'Weeks of petal counting have balanced him here, teetering, totally nervous...'

'We pick our way through the stacks and fall across the floor like sunlight...'

'I walk through the hospice like a voyeur. Each room is filled with the light clop of conversation. Family members mill about...'

'And off he goes, the tyres spinning in the dirt and gravel, throwing small stones backwards, and plumes of dust upwards.'

'The girls went ahead inside and Portia, who’d never been in the house before, was immediately lured to the spiral stairs.'

'Aunt Tabitha’s suicide note was clear. Before the police, her niece must call a man called Ernest Doran.'