Saturday 7th January

 Jane never understood a lot of things until she was older, (not like Harriet who saw through things straight away) and as each few years passed she realised a few more.  She never felt, for example, that they were privileged, comfortably off, fortunate never to have to really worry about money, though she later understood that her father must have had to worry all the time; he was good at hiding it; that was all.  He was good at hiding everything though, especially his emotions, and because he hid his worry, always maintaining a calm exterior for the world to see, the girls in their turn never had to worry.  They just took it (and him) for granted, and their mother too with that air of absent-mindedness, as if she was wandering in a permanent daze.  As small girls they never thought about money, or how it was got, or how it was spent, how it grew in some people’s hands and slid away like water in others. That would all come later, but when they were little they just thought everyone else must be like their family.

They lived in quite a big house, but then they never knew anything else, so they never appreciated it at the time. By the time Jane went to prep school she was so used to it, and everyone else at that school came from similar backgrounds so the thought never arose.  It was only when she went to Grammar School and met a few (and not as many as you would have thought) kids from the council houses, that she began to see the way the world divides up its spoils, how some are favoured and others are not.  And even then it didn’t really strike home, she didn’t make close friends with any of those girls, she still referred to them as ‘other girls’; she still clung to her own peer group, the safe world she came from.  It wasn’t until she became a teenager that any thoughts of social justice or poverty or the unfairness of it all ever came to the surface of her consciousness.

*  * *

‘Oh Jane was such a dull old thing sometimes’, thought Harriet; ‘she had to tell her everything, she really had no idea.  She could never work things out for herself, she always had to be shown.’  Harriet didn’t really mind, Jane was quite a quick learner in her way, and she always did what Harriet wanted so that suited her anyway.  But she had these strange ideas about fairness, and how things should be the same for everyone, whereas Harriet knew the world was out there just waiting for her to come along and grab it.  It seemed to her that the cleverer and quicker you were the more of the world you would get, if Jane wanted to sit there and wait for the good fairy to wave her wand and make it all beautiful that was up to her but Harriet wouldn’t wait around for her that was all.  At school Jane never asked questions, she just sat there and took it all in, like some silly dummy.  Harriet knew the answers almost before teacher had asked the questions and was always first with her hand up.  But it really annoyed her sometimes when even if she was the only girl in the whole class with her hand up, the only one who knew, teacher would say in her prissy condescending little voice, “Yes, I know you know the answer Harriet, I am just waiting for someone else to put their hand up.”   ‘What?’ thought little Harriet, ‘I mean, are you stupid or something?  Are you as stupid as all these other fools in the class?  I am the clever one, I know far more than all these idiots, why don’t you ask me the answer?  Well, if you are going to be like that about it I won’t bother anymore.  I won’t answer your stupid questions, even if you ask me.  I really don’t need you to tell me I am clever anyway.  I know that already.’

But being top of the class was important to her, and she made sure she always was.  First in English, first in Maths, gold stars all over her books, little rows of red ticks, that’s what she liked to see.  And her report every year, with words like ‘Excellent Progress’, and ‘Well Behaved’ suited her just fine because Jane had ‘Must Try Harder’ and ‘Lacks Concentration’ all over hers.  She used to watch her sometimes when she came to pick her up if her own class finished early, there she would be her head propped up on her elbow just staring out of the window, in a constant sleepy daze, ‘I mean what was she thinking about, just looking out of the window at a lot of boring fields and trees.’