Cupboard Ghost contains references to things that have been mentioned previously but some of them not for a while.
Much like when a tv shows shows you “previously on…” clips sometimes the reminder of important information feels like a bit of a spoiler because you’re already primed for the reveal.
If you’d like that not to happen just go straight to the zeroth chapter! That way you can feel super clever if you guessed things.
If you’d like a refresh then read on.
Previously on…
But I sit down and I write a letter to Alan Sebastian because I think, probably, he’s the only person who would even miss me.
And I don’t know if I feel better.
And I can’t give it to him right now but I walk to the top of the hill where I can get mobile reception and I call him. Because I think he’d be even more sad if I didn’t.
“Gillian?” Shell’s eyes are wide with the surprise I’d expected from Nanny Bas.
She’s taller than she was. Taller than me, now. But not nearly as tall as Alan Sebastian who grows at an alarming rate.
Shell grins at me and says my name again and I wonder if I can pretend that I just happened to be driving by. It’s a main enough road that it’s a plausible excuse and it could be a random coincidence. She doesn’t enquire.
Michelle left the week we turned eighteen.
She’d told me she was thinking about it. She told me if she stayed that she thought she would… die. And I asked her to promise that if she left she’d keep being alive. And she did. But I don’t know if she has.
I’d thought at the time that I was jealous. But if I was, it wasn’t very much. It was nothing compared with the all-consuming hurt I felt when Scott got a girlfriend.
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