Sublime

duplicitous

She was Melissa’s oldest, boldest friend. They had gone to the same primary school. Hazel worked in advertising. She had a wide and glamorous smile behind which was an oft-foul tongue, and long, bouncing, half-French, half-Ghanaian curls falling down her back, the most beautiful, the most envied of their schoolgirl pack, the one the boys always wen

Grace Macaulay, then: seventeen, small and plump, with skin that went brown by the end of May. Her hair was black and oily, and had the hot consoling scent of an animal in summer. She disliked books, and was by nature a thief if she found a thing to be beautiful, but not hers. She didn’t know she couldn’t sing. She was inclined to be cross.

Suddenly Thomas Bowman entered the discussion, his mustache twitching angrily. “She is my daughter,” he roared, “and she may speak as she wishes!”

obdurate.

Lacking

collogue.

“Dr. Garrett Gibson, this is Mr. MacRae,” Merritt said, “who shouldn’t be standing, since he was just stabbed in an alley.”