the photo.
But we like Claude.
Yes, but Claude feels nice on the inside.
Yes. Margot scratches her head. It’s a puzzle, she says.
I don’t think I am an English princess, I say.
You could be, though, says Margot.
I could be. But maybe I am just a normal girl. Maman isn’t a queen and she said that she is my real mother.
Unless she isn’t telling the truth, says Margot.
Why would Maman lie about it? I say. But as soon as I say it I can think of lots of reasons, like her not wanting me to call the police.
We will have to think about it like scientists, says Margot. What is the first thing you remember about Maman?
I try to remember being a baby, but I don’t remember it at all. Maman says we came from England, so I try to remember another house, another orchard, a different bedroom. I can only remember our own house that we live in now. My bone is itching and I rub it hard against my knee to make it stop.
I can’t remember, I say.
You are remembering all wrong, says Margot. You have to think backwards.
So I try. Margot is right, it is easier to think backwards.
I close my eyes and I think about last night. I think about the argument. I think about the trip to the seaside when I asked for the watermelon and the day she threw the peaches at the tractor. I think about the day she broke the glass with her belly, when she chose my jam instead of Margot’s and, before that, the day when all our clothes got spotty, when she had the fly stuck to her foot. I think fast over the bits that are dark and I think slow over the bits that are nice. I think about her at the church when Papa had died, and before that, when Papa still lived with us, and the food she would cook for us all to eat. I think about the day she came home from the hospital without the baby, and before that, when she was happy. She really did used to be happy. I think about all the kisses goodnight, when I was four years old and three years old. I remember birthday parties and picnic days at the beach, and walks in the low meadow. I remember one day in the low meadow, we were just walking. We had eaten peaches so it must have been summer. We were holding hands and all the sticky peachiness was gluing our hands together. We washed our hands in the stream and we practised naming all the trees and flowers and birds. Maman knew them all, so she would let me guess first. And that day I remember I found a ladybird and I wanted to show her. She got down on the ground beside me. It didn’t matter to her then that she was dirtying her dress, pressing her face close to all the different flower smells in the middle of the dewy meadow, where donkeys have weed and spiders spun webs. I remember that on the way home I was tired and she carried me on her shoulders up the hill. She didn’t mind. She was singing.
Well? says Margot.
Leave me alone, I say. I’m busy remembering. Margot taps her fingers and I open my eyes crossly.
I’m not a princess, I say. And I tidy everything away into the box. I wrap up all my rememberings with a yellow ribbon and I put that in there too. I can look at them again later.
Margot’s hair is getting longer again. Mine is not. It’s not fair, really. She is twizzling it round her fingers, trying to make it reach her mouth so that she can do thinking.
I have been reading a book, she says, about a girl who was not a princess. It is a good story. If you sit down nicely I will read it to you.
I am sitting down, I say. Margot rolls her eyes.
Once upon a time, she says, there was a girl who was not a princess. But she lived in a castle anyway, up on a hillside, far far away from here.
I close my eyes and listen to Margot’s story.
The castle was also far far away from all of the normal people in the kingdom. The girl, who was not a princess, was lonely, because her maman, who was not a queen, was very busy looking after the baby in her tummy. So the girl