I wonder if I will ever get to Number 5 with a boy again.

Oh and here’s Cain’s silly poem.

I’ll tear it up.

No, I won’t. I might save it to use in a performance sometime.

Oh and here’s the letter I wrote to Alex the Good last term and never posted.

Dear Alex,

It was really nice to see you last weekend and to talk about theater. I love the theater. It’s great, isn’t it? I think if I could just be on the stage all the time I would be truly happy. Not all the time, I mean I’d like to do other things. Like sleep and go shopping and so on. But apart from that do you . . .

I didn’t get any further than that. Just as well I didn’t send it to him because he would have probably read it out to his floaty girlfriend, Candice.

How come I can’t be like Candice?

All floaty.

I suppose I could get a floaty top from Skipley. I think I will.

I’ve eaten snail shells

THE TREE SISTERS ARE still under house arrest. And they’re not allowed out at the weekend.

At break on Friday, after a read-through of the banquet scene in The Taming of the Shrew with Dr. Lightowler (who made me be the half-witted manservant), Flossie said, “If I don’t get out of this goddam hellhole, Miss Lullah, well, I just gonna go plum crazee. I ache for the touch of a maaaan. Why, I even found mahself axing Bob if he’d thought about growing a li’l mustache cos I thought it would suit him real fine.”

This can’t go on. Somebody is going to snap. Jo keeps gazing at the boy-shaped hole in the potting-shed roof. She says it makes her feel nearer to Phil.

At the end of the day, Jo went off to the loos and came back all dressed in black with dark glasses on. She said, “I’m giving myself up to the Camp Commander. I can’t stand it anymore. Don’t try and stop me.”

When she said “Camp Commander,” I thought she meant Monty, but she was talking about Sidone.

We persuaded her to wait it out. They couldn’t keep the whole dorm cooped up forever.

Vaisey said, “Come on, how bad can things get? It’s just staying in a bit, isn’t it? We’re not being tortured.”

At which point, Dr. Lightowler came beaking along. “You girls on remand, no TV tonight. Instead we are experimenting with living as the Brontës did. Go and see what you can find in the garden to cook for supper and then it’s a magic lantern show.”

Poor Tree Sisters.

As I headed home for the weekend, they all waved sadly as Bob handed out the trowels. I was going through the main doors to lope off when Lav came up to me. Swishing her coppery hair about.

She looks like she wears makeup, but I don’t think she does. I think she’s just got that kind of perfect skin. The kind of skin that you really wish would have a spot on it.