“Let us begin with two girls at a dance. They are at the edge of the room. One sits on a chair,…

“Every day she felt unnerved by how unreasonable her love and her fury, which had become one, seemed. She spent most days…

“Each class took turns buying the week’s flowers for morning assembly. […] My class’s turn, that first term, came on a frosty…

“One memory in particular has preoccupied me all morning – or rather, a fragment of a memory, a moment that has for…

“Alice and Kasim stood peering through the French windows: the interior seemed to be a vision of another world, its stillness pregnant…

“You have to stop this, she said. Stop what, he said, we’re not doing anything. She wanted to correct him. There was…

“There’s a villa near my house that once belonged to a wealthy family, with grounds that attract children and dogs. I like…

“This was her own room, the room that had been hers since childhood. It was at the back of the house, on…

“There was not only nothing nice, there was nothing definite at all to remember, only a great many years that had passed…