In her 1992 memoir Curriculum Vitae, the novelist Muriel Spark describes her childhood neighbor in Edinburgh named Nita McEwen. Spark and McEwen did not know each other well, but their “physical resemblance was often remarked upon.” Years later, Spark encountered McEwen in southern Rhodesia, where both young women were living with their husbands. Spark’s new marriage was unhappy, but McEwen’s was worse: her husband murdered her, then killed himself. Spark used this event as the basis for a short story.