“Don’t push him.” My voice was louder than I expected.

“What?” Lindi was as surprised as me.

“Don’t push him. You think you can do whatever you want just because you’re an eldest, but you can’t. Don’t push him.”

“Tell your middler sister to shut up, will you, Jed? Tell her to go back to her normal mousy self.”

“Lindi, don’t.” Jed reached for her hand but she twisted away.

“Don’t? I told you, Jed, I can do whatever I like, and I can say whatever I like.”

“No.” I jumped off the wall. “No you can’t. You eldests, you’re all the same. Just because you were born first everyone thinks you’re so special. Well, I don’t. Not any more. I’m going to be just as special as you. I’m going to be Mr Wetheral’s apprentice – he asked me earlier on.”

Lindi shoved her face in front of mine. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, middler. You don’t know how easy you’ve got it.”

Easy?

Easy?

I stood myself up tall. Tall as I could go.

“Easy?” I said. “You eldests get everything – big parties, the best clothes, you win all the prizes, you get praise for stuff you didn’t do, we even chant about you every day in assembly—”

“And you’d swap places, would you? Rather be an eldest? Have a good think before you answer, middler. Would you rather know that as soon as you turn fourteen you’ll be taken away from everyone you’ve ever known? Sent to camp? To train for war? Where people are going kill you if you don’t manage to kill them first? You’d swap your middler place for that, would you?”

The war. She was talking about the Quiet War.

I never really thought much about the war.

I s’pose I might, though, if I was an eldest.

“And I don’t care what the mayor tells us,” she said, her nose close to mine, her breath damp on my face, “or what our parents or our uncles or our aunts tell us – I don’t know anyone who’s ever come home from the war – do you?”

Anyone who’s ever come home?

Well, there’s … there’s… I don’t know. Can’t think. Can’t speak.

“Swap your middler place for that, would you?”

Trig, in the corner of my eye, backed towards the wall and started jogging on the spot. Jed tried to take Lindi’s hand again. She pushed him away but he was stronger. He wrapped his arms round her, pulled her towards him.

“It’ll be OK, Lindi,” he said. “We’re going together. I’ll stay with you.”

And right in front of us Lindi’s face crinkled up and she started to cry.

“Go away, Maggie,” said Jed.

“But I—”

“Just go away.”