Big Nathan

The book was about torture.

The main character caught wasps and fed them into the middle of a trap he’d rigged up from an old town clock, each number representing a different way to die.

The book wouldn’t fit in my only smart bag, and I realised on the train that I was going to have to sit withThe Wasp Factory on my lap during the interview. Or hide it.

As the train eased into the platform I looked at the insects swarming on the cover and imagined being asked what the book was about by some chipper interviewer and saying, deadpan, “Torturing animals.”

The woman I had spoken to on the phone earlier that week had told me that the office was only a short walk from the train station – “Just follow the road round until you reach us” – but right outside were a roundabout and four possible roads to follow.

Ip dip, sky blue,

Nanny sitting on the loo,

Singing songs, dropping bombs,

Out goes you.

The last road left didn’t really seem that promising, but I followed it and sure enough, halfway up the