Shape of Snakes

E-mail from Mrs. Julia Charles, formerly next-door

neighbor to the Ranelaghs at 3 Graham Road,

Richmond-now living in Toronto, Canada-dated 1999

M. R.

From: Julia Charles (juliac@cancom.com)

Sent: 11 February 1999 18:50

To: M. Ranelagh

Subject: The Slater children!

You won't believe the trouble we've had just to locate one of the Slater children! Not the one you wanted, I fear-being the youngest (Danny)-but he may be the most amenable to persuading his mother to answer your letters! I won't bore you with full details of the swings and roundabouts-suffice it to say that Jennifer's preschool chum at number 6 (Linda Barry) kept in touch with another preschool chum (Amy Trent) who was at art school with Danny and still keeps in touch with him. We really did bust a gut to find Alan but got nowhere, I'm afraid. Word has it that he married six or seven years ago and is living somewhere in Isleworth, but I don't know how accurate that is. It might be worth trying international directory inquiries to see if there's an A. Slater in that area, but it's a common name and you may come up with several.

Anyway, Danny Slater is living somewhere in Brixton (no address or phone number) and teaching graphic design at a college there. The name and address of the college is: Freetown Community Center, Brixton, London. However, the really good news is that he has an e-mail address-michelangelo@rapmail.com-and collects his messages regularly via an Internet cafe near Waterloo station. Jennifer's game to make the contact if Luke and Tom don't want to, but it would speed things up, I think, if you approach him direct. NB: Your idea to say it's an IT project using e-mail and Internet only is a good one and worked well with Linda and Amy.

So glad to hear Sam's on the mend. I know what a shock it must have been for you!

Speak soon, love Julia