Thanks to Jeremy Osborne and Sweet Talk Productions without whom many of these stories would not have come into being. Last Train to Helsingør, The Music Box, The Chanterelles of Østvig, The Light from Dead Stars, Conning Mrs Vinterberg, The Bird in the Cage, The Climbing Rose, The Wailing Girl, Room Service, The Suitcase, The Tallboy, Detained and The Last Tenant were previously produced by Sweet Talk for BBC Radio 4, and The Crying was first printed by Mslexia. Thanks to Sarah and Kate Beal at Muswell Press for giving this collection life, and to Kate Quarry for her astute editing. Thanks also to Helen Pike, William Weinstein and Jeff Walkden for being my first readers, and to Frederik and Jules for making it all worthwhile. Finally, thanks to my late grandmothers in and around whose homes in Copenhagen I spent long school holidays lost in my imagination. While some locations in these stories may be real, all characters and events are entirely fictional, and any mistakes my own.