The Little Stranger

by Sarah Waters

The world seems to be run by scientists and generals, all playing with bombs like so many schoolboys.’

and just like a Georgette Heyer rake lost the whole of it in a single game of cards

I thought of the time, nearly thirty years before, when I had stood beside my parents in my College blazer to watch another Ayres funeral, its coffin half the size of this one; I thought it with an almost giddy feeling, as if my life were twisting round its head to snap at its own tail.