Chapter Seven

 

 

Q. Can you tell me what you meant by ‘Annie had different ideas’?

A. I told her Gran was an all right person, but she said no, Gran had deliberately wrecked the party, her party, but of course it was mine too. Thing is, I didn’t mind, I thought it had gone on long enough and anyway we all had a lot to think about and talk about. We sat around after everyone had gone, and Mother sort of got herself together to tell us we were adopted, that they couldn’t have kids, didn’t tell us who was at fault there, just that they adopted us from this poor poor family, and we had there awful names, all done with italic type words, you know what I mean? If they were written down they’d be in italics. I think we were supposed to feel grateful to our parents for rescuing us from the poor poor family and the terrible names, Mary and Audrey.

Q. Do you think they’re awful names?

A. They sound awful, after we’ve grown up being Tamasine and Anastasia, my name means little twin, by the way, Mother put a lot of thought into our names!

Q. What does Anastasia mean?

A. Resurrection. Reborn. Reborn with a new name. It all fits.

Q. What happened next?

A. We went along with it, smiled a lot, said thank you for the party and the gifts, were told we’d be alone again on Friday evening, and went upstairs. Annie called me into her room, well, what she did was ask me to come in when we were going upstairs, so I did, and she had a horrid spider sitting in the middle of the bed. She’d pictured it just for me. Then, as she always does when she’s in a foul mood started on about me doing something terrible. She’d been on about walking the streets, approaching the first man I saw and asking him to spank me until I cried. And if he refused, to go on to the next one until I found someone to do it, and then I’d have to come back and show her what h’d done to me. I was simply terrified at the thought, but -

Q. But you found it exciting as well.

A. Yes, terribly exciting. I mean, it could be a real experience, couldn’t it? All I’d experienced up to then was Annie’s boyfriends who weren’t exactly part of the scene!

Q. Did you do it?

A. No. Because we knew we had Friday to ourselves again, Annie promised to get someone else to come along. But she didn’t let me off. She told me to go and get a worm and eat it.

Q. Couldn’t you have faked that?

A. No, she said she’d know I’d done it when she heard me being sick. And I was.