The living room was to be off limits but the dining room seized us immediately, presenting a much more enticing and exciting vista. Two boys sat at the table. Annie strutted right past them and into the kitchen. She stopped there, ostensibly to get a drink, and turned to stare at them with a hungry, almost wolfish smile. Absorbed in their own concerns, they didn’t notice. But we didn’t join her; the action at the table was too magnetic for us to pass. The lighter-haired of the two – and his hair was only lighter by comparison because it was a rich walnut brown – had sitting in front of him a bottle of alcohol, a roll of raw cotton and a small vial of dark liquid. Tightly gripped in his right hand was a pencil with an unusual arrangement protruding from the eraser end, the broken point of a needle tightly wound with thread. The other boy, his pitch-black hair tumbling in waves onto his forehead, had his sleeve rolled up above his elbow. Over and over the eraser was dipped into the dark liquid and darted into the flesh of the exposed arm, forming a design. The way it affected us the rhythm or the scent of the ink might have been magic. All that was lacking was some mysterious chant. We didn't miss it. We were spellbound.