Chapter 1 Summary

Fleur Talbot sat in an old graveyard in London in the middle of the twentieth century working on a poem when she was approached by a young policeman who asked her what she was doing. They chatted casually for a while, then he said good-bye and that it was nice to talk to someone. He commented that the graves must be very old and left her to her work. This scene is described by Fleur as the last day of a whole chunk of her life, although she was not aware of it at the time.

She lived nearby in a small room; her morale was high at the time, although she was in need of a job, and her landlord, Mr. Alexander, was constantly trying to convince her to rent a larger room in the house, since her small room was overcrowded...