My first memory is of falling down the steps at the Homes and cutting my arm. I must have been three or four at the time. I was running out of the cottage with some of the others when I stumbled. I put my arm out to break the fall but the speed I was going I missed getting it down on the top step so I went down the two steps and landed on my arm and shoulder.
I was wearing short sleeves so I got badly grazed and blood started to come out. I remember lying there calling for help and crying. Someone came, an adult, though I don’t remember who, and they took me to the infirmary over the other side of the Homes.
Jonesy was there then. I remember her trying to hug me as I cried, as if she was trying to squeeze the pain out of me.
Jonesy is Morag Jones. She is my best friend. She has been in my cottage as long as I can remember and always has the bed next to mine. Even when we have to move beds, which we are made to do each year, she will somehow arrange it so that within a few days we are sleeping next to each other again.
They did once try to have us permanently on different sides of the room, but Jonesy just talked non-stop, and she would talk over the other beds to me, until the people in between moved so she could be next to me.
Jonesy has always been a bit scrawny. She eats anything that comes near her, but she’s built like a skinny dog, all bones and excited energy.
We are going to be friends for ever and when we leave the Homes we are going to go and live in Glasgow and get a flat and get boyfriends who will buy us nice dresses.
She sometimes gets us into trouble with her never-ending talking, and she gets the odd belt for it. She will cry and be quiet for the day afterwards, but then she will start again. You can’t stop her talking. In science we have learnt about an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Jonesy’s talking is an unstoppable force.
We are both twelve. She is obsessed with boys and when we will get boobs and how we can make ourselves pretty. She wants to marry a soldier when she is older. She says they get regular money and they are away a lot so she can have the place to herself. Her dream husband isn’t such a dream that she wants him around all the time.
I don’t know who I want to marry. I certainly don’t know what job he will have, but I want him to be kind, and I want him to be smart, and have a nice suit that he will wear to take me out, and I will have a nice dress, and when we walk past people they will think, She looks nice, I bet they have some money.
Jonesy and I always look out for each other. The Homes is a dangerous place and you need people to look out for you, your ‘team’. The adults aren’t always that bothered so unless you have people who can back you up, you are in trouble.
There are a couple of little gangs that the boys are part of. I think that some of them are part of it so the other gangs can’t pick them off. The older girls in our cottage look out for us, which I am grateful for, but then they can be nasty sometimes if they are bored and want someone to pick on. It’s like they won’t allow other people to pick on us, but they will pick on us if they want. Like we are their toys to play with.
Me and Jonesy, for ever joined at the hip. ‘The Chatter Twins’, Mrs Paterson calls us. We look so different, we act so different, but we are definitely twins who are lost when we are separated for too long.
Having a friend like her makes it bearable to get up in the morning. You need someone like Jonesy in a place like this. She can be a bit annoying sometimes but everything else about her more than makes up for it.