Even a year later, Eleanor would only think she knew what happened to Nessa McKinsey. She’d look out her window at night and see lightning over the distant peak of Old Speck and whisper to herself that Nessa McKinsey was there; that whenever a storm struck a pine, that was where Nessa McKinsey was just waiting to be found, deep in the woods, sleeping like Beauty on moss.

security compliance

Mother tells you not to play in the crystal forest.

Prepare a pot with soil and plenty of drainage. Place the slightly anemic cutting in a well-lit window like Alma told you to that last day in October when you both got drunk on her brother’s peach brandy and she told you she wasn’t long for this world.

She said: “You’re doing it wrong.”

She said: “The top is over here.”

She said: “No, this way!”

She said: “Didn’t you listen to Mum at all? This is why you’re single.”

The stain against the pool floor hadn’t been a body at first, or at least, it hadn’t from where I’d been sitting in a lifeguard stand over the deep water…