Vera was painting the pony’s hooves gold in the dining room; Janet said this was bad for him; poison would seep into his bloodstream. At the bottom of a great stone staircase, dressed in her mother’s black lace evening dress, twisted in murderous death, lies Janet.
So end the sixteen years of Janet’s short life. A life spent in a draughty Scottish castle, where roses will not grow, and a jackdaw decides to live in the doll’s house. A life peopled by prettier, smoother-haired siblings, a Nanny with a face like the North Sea and the peculiar, whisky-swigging Cousin Lila.
A life where Janet is perpetually misunderstood – and must turn from people, to animals, to books, to her own wild and wonderful imagination.
‘A wonderful oddity – brief, vivid, eccentric, written with ferocious zest and black humour.’ Penelope Lively
‘The reader feels unalloyed joy on every page.’ Independent
Counting My Chickens
My extraordinary mother, the writer Elspeth Barker, died in April 2022. She left this life on a balmy, sunny afternoon, just as if she was wandering down through her garden to the river with her...
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