till it bleeds. She is ugly & nasty & I HATE
HER. She makes me feel stupid and tries to make me look like a baby. She is the stupid one. I HATE her. Today, she stuck a leg out while I was coming back from my bath, just because I told her what Mummy had said yesterday. I was trying to help! I tripped over, and fell in a sprawl on the floor, & she just sat on the bed and laughed at me, and then called me a baby for crying. She is always saying I’m a baby for my age. I’m not, I’M NOT. I’m just not a vamp like she is.
Oh thinking about her puts me in such a bad mood. She makes me not like our family, or being here, she makes it all rotten. She doesn’t like it here. She hates the holidays. She wants to leave home and go to London. Well I wish she would.
Anyway.
I left off my proper favourite book off my list. It is very important. Emily Bronte is amazing. This summer term, we read Wuthering Heights at school. It is a most wonderful novel, full of insight into that most miraculous of emotions – that of human love. (I must say though, if I met Heathcliff I would just hide in a cupboard. He is frightening). The story is terribly, terribly sad, & I felt, when he saw her lifeless dead body, that I should cry so much my heart would break.
It’s much better than Jane Eyre, I thought Mr Rochester was boring & I wanted more descriptions of how the first Mrs Rochester drooled & everything.
After my bustup with Miranda I didn’t do very much today, swam by the sea & read, sat for Mummy again. We talked about our favourite films. She loves Gregory Peck too. It was a bit better today but she still snapped at me when I scratched my arm and goodness gracious me, I’m allowed to scratch my arm, aren’t I?
We had jam roll for tea today which was delicious. I read about the autumn fashions in the papers outside while the others went swimming. I do not want to wear a hat shaped like a cone, whatever anyone says. Miranda has some nice clothes this summer. I don’t know where she got them from, but she’s started trying them on in our room. Mummy hasn’t noticed yet, but she will. It’s funny. They’re expensive, and they’re grownup, and they . . . I think they suit her. Miranda gets them out when she thinks I’m not looking. Where did she get them from? There’s a black gros-grain dress I am particularly in love with, she’s hung it at the back of our wardrobe but she keeps opening it to stare at it. She is pretty stupid.
Yesterday was the sixth Sunday after Trinity. I wish it wasn’t like this any more. I am starting to think everyone is in an awful mood this summer, apart from Jeremy.
Bust exercises: 45!
Nose squashing exercises: 5 mins
Love always, Cecily
Tuesday, 23rd July 1963
Dear Diary
I fear I did not make a good beginning to this journal. There is too much silliness and feeling sorry for oneself in it. I need to show everyone eg Miss Powell, Jeremy, Miranda & others that I am a grown-up young woman, because sadly some people still treat me like I am five years old and when I am dead & they read this I want them to know how wrong they were.
It is a bit like that at our school, but not as bad, because everyone is nearly the same age. I don’t actually mind school, Miranda hates it. I like English, Drama & History. Also I can’t wait to see Miss Powell again in September because she treats you like a person. However I am also dreading having to listen to awful Annabel Taylor’s descriptions of her ghastly family’s holiday in St Tropez or wherever it will be. She is such a show-off. Miss Powell says one should never advertise one’s wealth or status & I agree. I don’t go around school boasting that my father is an OBE & writes extremely important books, & lectures at the Sorbonne, & that my mother has had an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, do I? No, I do not. AT is so vulgar too. What matters to her is how blonde your hair is, or whether you have a tennis court at home & are allowed to drink champagne by your family. She calls me & Miranda names, too, because of the fact our skin is darker than hers. She has thick, dark blonde beautiful hair & huge green eyes with thick black lashes & pink cheeks & sweet little freckles, it’s fine for her at a school like ours.
AT really is horrible. I shall refer to her as 21 (A is 1st letter of alphabet, T is 20th, add them together.) through the rest of this diary, bc I can’t bear to write her name.
And there is a secret about her & even though we row terribly, the Kapoor sisters do stick together about some things: Miranda is in awful trouble because of 21. Mummy & Dad don’t know it, but Miranda nearly got expelled this term because of 21. She lost her rag with her, two weeks before we broke up. Miranda was changing the water for the flowers, it was her turn. We had just heard from Mummy in a letter that these two strange boys would be coming to stay at Summercove & we were giggling about them, talking about the holidays, for once having a good old chat. ‘Maybe one of us will marry one of them and be very rich & have lots of children,’ Miranda said. 21 walked past & heard Miranda. She called her a horrible name again & said her children would be like monkeys. Out of the blue.
Well Miranda just went potty. It was so strange. She said, ‘I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough.’ She put her (21’s) head in a desk & banged it up & down on her, so hard I honestly thought 21’s skull would crack & her brains spill out onto the floor. 21 was screaming, ‘Stop it, stop it!!’ & Miranda just kept shouting, ‘I don’t care, I don’t care!’ & her teeth were gritted in between speaking. Her eyes were huge, she was flushed, she almost looked like she was enjoying it. 21 had to be in the san. for the night. She had bruises on her cheekbones for weeks. And ringing in her ears.
Miss Stephens, the headmistress, had Miranda in her office for ages. She was going to be expelled, I was sure of it. They said they were going to send M home early but she somehow persuaded Miss Stephens not to. I will never know what she said or how she did it. 21 never bothered her again, she didn’t like people knowing she’d got beaten up like that.
