My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.

The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world.

There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book. Do not abandon me.

But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

Everybody has a story. It's like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can't say you haven't got them. Same goes for stories.

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.