I never mentioned this to Merry. And she never said a word about it the many times she came to visit after that night. Soon my nails were long and french-tipped. Soon I had bangs. Soon Tate packed away his sheet, his camera. And whenever I come into my house alone, I make sure to take a deep breath right in the place where the smell was the worst. A private thing, like a prayer, like a confession. If there are any spirits in this house, I hope it makes them happy. Or at least, I hope it keeps them from hurting us; I hope it’s enough to stop our good luck from running out.

Future Moon

If you are reading this, you have twenty-eight days to tell twenty-eight people my story. Or else.

Or else what? you say.

Or else I will find you, and you will join me at the bottom of the well.

That is my story: they pushed me down a well.

I’ve had a lot of time to think since I’ve been here. I look up and see a disc of sky, blue all day and black all night.

Didn’t you call out? I hear you ask. Didn’t you scream?

Yes, and yes. But there was only the moon to hear me.

Did you know that she pulls everything on earth towards herself? In that way, a well is like a moon and now I am like a well. Look at my endless capacity. Everyone is welcome.

Or else what? A good question. I’m glad you’re not afraid. I like to think that when I find you, asleep, your face will be relaxed, round and open as the face of the moon.

My mother told me once that the moon is retreating from the earth. Only by a few centimetres each year. But one day the tides won’t be so strong. One day, a girl at the bottom of a well will hardly be able to see the moon at all.

For now, there she is. We reach for her and she reaches for us. But each day her grip lessens. In six hundred million years, she will have almost let us go.

Break Character

The Hair

Tom wasn’t supposed to bring the wig home; it was peeled from his scalp like a banana skin every night. Then it was arranged on a faceless polystyrene head that lived in front of his dressing-room mirror.

I guess I shouldn’t really call it a wig. The first time I saw it – the only time he let me come backstage – I said, ‘That’s quite a wig,’ expecting him to laugh. He didn’t. His makeup artist then explained, straight-faced, that theatre people didn’t say wig. They said hair Where’s your hair? As though to claim it was the real thing would turn it into the real thing.