The Likeness

it read a lot like an undercover had got killed.

Other Voices: Identity, Concealment and Truth.’

After a moment Frank said, very gently, “I know you’re getting on well with

almost everything I said was the truth, just Lexie’s rather than mine.

I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them any time I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control.

Daniel and I were strangers and we were on opposite sides, under the civilized chitchat we were fighting each other tooth and nail and both of us knew it, but I said it to him. Now I think that should have been my first warning.

Madison, because it sounds enough like my own surname to make me turn around, and Lexie because when I was a kid that was the name of my imaginary sister.

The detective’s god is the truth, and you don’t get much higher or much more ruthless than that.

I swing round the newel post at the top and catch a flash of movement in the corner of my eye: the spotted old mirror at the end of the corridor, my face reflected in it, laughing.