She’d always liked Ruth. Everyone had seemed stunned more than a decade ago by her first book of poetry, stunned that such an apparently brittle and bitter woman could contain such beauty. But Em knew. Had always known. That was one of the things she shared with Clara, and one of the many reasons Em had taken to Clara, from the first day she’d arrived, young and arrogant and full of piss and talent. Clara saw what others couldn’t. Like that little boy in The Sixth Sense, but instead of seeing ghosts, Clara saw good. Which was itself pretty scary. So much more comforting to see bad in others; gives us all sorts of excuses for our own bad behavior. But good? No, only really remarkable people see the good in others.

Though, as Em well knew, not everyone had good to see.

She walked to the stereo, opened a drawer and delicately lifted out a single woolen mitten. Beneath it she found a record. She put the record on, reaching out to touch the play button, her finger crooked and trembling like a feeble version of Michelangelo’s Creation. Then she walked back to the sofa, delicately holding the mitten as though it still contained a hand.

In the back bedrooms Mother and Kaye slept. For years now the three friends had stayed together on Christmas Eve and celebrated the day in their own quiet way. Em suspected this was her last Christmas. She suspected this was Kaye’s last too, and perhaps Mother’s. Two thirty.

The music began and Émilie Longpré closed her eyes.

In the back bedroom Mother could hear the opening notes of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in D Major. Christmas Eve was the only time Mother ever heard it, though it had once been her favorite piece. It had once been special to them all. Em most of all, but that was natural. Now she only played it once a year, in the small hours between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It broke Mother’s heart to hear it and to think of her friend alone in the living room. But she respected and loved Em too much to deny her this time alone with her grief and her son.

And this night Mother had her own grief to keep her company. She repeated over and over, be calm, be calm. But the mantra which had comforted her for so many years was suddenly empty, its power to heal stolen by that horrible, twisted grotesque of a woman. Damn that CC de Poitiers.