Fourth Estate
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MISLAID
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015
First published in the United States by Ecco in 2015
Copyright © Nell Zink 2015
THE WALLCREEPER
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015
First published in the United States by Dorothy, a Publishing Project in 2014
Copyright © Nell Zink 2014
Nell Zink asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
Jacket images © Norman Arlott
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
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These novels are works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Source ISBNs: 9780008139605 and 9780008130862
Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008139933
Version: 2015-05-22
Contents
Contents
My life would be harder
without the magnificent collective
Zeitenspiegel Reportagen,
to whose members and supporters
I gratefully dedicate this book
… among the rabble—men,
Lion ambition is chained down—
And crouches to a keeper’s hand—
Not so in deserts, where the grand—
The wild—the terrible, conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.
—E. A. Poe, “Tamerlane”
Stillwater College sat on the fall line south of Petersburg. One half of the campus was elevated over the other half, and the waters above were separated from the waters below by a ledge with stone outcroppings. The waters below lay still, and the waters above flowed down. They seeped into the sandy ground before they had time to form a stream. And that’s why the house had been named Stillwater. It overlooked a lake that lay motionless as if it had been dug with shovels and hand-lined with clay. But the lake had been there as long as anyone could remember. It had no visible outlet, and no docks because a piling might puncture the layer of clay. Nobody swam in the lake because of the leeches in the mud. There was no fishing because