Excerpt from "Lighthousekeeping" Jeanette Winterson

Lighthousekeeping | extract
Chapter 1 - Two Atlantics

My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal part pirate.

I have no father. There's nothing unusual about that - even children who do have fathers are often surprised to see them. My own father came out of the sea and went back that way. He was crew on a fishing boat that harboured with us one night when the waves were crashing like dark glass.
His splintered hull shored him for long enough to drop anchor inside my mother.

-Jeanette Winterson