This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Tessa Hadley read her story, The Bunty Club,

from the October 28th, 2019 issue of the magazine.

Hadley has published 10 books of fiction, including the story collections Married Love and Bad Dreams and Other stories,

and the novel Late in the Day, which was published earlier this year.

Now here's Tessa Hadley

The Bunty Club

Serena was out in the garden in the early morning before her two sisters got up.

It was the best time.

Reflected off the estuary water, the light seemed a blonde powder sifted through the summer air

onto grass that grew waist high, its mauve seed heads heavy with dew that soaked her skirt. She dipped to wash her arms in it. Even her face,

she was fanciful and ecstatic and she loved longgrass. Earth's smells and the pungency of privy and bulsome were still acute at this hour,

unmingled.

The shadows were as bold as in a child's picture book.

Swift's and House Martins tracked across the pale sky overhead,

thrilling in thrilled anticipation.

Everything was to come this unknown day. The garden was so much

more lovely now, Serena thought, than in the past when it was scrupulously cared for. A crimson rambler rose unmoored from its trellis

had flopped fatally forward into the grass where it bloomed copiously but mostly unseen.

Flower beds were knotty with convulvulous and bramble. The dense hedge of Blackthorne and Holly had grown too thick and high

for her to see over the top. She was alone, enclosed with everything enchanting

...