Epigraph

‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.

‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’

‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.

‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
Lewis Carroll

Chapter One

The woman in the fog:

It pressed round her, walls of yellow breath. She walked in a moving jail. At intervals the stem of a street light would loom like a great thin tree, or an angled wall would jut out. High above, electric windows dim as old lamplight, peering. She found her way by memory.

The fog had a sad melancholic smell that smothered everything. There was a feeling in the fog of a pursuer, but irrational, from every side.

The woman walked on. She was slim in a dark coat. Her hair was substantial, down her back, very black, like thick leaves on a bush. A slim white face and two pale eyes. One hand held her collar. She had unpainted nails, rather long.

She turned into Lizard Street, past the great building with lions, and walked into the bookshop.

‘Oh, Rachaela. You’re late.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Twenty minutes.’

She walked by Mr Gerard and into the back, the tiny room with its kettle and piled newspapers, the stacks of books either shiny and plastic with newness, or old as dying brittle moths. She hung up her coat.

She wore a black skirt and dark jumper and boots. The shop was never warm except in the sweltering summer when it baked, and only the thinnest of shirts was bearable, but Mr Gerard still pottered in his sweaty jacket and tie. Today he wore the Fair Isle pullover, cheerful under his sour fat fruit of a face.

He left her his position at the counter. Trice these from my list.’

Rachaela nodded.

This job paid very little, and she was required also to make tea, fetch sandwiches, sweep the floor, and dust the stacks, which she seldom did. She never argued or complained, neither did she apologize for her laxness, her constant lateness. Mr Gerard did not threaten her. She had not stolen from him, she did not answer back. When he flew into a temper at something she stared into far distances, and afterwards seemed to forget. She was as polite as a statue to the customers, of whom there were few. Mr Gerard knew next to nothing about her. A mystery woman.

As Mr Gerard edged away into the back of his dingy, frowsty cave, a man came in to collect a book. The fog swirled vaguely through with him to fill the space, wreathing a thousand volumes.

‘Rotten day,’ said the man. ‘I thought we were finished with these things years ago. Bloody weather.’