The Blind Assassin

, it was an image that must have appealed to a great many middle-class women of my grandmother's time. They were to be sedate in bearing, unapproachable, regal even, but possessed of arcane and potentially lethal recipes, and capable of inspiring the most incendiary passions in men. And on top of that, perfectly and always ladies-loaf givers. The distributors of gracious largesse.

In fairness, Reenie may have invented these slurs on the Griffens. She sometimes attributed to people the histories she felt they ought to have had.

More and more I feel like a letter-deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.

"So true," said Miss Violence, with a sigh. But she sighed about everything. She fit into Avilion very well-into its obsolete Victorian splendours, its air of aesthetic decay, of departed grace, of wan regret. Her attitudes and even her faded cashmeres went with the wallpaper

"Don't jog along," said Miss Violence. "The lines shouldflow, dear. Pretend you're a fountain." Although she herself was lumpy and inelegant, she had high standards of delicacy and a long list of things she wanted us to pretend to be: flowering trees, butterflies, the gentle breezes. Anything but little girls with dirty knees and their fingers up their noses: about matters of personal hygiene she was fastidious.

How I would like to have them back, those pointless afternoons-the boredom, the aimlessness, the unformed possibilities. And I do have them back, in a way; except now there won't be much of whatever happens next.

Silly, Reenie called these. Like nothing on earth. But that's what I liked about them.

My feet were stone cold, my teeth were chattering. I couldn't get out of my mind the image of Laura, in the icy black water of the Louveteau-how her hair had spread out like smoke in a swirling wind, how her wet face had gleamed silvery, how she had glared at me when I'd grabbed her by the coat. How hard it had been to hold on to her. How close I had come to letting go.

She had pierced ears, and her red hair (done with henna, I now realize) was wound around with scarves. She wore flowing robe-like garments in bold swirling prints: fuchsia, heliotrope, and saffron were the names of the colours. She told me these designs were from Paris, and were inspired by White Russian ©migr ©s. She explained what those were. She was full of explanations.

I could remember her absence, now, much better than her presence.