She was surrounded by silence, and came to love it. Her favourite game was listening to herself, even her breath, but a telephone would appear in every home, connected to a special cable. The shrill ringing of the telephone made her shudder. It rang as a signal that, his work over, he was coming home. Her mother waited. She could feel, sometimes pretending to be asleep, her father coming in to kiss her. She heard him unloading and cleaning his pistol while he was talking to her mother, and in the morning he was already away. She saw the pistol. Daddy showed her how to shoot with it. She held it in her hands, a real gun, not like the ones the boys played at war with, pretending to take aim and fire. She was proud, but kept the secret between her and her daddy. She liked him best. Her mummy
