‘A husband and wife lived by the sea. He was a handyman and she was a baker. Every day, after her baking was done, the wife would go down to the beach for a swim. In summer she lay on the shingle to dry off in the sun, and in winter she played chicken with the waves. Her husband joked that she was part mermaid, she loved the sea so much.’

The Mermaid and the Tick, a short-story from Hannah Vincent’s debut collection, She-Clown and other stories is cherry-picked by Minor Literature[s].