Alex’s Reviews > The Doll's Alphabet > Status Update

Among the ship's catch that afternoon were a magnificent orange octopus, silver and green fish, black eels, seaweed, glass bottles, small turtles, and chunks of red coral and jellyfish. The catch was a multitude of colours and textures, like the thigh of an old debauched prince squished into a stocking, the bulbous head of the octopus a blister ripe with pus.

Beside the aquarium was a mantel clock that looked like a shrunken train station, a small, long skull - the person we bought it from said it was a rat's - and two winking-face tea cups Nicholas had inherited from his grandmother. We didn't use them because Nicholas thought they would scream if we poured hot liquid into their heads.

She was lumpy and frayed, like a cloth doll stuffed with too much wool. Unclean fleece, I thought, torn from an animal.

I became used to cleaning, and also to the sight of Paul's saggy grey underpants draped over every surface of our room, dripping like rainclouds as they dried.

He had a cruel habit of telling almost every girl he met that they looked like a male star he had seen in a film long ago - so and so, what's his name, the funny chap with the moustache, you're just the image, don't say are you related to...?