Nights in White Satin

Katie Arkwright was seen at eleven o’clock, tossing her soft gold curls to the insistent rhythms of Hot Chocolate. More than one person watched how she moved, noted how the deft shrug of her shoulder echoed the deeper pulse of the music.

At eleven fifteen she was gone for good.

Katie Arkwright left, apparently of her own accord. She abandoned the May Ball quickly and decisively, as a person might walk away from a bus queue. As if the money that Jared Scott-Pettit had forked out for a ticket meant nothing. She took her splendid young self—the elegant white curve of a dress, the silver armlets, the dainty sandals, the corona of curls—and disappeared.

Not even a glass slipper remained behind on stone steps to signal she’d ever been there.