Trick or treat - Lesley Glaister

All Nell's life, Olive has lived next door but one. And all her life, Nell has hated her. Even at school she had sparkled indecently, unladylike, turning heads. But that was before she gave in to gravity. Oh, she might have been a beauty once, Olive Owens, but now she is a fright - a fat old spinster, childless, senile, nursed by the lackey she calls a lodger. Nell has a son, her pleasure and her shame, though now she lives alone. She watched her husband die in the dressing-table mirror, and she talks to him still, at times has to slip him over to shut him up. Nell is sharp, in all the places Olive is round. When Wolfe moves into the house in between them, their quiet street is transformed. A lonely, spirited, eight-year-old boy, he knocks on their doors at Halloween and invites them to his bonfire party. As the ashes smoulder and the fireworks flare, he finds himself in the middle of an ancient conflict, grudges bared, and burning with a fury he could never have imagined.