CHAPTER ONE
PROLOGUE
Alice was born in a London hospital during the year of the
Tiger
and almost expired from a heavy chest cold, but thanks to the
hospital's Intensive Care unit, pulled through to face another
lifetime.
She was brought up by her widowed mother in a converted old ballroom in
World’s End, and existed in a twilight zone of day school and
extra curriculum activities. She then woke up when exiled to boarding
school, an establishment that Alice’s mum had herself
attended
during the Second World War.
In later years, a world-weary Alice recalled little about her
compulsory stretch at the segregated girls public prison, but her
school days had never been dull. Her academic days were a
maroon-uniformed haze of letting off stink bombs in prayers, reading
'Teach Yourself Latin' books in biology (Alice devoured Latin after she
discovered it was dodo dead), blowing up dim-witted girls in domestic
science classes, and breast-stroking in one's
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