It’s home time. We are sitting in a circle in the classroom, and Miss Watts is putting a letter in our schoolbag. We wonder if it is a report. We have heard from the big kids in Year 2 that you get a report at the end of each term where the teacher writes about your progress.
Suddenly we are scared. The thought comes into our head that we have done something very bad this term, something we don’t even remember doing, and that Miss Watts is about to tell Mum and Dad.
We go outside into the playground, clutching our schoolbag. Grandma Muriel is waiting to pick us up, as Mum and Dad are always at work, and our au pair has the day off. Grandma has crazy orange hair and huge glasses, and she folds us into a big warm hug. Our nostrils fill with the smell of Persil and cooking.
“Hello, my love! Do you want me to take your schoolbag?” she asks. We pull it close to our chest, afraid she will take it and tear open the report right here.
What is this bad thing we may have done this term? Perhaps we hit another child, or bit someone. Maybe we called someone names or said a rude word to a teacher. The pictures of these things happening become so real in our head, we are sure that we must have done them—they must be half-memories of the real thing happening.
“What’s wrong with you?” says Grandma. “You don’t look yourself.”
We give her a big smile. “I’m fine.”
Once we get home, we wait for Grandma to go to the toilet. Quickly, we dig the letter out of our bag and put it in the bin, pushing it right to the bottom and piling the rubbish on top of it. For a few seconds, we feel calm. We can still hear some sort of roaring in the side of our head, though it is softer now, like the sea when you hear it through a shell.
But what if Grandma knows what we have done and tries to retrieve the letter? That can’t happen. The roaring gets louder; it sounds like the real sea, frothy and raging—as if it wants something.
For the next few hours we stand by the bin, offering to help Grandma whenever she needs to put in vegetable peels and other stuff. Grandma laughs. She says we remind her of the bin monitor she used to have at school.
“Grandma, what day do the bin men come?”
“Wednesday, I think.”
“What day is today?”
“Tuesday.”
“What time do they come?”
“In the morning. Early. You’d probably be asleep.”
“This bin bag needs to go outside.”
“It’s not full yet.”
“Yes, it is. I need to put it outside.”
“Why this sudden fascination with bins, Lily? Okay, just to show you one time how it works, we’ll put the bin bag outside together.”
We and Grandma haul the bin bag outside the front door. We’re not really carrying much of the weight, but we still clutch the side of it to make sure Grandma doesn’t run off with it. She tells us to lift the plastic lid off one of the big black bins, and we dump the bag inside. We feel better knowing the report is in the bin, but we won’t feel truly safe until we know it’s gone for good.
The next morning, we wake up very early. It’s pitch-black outside. We creep into the spare room, which looks out on the bins. We will stay here until the bin men come—we will make sure that letter is gone for good.
It feels like it takes hours, but we don’t think it can be that long. We hear it before we see it: a distant rumble getting closer. Then the lorry turns into our road. Giant and green with flashing lights, it crawls toward us a few doors at a time. Finally, it stops outside. Three men get out, and each takes a bag from the large black buckets. An old tall man with a beard takes the bag from the second bin—our bag. We watch him fling it into the back of the truck. Then they all get back in and drive on. We stay watching until the truck has well and truly disappeared.
The letter is gone now.
It will never hurt us. Everything is okay.
Our parents have been arguing about what type of school we should be at. There’s a school round the corner where the kids wear a uniform and a straw hat. Sophie, who is in our class, calls it the Posh School, and you have to pay money to go there. It seems like we might be going to the Posh School, because although we didn’t used to have much money, Dad has made some now.
Dad thinks it’s a good idea to get us away from “those girls.” But Mum doesn’t agree because she doesn’t want us to be snotty, and she doesn’t think we’ll get on with the crowd there. Dad says she needs to think about “what is best for Lily.”
“They don’t like her,” he hisses. “The girls there. They’re horrible to her. You saw—on her birthday, when we took them to the park. They just ran off and ignored her. She spent the whole time with us. She looked so sad. Don’t you want her to have friends?”
We can’t talk to them about this, because we’re not even supposed to know. We heard about it a few nights ago when we couldn’t sleep. When we can’t sleep, we have this thought that we will never be able to sleep again. When that happens, Mum has to repeat the special sentences:
Lying in bed is just as good as sleeping.
If you needed sleep your body would put you to sleep.
And if you can’t sleep, it’s because you had enough sleep the night before.
Then the thought feels a bit better. We don’t know why this works. We think it may be magic.
We went downstairs to ask for the special sentences. The door to the sitting room was ajar, and Mum and Dad were sitting on the red sofa with a bottle of wine, flicking through a brochure with pictures of smiling children. We stood there listening and never asked for the special sentences.
On weekends we and our younger sister Ella snuggle up under the covers of Mum and Dad’s bed and watch the children’s channels while they sleep more. It is always nice, as long as they are not upset with each other.
Today feels a bit different. Firstly, because they called us to come up. Secondly, because they look sad, but not like they have been arguing. We feel like they are going to tell us something important. Ella, who is two, is making her Sylvanian Families mouse jump up and down on the bedpost. We tell her to stop playing, because it isn’t that kind of day. Then suddenly we know.
We know what has happened.
“It’s Tom, isn’t it?” we burst out. “He’s dead.”
Tom is our cousin. He was born with a hole in his heart. He isn’t even one yet.
“How did you . . . How did you know that . . .” Mum trails off.
She stares at us and has gone pale. She looks scared, and we’re not sure why. We smile, trying to make it okay again.
“Don’t smile about this, okay, Lily? You don’t smile about this.”
And that’s when we know that we have done something very bad.
“Yes,” Mum says. “Tom died last night.”
Tom probably wasn’t even dead before we said it.
We made it happen.
We know it.
Because we are bad.
On the last day of term, Mum takes us into the classroom. We stop flat in our tracks, staring. Everyone is in fancy dress. We love fancy dress. How had we not known?
“I didn’t know it was a dressing-up day,” Mum says, looking worried.
“Yes, for the last day of term!” says Miss Watts, beaming at us. “Didn’t you get the letter?”