Sublime

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.

The bathroom, shared by all the occupants, provided almost unlimited opportunities for virtue. There was a black rim around the bath, the soaked bathmat was crumpled up in a corner . . . and Miss Bates, a nursery school teacher and the only British survivor at Number 27, had hung a row of dripping camiknickers on a sagging piece of string. None of

rebarbative

majordomo

In Tracey’s home, disappointment in the man was ancient history: they had never really had any hope in him, for he had almost never been at home.

The Christmas Egg consolidated Kelly’s developing reputation as a quirky, intelligent crime novelist, but she was never interested in following fashion or working to a template. Later, in an excess of modesty that seems typical of her, she would describe the three Nightingale books as “sins of my youth”.