Norma Jeane was nine. She was also frightened.

Not because her mother stacked her in foster homes when she was five. Or because those foster homes had been very cruel to her. It was not the daily hard work that earned her some nice bread. Or the frequent scolding.

It was Mr. Kimmel.

Mr. Kimmel was the Carpinson's star lodger. He was a sourly white man, a huge face with ugly pink smudges that looked up from between thick white collars. Norma had to strain to get a look at his eyes because of his bulging midsection, and even then his eyes were a dull gray.

Norma had blue eyes. Blue bright eyes that lit up her round thin face when she smiled, and eyes that were sheathed in small but long curly appealing lashes that seemed too big for her face. Her hair was a thick stack of a brunette; Norma was proud of her hair - her mother had told her that her hair was beautiful before she was taken away.

For a homeless, Norma was well fed. But she didn't look it. The bright white one-piece frock with red buttons all the way in the front that she was wearing now was bought when she was seven. And it still fit. Norma's nails were dirty because of too much running around in the mud, her hair could use a wash and her shoes were grimy.

But she was pretty.

Say that you have a little young girl; she's nearing five months and you're sitting at a bus-stop holding her. While she's gurgling in your hands and you're trying your best to kiss her in the nose, a bus pulls up and lots of nine year-old girls get off. They're all pretty and cute and nice, and they're all smiling, laughing and giggling. You'll watch them and you'll smile with them. And then you'll stare at them trying to decide which one of them you would want your girl to grow up to be. You'd pick the nicest girl.

Norma Jeane was nicer. And prettier.

Which was why Mr. Kimmel was poking at her chest.

Norma had brought up tea, iced with little cubes that she had dug up from the freezer. Mrs. Carpinson gave Mr. Kimmel iced tea because he'd asked for it. Norma doubted very much if she would ever tell her to carry up the tea for the black person who lodged next door. Norma was always confused when she thought of this because the black lodger was always much nicer to her. But she had learnt to be silent. Silence, or a good whacking.

The tray had bitten into her arms because Mrs. Carpinson had wanted so much to impress Mr. Kimmel. And then, just in the middle of the staircase the heavy metal had slipped a bit and the china pot had almost gone wallowing down the steps. Norma had put her whole weight behind it, willing herself to stop wobbling.

That was hard.

Harder still was to yell now.

At first, Norma was confused. Confused because Mr. Kimmel had got up from his chair and took the tea from her, and then asked her to stay. Before, Norma had always run away. She had remained and glanced at the crooked walls and the ambling fan for a few minutes while she felt his eyes on her. She didn't like that.

She didn't like it either when he moved towards her. She looked for the tray, but there was no tray in his hands.

And then he was poking her in the chest.

Rough huge hands held her in place as her frock was gone in a crash and then his hands were mauling her, crushing her frail body beneath the giving walls, biting into her mouth, piercing the soft skin in the nape of her neck, strangling her soul.