Alvaro came into this world a wrinkled, bluish-coloured screaming runt with curly black hair – the curls came from Billy, the colour Ramona – and he was the ugliest baby Billy had ever seen. Not that he had seen many. Ramona might have seen loads more. All he knew was she felt as he did, slightly appalled at what they had produced between them.
Alvaro had trouble latching on to Ramona’s n*****s due to his already pronounced underbite and she got engorged and then ill with milk fever. If pregnancy hadn’t suited her temperament, nursing an infant suited her less. She did her best to foist the little beast onto its father. Alvaro spent the first few months of his life being ignored in his pram by a parent filthy with concrete dust and sweat rendering a long and high concrete wall that seemed
