Extracts

It was a Monday morning, it was bright, it was warm, too warm for late autumn, and Charlotte Beck was about to experience the one really dramatic thing that would happen to her in her entire life.

He came up from South America by bus.

The Súd steered a careful course around the frigates and minesweepers in the approaches to Reykjavík harbour before finally coming alongside the docks.

“Who the hell are you?”

Fergus was getting tetchy.

‘How did you find me?’ the woman asked.

After I’d finished work I came out into the night

Mornings like this morning were Iris’s favourite kind.

Sylvia Blackwell was just twenty- four when in 1958 she took up the post of Children’s Librarian in East Mole.

Ambulance sirens sucked big time when you lived in a dive near Paddington station.

I thought I’d love being a mother.

For one who spent so much time surrounded by sharp-eyed artists and writers, Mollie Dean would prove a challenge to describe.

Listen. It starts with the bees.

By chance, I witnessed the arrival of the three American women.

I feel safe here.

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy.

The police decided to enter the flat, but rather than break down the door they called a locksmith

I woke up and the world was gone.

Miriam gave things to Mokhtar.

My mother and I drove east across the flatlands, along the vast floor of an ancient sea.

I’m aware of him looking at me.

The man hadn’t shown himself for months, but only one person owned that helmet and the red Indian Chief motorbike.

When I hit the bitumen and get that smooth grey rumble going under me everything’s hell different.

Just after 4 a.m. under a starless sky, a man in a well-worn tweed coat and black knit cap crossed Broadway onto Front Street