Apart from the army of lecherous cretins who constituted Veronica's fan club at The Ducking Stool, Jake's smallholding received little in the way of visitors. However there was this one woman, although she was more a girl really, and her name was Rosie, Rosie Trumble. She toiled from dawn 'til dusk at a far-off dairy and part of her arduous duties entailed her lugging huge jars of milk she secured from Jake's cowshed across the dreary windswept moorland. A few years older than Stig, Rosie had a permanently downcast demeanour, unflatteringly complemented by her trailing fair hair and pallid complexion, not to mention the long, drab, hardwearing frocks she appeared forever attired in. The milk had previously been conveyed by an old bag called Mrs Biddiscombe - a great bear of a woman with a hunchback's deportment and arms like a wrestler. Mrs Biddiscombe was never nice to Stig and the midget was much relieved when she finally croaked and was replaced by young Rosie.
    How Stig loved Rosie, or what he believed to be 'love', for he felt for her with such intensity he had since been scarcely able to conceive of. He couldn't even recall a single word ever issuing between those endearingly little lips yet he had fancied the pants off her, looking forward to her visits way in advance, praying his mad bitch of a mother wouldn't put him in that horrible pink dress and make him be Evelyn for the day. It was remarkable that through her treatment of him he hadn't turned out 'funny'. He'd seen some homosexual cross-dressers on the telly last week, stayed up late and watched an entire programme about 'em on his cheap little portable. A succession of affluent and flamboyant young men luxuriating in the womanly theatrics of their sometime female alter egos. There was one called Paul who doubled as Pauline, another named Dennis who was sometimes Denise, a big fat ugly guy who was Robert to his friends and Roberta to the patronizing curiosity seekers who flocked to his drag act, and finally Victor, a man so enamoured of Victoria - his bitchy female alternative - he had even taken to the streets whilst dressed as her. To Stig they came over as loud, brash and almost psychopathically confident, flouncing around in their frilly little dresses, God he hated his mother, yet the monstrous form of Jake McCray put up admirable competition.

He hated his stepfather for the beatings. He hated his mother for her insults. He hated his stepfather for working him in the fields all day unpaid. He hated his mother for her drinking. He hated his stepfather for taking him up to a distant meadow every other week and tying him to a post, leaving him there for hours doubling as a scarecrow. He hated his mother because she was a stripper. He hated his stepfather for being a brute. He hated his mother for being a slut. He hated his stepfather for that time he fenced him in with the pigs; that time he chained him to the rafters of the old barn for the night; that time he pursued him across country with the muckspreader. He hated his mother for Evelyn and the little pink dress. He hated his stepfather for his violence and unrestrained temper. He hated his mother for that one particularly horrible incident when she scooped him up and attempted to breastfeed him in front of Rosie. "This bloody mite's not interested in what you've got me girl," she had said, eyeing the dairy maid's piffling little bosom while pressing Stig's face into her bulbous left nipple. He remembered wrestling but to no avail, positively exploding with embarrassment, however Rosie had remained surprisingly unperturbed, as if witnessing a demented stripper whilst she attempted to breastfeed her long-suffering midget son was all in a dairy girl's work.

Stig had never told the girl about his feelings for her, and he had since assuaged the anguish of his failure by concluding that he had been preoccupied with his demented guardians. How he had wanted to kill his mother, and his stepfather, lock them up in the old barn then blow it to the skies; charge around his backwater with an AK, gleefully picking off The Ducking Stool's regulars. When he had marched into the village in his little pink dress, the taunts and laughter were only made bearable through such thoughts.