My mother named me Ivy after a girl she went to school with back in France. I have brown hair and grey eyes. My teeth are uneven. I have a heart-shaped face. I apply make-up every morning, I sing out of tune and – it is true – I will never bake like a wife. I have urges other people would find horrifying. I have been working in our boutique in town for three years. I am seventeen, which means I am old enough to kill people. I’d say so anyway.

Outside it is clear today.

I polish up old brass keys on the till.

Boil the kettle.

Place a new mannequin (in a top and trousers) on display in the window. Ask anyone from here to Fountainbridge – I dress a window nice as the ones in Paris. My mother takes me there every year. We never go to the flat where she lived with her family. She still has nightmares about the Spanish influenza pandemic. She lost all of her friends. She said the government failed them all. Streets were like ghost towns. Medical workers died unprotected. The stores ran out of things people needed. Jobs and industries folded. By the end of it there was no family left for my mother at all. Because of this my brother and I mean even more to her. Whilst I do not feel certain other normal things, I feel my mother’s pain. I do not know what to say to her. She says that it will not be the only virus to take out humans. She says this won’t be the only war. I listen. That I can do. I don’t know how to comfort her. I am better with mannequins. They appeal to me. I have stuck many bobby pins in their eyes and not a complaint from one!

I am not proud of my urges. I know they are bad but it doesn’t mean I can’t use them for good. Hundreds of thousands of people have been trained to kill other people all in the name of this war. Murder is legally insisted upon by governments all over the world. Why is it that young men who kill are heroes, but a young woman who has the urge to do so is reviled? I don’t particularly want to serve my country, I think it’s run by idiots. I don’t see why the poor have to die for fights started by the rich. I want to avenge my brother. This is the way to do it. I want to see fear in the eyes of men when I take their lives. It may not be the moral high ground. I have little care for that. Killing will not be my official job description. It is what my main duty will be. I have read everything the recruiters have given me. Imagine, just a shop girl – in Paris, armed and drinking with Germans.