Copyright

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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MISLAID

First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015

First published in the United States by Ecco in 2015

Copyright © Nell Zink 2015

THE WALLCREEPER

First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015

First published in the United States by Dorothy, a Publishing Project in 2014

Copyright © Nell Zink 2014

Nell Zink asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

Jacket images © Norman Arlott

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

These novels are works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Source ISBNs: 9780008139605 and 9780008130862

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008139933

Version: 2015-05-22

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Mislaid

The Wallcreeper

About the Author

About the Publisher

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Dedication

My life would be harder

without the magnificent collective

Zeitenspiegel Reportagen,

to whose members and supporters

I gratefully dedicate this book

Epigraph

… among the rabble—men,

Lion ambition is chained down—

And crouches to a keeper’s hand—

Not so in deserts, where the grand—

The wild—the terrible, conspire

With their own breath to fan his fire.

—E. A. Poe, “Tamerlane”