Lines in Books

T he past is not stable. The act of remembering changes us, and our whole lives can be re-written in a day. She believed the beauty of museums, like maps and human relationships, was in distance as much as connection. She did not like the turmoil of memories constantly poised in her mind, synapses and chemicals shifting their weight according to new moods and often threatening to collapse or disband. She could exert control over her memories here, and close the door on them.  A girl's best friend died when she was a child; despite being afraid of water, he'd jumped into the sea to save her when she was in trouble and drowned himself. Years later, she got into a relationship with her friend's brother who abused her. She ultimately left and, for years, let the man she later entered into another relationship with believe that she'd been in a car accident. 

Evil never dies.  A young woman's soul is, after her death, transferred to her violin so that she might 'live' again when someone plays it. The violin lies hidden for centuries. It is ultimately found in her home that has, by the time it is found, become a school and handed to a student who plays well but whose playing is uninspired... till she is given the violin. The original owner was, however, deep into the dark arts and the violin not only causes the student's playing to become spectacular but also causes the student herself to become insufferable. All of this is recorded by a painter whose work is also discovered at the school where a parallel story line runs: an actor who has developed Bell's palsy takes over as head of drama and puts on a new, dark interpretation of Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream . English fairies were always given to mischief and malevolence, after all.

I think my granddaughter believes we were actually grey-skinned, with dull hair, always posing in a shadowed landscape. But I remember the town as being almost too bright to look at when I was a girl. I remember the deep blue of the sky and the dark green of the pines cutting through it, the bright red of the local brick houses and the orange carpet of pine needles under our feet. Nowadays – though I’m sure the sky is still occasionally blue and most of the houses are still there, and the trees still drop their needles – nowadays, the colours seem faded, as if I live in an old photograph. An 82-year-old woman, cared for largely by her daughter, whose memory is failing becomes convinced that her friend Elizabeth is missing and proceeds to search for her, her memories becoming entwined with another disappearance in 1946, seventy years earlier: that of her sister. Eventually, it turns out that her friend has had a stroke and is in hospital, and her sister's remains are in her frien...