That story takes us back to the 1920s, and to the nearby town of Cottingley where a couple of young girls (Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright) claimed to have photographed fairies - claims (and photographs) which were taken seriously in an age before Photoshop, including by the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, a noted Spritualist and believer in the supernatural. But instead, Rose becomes increasingly obsessed, her belief engaged, with the intimidating Mrs Favell, a woman who seems almost like a tourist at the Home, and with the story, told in a batch of letters, which Favell lets her read. That's what Paul says he loves about her - that she 'believes'. Now, although she's found work at the Sunnyside Care Home and seems to have dropped any idea of resuming her degree, she still dreams of 'getting out', living in 'a house in a forest, a turret reaching up amid the branches, a circular room lined with shelves where I'll keep my mother's books. Rose is a young woman who has dropped out of university, at first to care for her dying mother but then to make a home with Paul (who her mother disapproved of). I've previously loved Elwood's horror novels, written as Alison Littlewood, and was intrigued to see this one which moves only slightly different ground (maybe that's behind the different name?) 'I want to see my mum, just once, for a little while, I want to tell her that this can't be me I'm not ready'

The cottingley cuckoo