A Fucked Up Life in Books. Литагент HarperCollins USD

house for long.

      Even after I’d moved in my brother was still picking daisies. He was so slow and shit. I went into my house and looked at the pictures in Mr Meddle and waited for him to finish. After what felt like hours, he came to show me how much he’d got.

      It wasn’t great, to be honest, but he’d probably been at it two hours and I really needed to decorate my house. So I took the basket from him and told him that there had been a change of plan and that he was decorating with grass and I’d have all these daisies. He was not happy.

      He screamed at me that they were his. I told him that no, the grass was his, he didn’t want flowers to decorate a tipi anyway.

      Unfortunately, being my only friend, he knew my weakness: the flowers that hung up on the side of the wall of the house to dry. That old woman that lived on the right was teaching me about drying and pressing flowers and all of the other shit that old ladies do because they are bored to tears. He told me he was going to pull the flowers down, and began to stride purposefully towards the house.

      Little cunt.

      He was angrier and quicker than me, but he was also shorter. He got to the wall of the house, reached up his hand to destroy my hard work and I came up behind him, snatched my flowers away, and smashed his head against the brick wall of the house.

      I don’t know why at the age of four my first instinct was to smash his head against the wall rather than just take the flowers and run. I wonder now why my brain had managed to make my first instinct so violent.

      He screamed. He screamed so fucking loud that it scared me. I ran to the bottom of the garden and climbed up a tree. I couldn’t see him any more, but I could hear my Mum shriek as she found him. I waited in the tree for what felt like forever until my Dad came and found me and told me to come inside, my brother had gone to accident and emergency with mum and that we were having pizza for dinner.

      When I got to the patio before going through the back door I noticed some splashes of blood on the tiles. No one had told me off though. If anyone asked then I’d just say he tripped.

      Mum came home with my brother. He was not talking to me. He’d had to have stitches in his forehead. We all ate pizza for dinner and I didn’t get told off. I don’t think at the time that he had told anyone what happened. As I got older I felt guilty that no one knew what I’d done.

      Almost a year ago to the day my brother visited my flat in London and stayed over because he was working nearby the next day. He pulled out of his bag a package wrapped in dinosaur wrapping paper and told me that it was my birthday present. I could open it now or later. It didn’t matter.

      My birthday wasn’t for another six weeks, so I chose later. That evening I sat in my flat with my brother and we drank some wine and watched some TV, just what we do any time he visits. And when I left for work in the morning I said bye without saying thanks for my birthday present, which sat at the foot of my bookshelves waiting to be opened.

      Six weeks after he visited it was my birthday. I sat in my flat with my boyfriend opening my presents. I’d left the one from my brother until last.

      I tore off the dinosaur wrapping paper, and the masses of bubble wrap underneath and found this:

      It’s a poem that he wrote for me, in a clip frame. A poem about that day when I smashed his head against the wall, and about our childhood together and about some of the shit that has happened between then and now. And it’s fucking wonderful, and as much as I’d like to write it all down for you to show you I won’t, because it’s mine. But I’ll give you the last two lines.

      ‘… Of each other’s part we played alongside the games those childhood ways the times we’d play, Hide away all night and day from our important lives.’

      Now, have a closer look.

       Burglar Bill

      I was in reception when I met my first love. He was in year one so we didn’t share a classroom, but we used to see each other in the playground and would poke around at the worms on the concrete together, or make aliens out of the grass cuttings on the field. He was the most handsome boy in school, and all of my friends were well jealous.

      At the end of one day, the school sent letters home with us about helping to litter pick on the field at lunchtime the following day. Mum asked me if I wanted to do it, and I did. She packed some gloves into my schoolbag so that I didn’t scratch my hands on the bushes and didn’t touch anything unsavoury.

      The day of the litter pick our teacher was reading us Burglar Bill before our morning break. She was one of those teachers that fucking loved reading out to us, and after reading out each page she would turn the book around and sweep it slowly in front of us all sitting on the carpet so that we could see the pictures. Then we went out for break.

      I found him waiting by the water fountain. He asked what story we’d had and I told him it was Burglar Bill. Then he told me that we weren’t allowed to play on the field at lunchtime. I told him I was allowed to go on the field because I was going to litter pick. He looked at me a bit funny.

      ‘Why do you want to litter pick, I thought we were going to play?’ he said.

      ‘Because my Mum asked me and I said yes. She’s packed my gloves. I think it will be fun, did your Mum forget to pack your gloves?’ I asked.

      He scrunched up his face at me.

      ‘I don’t want to litter pick, it’s stupid. It’s a stupid game and the stupid teachers are doing it.’ He said.

      I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I’d told my Mum I wanted to do it and she’d packed my gloves. I’d given my little slip with her signature on it to the teacher saying that I was going to help out. There was no way out.

      ‘Maybe if I pick up all the litter really fast it will all be gone and then I can come and play!’ I told him.

      He looked really, really grumpy.

      ‘No you won’t. We won’t get to play. I don’t think I love you anymore.’

      Fucking hell. Heartbreak.

      ‘But I thought you were my boyfriend?’ I said.

      ‘Well if you go and pick litter then we won’t get to play and you won’t be my girlfriend any more,’ he said.

      ‘But I have to pick litter!’ I shouted.

      He shrugged and walked away from me.

      At lunchtime I headed out with the other volunteers and picked crisp packets and other shit out of the thorny bushes. I looked over at the playground and there he was, poking at the worms with my best friend. Traitor. Cunt.

      We didn’t talk at school anymore after that. And when I went into year six he went to a secondary school. And when I went to secondary school it was a different one to him.

      I saw him a few years later when I was about fifteen and out playing and called him a fucking bastard. He said that he was sorry. I got off with him for a bit, but he wasn’t very handsome anymore so I sacked him off after a couple of weeks. We didn’t want the same things, anyway. I still wanted to pick litter and he still wanted to flirt with my mates. Young love, eh?

       Thelwell’s Riding Academy

      I used to be one of those cunts that went to Pony Club. Where I lived there were loads of fields and loads of people with money to spare, and loads of fucking awful children, so it made sense that there was a branch of Pony Club that met a few miles down the road.

      If