On his way back through the sitting-room he stopped to pick up the album. He was curious to see photographs of Annie's family and of Annie herself when she was younger. When he opened the album, however, he found that it was full of stories cut from newspapers.

The first two pages told of the wedding of Annie's parents and the birth of her elder brother, Paul - another Paul in her life - and of Annie herself. She was born on 1st April 1943. She must have hated being an April Fool.

The next page contained a report of a fire in a house in Hakersfield, California, in 1954. Five people had died in the fire. Three of them had been the children who lived in the ground- floor apartment, downstairs from the Wilkes family (who had been out of the house at the time). The fire had started because of a cigarette in the cellar.

Annie's voice echoed in Paul's mind: God, I hated those children.

Paul's blood began to run cold.

But she was only eleven years old.

That's old enough - old enough to let a candle burn down in the cellar so that the flame could light a pool of petrol. It's an old trick but hard to beat. Maybe she just wanted to frighten them and accidentally did more than that. But she did it, Paul. You know she did it.

He turned the page and found a story about the death of Annie's father. He had fallen over a pile of clothes at the top of the stairs in his house and broken his neck. The newspaper called it a 'curious accident'.

On the next page a newspaper from Los Angeles, hundreds of miles from Bakersfield, used exactly the same words - a 'curious accident'. This time it was a student nurse who had fallen over a dead cat at the top of the stairs and broken her neck. The name of the person who shared the student's apartment was Annie Wilkes. The year was 1959.

Paul felt pure terror rise up in him.

The 'accidents' had happened in different places and at different times, and no one had made the connection. Why should they? People were always falling down stairs.

Why had she killed them? He seemed to hear Annie's answers in his mind. The answers were absolutely mad, and Paul knew they were right.

I killed her because she played the radio late at night; I killed her because she let her boyfriend kiss her too much; I killed her because I caught her cheating; I killed her because she caught me cheating. I killed her to see whether I could. What does it matter? She was just a Miss Clever - so I killed her.