Virginia Woolf in Manhattan. Maggie Gee

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      19

      GERDA

      I do have a lot to tell my mother. Failing that I shall write it down.

      My Battle with the Furies,

      Part the First

      (I have decided to write it like an epic. I have chosen an epic typeface. Just seeing those letters cheers me up. I do need cheering. I am On My Own.)

      I know it isn’t good to get into fights. But I also know that you have to be brave. It’s like in that enormous great book, Cat’s Eye, which I liked a lot until it got too long, where the girls start doing mind games on each other.

      No-one was ever going to bully ME. My mum taught me that, which I’m grateful for, because my mum was bullied at school.

      So I knew I had to stand up for myself. Anyway, why should they call me fat? Ayesha was ugly, but I didn’t complain, and Linda had big pink ears like a monkey, but I had never mentioned it, and Cindy had skinny legs like sticks and I’d seen her breakfast: like, ONE cornflake.

      I mentioned it all after they started on ME. But then they got madder, and things got worse.

      Cindy, the skinny one I called Anna, which I also told everyone was short for Anna Rexia – (I know that sounds bad, but I never did it till after her friends started calling me ‘Greedier’, which was her ‘witty’ pun on ‘Gerda’) – was not as stupid as the others. I admit she was good at English. In fact she was second best to me, which is one of the reasons why she hated me, and besides, she was jealous because I could eat food, lovely chips and jelly that she just glowered at.

      In any case, Cindy is a feeble name. It’s a Princess name, and she’d like to be a Princess, whereas I am trying to be a Hero.

      Probably to date I have fallen short.

      So this Cindy – ‘Miss Anna Rexia’ – thought she would play a good joke on me. All of a sudden she started being friendly. She came and talked to me in the library (we were the only two who read books in the library, which everyone else probably thought was sad.)

      And I was dim, and thought she meant it. And I was too soft, and was nice back, because really, I wanted to be friends with them. In fact, I don’t like quarrelling.

      So for a bit, I went around with them, but only because I didn’t have many friends, so I missed my old school, and missed London, and if you want to know, I missed my mother, though I knew why she had to send me away, I understand she has to do her work –

      I’m crying now, which is pathetic. I won’t let ANYONE make me cry.

      It’s just that sometimes I miss my own bedroom. My own things. And my friends from home.

      But I’ll be OK, because I’m Gerda.

      And I want my mum to be able to work – she has a right to, and she’s a writer, and I do love her, and I don’t want to stop her, like my dad did, she says, because he was a Bastard, though he definitely cooked, when he was at home, and shopped and brought her cups of tea. In any case I wish Mum wouldn’t call him a Bastard. If I stop her writing, perhaps she won’t love me, though she claims to love me most in the world.

      And like I said, she needs money for me, or I will never get my new iPad, or my new bike, and my phone is CRAP – she promised me a new one, but then she forgot and went away.

      One day I’ll be a writer too, and I won’t want anybody to stop ME. So fair enough, I had to go to boarding school, but why did it have to be this horrible hell-hole, Bendham Abbey, which is s’posed to be the best, but is full of bitches?

      I meant to say ‘Wankers’. ‘Bitches’ is sexist. I’m against sexism, like Mum.

      I’m tired now so I’m going to eat Jelly Beans. I saved my favourites, which are Pomegranate.

      To be continued in

      My Battle with the Furies,

      Part the Second