Dear Mummy,

Here it is, the first ‘official’ letter that you will actually receive in the post. (Though I’m going to put all the ones I’ve written so far in the envelope too so you’ll have loads to read!)

Anyway, because this is your first proper letter I wanted it to be a good one. The others that I’ve already written are all a bit sad and I’m crying in most of them but this one is going to be happy because yesterday I had a really happy day. Let me tell you about it.

Well, we went on a school trip to a museum in London, but it wasn’t an ordinary museum full of stuffy old furniture and oil paintings, no, this museum was filled with blood and bodies.

I’ve found that if I concentrate on things that really interest me then it doesn’t hurt as much – by ‘it’ I mean not being with you and Daddy – and the thing that interests me at the moment is blood. Not like gruesome, horror-film blood, but real blood. I bet you’re wondering why I’m so interested in it, well I’ll tell you. A couple of weeks ago I had the worst nosebleed ever. I woke up in the night and my pillow was all wet so I jumped out of bed, turned the light on and looked in the mirror. At first I was scared because it looked like I’d been in an accident or something but then I ran the water in the sink and started to wash my face and as the blood mixed with the water it made the most beautiful pattern. It made me think about the colours inside our bodies and how they are much more interesting than our boring skin colours. Anyway, ever since that night I have wanted to find out more about blood, and in this amazing museum it was everywhere.

A man called Charles showed us around. He was the head curator and had studied at Cambridge, which is this amazing university. The others were bored and kept tutting and rolling their eyes at him. They just wanted to go and buy rubbish in the souvenir shop and eat chips in the cafe but I stuck with Charles. He was really friendly and answered all my questions. I found out that in scientific language dead bodies are known as cadavers. I even saw one. It was preserved in a liquid called formaldehyde (I copied that word in my notebook so I would remember how to spell it) and all the blood had been drained from it. I don’t know whether you are aware of it, Mummy, but a body without blood is very drab and boring, it just looks like a piece of old cardboard. Blood is what makes us beautiful, Charles said, and I agree with him. He also said that science was all about moving from darkness into the light and as I walked around the museum, looking at all the amazing displays, that is exactly how I felt.

Next he showed me a shelf that was filled with tiny vials of blood, all a different shade. One was almost black. It was so wonderful. I just stood there staring at them. I really wanted to pick one of them up – the scarlet one – and dip my finger into it, but Charles was standing next to me the whole time. Anyway, these things were rare artefacts. I could have been thrown out if I’d tampered with them, or worse, I could have been sent to prison!

Anyway, the best bit for me, after the blood, was this amazing book by a man called William Hunter. I wrote down the name of the book carefully as I wanted to remember it for ever. It was called ‘The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus’ and it was made in 1774. ‘Even before I was born,’ said Charles. He was very funny. Anyway, this book had lots of drawings, hundreds of them, showing the inside of a woman’s body when a baby’s inside it. And oh my goodness Mummy it was gruesome and lovely all at the same time. The baby was squeezed into this tiny space, its head facing downwards and its bottom in the air and there was no room to move. But the weirdest thing about this drawing for me was that the artist, Mr Hunter, had chopped off the woman’s legs so they looked like two bits of meat, like the disgusting lamb chops they serve us for dinner here.

And then I felt sorry for the upside down baby because it was just like me, all alone. I asked Charles if I could see another page but the book was kept under glass and nobody was allowed to touch it in case it fell apart. So I just stayed there for the rest of the afternoon looking at that baby and wondering why Mr Hunter had made its mother dead.

Please write back.

Or just copy down the address at the top of this letter and come and find me.

I love you.

Your lovely daughter xxx