Frimley, Surrey, England, August 1980
Sometimes a single event can shatter your soul and leave you trying to piece together the fragments for the rest of your life.
George Grigsley sucked his pencil’s rubber tip and looked thoughtfully at the oleander shrub dancing outside the kitchen window. His mother had left him two ham sandwiches and a glass of orange juice, together with his reading and maths homework. He was not to open the door to anyone. He understood. He hoped mother would bring home a man-friend tonight. Then they would have a nice dinner tomorrow.
The sunlight streaming through the window brightened the birthday cards on the wooden dresser. The front of one card showed a gold flower, and a vertical column of Chinese characters. At the library he’d managed to translate two of the characters: Beautiful and Good. Beside the Hong Kong postmark, the sender had attached a little sticker that read: It’s never too late to be eight!
He knelt on a chair, and leaned over the table, a permanent black marker in his left hand, a Sindy doll in his right. He put the marker tip beneath his nostrils, inhaled deeply, and then frowned as he blackened a neat triangle on the doll’s pubic region. He splayed the doll’s legs, placed it in a prone position, and then artfully arranged its clothes and underwear.
The male doll, a blue-eyed bearded soldier, required extra work. He used an awl to bore a hole in the doll’s blackened groin area, and pushed through the broken-off tip of a small crochet needle, which he had already painted in a flesh-coloured tone. He arranged the doll’s uniform and underwear, and then placed the figure on top of the female. Like a snooker player judging a difficult shot, he looked at it from the table’s edge, from various angles. He felt a thrill of satisfaction. He was ready.
He took his pad and began to sketch.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
He turned, just in time to see mother’s face, red with rage, before a stinging slap knocked him to the floor. She stood on a chair to get the rolling pin from above the dresser.
‘No! No!’ George said.
‘Yes.’ He tried to defend himself but she reached over his arms, hitting his head with a smart crack. Stunned, he moved his hands to shelter his head. She hit his legs, and his arms, blow after blow, until he was on the floor and she was breathless. He felt the blood on his cheek, but remained motionless.
She dragged him upright by his hair. ‘Undress.’ When he did not move quickly enough, she pulled the trousers and shirt from him, then his underpants. Five-pound notes fell to the floor from her coat pocket. She dragged him by the hair toward the cellar door behind the stairs. As she opened the door and pushed him down the steps, he saw his sister standing behind mother, smirking.
He tumbled down the cold steps and lay in a heap in the dark, his eyes closed. He heard the television. His sister was watching Bewitched. Looking up, he saw a pair of eyes. When he reached out, a voice box said: I love you. As he ripped the doll’s limbs from their sockets, and its head from its neck, it repeated: I love you. When he tore the voice box from the doll’s back, he felt satisfied.