Every Thursday our whole school goes to the church down the road. It lasts forty-five minutes, but it feels like hours. From the second we get into church until the second we leave, we can’t stop saying rude words—in our head. Church is not the place for these words, but we can’t make them go away.
Fucking boring-ass church. Crap, fuck, shit, wanker, cunt.
We look at the altar with the huge cross.
Fucking Jesus on a fucking cross. Crap, fuck, shit, wanker, cunt.
We sit down.
Fucking uncomfortable pew. Crap, fuck, shit, wanker, cunt.
The vicar starts talking about the love of Christ.
The vicar is a wanker cunt face. Crap, fuck, shit, wanker, cunt. Those robes just make him look like a massive dickhead.
We open our hymn books.
Fucking shit songs. Crap, fuck, shit, wanker, cunt.
What is cunt, anyway? Crap and shit mean poo, fuck is what adults do in bed. Wanker is someone who drives a car badly.
But what is cunt?
We are supposed to sing the hymns, but we are too scared the horrible words will come out instead and everyone will know how bad we are. Then the teacher tells us off and says we have to sing. We mouth the words.
Scarlett whispers in our ear, “I don’t believe in God.”
“Stop it,” we say.
“It’s like believing in Father Christmas.”
“STOP IT!”
Why is Scarlett saying these things? Why won’t she stop? Now we’re definitely going to hell.
We sit on the steps during break, drinking our cartons of milk and watching the other girls skipping. We ask Scarlett why she doesn’t believe in God.
Scarlett says when you’re little, you get taught to believe in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas, and God. When you turn ten, everyone says “Okay, that stuff wasn’t real, we just made it up. Except for God, he’s real.” Scarlett says, “If God existed, do you think the world would be so unfair? Do you think we would be sitting here enjoying our milk while kids die of thirst in Africa? And God would be just like: ‘Well, it’s their own fault. I did tell Eve not to eat that apple.’”
It’s pretty funny; Scarlett is so smart.
“But I spend ages praying every night, and I constantly do all this stuff because I’m worried that if I don’t, God won’t protect me and my family.”
Now it’s Scarlett’s turn to laugh, though not in an unkind way. It’s just a laugh that says Why on earth would you do that?
“Stop doing that,” she instructs. “It’s a waste of time. God doesn’t exist.”
Thinking about it over the next few weeks, it seems Scarlett must be right; God does not exist. The prayer disappears, and the swear words in church start to seem more funny than scary. The funnier and less terrifying they are, the less often they come.
Finally, they stop coming at all.
When we get home today, Dad is on the sofa, staring into space. He fought with Mum yesterday, and we heard him say he was spending the night in a hotel because he couldn’t bear to be in the house.
We wonder when he got back.
He doesn’t hear us come in. He doesn’t notice us when we stand in front of him.
We want to hug him and tell him everything will be okay, but he looks so sad.
We want to say Thank you for working so hard, thank you for always looking out for us, thank you for being our dad. We understand that you only get angry because Mum doesn’t make you happy, but you don’t want to lose us. But how can we say this?
Silently, we walk out of the room.
We are clever now. It took time, but we got there in the end. When we do exams, we are almost always in the top three. At the school prize-giving assembly, they announce who is top in the whole year and who is second and third. Usually Scarlett comes in top and we come in second. Then you get a book with a certificate in it to say well done. We like being smart. It’s the only thing we’ve ever been any good at. We think that’s why we get so upset when we don’t understand something. It usually happens in math. I tell myself it’s fine, I’ll get it the second time, but She starts saying:
She and I agree on almost everything, but very occasionally we have arguments. I don’t think it’s that bad to not get something the first time you are taught it. After all, you can’t understand everything straightaway, and I’m still second top in math after Scarlett.
But my friend says No, that’s not how it works. If you don’t get it, you’re an
I try to focus on the words Mrs. Johnston is saying and how I can apply them to the numbers in front of me. But She says it’s much more important that we record that I have been stupid so we can go through it together later. I tell her that we won’t have to record that I have been stupid if we learn it now.
But She says it’s too late: not understanding the first time is as bad as never understanding. She tells me this so loudly that it cannot be disputed.
I try to compromise, and record in my head what I have done that is stupid while trying to understand Mrs. Johnston.
It’s an impossible task, and I know I’m going to cry. I feel it coming on; the tightness in my throat, the way the numbers start to go blurry. Then I see the tears splash on my textbook. I try to hide it, because I am twelve: I am too old to be crying in class. I want it to stop, but the more I try not to cry, the more I do.
Mrs. Johnston used to be nice about it. She used to give me a tissue and ask if I was okay, but lately she gets frustrated, and tells me I won’t get away with this in big school. I know it must be annoying to have a kid in your class who bursts into tears all the time when you are trying to get on with your lesson, but it makes the tears come even faster, because between her and my friend, I feel like I must be a stupid baby.
I thought that once we had got rid of God, things might get better, but my friend has different ideas.
She says, There may be no God, but there are still things we need to protect ourselves from. And if we can’t pray to God to make you an okay person who people like, we must make it happen ourselves.
School finishes at 5:20 p.m., and our au pair picks us up. Our au pair changes every year or so, because once she has learned English and qualified from the language school down the road, she gets a different job or returns home. At the moment, our au pair is called Illy and is from Slovakia. She is our favorite au pair ever. She is very tall, with short blond spiky hair. She makes us laugh so much our tummy hurts and is always lovely to us. When Mum and Dad have fights or when we can’t sleep, she lets us come into her room and watch TV.
When we get home, Illy gives us our dinner and we play a game, usually cards. Mum gets home from her office around 7:30 p.m. Dad gets back around 9:00.
Tonight, Mum gets back at 6:30, which is unusual. We are sitting playing cards in the living room when she says she wants to talk to us.
We panic. What have we done wrong?
We go into the kitchen with her. She sits down at the table and indicates for us to sit opposite her. She takes our hands in hers.
“Lily, are you okay?”
“Yes! Of course, Mum. Why?”
“Because I have a letter from school saying you keep crying in class and your teachers don’t know why. School is asking if there’s something going on at home that’s upsetting you. Is there?”
“No! Not at all. Please don’t worry. It’s just I’m a bit of a baby when I don’t understand something.”
“Okay. But I want you to know that if you ever were upset about something, you could tell me. Come here.” She pulls us into a hug. I should be safe and warm, but—
See?! She snarls. People have noticed that you’re behaving weirdly. It’s not all right to just sob your heart out over math. Get it together!
We are about to graduate from Buxton House, which finishes at Year 8. Then it will be time to be mature. Everyone takes a 13-plus exam, but it’s not necessary for Scarlett and us.
A few months ago, Scarlett told us that she had visited a boarding school in Kent with her parents, where they gave everyone personalized chocolate bars with “Hambledon” written on the wrapping. Pupils could keep a goldfish in their dorm and there was a proper gym, swimming pool, tennis courts, great food—and it looked like Hogwarts!
We went to the school to do special tests. A couple of weeks later, we and Scarlett got letters saying we had passed. We are academic scholars and are expected always to be at the top of our grade. Our name gets printed in big letters on a special wooden board in the entrance hall. It also means that while the other girls have to work hard for the next few weeks on the 13-plus, we get to bum around doing projects and making stuff, which is amazing.
What is also amazing is that Mum and Dad are getting divorced. They sat us down and told us last night. Ella cried, but we had to try hard not to shout with joy.
Dad will move out of the house, and there will be no more fighting. This means we don’t have to feel bad about leaving Ella behind when we go to Hambledon.
Before we leave Buxton, Mrs. Woodson gathers the whole of Year 8 to have a talk. She stands at the front of our classroom, talking about protecting ourselves on the Internet.
She wants us to know that there are bad people out there, who might try to take advantage of the way we use websites. She is particularly concerned about Bebo, which is this new site where you connect with your friends and chat online. We all use it.
Mrs. Woodson says she has taken a look at some of our profiles. She says that Athena’s has a picture of herself in a bikini. Would Athena walk down the road to Clapham Junction in her underwear? No, she would not. Yet, Mrs. Woodson tells her, what she has done online is exactly the same. She will speak to her privately afterward.
Mrs. Woodson says she is most concerned about bad people seeing our pictures and using them to masturbate, or finding our details and trying to track us down. She asks who in the class doesn’t know what masturbation is. A few of us put up our hands.
“Right, er, okay,” she says, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “It’s when someone pleasures themselves by touching their private parts. They could do it by looking at photographs, or maybe touching another person to arouse themselves. Say, they could, er, touch your chest, or breasts, if you have them yet, or, er, even your bottom, to get pleasure. That would be called abuse.”
Mrs. Woodson has gone red, but she takes a deep breath and carries on talking, as if the world isn’t ending.
We are shaking in horror. Everything is going fuzzy, and we can’t hear Mrs. Woodson anymore.
All this time, when we were checking that Ella was alive and feeling her heartbeat, we have really been touching her chest over and over.
She asks: Did you get pleasure from it?
Only in the sense of being glad she was alive. Is that a bad sort of pleasure? Was it even pleasure? It felt more like relief. Either way, this is undoable. How could we not know we were abusing our own sister?
We mustn’t check on Ella again: it is shatteringly clear that what we thought was saving her was really just the product of a dark impulse.
Thank god we are going to boarding school soon. Ella will be away from us. She will be safe. We will never, ever be able to hurt her again.