Head of Zeus

She is the person I go to for everything from a cup of sugar to good advice.

You will die old and alone and you will know deep fear.

We all can be no more, or less, than who we are.”

Everything is valuable under the right conditions. To a man dying of thirst, water be more precious than gold. To a drowning man, water be of little worth and great trouble

I will gather up all the little pieces that you have chipped away, hidden in drawers, swept under the carpet and shoved behind cushions and I will rebuild myself. I will become all of the things that I thought I might. All the dreams I considered before you broke me, I will chase them all.

certain people wanted a place to hide certain remains that they didn’t want nobody to find,

The day that she and Milly had arrived at the six-storey terrace on Kenway Road, they had thought they were invincible, immune to the regrets and recriminations that came with old age. It was the last in a long list of rentals that she and Milly had painstakingly ringed in the small ads, and from the moment they arrived they knew it was the place for them. A statuesque, elegant woman opened the door wearing a silk kimono and smoking a thin cigar in an ivory cigarette holder. She introduced herself as Trudy; she lived in a flat on the top floor. Pru walked to one of two deep-set sash windows on the landing and gazed at the most incredible view of the London skyline, all the way out to Fulham and beyond. She let her eyes skim the horizon and red-brick chimney pots. This would be the

start of their journey, here among the west London rooftops, living with this assured, worldly woman. Pru followed Trudy down a narrow hallway, noting the way she swept along on her high heels, which made her look refined and sophisticated, sexy. She was going to practise that walk and when she had enough money, buy herself a pair of high-heeled red patent leather shoes, just like Trudys.

The cleaners in their blue nylon tabards and with their hair scraped up into untidy knots were hard at it, buff

She was in a state somewhere between panic and hysteria, and when morning finally came, she would be exhausted from trying not to succumb to either. The morning. It felt very far away.