Shrinking Violet

For my niece, Anna Ure, and for Susanna Buxton, who both helped.

Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Shrinking Violet

Also by Jean Ure

Copyright

About the Publisher

Shrinking Violet

I am a twin. Unfortunately! It is not always easy, being a twin. People expect you to:

look alike

think alike

dress alike

talk alike.

They also expect you to:

sit together

walk together

play together

and

LOVE EACH OTHER TO BITS.

Some twins, I suppose, might do all these things. We don’t! We try our hardest not to.

My twin is called Lily. I am called Violet.

Spot the difference! We are not identical. If anyone thinks we are, it is because they have not looked properly. “Oh! (they go) They are like two peas in a pod! How ever do you tell them apart?”

LOOK AT THE PICTURES. That is what I say.

Lily says you would have to be blind to mistake her for me. But just to make sure, we always try to wear different clothes. When we can! Like, for instance, Lily will wear black jeans and I will wear red ones. She will wear an orange top and I will wear a white one. We can’t do this at school because of the uniform, but most people at school have learnt to tell us apart. They know that Lily is the LOUD one and I am the quiet one. It’s only, sometimes, new teachers that get us in a muddle. But not for long. If one of us is shrieking, they know at once that it is Lily!

Dad calls her Lily Loudmouth because of all the noise she makes. He claps his hands to his ears and goes, “Here comes Lily Loudmouth!” She loves to dance, and sing along to her favourite music. I do, too, but I only do it when I am at home. Lily does it all over. At home, at school, in the street, in the shopping mall … everywhere! I would be too embarrassed.

Dad teases me and says I am a shrinking violet. Mum says I live too much in Lily’s shadow. Lily just says I am a twonk.

Twinkle twonkle, little Vi, How I really wonder why Lily’s brash and you are shy!

This is a rhyme that I made up, but it is in my Secret Filofax that I keep locked with a key. The key hangs round my neck on a special silver chain. I wouldn’t want anyone reading the things that I keep in my Filofax! Also, I hate it if people call me Vi. I only did it for the rhyme. Violet is bad enough, but Vi is the pits.

The reason we’ve got these weird names is that Mum is a huge gardening person and her two most favourite flowers just happen to be the dear little shrinking violet and a great big blustering lily thing that is covered in spots and grows about eight feet tall.

How she got to be Lily and I got to be Violet was just a mistake. I was supposed to be Lily! I was born first (by five whole minutes) and L comes before V in the alphabet so Lily was going to be me. But what with us being twins, and all babies looking the same anyway, Mum went and got us mixed up. Our nan – Big Nan – had knitted this cute little violet suit for one of us and a sweet little white one for the other, and Mum dressed us in the wrong ones! The only way that she could tell which of us was which when we were first born was by this brown birthmark thingie, in other words spot, that Lily has on her bottom, if you will excuse the expression. It is just as well we have now grown up to look so different because who would want to keep gazing at Lily’s, pardon me, bottom all the time? Ugh! Yuck! What a sight!

On the day of the christening, Mum says she was in such a flap, “I couldn’t remember which of you had the spot on her bot!”

Then she laughs like she thinks it’s really funny. Imagine! A mum not being able to tell her own babies apart! But I was the one that had to suffer. I mean … Violet. It’s a granny name. Well past its sellby date. Lily, I think, is quite cool, though Lily herself disagrees.

“Lily! Yuck. It’s like skimmed milk … all white and flabby.”

Dad once said that we should count our blessings. He said just think how much worse it could have been.

“Imagine if your mum’s favourite flowers were nasturtium or geranium!”

Except that then I could have been Geranium, shortened to Gerry, which would be neat, and she could have been Nasturtium, shortened to Nasty. Which would suit her!

She’s all right really, I suppose. Sometimes she can be quite nice, like when our cat Horatio went missing and I thought we’d never see him again and I cried and cried and couldn’t stop. She put her arms round me and said, “Don’t cry, Violet! He’ll come back.” Of course we were only little, then. It’s as we’ve got older that she’s got horrid. Mum says ten is a bad age. She says, “When I was young you didn’t start throwing tantrums till you were twelve or thirteen. Now it’s happening when you’re ten.”

She said it the other day when Lily went into a simply tremendous sulk about not being allowed to go to a party wearing a skirt that didn’t even cover her knickers. Mum and Lily are always having battles over stuff that Lily wants to wear and that Mum doesn’t think is suitable. The reason I don’t have battles isn’t that I’m a goody goody, which is what Lily says, it is just that I would be too shy. Like with singing and dancing in Tesco’s! She swung upside down on a handrail the other day, in full view of absolutely everyone. I just nearly died! But Lily is a natural show off. She will probably be a movie star when she is older.

Well, anyway, that is about me and Lily. Now a bit about Horatio, that is our cat. Horatio is what Mum calls “a grand old gentleman”. He is two years older than Lily and me! Black, with a white bib.

Horatio is a good cat. He is a kind cat. Once when I was ill in bed he came and snuggled under the duvet with me and stayed there till I was better. I thought that was so sweet of him! Dad laughs and says, “Don’t kid yourself! He just knows when he’s on to a good thing.” But that isn’t true! He didn’t go and cuddle with Lily when she was ill. Just with me because he knows how much I love him.

So. That is Horatio. Now Mum and Dad. Dad is a computer person. I am not quite sure what he does exactly, but he goes into his office every day and does it and it seems to make him happy. Mum is a flower person. She has this flower shop called Flora Green, with a dear little green van with flowers painted on it. Really cute! Sometimes, if Dad is in a rush, she takes me and Lily to school in it. Lily grumbles that it is seriously uncool, being taken to school in a van, but this is because her best friends that she hangs out with, Sarah in a Whittington and Francine Church, are really posh and would think a van beneath them. I don’t care about such things as I don’t have any posh friends and so it doesn’t bother me. I like Mum’s flowery van!

Lily has lots of friends. Sarah and Francine are her best ones, but there is also Ayesha and Haroula and Debbie and Jessica. Lily is tremendously popular.

On account of being silly and shrinking, I am not very good at making friends. I get nervous and blurt out the first thing that comes into my head, which is not always the best thing. Like one day when Ayesha said to me that she was going to go on a diet and lose weight.

“But I’m going to do it sensibly,” she said. “Just a bit at a time. I don’t want to lose too much all at once.”

You will never believe what I said! I said, “No, ’cos that would look silly with a great fat face.”

I didn’t mean to be rude, or to upset her. It just, like, burst out of me before I could stop it. I couldn’t understand why she went off in a huff and wouldn’t speak to me, not even when we were put as partners for gym. It was Lily who told me.

“You said she had a great fat face!”

“I didn’t!” I said.

“You did, too,” said Lily. “You said if she lost too much weight it would look silly with a great fat face!”

“Oh, dear,” said Mum.

I was so ashamed! I am always doing this kind of thing. Another thing I do, I drop stuff and smash stuff. Like I dropped Haroula’s genuine Victorian glass bubble with a snowstorm inside it that she’d inherited from her great grandmother. It was a family heirloom and I went and dropped it! Fortunately it didn’t break, it just rolled over the floor, but a huge groan went up, like everyone was thinking, “Trust her!”

Like another time when we’d been told to clear the stuff off our dinner plates into one bin and chuck plastic pots, etc., into another, and I got confused and put it all in the same bin and Lily said, “You would, wouldn’t you?”

This is the sort of person I am, and that is why I am not very good at making friends. When I do, it is mostly just one at a time; not hordes, like Lily.

I used to be best friends with a girl called Greta. We did everything together and I really missed her when she went back to America with her mum and dad. We wrote to each other for a while. I quite enjoyed writing letters, but after a bit it sort of faded out. Like I would write a really long letter, and Greta would just send back a postcard, and then I would write again and for weeks and weeks she wouldn’t bother and then it would be just another card, or maybe an e-mail. Hi! How R U? NY is fab! Will write soon. Luv & xxx Greta.

In the end we stopped altogether. I suppose we didn’t really have all that much in common is what it came down to. It was all right while we could do things together, but Greta wasn’t really a word person. Lots of people aren’t. Dad isn’t. Lily isn’t. Mum isn’t. I am the only one in the family!

Anyway, all that was in Year 5. Now we’d moved up to Year 6 and I was sort of going round with this girl called Pandora who is very good-natured and pretty but quite honestly not the brightest. I am not being horrible here, I am just telling it like it is. She is one of those people, she is so sweet and innocent she would trust just about anybody. Like she would take sweets from strangers and go jumping into cars unless there was someone to watch over her. So I was kind of watching over her because I mean someone had to and I didn’t have anyone else. To be friends with, I mean.

Well, apart from this girl called Yvonne that I sometimes hung out with, but she is quite bad-tempered and also bossy, and in spite of being shrinking I don’t like people bossing me and pushing me around. Plus sometimes she makes Pandora cry by saying these really mean things to her, so I only hung with Yvonne on days when Pandora wasn’t there or when I was feeling strong enough to stand up to her. We certainly didn’t see each other out of school.

I didn’t really see anyone out of school. Me and Greta used to meet up sometimes, but now I just did things on my own. Usually on a Saturday I’d go and help Mum in Flora Green. I enjoyed watering all the plants out in the yard, and arranging the cut flowers in their buckets. I didn’t even mind stacking flower pots or sweeping the floor. Lily wouldn’t be seen dead in there! She would be scared her posh friends might catch sight of her. But most often she was out doing things with them, anyway. They rode their ponies in the park, or went ice skating or slept over at each other’s houses. Lily has this really full social calendar. Her life is a whirl!

Sometimes I used to wish that my life could be like Lily’s. I used to wish it so much. Dad always said that I was his little stay-at-home while Lily was Miss Gad About. I always pretended that I thought it was funny and that I didn’t mind. I even pretended it to myself.

It is silly, pretending things to yourself.

One day near the start of the spring term Lily came home all excited because Sarah’s mum, who is something important to do with TV, had said that Sarah could invite some of her friends to visit the set of Riverside.

“She said we could go next Saturday, so is that all right, Mum? It is all right, isn’t it? Sarah’s mum will take us there and bring us back, so can I say I’ll go?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Mum. “Who else is going?”

“Just me and Sarah, and Francie and Hara. Debbie was going to, but she can’t.”

“So what about Violet?” said Mum.

There was a pause. I felt my cheeks go tingly. I did wish Mum wouldn’t!

“She didn’t invite Violet,” said Lily. “Just me. ’Cos I’m Sarah’s friend.”

“I wouldn’t want to, anyway,” I said.

Well, I wouldn’t! Not with Lily and her crowd. They’re all loud and shrieking, just like Lily. And they don’t really like me, they think I’m freaky.

“Wouldn’t want to?” said Mum. “But you’re such a fan! Even more than Lily is!”

“But she hasn’t been invited” said Lily. “Not just anyone can go. You have to be asked.”

“Well, I’m sure Sarah would ask her if she knew what a fan she was. After all, she is your twin!”

Lily set her jaw in that way that she does, like it’s made out of cement, or something. I felt myself shrivel. Mum does this to me, sometimes. She tries to push me in where I’m not wanted. It gets Lily so mad! And it gets me all hot and embarrassed.

“Mum, it’s all right,” I said. “I’ve got to help you in the shop.”

“You haven’t got to help me in the shop,” said Mum. “I’m very grateful when you do, but it seems a shame to miss out on other things. A visit to Riverside! And if Debbie can’t go —”

“That isn’t any reason for her to come.”

Mum said, “Lily!”

“Well, it isn’t,” muttered Lilly. “People don’t have to invite her just ’cos they’ve invited me. Just ’cos we came out the same egg doesn’t mean we have to do everything together all the time!”

“You don’t do anything together any of the time,” said Mum. “I just thought, this once —”

“But I don’t want to go!” I snatched up Horatio and buried my face in his fur. “Mm … yum yum,” I mumbled, nibbling at him with my lips.

“Stinking swizzlesticks, you’re disgusting!” said Lily.

She could talk! I’ve seen her doing things that are far more disgusting than chumbling in Horatio’s fur. I’ve seen her chewing her toenails. That is gross!

Later that day I heard Mum and Dad discussing me. They were in the kitchen and didn’t know I was there. Well, I wasn’t actually there, exactly. I mean, I wasn’t sitting in a cupboard or anything. What it was, I was outside the door, about to go in, when I heard Mum say “too much in Lily’s shadow” and I immediately froze.

I heard Mum say about Lily going off with her friends, and me not going anywhere. Then Dad said, “She’s my little shrinking violet,” and Mum said, “But she ought to have friends!” And then a tap started running, and the sound got blotted out, and next thing I heard was Dad saying something about chat rooms.

“That way, she could meet someone with her own interests … that’s what she needs! Someone to share her interests with.”

“Not in a chat room,” said Mum.

Dad said, “Oh, come on! We’d monitor her.”

“No,” said Mum. “No way!”

She’d read this horror story just a few days ago about a young girl being picked up (in a chat room) by this middle-aged man pretending to be a fifteen-year-old boy. Lily had said boastfully that that could never happen to her. She’d soon suss him out! But Mum was now convinced that all chat rooms were full of middle-aged men in mackintoshes (I don’t know why she thought they were in mackintoshes), all looking for young girls and pretending to be fifteen years old. She had forbidden Lily to go anywhere near one.

She said to Dad, “If I’m not letting Lily visit one, I’m certainly not letting Violet!”

I wondered if this meant that Mum cared more about me than she did about Lily, or whether it simply meant she thought that I was more stupid than Lily and more likely to be deceived by the men in mackintoshes.

Probably she thought that I was more stupid, although in fact it is Lily who talks to strangers, not me. Lily talks to people everywhere she goes. In the supermarket, in buses, on trains. She just strikes up these conversations. I would be too shy! I was really relieved when Mum stood up to Dad and said no way. I didn’t want to visit any chat rooms! It would be too much like actually meeting people; I would get tongue-tied and not know what to say.

But then Mum had an even worse idea. Worse even than Dad’s!

“Maybe we could find some sort of club.”

I thought, No! Please! We’d already tried a club. An after-school club. I’d hated it! Lily had immediately made about twenty new friends and I’d just sat in the corner like a droopy pot plant waiting for Mum and Dad to come and pick us up.

“Maybe on her own,” said Mum, “without Lily …”

It is true that I tend to get a bit crushed by Lily. She is so loud, and so bouncy! She bursts through doors like she’s jet-propelled.

And then it is all shrieking and screeching and stinking swizzlesticks. (Her favourite expression for this term.) It is very difficult, when you are a shrinking kind of person, to have a twin that is so noisy. Everyone expects you to be the same.

Actually, it’s funny, but no one ever expects Lily to be like me. They all expect me to be like Lily. And I can’t be! I’ve tried. It just doesn’t work. Maybe if I was on my own, people wouldn’t think it so peculiar if I was a bit quiet. But I still didn’t want to join any clubs!

I never got to hear what Dad thought of Mum’s suggestion ’cos just as he started to say something there was this loud CRASH, followed by a series of thuds and bangs, like the house was collapsing. All it was, was Lily, coming out of her bedroom and hurtling down the stairs. She always hurtles down the stairs. Dad asked her the other day if wild elephants were after her.

“Mum!” She went shrieking past me, into the kitchen. “I’ve been trying to find something to wear on Saturday and I can’t! I haven’t got anything! Mum, I need something new! I’ve got to have something new! ’Cos it’s Riverside, Mum. There might be actors! I’ve got to, Mum!”

She goes on like this all the time. Like, if she’s already been seen wearing something, she can’t possibly be seen in it again. To be seen in it again would be death. It’s what happens when you lead a mad social life.

Under cover of all the shrieking I slid into the kitchen and helped myself to a bowl of cereal, which is what I’d been going there for in the first place. I stood by the sink, munching it, while Mum and Lily got into one of their shouting matches about how many clothes a person of ten years old actually needs.

Lily yelled, “Enough so your friends don’t keep seeing you in the same old thing all the time!” To which Mum retorted, “What utter rubbish!” and told Lily that she was:

a) too obsessed with the way she looked

b) in danger of becoming shallow-minded and

c) spoilt.

Lily screeched that Mum was mean as could be. “You don’t understand what you’re doing to me! You’re ruining my life!”

This is nothing new. Dad once counted up and said that on average Lily accused Mum of ruining her life at least three times a week. Sometimes I feel like telling Lily that she is ruining my life. If she weren’t so shrieky, I might not be so shrinky. Though I suppose it is not really fair to blame Lily.

At least it got Mum off the subject of clubs. By the time she and Lily had finished yelling at each other, Mum was all hot and bothered. She said she was going to go and soak in the bath and calm herself with thoughts of grass and trees and flowers.

“And not of spoilt selfish brats!”

So that was all right. But I kept thinking about it, especially when Saturday came and Lily went swaggering off (in new jeans and a new top, which were in fact mine). I would have loved more than anything to visit the set of Riverside! But you can’t barge your way in where you’re not wanted. Sarah was Lily’s friend, not mine. I would only be a drag.

I spent most of that day helping Mum in Flora Green, but somehow it wasn’t as much fun as usual. I kept thinking of Lily, on the set of Riverside. She might even get to see Tony! (Tony is my A1 favourite character. I once wrote him a fan letter and he sent me a signed photo, which I have on my wall.) Lily doesn’t have one because she never wrote to him. She doesn’t even specially like Riverside.

When we got home that evening, Lily was already there. She’d just been dropped off by Sarah and her mum.

“Well? So how was it?” said Mum.

Lily said that it was “totally and utterly brilliant”.

“You know the Green, where Nick and Tina live? Where all the little houses are? They’re not real! I always thought they were real. But it’s just the front bits. Like you can open the gate and go up the path, but when you open the door there’s nothing on the other side! It’s absolutely amazing! And there’s all these girls going round with clipboards and stuff. They’re called PAs.” She looked at me. “I don’t expect you know what a PA is, do you?”

I shook my head.

“It’s a production assistant” said Lily, all self-important. “They help the producer. Like Sarah’s mum’s got one called Lisa. She looks like a model! She told me all what they do. It’s what I’m going to be when I grow up. I’ve decided … I’m going to be a PA!”

She strutted off round the room, holding her imaginary clipboard and an imaginary something else which she kept looking at, and frowning at, and clicking.

“This is a stop watch,” she said. “I’m timing things. It’s very important to know how long a scene will take. You have to know exactly, down to the last second. It’s for programme planning, and fitting in the commercials.”