AFTER MADNESS - CH 3 -1

I had a lot of problems fitting in as a child. I was terrified of doorways, upstairs and the thing that would come and get me. I'd seen it, that big black thing that came out of the bathroom.

Margaret had strange tales about this period too. I remembered playing in a garden with another little girl my age when I was about three. Margaret insisted it was my friend Christine Taberner but I only met her when I started school; so who was it? I remembered us squatting around an old frying pan filled with stones and pretending to cook them. Margaret's memory was slightly different. When I had this memory and asked Margaret about it, she insisted that it was Christine and that she just caught us in time. According to her we had cut a load of worms up and were pretending to fry them. I don't think so. I think she was still traumatised from the incident in the clubhouse place.

We had the most beautiful pram. It was enormous, Sandra and I could both sit in it - I think it must have been a pram for twins. It was a coach built beauty in green an cream. Margaret said it was given to her for Sandra's birth, but why would anyone give you a double-sized pram? Frank Phillips owned pubs so he could afford his own if he wanted, one in the right size.

Margaret also had this lovely camel hair-coat with an astraskhan collar which she also claimed to have been given. It was far too stylish for Margaret. I have a strong suspicion that it was the woman who was killed's coat; the pram too. It was a twin pram, was the little girl on the stairs the same little girl I played with in the garden? Was she my twin sister?