Paul plays with the image of his sister's
wow gold doll. It is difficult to remember what Bessie looked like before he sacrificed her to the darker gods of his temper. He remembers how the red hot poker seared the thick plastic making scars across her cheeks and forehead. Paul had taken his inspiration from a drawing in the Wizard; he prefers the Wizard to illustrated comics like The Dandy and The Beano; he has always considered them juvenile.
At six years old he'd insisted his mother read him the stories from the Hotspur and the Wizard; he sat on the rug in front of the fire, back ensconced between her legs, head laid back on her pinafored lap, and he listened, o, how the boy listened, the words flickering as brightly as the flames dancing in the glowing coals.
At seven he read the stories for himself. He read the Hotspur and the Wizard, and the Courier and the Evening Telegraph, the Sunday Post and the People's Friend. He read anything and everything that came into the house. He rummaged in dustbins, not for 'luckies', the odds and ends of people's lives, but for something, anything to read. His mother had come across him up-ended in a dustbin, rummaging. She'd tipped his legs so he fell headfirst into the bin, then jammed on the lid. He'd howled not through fear but in protest at the stinking dark that did not allow him to read the Woman's Weekly he'd retrieved.