She read her way around the library, hungry for journeys, adventures, laughter and passion.  She took each new book to bed like a lover, savouring every chapter, going too far some nights until the letters danced like insects and she was groggy next day at work.  But still she’d sneak away for lunchtime trysts, her eager fingers fumbling for the bookmark.  In between times, in the worst of times and all alone, she would graze on safety notices, cereal packets, logos, the small print on tickets.  In museums and galleries she read the plaques, barely glancing at the exhibits.

When she died she had never travelled more than thirty miles from the small town of her birth.  But between the covers she’d been all round the globe:  a queen, a mother, a spy, a murderer, a general, a slave, an alien.  She died just before the last chapter.

*Originally published by www.the-phone-book.com (now archived)