“So a life builds up in layers, piecemeal, a kind of haphazard engineering that has elements of skill and cunning – the previous layers mostly hidden, as are the smaller mounds within, the clumps of different-coloured earth, the burnt offerings, the nodules of pain and the delight. The hard graft of the chopped-off antlers, picking and stabbing and scraping. The embers of old fires, old flames, in mute fragments of charcoal.”
