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too. She wondered at me standing so still in the rain, wanted me in for my tea.
    Tom watched me as I limped off down the entry. His hair, I just had time to notice, was bone dry.

Rufus
    T HAT NIGHT I TRIED to talk to Harry. I told him about Tom. That I had seen him again, here at the house. That Auntie Marge had not seen him. That when I got to the window straight after tea, he was no longer there. Harry said little. He wasn't talking much in those days anyway. ‘No, no!’ when Marge came after him. ‘Milk,’ sometimes to me at breakfast. And now, ‘Tom – see Tom.’ Harry's life I think at that time had just curled up into a ball. He was somewhere inside, sitting it out.
    As soon as Harry was asleep, I crept out onto the landing and into Tom's room. Auntie Marge and Uncle Stan were downstairs with the radio on. Yellow foggy light from the street lamp lit up two thirds of the room and cast the rest into shadow. I stood uncertainly beside Tom's narrow bed. His things were all around me: Meccano models, balsa wood planes, his green Cubs' jumper with badges down the sleeves, marbles, cigarette cards… shoes. I sat on the bed and felt like an intruder.
    I shivered. Already Tom's room was colder than the rest of the house and had begun to acquire that musty, unlived-in smell. A double-decker bus went sailing past the window. I sat there with my hands in my lap. Then the shapes in the room dissolved, and I began to cry.

    The next day, Sunday, Harry and I went to Sunday school. We sang ‘Ye Holy Angels Bright’ and did a Bible quiz. I spent our collection money in Starkey's Sweet Shop. When we got home Auntie Marge smelled the sherbet on us, gave me a clout and sent the pair of us to our room. No tea, she said. No toys. Not a sound. Uncle Stan came in later, sheepishly, with a couple of biscuits. (Of course next morning she found the crumbs and he got a telling off.) The afternoon passed. It became darker in the room. (No light on.) Harry dozed off on his bed. I stood for a while at the window staring down into the yard. Presently, out came Rufus snuffling around, looking for amusement. I watched, and suddenly there was Tom. He was following Rufus here and there across the yard. Rufus had hold of an old deflated ball and was shaking it like a rat. Tom held out a hand, crouched down beside him, attempted to ruffle his furry neck. And Rufus, dim un seeing Rufus, no sixth sense (hardly five), went bounding through him.

Bad Times
    I WILL SAY SOMETHING here about polio. It is not, after all and thank goodness, a disease that any of us has cause to fear these days. But in those days… well, there were two others in my school with calipers on their legs. There was also a boy, I seem to remember, who had it and was so ill he just stayed home.
    Polio – poliomyelitis – is a virus. One of its many unpleasant effects is to paralyse certain muscles. You needed then to wear a metal and leather brace, a ‘caliper’ as it was called. This helped your weakened leg (or legs) to support your weight. I had caught polio when I was six and had been wearing a caliper for about a year and a half.
    Rosalind Phipps was just a nasty child, I can see this now. Though maybe she had her troubles too. (What went on in her house, I wonder.) She was a bully to me, she and her spiteful gang. ‘Frances Frogarty,’ they would chant in their sarcastic sing-song voices. It drove me crazy. I had a temper. I would rise to the bait and Rosalind knew it. Then having got me all worked up she would somehow cunningly duck out of sight, leaving me to suffer the consequences with Mrs Harris, Mr Cork or whoever. Also she would say bad things about Harry (her little sister and Harry went to the same nursery), or worse about our parents. ‘You only live with your Auntie!’ I wanted to punch her.
    So I was having a bad time at school and Harry and I were having a bad time at home. Auntie Marge had no interest in children, no maternal instincts I heard her say