Very Good Lives What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty but failure. At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations...
The Dursleys liked everything neat and ordered; the Weasleys’ house burst with the strange and unexpected. Harry got a shock the first time he looked in the mirror over the kitchen mantelpiece and it shouted, “Tuck your shirt in, scruffy!” The ghoul in the attic howled and dropped pipes whenever ...
The deep black cuts in the white scalp, like the grooves of skates on ice, were hidden by his forest of thick hair. Cold, waxen and empty, the body lay, re-dressed in Barry’s anniversary dinner shirt and trousers, in a dimly lit viewing room where soft music played. Touches of discreet makeup had...