Free The Cornflake House by Deborah Gregory

most difficult quest is following so closely on the heels of the first. I only hope that captivating you doesn’t bring me as fierce a punishment as the one I am suffering for freeing my mother.
    You said you wanted me to try and tell you about myself as a child, to explain how it felt to be Eve, the eldest. It felt brilliant and tragic, marvellous and ordinary. I was both princess and pauper, a clumsy tub with a thin, dainty girl locked inside. A kid who never cared about clothes, yet longed for lace, silk, sequins. Well what child isn’t a mass, or in my case a mess, of contradictions? Being me at home was so completely separate from being me elsewhere, it’s amazing I’m not schizophrenic. I was confident, self-assured, often bossy with my brothers and sister, yet I was reticent and shy with adults. I’m sure that grown-ups, with the exception of Mum and Taff, found me distasteful. Neighbours in Fisher’s Close eyed me with suspicion, as if expecting me to spit or call abuse at any moment, while I was really a quiet girl, keen to be at peace with people. My teachers treated me as if I was a special needs case, although I was bright enough and got good marks. They always addressed me directly, bending their concerned faces close to my own so that I knew whose teeth were brushed and who hadn’t had time to say hallo to Mr Toothbrush. I might have been a deaf child or a foreigner. Such treatment baffled and upset me. Fear of looking as stupid as they thought I was kept me tense, tight, on the alert; I never allowed my mouth to hang open or let my eyes drift out of focus. I know I was a sight (and I was the pick of the bunch since most of my clothes went on down through the other six children) but I still find it depressing that not one teacher ever saw through the tatty exterior.
    Children who were not my own brothers and sisters seemed a strange breed to me. I now understand that we were the odd ones out; but at eight, or ten or twelve, my peers were peculiar simply for not being like me. The entire population of the world, or at least of Woking and its surrounding villages, walked in a haze as far as I was concerned, distanced by their lack of perception, their inability to see how wonderful, how glorious we, the children of Victory, actually were. All the same, I was constantly aware of being both special and unseemly: the daughter of the Queen of Magic, half-sister to the Child of the Moon, Gypsy Boy, Son of Satchmo and the little Eskimo lad, not to mention the pixie-faced speedy one and that extraordinary, manicured girl with the Shakespearean name. A lot to live up to. And I headed this troupe, I was the eldest, the leader. It was up to me to steer them from trouble, to teach them right from wrong, to watch over them in cloakrooms where gym kits went missing, in playgrounds where skipping ropes waited to trip them, on buses where they risked having their lunch-boxes thrown from the window.
    Have you noticed that I make no mention of friends? I had none. I spared no time, made no opportunities for forming friendships; perhaps there was no need. I was one of seven, and then their was my mother, always prepared to listen, to laugh, to help out. Besides, forgive the pathos, but I can’t recall anybody making advances, asking if I’d like to sit by them, to walk to assembly in their company, to share a bag of sweets. I know it takes two and, not wanting to be seen to capitulate or conform, I was equally mean with my smiles, my gestures of goodwill. When situations demanded pairing up, for dancing or for the walk to the swimming pool, I was among the last to be chosen, often having to team up with the teacher or with an insipid little boy called Timothy Ross, a creature so nondescript that even when you held his hand you managed to forget he existed. It didn’t bother me. I wanted it that way. To join them would have diluted me, or so I believed.
    I ought to have seen things differently