Excerpt from Laura Blundy by Julie Myerson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Well, I did not know about that, but meanwhile it was so damp and cessy at Billy's place that the whole family had to walk on bricks to reach the privy in the yard, for there was so much waste and overflow slopping about your ankles. This was not helped by his downstairs neighbour, the red-faced and rambunctious Mrs Reeves who, not being communally-minded, never bothered to so much as replace the candle in the shared convenience, so that Billy's littl'uns- having managed to teeter across the bricks - frequently ended by falling in the privy.

I know also that the said Mrs R. scrubbed the doorstep with ochre and then had a great old moan if any of the kiddies trampled it through. And that her own, solitary, female child sat forlornly on countless other doorsteps while her mother entirely forgot her in her hurry to go around poking her fingers into everybody else's pies.

I knew that Billy loved all his kids with a big, sweeping passion, but that he still had a sudden temper and could not stop himself knocking them about. I knew they had bruises in various stages of ripeness all over their small sweet faces. And that he was full of shame about this fact.

But he had a lot to put up with. I knew that Arthur was born with a potato for a brain and that he mostly just slumped in his chair or had to be tied in for his limbs went all jerky otherwise.

I knew that he had unexpected skills all the same - that he smiled at three weeks old and at two years could roll a ha'penny into an empty jar from three feet and that he could tell when the big girl Pinny had rounded the corner of the next street just by sniffing at the moist and tetchy air.

I understood that last January he fell down the backstairs and lost his speech for a while. And that these days he was mostly tied to the bed or the chair while his mother did a wash or fetched water for the copper. And that this was the reason for the soreness of his wrists and ankles, since he always worked hard to undo his bonds.

I knew more about Billy's children for I had made it my business to find out. I knew that his favourite boy Jack died one night of a chill on his chest and that he was only three years old and loved horses so much that he'd wait at the window for hours just to watch the night soil man go past. And that he had his own little rag thing - a wisp of a toy bought off a pedlar on Lambeth Walk - that he called hoss. And his favourite thing at night was to suck his thumb and stick a piece of hoss up his nose at the same time.

I knew that Lulu, the ex-babby, was a frantic and consumed little person - three years old now, the same age as Jack when they lost him and bearing this burden stoically. I knew that all she wanted in the world was to be the same as the others - as big and free and lively. I knew she spoke her first words at one year old but no one noticed. And that she could clap along merrily to a tune and was dry at night, but liked to cry and throw tantrums and was generally thought to be a delicate and peevish child.

But the fact about Billy's family that caused me the greatest and jealousest pain was this: that he had a particular and unfathomably deep and gentle love for the oldest -the one that was not even his.

This was the girl Pinny who, if he hit the babbies, would not speak to him, and this was what made him sorry and kept him in check. She was pure woman in the making, that one. She had the pull over him and could wrap him around her little finger. She knew all the delicate things you were supposed to take years learning and even then, in company, were best off hesitating to admit you knew.

I also knew that, though he would have maintained that he was quite satisfied with his life, Billy often lay alone and restlessly sad in the sour dawn light, tasting the four o'clock tang of bacon smoke from Shanklin Court and knowing there was no more sleep to be had.

Reprinted from Laura Blundy by Julie Myerson by permission of Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright (c) 2000 by Julie Myerson. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.