Then Rosely was there—at the doorway, shrieking unintelligible things. Evie jerked back, flung herself away, leaving me flopping like a beached fish. I saw the horror in Rosely’s eyes, as she turned and ran, from the doorway, the hall, the house. Evie gathered herself up and went after her, then came back, still having trouble fastening buttons.
“Don’t you say anything to anyone about this,” she gasped menacingly.
    Say what to who about what? Somehow every possibility was impossible.

“There are strings,” said Mr Tappertit,” in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.”
    Barnaby Rudge is the most unregarded of Charles Dickens works, although not because it is the least interesting or most poorly rewritten. It is a tale of some riots that seemed to be forgotten by the time Dickens wrote about them (because he needs to remind the reader of the fact) and in his list of characters there is not a single immortal name. Dolly Varden sometimes gets raised, but only because she was pretty. I claim immunity because I was force-fed the book by an old style English teacher and therefore have blotted every bit of it from my memory. But I have since learned that this might have been a good thing. After all, what if the bastard teacher had picked one of Dicken’s greater works?

I got out of bed, got my pyjamas in order, and headed through to the lounge room, from where there was a view of the street in front of the house. Rosely was by the front gate, her face in her hands as she wept. I shook my head in puzzlement. What on earth could she have been so upset about?