Free Set Me Free by Daniela Sacerdoti

Tanya, you know, the girls who were supposed to be her best friends? The ones she’d been in class with since Reception.”
    â€œVile indeed! Girls can be so cruel. And is she eating okay?”
    â€œWe’re up and down with that too. She’s so small, like a bird.”
    â€œWe can work on that,” my mum said, and I imagined her rubbing her hands in glee. She loves nothing more than feeding people, and she has passed on her love of food to my sisters and me. Laura is tall and slender and she seems to stay that way even if she works as a chef; Anna eats like a horse but sweats all the calories off with her love of sport; and I happily accumulate them on my five-foot-two frame. You only live once, after all.
    â€œI hope Lara will relax a bit, up there. She’s not sleeping well. She never did, but recently it’s got worse. I think she should see someone. I really do.”
    â€œI think the summer in Glen Avich will do her a world of good. And you too. And after that, you can decide what to do about Lara.”
    â€œYes. Leo doesn’t know yet. I’ll speak to him later, but he’s so young, I’ll just tell him we’re going to see Nonna and he’ll be happy. Six weeks is a long time to be away from his dad, but he never really sees him anyway.”
    â€œIs Ash still coming round every weekend?”
    â€œNo. Something always comes up. It’s been every two weeks for a little while, now it’s if and when. He wasn’t involved at all with Lara’s school either. It’s so sad to see, you know . . . Every time Ash is around Leo follows him like a little shadow. He tries to catch his attention and never quite manages.”
    â€œWell, he’ll get plenty of attention here; we’ll give him a really good time, I promise. There are quite a few kids his age in Glen Avich and there’s a really good play park just across the road from our house, he’ll have plenty of little friends to play with.”
    â€œThat’s good,” I said in a shaky voice, and took a sip of my cappuccino. The caffeine was slowly waking me up after the sleepless night.
    â€œMargherita?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œYou told me something happened at Lara’s school, but never the details . . .”
    I swallowed the coffee through the lump in my throat. “She shouted at her English teacher. Apparently she was about to hit her.” It was horrifying to say it aloud.
    â€œ Lara? ”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œMy poor little girl . . .”
    â€œYes. She’s been through a lot.”
    â€œI meant you ,” my mum said. “Don’t worry, tesoro . We’ll sort things out, okay?”
    â€œOkay,” I whispered, feeling like a little girl for real. And a lost one, at that. I was a thirty-eight-year-old mother of two, but I wanted my mum.

6

Roots
    Lara
    Dear Kitty,
    I can safely say that things have been a bit rubbish recently. I’m not sure what’s up with me, but I can’t sleep. I get these night terrors, they’re called, and this makes me grumpy during the day. Extremely grumpy. As in, shouting-at-people grumpy. I get so angry, and I don’t even know why. I ended up screaming at Mrs Akerele and it was horrible. I have no idea what comes over me. Maybe in a way I know myself what’s wrong with me, it’s that it feels like I’m boiling inside, and every once in a while it spills over. I was always able to keep it locked inside me, but it’s coming out and I can’t stop it. It’s scary.
    In less freaky but still distressing news, I think Ian likes Polly. It’s okay because I don’t fancy Ian any more. I’m over that kind of thing now. Nobody wants to hang out with me in school anyway. Since the incident with Mrs Akerele, Polly and Tanya have been avoiding me. Polly’s mum said to Tanya’s mum that I’m not the best influence on their