The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep. Juliet Butler

laughing, and lions that eat their trainers right before your very eyes. We all run outside and find the kids from the other wards there, excited as a buzz of bees. I can hear the word kosmos going round and round, and think maybe they’re sending us off in a rocket to start the Soviet moon at last.

      We race off to the Room of Relaxation, which we’re never normally allowed in. It’s full, and everyone’s crowded around the new television. We’ve never seen it before, but we heard it was there from the nannies. It’s a little black box where you can see everything that’s happening on the Outside, zooming right inside to it. But only in black and white, not colour like the real world. It’s so healthy!

      ‘Now then. Quiet!’ Lydia Mikhailovna’s standing with all the staff, even the kitchen staff, by the television. ‘This is a wonderful day!’ she says again. ‘A day of one of the most incredible Soviet Achievements we have ever seen.’ She looks around at the staff, who are all smiling fit to burst. ‘We have sent a man into space!’

      There’s a sort of gasp all round. Space? To the moon? Did he die like Laika?

      ‘That man was Comrade Gagarin,’ she goes on, ‘he orbited once and then returned to earth and the People are rejoicing throughout the Soviet Union.’

      Masha’s pushing to the front, round the side of the room, by the windows, and I look out and I can see the People celebrating, I really can, hugging each other and throwing caps in the air and running somewhere.

      ‘This proves that our country, the Soviet Union, is the most advanced in the world. In the entire world,’ says Lydia Mikhailovna loudly. ‘We are now going to watch Comrade Gagarin being congratulated by First Secretary Nikita Sergeyevich, right here in Moscow.’

      ‘Gaaa!’ groans Masha. ‘It’s another yobinny Achievement and not the circus.’ But she’s got us to the front so we have the best view of anyone of the television. There he is! I can see him! Walking down a long rug at the airport, dressed in a uniform like Father Stalin’s. He’s so … so handsome. I just stare and stare. Lydia Mikhailovna’s talking about how the Soviet Union has finally proved its superiority, and how Communism will now spread throughout the world, as everyone can see it’s the best system possible, but I can’t stop staring at him. I’ve never seen anyone in my life so perfect before. I kind of all swell up like dough with happiness that he’s been so brave and that he’s Ours. Comrade Khrushchev takes his hat off and hugs him so hard I think they’re both going to cry or something, and then there’s pictures of the crowd holding big banners of Gagarin’s face, and there’s schoolgirls with bows in their hair, running up to him with bunches of flowers. We’re all laughing now and the staff are hugging each other too. I’ve never seen anyone so happy, all at the same time. Masha’s shouting ‘Oorrraaaa!’ at the top of her voice and doesn’t even get told off.

      When all the huggings are over we all go out of the Room of Relaxation and I think this must really be the best day ever, even if I’m not going to the Circus or to the moon because I’m living here, where Yuri Gagarin is.

      In the Best of All Possible Worlds.

      Lydia Mikhailovna tells us off for Masha being naughty

      ‘So. I expect you know why you’ve been called in this time?’ Lydia Mikhailovna’s sitting behind her big desk in her office and we’re standing in front of it. She’s all cross again, like she always is when we’ve been naughty. But everyone else is still happy. It’s like the sun is shining all the time. We cut a photo of Gagarin out of the newspaper, which was stuck up on the news board (that was nyelzya, of course) and keep it folded up under a loose tile in the toilets to look at. He’s got a dimple and light green or maybe blue eyes. I’m not sure, as it’s black and white. I think they’re probably blue. He’s a hero. It just shows, this does, that we’re the best country ever. It just shows.

      Masha’s twiddling the button on her pyjama bottoms. We both know we’re being told off because of Boris this time.

      ‘Boris called me Mashdash-Car-Crash! It’s nyelzya to call Defectives names,’ says Masha quickly. ‘We Must Respect Deformity. That’s what you always say, Lydia Mikhailovna.’

      ‘True. And breaking his leg in two places is showing respect?’

      ‘It was an accident,’ she says sulkily.

      ‘So you accidentally stole a bottle of vegetable oil from the kitchens, while Lucia was pretending to faint, and then accidentally spilt it on the floor, just as Boris was coming out of his ward?’

      ‘I didn’t know he’d go over with such a crack—’

      ‘His leg was both fractured and broken. Extremely painful. As if we haven’t got enough work to do in here.’

      I shiver. It was horrible. I feel sick remembering it. The bone was sticking out all white and knobbly in his only leg.

      ‘Yolki palki! It was him who got the other kids to hang us over the banisters by our feet. I thought my last hour had come, Lydia Mikhailovna!’

      ‘I will hear no more excuses. What am I to do with you?’

      ‘Send us into space?’ says Masha and does her little kitten look.

      ‘Don’t tempt me.’ She picks up a piece of paper. ‘So. Here is a list of your recent activities. One. Playing hide-and-seek in the top-floor laboratory, which is strictly out of bounds, and being eventually found trapped in a rabbit cage.’ I bite my lip and look past her at the paintings of Comrade Khrushchev and Uncle Lenin. That was so scary. I was crying loads. I thought we’d never ever be found, but once we got in, we couldn’t get out. Masha couldn’t get the door back open and the rabbits just sat there with their bulging eyes staring at us for hours and hours and I thought we’d die in there.

      There’s an empty patch on the wall where they’ve taken Father Stalin down. Maybe they’ll put Yuri Gagarin up now instead.

      ‘Next … calling up all the emergency services from the guardroom phone while Lucia again feigned a fainting fit. We were treated to the fire service, the militia … and you even managed to call an ambulance to a hospital. Three. Stealing syringes and scalpels from the Medical Room and skewers and knives from the kitchens to use as threatening weapons on fellow patients, one of whom claims he was stabbed through the hand.’

      ‘I tripped,’ says Masha, being sulky again.

      ‘Four. Traumatizing young patients with some ridiculous story of a severed hand that stalks SNIP and then placing surgical gloves filled with water in their beds. And Five, riding a food trolley down the kitchen stairs. Repeatedly. Well. The list goes on, culminating in Boris.’

      I’m biting my lip so hard now I can feel blood in my mouth. The worst punishment is having our pyjamas taken away so we’re just in our nappy. Last time was for two weeks and we couldn’t leave the ward then for anything.

      ‘And you, Masha, you beat your sister black and blue behind closed doors.’

      ‘Don’t too. She keeps falling off the bed.’

      ‘And you, miraculously, stay on it?’ She’s rapping a pen on the table with a toc toc toc like a time bomb. I hold my breath and I’m thinking the same thing, over and over, hard in my head. She’s going to send us away. Please, please, please don’t send us to an orphanage for Uneducables. ‘Well,’ she says eventually, ‘I think it’s high time we got you out.’

      ‘Out? No, no, no!’ I jump up. ‘Please, please, Lydia Mikhailovna! We’ll never be naughty again.’ I lean right over the desk with my arms out to her. ‘Don’t send us away! Please! Please!’

      ‘Gospodi! I don’t mean away, Dasha,’ she says, putting the pen down. ‘I mean out. Outside. To exercise. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, because there’s a chance you might be seen by the Healthies in the street …’

      Outside? I stop crying. Out into the grounds? Into the fresh air? I can hardly hear her for