Angela Carter

This is my room. We don’t share. We’ve always respected one another’s privacy. Identical, well and good; Siamese, no.

And I give a little shiver because suddenly I know, I know it in my ancient water, that something will happen today. Something exciting. Something nice, something nasty, I don’t give a monkey’s. Just as long as something happens to remind us we’re still in the land of the living.

This clock has got a lot of sentimental value for Nora and me. It came to us from our father. His only gift and even then it came by accident.

And the Misses Leonora and Dora, that is, yours truly, are, of course, Sir Melchior Hazard’s daughters, though not, ahem, by any of his wives. We are his natural daughters, as they say, as if only unmarried couples do it the way that nature intended. His never-by-him officially recognised daughters, with whom, by a bizarre coincidence, he shares a birthday.

She said: ‘Yes!’ to life and I said, ‘Maybe . . .’

to show off her red, red hair. Our paternal grandmother, the one fixed point in our fathers’ genealogy. Indeed, the one fixed point in our entire genealogy;

smiling, waving, smiling.
Our Uncle Peregrine inherited her scarlet hair. So did our half-sisters, Saskia and Imogen. Tristram, too. Not us, worse luck. The red hair only went to the legit. side.