Free Like a Charm by Karin Slaughter (.ed) Page A

train. But I don't want to think about her. She is a nasty piece of work.
    As long as I remember my manners and am polite Mummy says I will always be all right, because I am quite handsome. I am tall and have dark hair. It is cut in the usual way for a man. I would like to have long hair like The Beatles, but I go to the barber with my daddy and the barber always uses the electric razor up the back of my neck. Daddy says The Beatles are like pansies.
    I wish Daddy liked me a bit more, and I could play cricket with him or even football. Daddy does not like me to call him Daddy. I tried one day calling him Dad instead but he says there is no need to call him anything in front of people. Most people call him Bill, which is short for William. No one I have asked knows why Bill is short for William, but you would think Bill was short for Billiam, which would be a stupid name.
    I don't know why Daddy doesn't like me very much. He is usually very friendly with men. He goes to the Red Lion with them and plays darts and drinks beer. But he never takes me with him. Even though I am over eighteen.
    I can remember when I was still practically a child and he'd come to my bedroom in the night and read me stories by the nightlight, which was a red and white mushroom. When he thought I was asleep he would talk to me, saying horrid things in a hissing voice. One day he spat on my bed. But I didn't tell Mummy about that, even though I was frightened that she might think it was me who spat on the quilted counterpane. I am more scared of Daddy than Mummy. He has got very strong hands. Daddy whispered in my ear one night that I was not his son, and one day he told a lady in a shop that I was bitten by a monkey when I was a baby, but I cannot believe that this is true because whoever heard of monkeys living in Salisbury except when the circus comes? I am not saying that I think my daddy is a liar, though perhaps he was confused because he might have had a drink in the pub at lunchtime or something. I don't like being alone with him very much, and I told Mummy this but she says I must always remember how brave Daddy is, and how he risks his life every day to put the food on our table, although I have never seen him do this. Cook usually puts the food on the table. Daddy's work sometimes means he has to go away for a few days and sometimes he stays out till very late at night and comes in shouting because he is drunk. Sometimes this makes Mummy very sad, and while we are sitting watching the television I can see that she is crying, even though we might be watching something funny like Steptoe and Son or Benny Hill, or the comedy bits in the Black and White Minstrel Show.
    Rosemary, the lady I met on the train, was like the girls in the Black and White Minstrel Show. They all wear sparkly dresses and twinkling top hats and smile all the time. They are called the Television Toppers and I think they are all six foot tall, the same height as me. But this lady was much smaller than that, although she was very pretty with that kind of yellow hair, all fluffed up, like Marilyn Monroe before she killed herself.
    Her jumper was very tight for a lady. It was pink. She also wore a tight skirt and had a shiny patent leather handbag. She was in a compartment without any men, which was why I went and sat with her, although I wish I had not. After the guard took our tickets I saw that we were both going to Salisbury. I had been up to Vauxhall, which is a good station for trainspotting as all the trains coming out of Waterloo go through it. I saw quite a few Q1s. The Q1 locomotive weighs 51 tons and 5 cwt and its driving wheel is 5 foot 1 inch in diameter. But mainly I saw diesels and electrics, which are not much fun. Electrics don't even look as though there is a locomotive, just a row of boring passenger cars. Soon I believe there will be no more steam trains and that will be the beginning of the end for the railways. And a man called Doctor Beeching is planning