Shrinking Violet (5 page)
Authors: Jean Ure
“Who’s it from?”
“Not telling!”
I turned the envelope over in my hands. It was pink and smelled of fruit and had two little furry cat stickers in one corner.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” said Lily.
“Not right now,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to!”
“So w —”
“Lily, just leave Violet alone,” said Mum. “Letters are personal! How would you like it if she pried into yours?”
Lily tossed her head. “Wouldn’t ever have one! Don’t know anyone who still writes them!”
She can say what she likes. I enjoy having letters! I like seeing my name on the front of the envelope and
I like looking at the stamps and studying the postmark and trying to guess who could have sent it. (Though I have so few that I almost always know!) I could guess that this was from Katie by the little cat stickers; and anyway, who else would be writing to me?
I waited till we’d finished tea then I rushed upstairs to my room and tore open the envelope. I’d gone all trembly because I had this fear she might be going to say, “Thank you for writing to me but I’m afraid I have found someone else to be my pen pal.” Someone who sounded like more fun!
It is terrible to have so little confidence, but it is what happens when you are one half of a twin and the other half keeps telling you that you are a nerdy party pooper. I tell her that she is a noisy windbag, but being a noisy windbag is not necessarily such a bad thing to be. Being a party pooper is the worst.
I slid the letter out of the envelope r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y. It was quite thick. It was three pages! I couldn’t believe it!
The first thing I saw was the address, which was in London. I would rather it had been somewhere miles away, such as for instance the Outer Hebrides, as all I wanted was a pen pal. I didn’t want to meet her! But I thought that I would read the letter first and worry about other things later.
Hi, Violet!
This is Katie, writing back to you. I was really pleased to get your letter! It came just this morning, so here I am replying IMMEDIATELY.
I would love it if we could be pen pals! You sound incredibly interesting and exactly the sort of person I have dreamt of writing to. I hope I sound like the sort of person you have dreamt of writing to!
I will tell you about myself, and then you can decide. I live with my mum, whose name is Clare. I don’t have any brothers or sisters but I do have two cats. They are:
Bertie, who is small and stripy
Bella, who is small and black.
Bertie is full of fun! The other night while we were asleep he stole a toilet roll from out of the bathroom and carried it all the way downstairs, then chewed it to pieces and spat out the bits. When we
woke in the morning it looked like confetti! We thought someone had got married!
Bella is a sweetheart. She is very round and cuddly. She just loves her grub! Mum says she cannot decide whether she should be called Belle of the Ball or Bella the Ball!
Please tell me about your cat Horatio. I would love to see a picture of him!! Thank you for sending me your photo. I am sending you one of me. I hope it will not put you off!!!
I noticed in yours that there was another girl at the end of the row that looked just like you! Is she your sister?
Are you twins? I would love to be a twin! I think it would be so neat for there to be two of you and no one
knowing which was which. I said this to Mum and she said you could get up to all kinds of mischief. But she also said, maybe it would not be quite as much fun as I seem to think. Is it??? Tell me about your mum and dad. My mum is a teacher, she teaches violin and piano. She does it partly in a school (not my one!) and partly at home. When she is teaching violin the house is full of unearthly screechings and scrapings and sometimes my cat Bella sits outside the door and joins in. She thinks she is a violin!
I love to draw! I am not very musical but I think when I grow up I will be an artist of some kind. What will you be?
Underneath your photo it says “Mrs Frost’s class”. But I counted up and there are only fourteen people! We have twenty-eight in my class. I go to St Saviour’s Juniors. Where do you go?
I hope you don’t think I am being too nosy but it is just because I am so interested. Whatever you want to know about me, you can ask!
I had better stop now in case I am boring you. Please, please, PLEASE, write back! If you would still like to be my pen pal, that is.
Lots of luv
From
Katie Saunders XXX
PS Where does an elf go to get fit? To an elf farm! Ha ha!
The minute I’d finished reading the letter I went hurtling back downstairs, thump thud bang! I sounded like Lily.
“Mum!” I cried. “I’ve got a pen friend!”
“Really?” said Mum. “That’s wonderful! Where did you find her?”
“If it is a her,” said Dad.
“
Dad!
Of course it is,” I said. I wouldn’t want to write to a boy! “Her name’s Katie and she’s the same age as me and she has two cats and her mum teaches the piano and she advertised in Go Girl for someone to be her pen pal!”
“So you wrote to her?” said Mum. “That’s very enterprising! Can I have a read, or is it private?”
I hesitated. “You can read this first one,” I said. “But after that they’ll be private!”
I thought that in future letters we would probably share all kinds of secrets that I certainly wouldn’t want Mum reading! But there wasn’t anything secret yet, and I was just so bursting with pride. Katie found me interesting! Katie wanted us to be pen pals! I thought if Mum read her letter it would make her happy and she would stop worrying quite so much about me living in Lily’s shadow.
I was right. It worked!
“She sounds lovely,” said Mum. “I think that was such an excellent idea, Violet! Finding yourself a pen friend. I see she lives with her mum … I wonder what happened to her dad?”
I said that I had wondered that, too. “Maybe they’re divorced?” I said. Lots of girls at school have mums and dads who are divorced.
Mum agreed that this was possible. “But you’d better not ask her,” she warned. “It might be something she doesn’t want to talk about. Wait till she feels ready to tell you.”
“Yes, I was going to,” I said. I am not like Lily! Lily always goes rushing in with both feet. “Where is your dad?” is probably the very
first
question she’d ask. I try to consider other people’s
feelings, ’cos I know how I would feel – which just makes it all the worse when I go and say stupid things like I did to Ayesha about her face.
Mum folded the letter and handed it back to me. “It’s nice she lives so near,” she said. “When you get to know each other better, you’ll be able to meet.”
I said, “Mm!” Doing my best to sound enthusiastic.
“In fact,” said Mum, “why don’t y —”
“Look!” I waved the envelope in the air. Quickly, quickly, before Mum could get carried away and start arranging things. “She’s sent me a photo! D’you want to see it?”
I was just handing the photograph to Mum when Lily came crashing into the room. Needless to say, she had to come bundling over to take a look.
“Who’s that?” she said.
I told her that it was a picture of my pen pal. “Katie.”
“Hm!” Lily studied it, critically. “Her nose is like a
blob.
”
“I think she looks rather cute,” said Mum. “Like a little pixie!”
Lily said, “
Pixie
,” in tones of deepest scorn.
“Munch munch munch,” said Dad, pretending to nibble a carrot.
Lily flushed bright scarlet. Our front teeth are just the tiniest bit rabbity, so that we have to wear a brace. Lily really hates it! She is really self-conscious about it.
“Well, I’m sorry, but people who live in glass houses,” said Dad.
Angrily, Lily said, “What’s that s’pposed to mean?”
“It means,” said Mum, “that we do not mock the way other people look unless we want to be mocked in return. What are you doing down here, anyway? I thought you were going to have a bath?”
“Am! Don’t want anything!” shouted Lily; and she slammed out of the room and went thudding back up the stairs.
“That girl!” said Mum.
I pointed out that it was all right for Mum, she was only her mother. “I’m her
twin!
”
I decided that I would write back to Katie straight away and tell her that being a twin was not always as much fun as you might think.
Hi, Katie!
Thank you for writing to me so quickly. And for writing such a lovely
long letter. I am SO glad you want to be my pen pal! I am writing back at once as I know what it is like when you are waiting and waiting for something to come, and thinking that it never will and worrying to yourself in case you have said something to upset the person.
First of all I will try to answer your questions! The girl at the end of the row that you thought looked like me is my sister, Lily. We are twins but NOT IDENTICAL. In fact we are just about as different as two people can be! You mum is right, it is not always fun to be a twin, although sometimes of course it can be. Like for instance if you dress the same and pretend to people that you are each other. We used to do this quite a lot when we were little but we don’t do it so often now as we are so completely different that it probably wouldn’t
work. And anyway Lily wouldn’t want people to think that she was me and I wouldn’t want them to think that I was her. No way!
What I would really, really like would be if it was just me on my own, but if Mum was to have another baby I would love a little brother! But this unfortunately is not very likely to happen as Mum says two children are quite enough for one family what with the world being over-populated and people starving, etc., and in any case they are both so busy they probably wouldn’t have time for one. A baby, I mean.
You asked me to tell you about my mum and dad. My mum is called Emma and my dad is called Steve. They both work all the time, which is why they are too busy to have another baby. (Plus over-population, etc.) Dad does things with computers and Mum has a flower shop, where
sometimes I help on a Saturday. Lily doesn’t help. She has lots of posh friends and thinks it is beneath her to have a mum who works in a shop, even if the shop is her own one. You can see it is true that we are not at all alike.
Another thing you ask is what I will be when I grow up. I haven’t yet decided! But it will not be anything to do with computers, I don’t think. Maybe I could be a flower artist and make flower arrangements for weddings and parties, etc. But if I cannot do that (as I may not be artistic enough) then perhaps I will be something to do with writing. I really love to write stories! But I cannot do the pictures to go with them. You are so lucky that you can draw! I wish wish WISH that I could. All I can do is stick figures.
I expect you will say that this is utterly pathetic and the sort of
stuff you would do in Reception, but it is just one of those things. I can see pictures in my head, but when I pick up my pen my hand won’t do what I want it to. This is probably something that you will not understand, as I expect when you pick up a pen it does exactly what you tell it to.
It would be just SO brilliant if I could write stories and you could illustrate them! But only if you want to, of course. You might not want to. You would most probably be too busy doing drawings of your own.
I just loved the pictures you did of your cats! It is so nice that you are a cat person. One of my nans has a cat allergy, which means that whenever she comes to stay poor Horatio is banished.
He has to go to a cattery for what Mum calls “a little holiday”. But I am sure he hates it and thinks we have abandoned him. He probably wonders what he has done wrong when in fact he hasn’t done anything. It is just my nan, wheezing and sneezing and complaining of cat hair on the furniture.
My school is called Lavendar House. It is very titchy and tiny. We have sixteen people in my class but on the day when the photograph was taken two of them were away. It is all girls. No boys! Do you have boys at your school? Most people do. Sometimes I wish that we had but on the other hand they can be a pain. A girl called Francine Church had some at her birthday party last term and they ruined everything by rushing about, shouting and showing off and spoiling all our games.
Do you have a uniform at your school? We have to wear: