Today is a Tuesday. She is lying on her bed, arms and legs stretched out by her sides. Her eyes are closed, but – every few minutes, as if to show that she’s alive, she opens them. She stares blearily at the ceiling. Her window is open, and the room is bright: she likes this. The light assures her that it is still day. There is still time, she thinks, to write. Later. There is always later. And there will be biscuits for tea, and tomato juice. Lucy loves tomato juice.

The diary is by her bed, open at a random page. Open; and the daylight exposes Lucy’s writing. As she opens her eyes she sits up, just slightly, and she sees it. It hurts her. She drops back onto the bed, doesn’t let herself move. She has to do this, she thinks. Knowing that she could move if she wanted to – that she is holding herself back rather than surrendering – soothes her. She opens her eyes again and forces herself to look at the diary again. It’s painful, indecent, but she needs that. She needs familiarity. Getting the diary, she thinks. Her father’s expectant smile. The utter and complete wrongness of it all; she remembers, and she wants to lock herself into her room again. She wants to break down into immature sobs, because she is a spoilt brat and she doesn’t care. She wants to wake up and write in the diary and hate it, hate it, hate it. She wants to write everything down, everything she’s ever felt, and she wants to never stop writing. She wants to become addicted to it. She wants to learn to take it everywhere with her, secretly hating it all the while. She wants to treat it with that extra violence, as if the diary stands for everything in her which she hates. She wants the embarrassment of having it found, one day – of having it handed to her in an office which smells of damp, while the teacher looks pityingly at her. She wants their concern, because they have read one entry and understood nothing. She wants the hidden, terrible sense of victory; the pride because she has won over the diary, because they have read it and owned it and stolen her responsibility. She wants... she wants too many things, and she will get none of them.

I want never gets, she thinks, and she very nearly laughs.