Disappearing act

Miss DWH is fascinated by ordinary people who disappear - not the ones who are thought to be victims of some ruthless, violent crime - but the ones who seemed to have changed their mind about who they are and where they want to be. And they cannot be found.

She used to imagine that if she left for a trip and didn't come back, what would the investigators deduce about her from what she left behind? And where would she be? There was a time when driving out to California in a little red sports car, her long blond hair flowing behind her, was appealing.

So it is she arrives at the first sentence of her novel.

You know of course some of the best first lines of novels:

Call me Ishmael.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a singe man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy it its own way. (My favorite)

It was the best of times, the worst of times.

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together.

So tonight Miss DWH will find her first line, in a box, in a drawer, in the woods, in the eggs - and she'll be back.

Until we meet again
Miss DWH