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Dear Mummy,

Daddy said I was allowed to take my diary to Vics’ house. Beth is asleep. She makes a funny noise when she breathes. I’m glad it’s not too quiet though. I am scared when it is. I’m so scared anyway. I don’t think I will be able to sleep all night and my pillow is wet from all my crying. I am worried you will never come back. I know that Daddy says you have gone to a police station but I keep imagining that you have gone into the dark, dark woods where there are serpents and dragons to kill you and then what would I do without you? Daddy said you were going to be asked some questions just like the police asked me. The pretty police officer was really nice. She smiled a lot. She will be nice to you too, Mummy. The other woman Miranda Slay-something was a bit weird. She was a social worker and she had big teeth and a long grey ponytail that she kept stroking like it was her snake pet. She creeped me out. Also I don’t think grown-ups should have pink dangly pens like hers. I like your smart black pen that you use for your work and I want to have one when I am grown-up. I hope you don’t have to talk to snake-lady.

Daddy says you will be home later. Sometimes Daddy says stuff just to make me feel better and then it makes me sadder because I know he is lying. You never lie to me. I think that is really cool. I want you to come home, mummy. Please, please come home. I’m sure you can hear me.

INVISIBLE INK ALERT: I want so badly to say how sorry I am. When the police wanted to talk to me again on the flowery sofa in that weird house that was not like a real house that Harriet took me to with that big weird window mirror I was too scared to tell them that my imagination was getting very big and it felt like I was writing a composition at school that I couldn’t stop writing and it ran away with me like the dog with the spoon. I feel bad because I broke the one rule that they said was the only rule in the room. (I wondered what other rule they had in the upstairs room of the house and I thought about all those different rules in all the different rooms in the world and my eyes went cross-eyed – only in my head. If I really went cross-eyed I would look like a weirdo). Then they asked me what the difference between telling a lie and telling the truth was. The story went like this: If someone stole my pencil case at school and then told me they hadn’t stolen it even though I knew they had, was this a lie or the truth? .... DUH! DUH! DAH! Even Noah could answer that dumb question.

It’s just I wasn’t really lying, mummy, I promise you. Mrs E said some stuff about her mummy slapping her and there being blood on her lip then I kind of imagined you slapped me like it was a film and then I thought I could taste the blood and see the red dripping down my lips and I was so angry with you for saying that thing about not being my real mummy that it was like the anger was boiling up inside me and the story just came out and it kind of became like real and it got stuck in my head and I couldn’t get it out until it was really real, real. Now I am imagining it again and I am thinking that maybe it was real. Was it real mummy? The blood was crimson. Crimson is the word that the writer used in that book you read me about those wolves when they died in the white snow and I remembered it and thought about the crimson blood dripping down and down onto my white school shirt, white like the snow. Get it? When I told the police about that white shirt and the crimson blood (but I said red instead of crimson and I did not tell them about the wolves) I thought they looked a bit worried like they were watching the same scary film that was in my head and I felt flutters in my stomach and I didn’t want them to stop listening to me so I went on about it a bit.

My fingers ache from all this writing. My teacher says I should be a tortoise not a hare when I write, but I feel like a hare scrambling through the woods to watch you be killed by dragons. How would I save you in my story? If I told the truth to Daddy he would hate me and I think Daddy is the only one who really loves me in the whole world. I will always love you more than you love me, but I think Daddy loves me more than I love him or maybe just the same. I love you more than anyone. If I told that pretty police lady that I lied she might send me to prison and I would get so told off and I don’t want anyone to be angry with me anymore. I want everyone to be happy and I want to be a good girl so that you love me more than I love you, so that I can love you even more than that, and then you will want to be my real mummy ALL THE TIME even when you are cross with me. Mrs E was so nice – not a Mrs Shithead at all – and I think she will understand. I think I want to ask her what to do. She won’t tell me off for lying. I wonder if I can creep out of Vics’ house like a tortoise and go to Mrs E’s house to ask her?

I’m going to save you from the dragons. You watch.

Love,

Rosie

PS I am only a bit scared of the dark. If I see a fox with shiny eyes I am going to hiss at it like a snake and it will run away.