'Eli was not quite seven years old when he discovered that he was different. One March day, Eli looked into the eyes of his friend Thomas Wilkes and said, oYou are going to die on Tuesday.o And when the following Tuesday, after school, Tommy Wilkes fell from his treehouse and broke his neck it was inevitable that questions were asked . . . ' In this collection of stories, Salley Vickers, master of the uncanny and the unexpected, explores bereavement and betrayal, closely guarded secrets, unforeseen endings and decidedly odd beginnings. From the woman who finds solace in a haunted graveyard to the artist obsessed by a wolf roaming loose in a park, the crown prince who becomes a great playwright to the refugee whose history lies hidden in an old sofa, we enter lives in in which ordinary surfaces conceal dark, and often disturbing, depths.