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Tense, beautiful, and underpinned by an unassailable love and resilience, this is a novel that explores coercive control in a relationship and one woman’s bid to start over.

On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe.

This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.

The Author
Roisín O’Donnell won the prize for Short Story of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards in 2018 and was shortlisted for the same prize in 2022. She is the author of the story collection ‘Wild Quiet’, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award. Her short fiction has featured in The Stinging Fly, The Tangerine, the Irish Times and many other places. Other stories have been selected for major anthologies such as ‘The Long Gaze Back’. Her debut novel ‘Nesting’ was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025 and was a Sunday Times and Irish Times bestseller. Roisín lives near Dublin with her two children.

Reader: Aoibhéann McCann
Author: Roisín O’Donnell
Abridger: Rowan Routh
Producer: Michael Shannon

A Â鶹Éç Audio Northern Ireland Production for Â鶹Éç Radio 4.