‘Will you stop doing that? It’s nuts,’ he says.

I ignore him and carry on with my routine. I can feel him staring at me.

The wheels on the bus go round and round . . .

All we seem to do lately is argue.

Round and round . . .

The harder I try to hold us together, the faster we fall apart.

Round and round.

I’m not someone who cries, I have other ways of expressing my sadness.

The wheels on the bus go round and round . . .

I wish I could tell him the truth.

All day long.

A memory from my childhood switches itself on inside my head. I wish it wouldn’t.

‘Are you OK?’ Paul asks, finally leaving the doorway.

‘No,’ I whisper and let him hold me.

It’s the truth, but not the whole of it.

Before

Monday, 16th September 1991

Dear Diary,

Today was an interesting day, I started at a new school. That is not very interesting, it happens quite often, but today it felt different, as though maybe things will work out this time. My new form teacher seems nice. When Mum meets her, I bet she’ll say, ‘Mrs MacDonald likes her food, doesn’t she?’ Mum says that sort of thing a lot, it’s her way of saying someone is overweight. Mum says it is important to look your best, because even if people shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, they still do. Mrs MacDonald is older than Mum but younger than Nana was. She introduced me to the class without making a song and dance of it like teachers normally do, then told me to take a seat. There was only one empty desk at the back of the room, so I sat there. As first days at school go, today was OK. Mum says we’ll definitely stick around this time, but she’s said that before.

The class are reading the diary of a girl called Anne Frank, but they’ve only just started, so I haven’t missed too much. The girl at the desk next to mine let me share her copy. She said I should call her Taylor, which is actually her surname, not her first name, but whatever. I noticed the dusting of chalk on her blazer and I already know she’s one of those kids, the sort the others don’t like.

For our homework, we have to write a diary entry every day for a week, a bit like Anne Frank, but she did it for much longer. The best part of this is that we don’t even have to hand it in, because Mrs MacDonald says diaries should always be private. I thought about not doing it at all, nobody would know, but Mum and Dad are arguing again downstairs so I thought I may as well give it a go.

I don’t think my diary is going to be as interesting as Anne Frank’s. I’m not a very interesting person. Mrs MacDonald says if we get stuck with what to write, we should just think of three honest things to say about ourselves. She says that everyone can think of three things and that being honest with yourself is more important than being honest with others. So, here are my first three things to share with you (they are all true):

1. I’m almost ten.

2. I don’t have any friends.

3. My parents don’t love me.

The thing about the truth is that it sucks.

My nana died of cancer. We moved in with her when she got sick, but it didn’t make her better. She was sixty-two, which sounds old, but Mum said it was actually quite young to die. I used to spend a lot of time with Nana, she always took me to cool places and listened to me. She never had a lot of money, but she gave me this diary last Christmas. She thought writing down how I felt might help me deal with things. Nearly a whole year has gone by and I didn’t listen, but now I wish I had. I wish I had written down all the things she used to say, because I’ve already started to forget them.

I think my parents used to love me, but I disappointed them so often that the love got rubbed out. They don’t even love each other, they argue and shout at each other all the time. They argue about lots of things, but mostly about all the money that we don’t have. They also argue about me. They were so loud once that one of our old neighbours called the police. Mum said it was all very embarrassing and, when the police left, they argued even more because of that. We don’t live there now, so Mum says it doesn’t matter any more and that people should mind their own business. She said it would be a ‘fresh start’ when we moved here and, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to make some new friends?’ She hadn’t noticed that I didn’t have any old ones.

I used to make friends whenever we moved to a new place, but I always felt really sad when I had to say goodbye. I don’t bother now. I don’t need friends anyway. When people ask if I’d like to come to their birthday parties, I just say no thank you and that I’m not allowed, even though I would be. I don’t even show Mum the invites, I just put them in the bin. The problem with going to other people’s houses is that then they want to visit yours. Nana always said that books made better friends than people anyway. Books will take you anywhere if you let them, she used to say, and I think she was right.

After Nana died, Mum said we would redecorate but we haven’t. I sleep in Nana’s room in the bed where she went to sleep one day and never woke up. Mum said I could get a new bed, but I don’t want to, not yet. Sometimes I think I can still smell her, which is silly because the sheets have been washed loads and they’re not even the same ones. There are two beds in my room. The other one was Grandad’s, but he didn’t die there, he died in a home that wasn’t his.

I can’t hear anything which means they’ve stopped arguing, for now. What happens next is that Dad will open a bottle of red wine and pour himself a large glass. Meanwhile, Mum will take something out of the freezer for dinner and make herself a drink that looks like water but isn’t. I’m never going to drink alcohol when I grow up, I don’t like what it does to people. We’ll eat our microwaved lasagne in silence for a while, before one of them remembers to ask about my first day. I’ll tell them it was fine, talk a little bit about the teachers and my classes and they’ll pretend to listen. As soon as Dad has finished eating, he’ll take what’s left of the wine and go to his study. It used to be Nana’s sewing room. Dad renamed it but he doesn’t do any studying in there, he watches the little TV. Mum will wash up and I’ll sit in the lounge by myself watching the big TV until it’s time for bed. Then, at nine o’clock, Mum will tell me to go upstairs. She sets an alarm to remind herself to do this. Once I’m in bed and they think I’m asleep, they’ll start arguing again. Nana used to sing me a song to help me go to sleep when I was little. ‘The wheels on the bus go round and round.’ I didn’t used to like it, but now I sometimes hum it to myself to drown out the sound of Dad shouting and Mum crying. That’s pretty much my life. I told you it wasn’t as interesting as Anne Frank’s.

Now

Tuesday, 27th December 2016