Shrines of Gaiety

by Kate Atkinson

it was all just paper that someone would have to dispose of after you were gone. Perhaps, after all, one’s purpose in this world was to be forgotten, not remembered.

Some people were complete in themselves, as if born from the earth or the ocean, like some of the gods. Which was not a compliment. The gods were ruthlessly indifferent to humanity.

‘Ah, Nellie, welcome,’ Frazzini said when he saw her, as if she were arriving at an elegant soirée in Pall Mall rather than what at first sight was a Dadaist torture tableau. Not that Nellie had heard of Dada. For Nellie, art stopped at Frans Hals’s Laughing Cavalier.