Free Apple of My Eye by Patrick Redmond

that caused such excitement in others. It was heart shaped, framed by thick, dark hair. Blue-black, her father said. The skin was pale, lips red and full, nose slim and elegant. Huge eyes, rimmed by dark lashes, were so blue as to be almost purple. Violet, her mother said. The sort of face, said others, that men would one day die for.
    But for now it was just her face. Quickly she would become bored and return to her own room with the bedspread decorated with moons and stars, the shelves full of books and toys and the conch shell her father had bought her while on holiday in Cornwall and which she had only to press to her ear to hear the sound of the sea.
    In the centre of the room was a wooden crib that her paternal grandfather had made. Inside it, covered in a blanket, was a china doll that had been a present from her paternal grandmother. Both had died before her second birthday. She had no recollection of either but still she missed them. Her father talked about them often, keeping both alive in her mind.
    She would kneel beside the crib, rocking it gently, singing the songs she had learned at school and feeling suddenly sad because the thing she wanted more than anything in the world was a brother or sister. A real-life doll that she could love and protect, just as her parents loved and protected her.
    There would never be a baby. That was what her father had said. ‘Why would we want another child,’ he had gone on to ask, ‘when we have the perfect one in you?’ Though he was smiling his eyes had been sad and she had known that this was all part of some strange adult mystery that she did not yet understand and could only accept.
    But still the longing remained, and as she sang to the doll she would stare into its painted eyes, willing it to live and make her dreams come true.
    *
    Kendleton, like most small towns, had its exclusive addresses.
    The most prestigious was The Avenue: a collective description for the grand houses to the south-east of the town centre, all with huge gardens that backed on to the Thames. Susan’s parents were not friends with any of the residents of The Avenue, but one of Susan’s classmates, Alice Wetherby, lived there, and Susan and her friend Charlotte had been to Alice’s house for a party. During the party Alice’s elder brother Edward had thrown Charlotte’s glasses into the river and made her cry, so Susan had punched Edward in the mouth and made him cry, immediately being sent home in disgrace and so bringing to an end her association with Kendleton’s elite.
    But she still had connections. The next most desirable address was Queen Anne Square; a quadrangle of beautiful red-brick houses in the shadow of Kendleton Church and home to Susan’s godmother Auntie Emma and her husband Uncle George. The two of them had married the previous summer and Susan had been bridesmaid, sharing the honours with a girl called Helen, who had thrown a tantrum because she didn’t like her dress and then been spectacularly sick when they were halfway down the aisle.
    The heart of Kendleton was Market Court: a huge oval space at the centre of the town with streets running off it like the strands of a spider’s web. The wealthier members of town lived on the east side,where houses were larger and streets wider, and ‘crossing the Court’ was something that many a west-side resident longed to do.
    Market Court was full of shops, including Ramsey’s Studio, which belonged to Susan’s father. He was a photographer, specializing in portraits. Two years earlier a local newspaper had run a competition to find ‘Little Miss Sparkle’ and Susan’s father had submitted her portrait. She had won and received ten shillings, a book of fairy tales and the honour of having her picture in the paper under the heading ‘Little Susan Ramsey sparkles like a star’. Her father had had the article framed and hung on the wall of his shop so that everyone could see.
    And from that day on she was always his little