They called me Ophelia after a box of chocolates. I hate them. My father gave the chocolates to my mother on the day I was born, but then my mother disappeared.

We still have the chocolate box, only my grandmother keeps photographs in it now. It’s not fair. The box was a present to my mother and she would have wanted me to have it.

It is not as if my grandmother is a real grandmother either. She is only my step grandmother so she had no right to put her photographs in my box.

There is a picture of a drowned woman on the lid. Her name is Ophelia and she is floating in the water with her mouth open like a dead fish. Ophelia was engaged to a prince called Hamlet but then she went mad and drowned herself before they had a chance to get married.

Everyone says I am the spitting image of the Ophelia on the box. Sometimes I get really scared that I will go mad and end up like she did.

I wish I didn’t look like her because I don’t want to drown. I would like to die properly of natural causes.

 

‘Ophelia, you’ve got green eyes,’ says my stepmother, ‘I never noticed before.’

‘I like my green eyes.’

‘Green eyes are a sign of a jealous personality.’

‘People with auburn hair often have green eyes,’ I tell her, ‘I read it.’

‘People with auburn hair often have bad tempers. Did you read that too?’

My brother lifts his blond head and stares at me with his blue eyes, and my father says,

‘Ophelia, please apologise to April.’

That is my stepmother’s name. April. I think it is a silly name.

I bang the door as hard as I can when I run out of the room because I know it makes April hopping mad. I run all the way down the lane to the farmhouse where my grandparents live and I get the Ophelia Box down from the sideboard.

 ‘April’s horrible,’ I tell the drowned Ophelia. ‘She hates me and it’s all your fault.’

I put my mouth close to the box and whisper this because I don’t want my grandmother to hear, but I am really careful not to touch the box. Ophelia is a cold dead thing and I don’t want to feel her with my lips.

When she isn’t looking I take my grandmother’s scissors from the sewing basket and stab at the staring green eyes until the points of the scissors go right through the cardboard and then I scratch Ophelia’s head until every bit of her auburn hair has disappeared.

‘You’ll go blind yourself now, and bald too I shouldn’t wonder,’ says my grandmother when she finds out what I have done. ‘It serves you right for being a naughty girl.’

This makes me cry, but then my grandmother tells me it is not my fault I was born with auburn hair and that when I grow up I can always wear a hat. She is quite a kind person really, my grandmother.

‘I’ll tell you what your trouble is, Ophelia,’ says my grandmother, before she sends me home to The Barn. ‘You’ve got too much imagination. That’s your trouble.’

This makes me cry all over again because I can’t help having too much imagination and I can’t scratch out imagination with my grandmother’s scissors.

After this I am forbidden to touch the Ophelia Box again because my grandmother says it brings out the worst in me. She hides the box under her corsets in the dressing table drawer and when I find it I draw big blue eyes around the holes in Ophelia’s face and I give her a lot of yellow hair.

 

My horrible family

 

There is a newspaper cutting in the Ophelia Box of when my father married April. I can understand every word it says and I am only six.

I am top of the class in reading and writing and my teacher says that one day I will probably be a famous writer like Enid Blyton.

Anyway, the piece of newspaper is from The Times and the date is January 20th 1946.

 

The marriage took place at Saint Stephen’s Church, Cairo, on January 14th. 1946 between Second Lieutenant Toby Gunn, son of Lady Effie Gunn of Kensington, and April, only daughter of Mr and Mrs Harald Siward, of Grymewyck Hall, Yorkshire. The bride was attended by Miss Pearl Bonnet. Major Charles Manners was best man. A reception was held at Shepheard’s Hotel.

 

I like the names. Pearl and Charles. Charles and Pearl. I like to think of them playing tennis and kissing together under a tree. When I grow up and have children that is what I am going to call them. Pearl and Charles.

The newspaper cutting is yellow now and it is beginning to crack along the crease. I am careful not to tear it when I unfold it because this piece of paper is my evidence. It is my proof that April and my father lied to each other, even on their wedding day.

There is a photograph in the box of their wedding in Cairo. April and my father with Pearl and Charles. Charles and Pearl. Charles is handsome, but not as handsome as my father.

Pearl has a round face and round eyes. She looks nice. Not like April. April looks as miserable as sin. Not that it was a proper wedding anyway because everyone was wearing army uniform, even Pearl and April.

 

When my father married April he sent me to live with my London grandmother in Kennington but my London grandmother doesn’t like babies and as soon as the war was over she sent me back.

The newspaper cutting says my London grandmother lived in Kensington, not Kennington. They are different places in London. My father says this is a misprint but April says my father is a lying bastard.

The best thing in the Ophelia Box is an old photograph taken in front of our house when it was still a barn, so it must have been taken before I came to live in Grymewyck.

The people in the picture are all leaning on hay rakes, except for my grandfather. He is the man on the tractor.

There is a boy in the photograph with dark eyes and black hair and he is squinting at the camera. I don’t know who the boy is, but he makes everyone else in the photograph seem very pale.

The dark-eyed boy looks nice. I wish he was my friend but probably he is quite old by now. He might even be dead because the photograph is really faded.

I come to visit the photograph of the dark-eyed boy a lot, especially when April and my father are fighting. Sometimes we just look at each other, the dark-eyed boy and me, and sometimes we talk.

The dark-eyed boy doesn’t like April either. I can tell that by the way he screws up his face when I say her name.

 

My brother Jack is younger than me and he was born here in Grymewyck. Jack is only my half brother really and he has blond hair and blue eyes just like April.

All the Siwards have blond hair and blue eyes, even my grandfather who is really old now.

‘You and I are real Siwards,’ April tells Jack. ‘The Siwards are descended from the Vikings.’

She strokes Jack’s blond hair when she says this.

‘What are Vikings?’ I ask.

 

‘My warrior lord died yesterday, his spirit passed away.

Today they’ll float the funeral pyre, on longboats lit by blazing fire.’

 

April’s a show off. She got that out of my book of children’s verse and it is the worst poem in the whole book. I could write a better poem than that, and one day I will. I already know more about poetry than April does even though I am only six.

‘What are Vikings?’ I ask again.

‘The Vikings came to Grymewyck from across the sea,’ says April. ‘They had blond hair and blue eyes and the men had horns.’

‘They sound horrible. Am I descended from Vikings too?’

‘Hardly,’ says April. ‘I dread to think where you came from, Ophelia. Gypsies, probably.’

April says where people come from is important. She calls it breeding, and she is a big fan of the royal family.

My brother is called John William George Edward after the kings of England but everyone calls him Jack. I just have the one name. Ophelia.

I was born in Egypt during the war but I don’t remember it. After Egypt we came to Grymewyck because my father was broke. This means he didn’t have any money. My Grymewyck grandmother says it is a blessing we came back because Egypt is full of foreigners and she would have been worried sick.

It is really April who doesn’t like being in Grymewyck, even though she was born here. My father doesn’t mind where he lives as long as he gets his Senior Service cigarettes and can go to the pub. This is what my Grymewyck grandmother says anyway.

My grandfather put a kitchen and a bathroom in the old hay barn for us, which is where we live now. It is quite like a house really, with a proper fireplace and three bedrooms, but you can still tell it was a barn. It is even called The Barn.

The trouble with a barn is that it has no proper floors or ceilings, just wooden boards. In the bedroom where Jack and I sleep we can hear everything that happens downstairs, which is usually my father and April quarrelling. If they are standing right underneath one of the gaps we can sometimes see the tops of their heads as well.

‘I hope you’re not thinking of going to the pub, Toby.’

‘I can’t stay here night after night listening to you ranting. I need friends.’

‘Friends! Those yokels you drink with aren’t friends. They’re laughing at you. They’re laughing at me too.’

April has a thing about people laughing at her and she doesn’t like my father having friends in the village because she thinks they talk about her behind her back.

‘April, if I have to live in this dump I need friends.’

‘And do you know why you have to live in this dump? It’s because you are too useless to live anywhere else. You are useless. Useless. Useless.’

 This is what April always calls my father when they argue and she always grins a horrible grin when she says it.

‘April, please don’t start. The children will hear.’

‘The children! I’m rotting away in this dump because of those children. You are so bloody useless.’

April never just says things when they argue, she shouts them. My father hates this so he gets his own back by saying nasty things himself, very quietly, which makes my stepmother shout even louder.

‘Control yourself. You’re sounding like the common little peasant’s daughter you are.’

‘I’ll have you know that my family have Viking blood in their veins.’

‘Your family are peasants.’

‘How dare you!’

This is another of April’s favourites…

‘How dare you! My parents have put a roof over your head, which is more than your own mother did. Lady Gunn my foot! Lady Muck more like.’

My father gets really angry when April says nasty things about his mother and his eyes go all small and scary.

‘My family had ambition, which is more than can be said for your family. The Siwards have been rolling rocks around this God forsaken hillside for a thousand years and it’s what they’ll still be doing in a thousand years time.’

Sometimes April attacks my father with her fists. When she does this he grabs her by the wrists and throws her onto the sofa, and then he goes to the pub.

 

I like it much better at my grandparents’ house and when April and my father are fighting really badly this is where I go.

‘They’re at it again,’ I tell my grandparents, ‘I think they’re going to kill each other this time.’

‘Have you had anything to eat today, child?’ asks my aunt May.

May is April’s sister and she is much nicer than April. She is a spinster, which means she hasn’t found a husband yet, and she lives in the farmhouse with my grandparents. May always gives me and Jack food when we go there because April doesn’t cook.

‘April says it’s not her job to look after me because I’m somebody else’s bastard,’ I say, ‘April says she wishes I had never been born.’

‘April needs her backside tanning,’ says May, ‘She’s not fit to be looking after children, and that’s the fact of the matter.’

 

The best thing about Grymewyck is helping Percy Hammer in the hay field. Percy has worked for my grandfather since he left school and he shears the sheep and mends the stone walls, and he helps to milk my grandfather’s nine cows. Nine cows seem like a lot to me but Percy says it is not, not compared with some farms.

My grandfather is horrid to Percy and says: ‘Look sharp!’ and ‘Stir yourself!’ He never says thank you. May laughs at Percy and calls him a daft ha’p’orth and April calls him an uncouth creature.

Once my father borrowed half a crown from Percy for his cigarettes and there was a big row about it. My grandfather paid back the half crown and told Percy not to lend my father any more money.

May really likes Percy. She says that when God created angels he was just practising before he made Percy Hammer. This is a funny thing for May to say because Percy isn’t a bit like an angel to look at. He is tall and bony with big teeth and thick hair that looks like hay, but he laughs a lot and he listens.

Jack and I trail around after Percy for hours just telling him things while he listens. Perhaps that is what proper angels do. They listen.

When I tell Percy about April wanting to kill me he stops sweeping the yard and scratches his head.

‘Get away with you,’ he says, ‘You’re having me on.’

‘April says that if she put a pillow over my head while I was asleep nobody would be any the wiser.’

‘If April says anything like that again, you go straight to your grandfather,’ says Percy, ‘It’s no good it coming from me. They think nothing of me.’

It is true what he says. No one thinks anything of Percy.

Percy’s mother has knitted him a green jumper but my grandmother won’t allow him in the house when he is wearing it because green is her unlucky colour so Percy has to eat his sandwiches in the yard.

 

I really like being at the farmhouse with my grandparents but usually April comes and spoils it. We know it is her even before she comes into the room because she always slams the front door and then we hear her stamping up the passage.

‘Mother, have you seen Toby?’

This happens all the time. April is horrible to my father when he is with her but when he isn’t with her she thinks he has run away.

‘Did you give Toby any money, mother?’

My grandmother hangs her head.

‘I lent him half a crown for his cigarettes.’

‘We’ll not see that again,’ says my grandfather and spits into the fire.

But we all know it is not really the cigarette money April cares about.

‘Did you give him any more than that, mother?

April thinks my father has borrowed money to run away.

Poor daddy. She hates him because he hasn’t got any money but she doesn’t want him to have any in case he uses it to escape.

If he did run away I wouldn’t blame him a bit.

 

My real mother

 

April has forbidden me to talk about my real mother, but when April isn’t there I talk about Maisie all the time.

‘What does Maisie do?’ I ask my father.

We are lying on our backs in the long grass at the bottom of the garden. He is hiding from April and I am looking up at the sky through the branches of the big sycamore tree.

‘I told you what she does. Maisie’s an actress and during the war she travelled all over the world and gave concerts for the soldiers.’

‘Is Maisie beautiful?’

My father sighs because I have asked the same question a hundred times before.

‘Your mother is a very beautiful lady.’

‘Like Vera Lynn?’

‘Much more beautiful than Vera Lynn.’

‘Tell me what Maisie looks like?’

I ask him this all the time.

‘She’s got auburn hair and green eyes, just like you.’

‘Is that why you gave her the box of chocolates when I was born, because she looked like the woman on the lid?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Where is Maisie now?’

This is the question my father never answers.

‘That’s enough,’ he says, and looks round nervously. ‘This conversation must be our little secret, Ophelia. We don’t want to upset April. She does try to be a good stepmother to you.’

I want to know everything there is know about my real mother, but I can see my father is getting cross so I try to forget about Maisie by counting the leaves on the tree. I concentrate so hard the leaves start to go fuzzy at the edges and melt into the sky so all I am left with is an empty white space.

It would be good if I could magic other things away as easily. If only I could make April disappear just by looking at her. And it would be really, really good if I could make Maisie come back.

I stare hard at the white space without blinking and try to hold on to it for as long as possible, but then it vanishes and I am looking up into the tree branches again. My father sighs and reaches for his cigarettes, groping around for them in the grass without bothering to turn over.

He and April have had another fight and it was a really bad one this time. April scratched my father’s face and there is blood all over his collar. They were fighting about Maisie. April called my mother a common tart, and my father said it takes one to know one. I think April is just jealous.

Sometimes April and my father argue about my other grandmother in London. My London grandmother has no home now and my father wants her to come and live with us at The Barn, but April says over her dead body.

One day soon my father will be rich. He will be very rich and very soon, but first he needs to find some capital. I don’t exactly know what capital is.

My father is going to leave Grymewyck but this is our secret and I am not allowed to tell April. He is going to take me with him and we will be going any day now. Perhaps tomorrow. My father says we will probably go to London and I ask him if we can go and live with Maisie but he just sighs.

‘Try to forget about Maisie.’ he says.

Then I ask if we can stay with Charles and Pearl and he sighs again and blows a little smoke ring. He says he hasn’t heard from Charlie Manners for ages, not since they were in the army together, and he has no idea what happened to Pearl Bonnet.

A precious pearl with a heart of gold, that is what my father calls Pearl Bonnet. And he tells me something else. Pearl Bonnet is rich.

My father says he will get in touch with Pearl very soon, perhaps tomorrow, and then he runs out of cigarettes and sends me to the village shop to buy some more. He must have borrowed another half crown from my grandmother because he tells me to go the long way round through the boggy field so as not to be seen from the farmhouse.

‘Can I have a liquorice bootlace?’

‘It must be our little secret,’ he says with a crooked little smile.