Pawns

   “I know what you are.”

   I love that because it saves me breaking things and the tree climbing that has become so fashionable lately but inconvenient here in treeless Norfolk. There’s sometimes a hopeful little smile too as though I was offering an invitation to some Regency valetudinarian’s paradise of health, well-being and longevity. Not so, of course; and these silly girls should stick to the Victorian pot-boilers that at least acknowledged the existence of evil. There are many names for what we are and many variations of how we survive, but what we truly, madly, always are is thirsty.