Affinity

by Sarah Waters

The others, who do not know me, call me ‘madam’ now, I noticed, instead of ‘miss’. I have turned, in two years, from a girl into a spinster.

I don’t have much cause to remember the ways of friendship, here.’

It has pictures of devils and phantoms in it, painted vividly, and the object of it is that you must gaze at each figure very hard, then look quickly at a blank wall or a ceiling—when you do that, you see the phantom floating there, very clearly, but in quite a different colour to the original.