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  I usually liked our Literacy lessons, but I couldn’t stand writing about feelings. I put Writing stupid poems in our Hate column.

  ‘Yeah, it’s rubbish, isn’t it,’ said Matty. She added Being a Bridesmaid underneath.

  She mumbled to herself and then she snapped her fingers. ‘Got it! Listen!’ She recited her poem proudly.

  ‘I can’t

  Be a bridesmaid for my aunt

  I’ll look silly

  In a daft dress with a frilly

  Bit at the bottom

  In finest pink cotton.’

  ‘There! It’s great, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Aren’t bridesmaid’s dresses usually silk or satin? Not cotton?’

  ‘Yeah, but then it wouldn’t rhyme.’

  ‘It’s a bit short, isn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Well, you add a bit,’ said Matty.

  So I wrote:

  I’ll add a second verse

  Because it could be worse.

  I’ll eat lots of cake and drink lots of Coke

  And have a laugh at every single joke

  And I might even spill

  Down my silly pink frill.

  ‘Cool! Draw a picture of me doing just that!’ said Matty. ‘Then draw all my dinosaurs attacking my Aunt Rachel.’

  ‘I can’t. I’ll get into trouble. Miss Hope told Dad about my dinosaur drawings this morning,’ I said, starting to draw Matty.

  ‘What, she told on you to your dad just for scribbling in your jotter? Everyone does it!’

  ‘Yes, I know. But she got fussed about them being dinosaurs. And so did Aunty Sue. She told Dad too. It’s because they’re violent. If you draw very violent things, then they think you’ve gone a bit weird and send you to see a lady in a clinic,’ I said.

  ‘No they don’t!’

  ‘They do too,’ I told her.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Matty.

  I hesitated. I’d said too much. I didn’t want to tell Matty everything, even though she was my best friend in all the world.

  ‘I just do,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Well, they’re not your dinosaurs, they’re mine, Princess Powerful’s very own pets. I invented them. Tell your dad and Miss Hope and that Aunty Sue lady that it’s all my fault,’ said Matty.

  ‘No, because then you’d maybe get into trouble too. And what if Dad said I couldn’t play with you any more?’ I could feel my face getting very red. ‘I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Matty. ‘But don’t worry. I don’t think anything will happen. They’re not going to cart you off to any scary clinic. I won’t let them!’

  I felt incredibly comforted, even though I knew Matty couldn’t possibly defend me against three adults. When I was at Aunty Sue’s after school, I drew the most normal picture in the world, a house with a garden with lots of carefully coloured flowers, and two girls holding hands standing on the very green grass. I gave one girl orange hair, and each had a very smiley mouth. Then I took my yellow felt tip and drew a big sun at the top of the page with rays all around. The sun had a smiley mouth too. I even gave the blue front door a curved letter box so it looked as if the house was smiling as well. Aunty Sue hovered above me. ‘Oh, that’s a lovely picture, dear,’ she said, and she offered me another teacake.

  When Dad came to collect me, Aunty Sue said, ‘Show Daddy your lovely picture, Tilly.’

  I showed Dad and he smiled. When he came to tuck me up in bed that night, he was a bit fidgety, roaming around my room, running his finger along the top of all my paperbacks and turning my china dogs the other way round. He didn’t look at the photo of Mum. He never did.

  He finally sat down on the edge of my bed with Blue Bunny on his lap. ‘I really liked your picture of the house and the little girls,’ he said, ‘but Miss Hope says you’ve been drawing all those monster things in your school books.’

  ‘It’s only my jotter. We’re allowed to draw stuff in our jotters,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you are. Miss Hope isn’t cross. She’s just a little worried that you might be a bit upset about something,’ said Dad.

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ I said. ‘Not any more.’

  After the whole Mum thing I had gone a bit weird. I cried a lot at first, especially at home. I sometimes went and sat in Mum’s wardrobe just because the few clothes hanging there still smelled of her. But after a while I got angry. One day I got so really red roaring angry that I got the scissors out of the kitchen drawer and cut Mum’s clothes up into little bits. I kept drawing Mum too, taking great care, doing every curl separately and drawing all the numbers on her watch, but then I’d take my big black wax crayon and I’d scribble all over her until you could only glimpse bits of her through the black.

  I’d had to go to a clinic once a week and talk to the lady there. She wanted me to play with all the little dolls in the doll’s house and the plastic toys in the sandpit, though I felt stupid playing games in front of her. She especially liked it if I did lots of pictures. She didn’t tell me off if I scribbled with black crayon. She just talked about it with me. Talked about Mum.

  I didn’t like talking to her, especially about Mum. My pictures got darker and darker. Sometimes I used powder paints and a big brush and coloured a whole page black. I was in the toilets at the clinic one day trying to wash all the black off my hands when an older, very thin girl came out of a cubicle and shook her head at me.

  ‘You’ll be stuck coming here for ever if you paint a lot of black things,’ she said, washing her own hands. ‘They think that means you’re angry and fed up. The trick is to paint happy things. Smiley faces and suns and cute bunnies and kittens. They think that shows you’ve worked through your problems.’

  I went on washing my hands thoughtfully. ‘Do you do that?’

  ‘Course I do.’

  ‘So why do you still have to come here then?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I won’t eat,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to. Quit asking me questions. You’re worse than they are,’ she said, and she splashed me.

  I splashed her back. We started to look as if we’d been for a swim.

  ‘Hey, better stop now. They’re so nuts they’ll think we tried to drown ourselves in the wash basins,’ said the thin girl.

  I took her advice on my next visit. I painted a very sunny, smiley picture of the countryside. It was a pretty awful painting, because I did it too quickly and the blue sky trickled down the page and flooded the green grass, and all the black and white cows in my meadow turned muddy grey – but their pink mouths still smiled.

  My lady smiled too, and said she thought it was a lovely picture. I was careful to play sunny, smiley games after that too. I made the family in the doll’s house all kiss each other and have a plasticine feast from the tiny tea set on the miniature table. I arranged all the plastic clutter in the sandpit into a pretty pattern, taking care not to bury anything. Quite soon the lady and Dad had a discussion, and I didn’t have to go to the clinic after that.

  I desperately didn’t want to go back there. It made me think about Mum too much.

  ‘Tilly,’ said Dad, putting his arm round me. ‘Tilly, do you still miss Mum a lot?’

  His voice sounded very strained. I knew he didn’t like to talk about Mum either.

  ‘I don’t miss her at all,’ I said.

  We both knew I was fibbing, but Dad decided to let it go. He tucked me up and kissed me goodnight. I played my wedding game until I went to sleep. This time I pictured myself in a pink bridesmaid’s dress. It was the wrong shade of pink. I hadn’t seen Matty’s raspberry-pink dress. It hadn’t even been made yet. But the next morning at school Matty showed me a little square of silk.

  ‘What is it? A little handkerchief?’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘No, you nutcase! It’s a sample of my new bridesmaid’s dress. Isn’t it the yuckiest colour ever?’

  ‘I think it’s beautiful,’ I said, stroking the soft