Copyright

      HarperVoyager

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

      Copyright © Dale Bailey 2018

      Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

      Cover images © Shutterstock.com

      Frontispiece illustration © Andrew Davidson

      Dale Bailey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008329167

      Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008329174

      Version: 2019-08-30

       Dedication

       For Pam and Sally

       Epigraph

      The specific mode of existence of man implies the need of his learning what happens, and above all what can happen, in the world around him and in his own interior world. That it is a matter of the structure of the human condition is shown, inter alia, by the existential necessity of listening to stories and fairy tales, even in the most tragic of circumstances.

      — MIRCEA ELIADE, THE FORBIDDEN FOREST

      Gretel began to cry and said,

      “How are we to get out of the forest now?”

      — THE BROTHERS GRIMM, “HANSEL AND GRETEL”