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size 16. A continuing expansion kept in check only by the amount of physical exercise her job entailed. Yet Isobel hardly noticed, for aside from her uniform, the only other clothes she wore were tracksuit bottoms and sweatshirts, baggy enough to accommodate a few extra pounds without much trouble and unforgiving enough to allow her to indulge in her favourite passion for all things sweet whilst watching TV and bemoaning the fact that while everyone else was out having a fantastic time, she was stuck indoors.
    Life was fucking awful and then you died.
    Half way through her favourite soap, the cat woke up and wanting to announce this spectacular achievement began to paw at her side. Pulling and catching its claws in her sweatshirt until unable to stand it any longer, Isobel climbed slowly to her feet and followed the scurrying cat out into the tiny kitchen, where opening a tin of cat food, she thought how she really ought to give the place a bit of a wipe over. But what was the point? She never had any visitors and the bacon fat on the cooker wasn’t hurting anyone, so why should she bother when she could be doing something else? Like catching up with what was going on in the street?
    Pushing the cat’s bowl under its eager nose, she straightened up and turned to the fridge, noticing how her small collection of fridge magnets were just as grubby as everything else. Most of them had been pilfered from work, but one or two were of her own choosing. The first being an advertisement for Ovaltine in which a rosy cheeked kid all tucked up in bed, held a steaming, hot mug clasped between his chubby hands.
    The lone survivor of a house fire in which she had managed to escape, but which her parents, overcome by the choking smoke, had suffocated in their beds, leaving the six year old Isobel an orphan and the authorities with a problem.
    They had tried but it seemed without Aunts, Uncles or any other family friends willing to take her in, the only thing they could do with her was place her in the tender, loving care of Sunnylawns children’s home.
    Except it wasn’t sunny and it didn’t have a lawn.
    Instead, the buiding was dark and depressing and outside, any grass that might once have sprouted, had long ago been worn away by the tramp of dozens of children’s feet.
    Clutching a brown suitcase, Isobel had been squashed into a dreary bedroom with two other girls, whose names she could now no longer recall, but who, on arrival, had insisted she shut up and keep all her belongings over her side.
    Something she would have been more than happy to do, if only the girls had allowed her. But the one with the red hair had been a bed wetter and everytime she woke up sodden and cold, she’d climb from her own wet and stinking bed and into Isobel’s, stealing all of Isobel’s warmth and almost choking her with the smell of urine. Alone and miserable, Isobel could do nothing about it except roll over and make room, until one night, sick and tired of the stinking invasion, she’d kicked the red head away and screamed blue murder. Bringing the night matron running and demanding to know who was being murdered and what the horrible smell was?
    The bed wetter went without sweets for a week, whilst Isobel was simply branded a trouble maker. A title she more than lived up to.
    No one wanted her, no one cared and whenever potential parents came to visit she hid, instantly giving the impression she was of a sullen nature and downright rude to go with it, and while the other children gradually left to begin new lives with loving families, Isobel remained. Silent, brooding and miserable.
    Her teenage years saw her turning to petty theft for amusement in which she plundered London. Soon learning how to con foreign tourists and picking mostly on the ever enthusiastic Japanese, who heavy with cash but low on local information, looked at Isobel with something like adoration when she sneered at their guide books and told