by Kevlin Henney

I wasn’t supposed to be a home birth, but Mum wasn’t gonna miss the landing. I was number five. She reckoned she’d got the timing sussed. She hadn’t. Still wasn’t gonna miss it, though.

I say home birth, but wasn’t our house. Proper family do, all round at Auntie Joan’s, piled round that little telly of theirs, cousins and uncles and aunts and grands and greats and Mum and Dad and then, right there, me.

You get something at school with that name, but when it’s coming from Noel and saint’s-days Patrick, Agnes and Jude, you know they’re just jealous.

---

Kevlin Henney writes shorts and flashes and drabbles of fiction. His writing has appeared online, on tree and on air. His stories have made their way onto competition longlists, shortlists and pole position, and into magazines and anthologies, including The Dark Half of the Year, North by Southwest, Salt Anthology of New Writing, The Real Jazz Baby, And We Pass Through, Sleep Is a Beautiful Colour and many more. He lives in Bristol and online, where he can be found on Twitter (@KevlinHenney) and Instagram (@kevlin.henney).