Starred in the school play every year. I suppose that’s why subterfuge comes easily to me. Alice is looking at the painting in progress—a small illustration of a tiny wren sitting on a nest as small as a child’s hand—remembering her school days, remembering writing, in her best hand, to various aunts, pleading poverty, or family quarrels before asking for cash to be sent inside a card or a box—anything to fool that prying dried up stick of a devout Calvinist form-mistress. It’s easy to deceive when you have practiced for years on family members. And men. Alice chuckles to herself. The dog looks up. Five minutes, she promises, then we will walk. Finishing off the delicate cross-hatching lines of the nest, Alice thinks of her archenemy. Poor Mrs. Mackenzie. My nemesis. Little does she, or anyone, know that she is right. Not in what she has accused me of, but she knows there is something not quite genuine about me. She smells it, senses it. Perhaps she is the witch. Don was shouting, “How do you expect me to fill these pages when I’ve no staff?”
