Excerpt from Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'Where did you get them?'

'In duty-free.'



'What are they supposed to do?'

'Keep me from being sick.'

'How?'

'Pressure points.' She showed him a white bead which touched her wrist on the inside. 'It presses here – near your pulse point – it stops nausea. They've worked for me in the past. On ferries. Remember?'

'Look, I've been flying for years and not once have I seen anybody throwing up. There was a child one time – prob- ably had a feed of bad oysters and dodgy stout before he got on. You'd be far better off saying the rosary. For a special intention.'

'Which is?'

'God, don't let me vomit on this flight.'

Stella smiled and said, 'We used to say the rosary in the car going to dances.'

'You did not.'

'The driver was a lot older than us but he was kind. Did it for petrol money. He gave out the rosary as he was driving.' 'Poor horny guys going along, paying their money, hop- ing like mad for a bit and you're saying the rosary on the way there?'

'Ireland in the fifties.'

'Was nobody ever carsick?'

'Not a one.'

'So you'd be far better off saying the rosary than throwing your money away on bloody armbands . . .'

'Wristbands. Armbands keep you from drowning.'

Gerry produced the packet of Werther's.

'Like a sweet for take-off, modom?'

'You said you'd forgotten them.' She pulled out another tube of Werther's. 'So I bought my own.'

'You're so organised.' Gerry put the sweets back in his pocket.


The plane's engine note rose and it javelined down the runway, pressing them into their seats. Then the rumbling under- carriage noise stopped.

'We're off.'

Stella smiled and opened her eyes.

'Have you brought a book?'

'I'm on my holidays.'

She snuggled back in her seat.

'I'm really looking forward to this,' she said. 'There's some things I want to do.'

'Like what?'

'My own concerns.'

Gerry hooted as if there was something mysterious in what she'd said.

'Me likewise.'

'So we don't necessarily have to do them together.' She smiled an exaggerated smile.

'Why didn't we go somewhere warm?' he said. 'Like to a nearby hemisphere?'

'Too much hassle.'

The plane rose and began to judder as it entered cloud.

Again he put his hand on her hand.

'How come you were in Amsterdam and I wasn't?' 'A conference. With teachers.'

'When was this?'

She shrugged.

'I think it was the eighties? Anyway I thought it would be good. To remind myself.'

'It's a very elaborate piece of storyboarding.'



'How do you mean?'

'Planning ahead. Mapping it all out. The way you want things to happen.'

'Storyboarding?'

'It's a movie term. They draw a comic first – then film it. It's a way of setting out exactly what you want to happen.'

'I like that word,' said Stella.


It wasn't a long flight. Stella did two crosswords. Both cryp- tic. One in the morning paper, the other – kept flat in her Filofax – clipped from Sunday's paper. She had a theory about crosswords: that they would keep her mentally active in her very old age. Press-ups for the brain, she called them.

Excerpted from Midwinter Breakby Bernard MacLaverty. Copyright © 2017 Bernard MacLaverty. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.