I lay there for a while, feeling the weight lift off me. I was free at last. My secret was safe, buried for ever. Soon I could begin to mourn the Azra I’d once known, before all this happened—if, indeed, I had known her at all, or she had known me. What mysteries we are to each other! Me and Greg; me and Calvin. All those strangers whose funerals were simply a hall of mirrors, reflecting back a multitude of truths, and half-truths, and lies. For they were simply mirroring back our own selves. If I’d learned one thing over the past months, it was this.

Dizzy from the sun, I got to my feet, picked up my bag and walked towards the road.

I left the dress behind. It was late in the afternoon, but the beach was still crowded. Amongst the bodies it lay unnoticed, a small dark shadow, woman-shaped.

About the Author

About the Author

Deborah Moggach is an English novelist and screenwriter. She graduated from Bristol University, trained as a teacher, and then worked at Oxford University Press. In the mid-seventies, Moggach moved to Pakistan for two years, where she started composing articles for Pakistani newspapers and her first novel, You Must Be Sisters. Her novels The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Tulip Fever were adapted for film in 2011 and 2017 respectively.

Moggach began writing screenplays in the mid-eighties. Her screenplay for an adaption of Pride & Prejudice starring Keira Knightley received a BAFTA nomination, and she won a Writers Guild Award for her adaptation of Anne Fine’s Goggle-Eyes. She has served as Chair of the Management Committee for the Society of Authors and worked for PEN’s Executive Committee, as well as being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Moggach currently lives in the Welsh Marches with her husband.

DEBORAH MOGGACH

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