It was like a coastal shelf, building up over the years. Minor additions, accretions, layers of sediment.The seemingly random overlapping of fragments of evidence. Plates, even. Or maybe it was the slot machines at the arcades. Maybe that is what it was.  The famous penny falls. The machines she had loved as a child, playing with her father, on seaside holidays – except now she was playing them for real. One more word and all would come tumbling down around her. One more word. Or maybe two. And then some terrible jackpot of awkwardness and humiliation. She had dreaded it all her life – she had been a sensitive child, after all – and now she flirted with it every day. Life can be cruel, eh? It really could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, after all. Because words have consequences, they really do…

She remembered her father’s adage every day when she sat into the car. Whatever you say, say nothing. He had blamed it on his Irishness. A fatal inability to say it out straight, he said. And sometimes she truly felt it was inherited, passed on. But could that really be so? Surely it was not like rolling your tongue or twitching your ears? Either way, she had never dreamed of becoming a spy. A spy in her own world. It had been difficult at first – but over the years it had become harder and harder.To maintain a life of deception, to live a lie. Another penny. Another word.  Another sliver of calcium on the great pile. A crushed ...