“The back of the house beyond has already sunk into obscurity. I do not need to see it to picture it. Where this house is stucco, that one is red brick; where this one stands alone, the other is in a terrace. Those are not the facts that matter. What I see through the cover of darkness are the black smudges across its brickwork – sooty fingerprints of wrongdoing. The emptied windows with their glass blown out are mouths open in reproach. The fire ravaged the house, as if to complete what had been started. How was it that I came to steal a life?”

Extract from the novel, ‘After Anjelica (detail)’