I thought I’d just start with my first six questions and see what happened from there.

All three of us agreed that living with other people was a bit weird, because every family and every house seemed to have its own strangeness about it. Ruthy said the Hodgesons were pretty clean generally, but not as fussy as Mum, and that Mr Hodgeson missed the toilet bowl quite a lot and left bits of beard in the sink when he shaved. Ruthy had taken to tearing off bits of toilet paper and covering the seat and the floor where her feet would touch the ground before she sat down. This had resulted in her completely blocking the toilet one night so nothing would flush, and Brother Hodgeson had to kneel down with a big rubber plunger to unblock it. He didn’t get cross though, which was quite relieving, and Ruthy was secretly glad he had to kneel on his own urine dribbles to fix it, because this seemed a bit like justice.

We kids would meet in the ladies’ toilets at the meeting on Sundays to swap stories, and sometimes Ruthy cried, which made me cry, and we both wished we could just go home and it would be like it used to be.

Aunty Maisie caught us crying one Sunday, and issued an ultimatum that we were not to speak to each other during the week because I upset the little ones. This meant we had to save everything up for small pieces of time on Sundays and had to find hidey places to meet where we wouldn’t be overheard. The best place was behind the store shed in the carpark, and all three of us would run there when we got a chance to see if one of the others was free.

Ruthy’s other big problem, besides the bathroom situation, was her writing. It was lovely at first to be given books and pens, but the Hodgesons nagged her to read her notebooks to them. This was definitely not allowed. We had a big rule that no one ever opened Ruthy’s notebooks, and even I didn’t disobey, although to be honest that was largely because I just wasn’t that interested. She started to worry that they snuck in and read them when she was asleep or playing outside. This became a constant worry for her.

She decided to set a test to see if she was right. The first thing she did was to find a hiding place for her notebooks. This wasn’t an easy thing to do in a house you don’t know, because it was hard to work out what the Hodgesons might use regularly.

She wasn’t going to school, so she couldn’t ask a friend to look after them for her. In the end, I asked Anne King if she would care for Ruthy’s books, and she said of course she would. Ruthy and I agreed she was trustworthy. We met behind the store shed one Sunday for the handover, and Anne offered to cut her wrist a bit if Ruthy wanted to do the same to make a blood oath, but Ruthy said that was okay, she trusted her. I find a bit of blood quite interesting, but it makes Ruthy queasy.