritual home. A beautiful tribute to love and healing.
After a decade trying to accept that London is home, a devastating bereavement pushes 29 year old May to return to the rural Vermont town she fled so long ago. Ignoring her sister’s strong misgivings, she immerses herself in creating a healing garden, bringing people together with the food she loves to cook, and renovating a dilapidated farmhouse until she starts to find a sense of peace and purpose. But as spring turns to sultry summer and she is thrown increasingly together with Harley, the man she loved and left ten years before, May is torn. Will she take a risk and follow her heart, or go back to London where her ever loyal sister is longing for her return?
Mish Cromer’s latest novel of love and friendship and the healing power of the natural environment explores the impact of family, trauma and loss, and the powerful need we all have to find the place where we belong
At the beginning of All the Places that Were Hurt, May, the protagonist, is hopeless and grieving. Looking for some relief from her situation, she decides to travel from her home in London to the college town of Hartland, Vermont. Hartland is where she was happier than ever ten years before, leading a carefree life surrounded by friends, adventures and nature. This is also where she met her first love.
Lallie, May’s older, much more conventional sister, admonishes her not to return to Hartland because, although things started on a promising note for May there, they didn’t end up well.
But May still decides to go, and once in Hartland, she keeps bumping into Harley, her old flame. Harley is the town’s heartthrob: handsome, bright, mysterious, elusive. There are shades of Heathcliff (yes, that guy from Wuthering Heights) in Harley. But there is also much more to him, and there are deep-seated reasons for his strange behavior that the reader will discover as the novel progresses.
Through the relationship between May and Harley, this wonderful book explores the devastating and lasting consequences of trauma, but also the possibility of healing and growth. There is a celebration of small town life and the sense of community and belonging that it can bring. Ultimately, this is a novel about love: romantic love, love of friends, love of nature, love of a place, love of family, love of yourself…
The plot is very attuned to nature, to the seasons. Summer is the time for passion; fall is the time for reflection. It is no coincidence that this novel both starts and ends during the winter. There is dread and grief in the winter, indeed. But there is also the stark beauty and the realization that the season of rebirth will come next.
All the Places that Were Hurt is a novel that takes its time to develop. It is not in a rush to get to the end, and neither should you, the reader, be. Like the free-spirited May, it invites you to stop by and dwell on its scenes of domesticity and intimacy. It makes you pause and admire the beautiful sentences. It compels you to reflect on the natural and psychological landscapes it depicts, as well as on the complex interactions of its characters.
At nearly 500 pages, this book involves a significant time commitment. It also requires a considerable emotional investment due to some of the sensitive matters it addresses (in a tactful way, it must be said). But it is well worth the effort. Like all good literature, its characters will grow on you as the pages and seasons pass. And when you turn to the last few pages, you will feel already nostalgic, like you are saying so long to a dear friend.
Reviewed by
Content strategist. Founding member of Bogotá Writers, where I have contributed short stories to two anthologies, with a third forthcoming soon. I write in English and Spanish, and have been published by After Dinner Conversation, Short Édition and Letralia. I read for Reedsy and Short Édition.
After a decade trying to accept that London is home, a devastating bereavement pushes 29 year old May to return to the rural Vermont town she fled so long ago. Ignoring her sister’s strong misgivings, she immerses herself in creating a healing garden, bringing people together with the food she loves to cook, and renovating a dilapidated farmhouse until she starts to find a sense of peace and purpose. But as spring turns to sultry summer and she is thrown increasingly together with Harley, the man she loved and left ten years before, May is torn. Will she take a risk and follow her heart, or go back to London where her ever loyal sister is longing for her return?
Mish Cromer’s latest novel of love and friendship and the healing power of the natural environment explores the impact of family, trauma and loss, and the powerful need we all have to find the place where we belong
About the author
MISH CROMER is a writer and therapist from London. Drawing on her cultural heritage of Greece and the southern USA, she writes novels about the complexities of family, with a focus on women's narratives and the meaning of home. She has three children and lives in London with her husband. view profile
Published on November 15, 2021
Published by Cinnamon Press
130000 words
Contains mild explicit content ⚠️
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Reviewed by
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