4th Estate
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018
Copyright © Philip Hensher 2018
Cover image by Albert Anker (1831–1910)
Kleinkinderschule auf der Kirchenfeldbrücke, 1900, oil on canvas
Gottfried Keller-Stiftung, Bundesamt für Kultur, Bern
Depositum im Kunstmuseum Bern
Extract from ‘Second’ taken from Happiness by Jack Underwood (Faber & Faber). Copyright © Jack Underwood, 2015. Reproduced by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.
The right of Philip Hensher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008175641
Ebook edition: March 2018 ISBN: 9780008175665
Version: 2018-01-30
For Zaved Mahmood, of course
If I lived in a cave and you were my only visitor,
what would I tell you that the walls had told me?
That people are unfinished and are made between
each other …
JACK UNDERWOOD, ‘Second’
… amid the millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people are or what their object can be …
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Contents
BOOK ONE: THE LITTLE SPINSTERS
1.
Towards the end of the afternoon, Aisha got up and stood at the garden window. The arrangements for the