Free Playing with the Grown-ups by Sophie Dahl Page B

Kitty, it's just the beginning of our new wonderful life. Can you believe it?'
    Sam and Violet returned with Irish accents and freckles.
    'Violet, Violet, we live in a feckin' mansion like Daddy Warbucks!' Sam flung his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack on
     the marble floor. 'Howareya, Kitty?' he said.
    'Cool house, right?' she said, shy of him.
    Violet said, 'I'm only staying here if Sam and me have the same room.'
    'Well that's a lucky thing, because you do. Have you said hello to your sister?' Her mother swooped down, scooped her up and
     nuzzled her.
    'No. Hi.' Violet buried her face in her mother's T-shirt.
    'I remember you, from when I was a little girl. But now I'm big, so I don't remember you as well.'
    'Well, I do,' Sam said.
    'That's good,' Kitty said, because she couldn't think of anything else to say.
    'Come on, skinny bones.' Nora passed Kitty a plate of her macaroni cheese. 'Eat up.'
    'No, thank you, I don't want it.' Kitty handed it to Violet.
    'Kitty, will you just eat the macaroni, I made it especially for you.' A vein throbbed in Nora's temple.
    'But I don't want it. I'm not hungry.'
    'What do you want?'
    'Nothing. I'm not hungry.'
    'But it's suppertime.'
    'Just because its suppertime doesn't mean I have to be hungry. My stomach doesn't have a clock that says "Oh suppertime, I
     must be hungry!" '
    Sam found this hilarious.
    ' "Oh suppertime, I must be hungry! I'mso hungry1 could eat all of you, attack of the supper stomach monster." '
    'Please will you eat some macaroni?' Nora enunciated each word. 'Stop it, Sam!'
    'No,' Kitty said. 'None of you understand me! Why can't you understand?' She threw her chair back from the table and ran upstairs.
    'Kitty?' Violet stood awkwardly at Kitty's side, clutching her fairy wings. 'You can have my fairy wings if you like. Look,
     they're pink and very expensive, Mum said. I wore them at Halloween.'
    'Are you sure?' Kitty said.
    'Yes, positive.'
    'Thank you. I think that's the loveliest present anyone's ever given me. I'll put them on my dressing table so I see them
     every morning when I wake up, and every night before I go to sleep.'
    'Aren't you going to wear them?'
    'I will on special occasions. Like Christmas and my birthday.'
    Violet smiled.
    'Can I tell you a secret?' She leaned in towards Kitty and her breath was like strawberry saucers.
    'I don't like macaroni either; I think it's horrible, like feet on mush. And last night, I stuck my finger up Sam's bum and
     made him smell it.'
    'I don't think you should do that any more,' Kitty said gravely.
    'I know. It made him cry, and so I just gave him my witch's costume from the Halloween before I was a fairy. '
    Violet lay down next to Kitty.
    'Can I tell you something else? I do remember you from before, I just said I didn't. You used to play with us in the bath,
     and you were really nice.' She flung her arms out and wriggled around like a sugary minnow. She threw her head down on Kitty's
     chest.
    'Ow, Violet! My bosoms. You have to be careful, they're growing . . .'
    'Like rabbits. Oh, everything in my life is soft,' Violet said happily.
    Kitty's thirteenth birthday arrived charitably to claim her on a Saturday.
    It rained, a damp pervasive rain, and she skulked around the empty house like a ghost glaring out of the windows on to a sodden
     New York, overcome with self-pity. In the kitchen she found Nora, who informed her that her mother was off doing 'birthday
     things' and would be back at one.
    When she looked sulky at this, Nora said, 'Lord, for goodness sake, the fuss you lot make about your birthdays. In my family
     it was just a normal day.'
    Her mother's surprises sometimes backfired. The year before, in child time a decade, on Sam and Violet's fifth birthday, she
     took them to Disney World. Marina's best friend, Katie, flew out from England with her four-year-old daughter Lily. They wrapped
     Lily up in a box festooned with ribbons and presented it to Sam. Her mother's sense of excitement