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Chritsmas wonT be Chritsmas witout any presnets.

      MEG (sisghs) Its so daredful to be poor (looking dwon at her old dresss)

      “I can’t help it if the typewriter isn’t any good,” said Jazz. “Just get on with it! Rose, say your line.”

      “I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things and other girls having nothing at all. Well, it isn’t,” said Rose. “But that’s what happens when you live in a capitalist society.”

      “Do you mind?” Jazz glared at her sister. “Just say the lines! Don’t add bits.”

      “Well, but this Amy person does my head in,” said Rose. “Why do I have to play her?”

      “Because I’m the director and that’s who I cast you as!”

      “But I’m nothing like her,” said Rose.

      “You’re the youngest!”

      “So what? It doesn’t make me like her.”

      “Look, just shut up!” said Jazz. “You’re supposed to be acting. Injured sniff. Give an injured sniff!”

      Rose did so.

      “That was good,” said Jazz. “Daisy! Your line.”

      “We’ve g–got f–father and m–mother and e–each other,” read Daisy, haltingly, from her script.

      “Vomit,” said Rose. “This is really yucky!”

      “It’s not, it’s lovely!” said Jazz. “Don’t be so horrid! It was Mum’s favourite book when she was young.”

      “I cried buckets when I saw the film,” said Laurel.

      “You would.” Rose looked at her eldest sister, pityingly. “The only films you ever like are weepies. And sickies.”

      “I don’t like sickies!”

      “Yes, you do! You just love it if it’s about someone getting ill and dying. You wallow.”

      “Oh. I thought you meant sick like people going round murdering people. I don’t like it when they go round murdering people. I l—”

      “Look!” Jazz, impatient, stamped a foot. Daisy jumped. “Are we rehearsing Little Women or are we having a mothers’ meeting?”

      “Rehearsing Little Women,” said Daisy.

      “Thank you! That is what I thought we were doing. Can we please get on with it? We’ve only got four days!”

      They staggered on, through the script that Jazz had so laboriously typed out on the old machine in the attic. Rose kept saying Vomit and Yuck and “I’m going to be sick!” Laurel didn’t pay proper attention and kept reading stage directions and typing errors.

      “Really, girls, you are both to be balmed – balmed? Oh! You mean blamed. You are both to be blamed, beginning to lecture in her – oops! Sorry! Stage direction. You are old enough to leave off such boysih – BOYISH tricks and tobe have better. What’s tobe have b – oh! To behave better. Why do you keep splitting words up all funny?”

      “I couldn’t help it,” said Jazz. “It’s the typewriter. It keeps sticking. If you would just concentrate—”

      “It’s all yuck,” said Rose.

      Daisy was the only one who really tried, but Daisy wasn’t the most brilliant reader at the best of times. It was as much as she could do to read what Jazz had actually typed.

      “If J–Jo is a r–romboy—”

      “A romboy!” Rose threw up her hands in delight. “Jo is a romboy!”

      Jazz screamed, “Tomboy, you idiot!”

      She wasn’t screaming at Daisy; you didn’t scream at Daisy. It was that stupid Rose, always trying to be so clever.

      “What’s the matter with romboy?” said Rose. “I like it!”

      “It’s w–what it says,” stammered Daisy.

      “Look, look! What’s this word here? Clotehs.” Rose wrapped her tongue round it, lovingly. “Meg wants some new clotehs!”

      “So do I,” said Laurel. “I want a whole wardrobe of new clotehs.”

      “We could invent a language,” said Rose. “Typing Error language. Like sock would be cosk and milk would be klim and b—”

      “All right! If you don’t want to give Mum a present” – Jazz hurled her script across the floor – “then don’t give her one!” And she raced from the room, slamming the door very loudly behind her.

      There was a silence.

      “We could call it Terrol,” said Rose, brightly.

      “Call what?” said Laurel.

      “The language. Typing Error language … Terrol! Book would be boko. Foot would be foto. Hair w—”

      “Stop it,” said Laurel. “We’ve upset her.”

      “W–was it my fault?” whispered Daisy.

      “No! Of course it wasn’t.” Rose rushed fiercely to her sister’s defence. “You only read what she’d typed. You weren’t to know!”

      “We shouldn’t have fooled around,” said Laurel. Laurel was, after all, the eldest. She was fourteen. Old enough to know better.

      “Well, she’s only got herself to blame,” said Rose. “Takes everything so seriously.”

      Rose was a fine one to talk. Get her started on one of her isms and she had about as much sense of humour as a shark with a sore tooth.

      “Anyway,” said Rose, “she’s not really doing it for Mum. She’s just doing it to show off!”

      “It’s not showing off.” You had to be fair to Jazz. It was true her enthusiasms sometimes ran away with her and made her a bit domineering, but she wasn’t a show-off. “It’s very important to her,” said Laurel, “being an actress.”

      “Yes, ’cos she really really wants to go to drama school,” said Daisy. “She wants to show Mum what she can do.”

      “Don’t see how she thinks we can afford drama school if we can’t even afford proper Christmas presents!” retorted Rose.

      “She doesn’t mean fulltime,” said Laurel. “Just that little one up the road … Glenda Glade, or whatever it’s called. There’s a girl in her class goes there. Pinky Simons? The one with all the hair? She goes there twice a week. She’s done a commercial. It’s very frustrating,” said Laurel. “It’s what Jazz wants to do more than anything in the world!”

      “What, a commercial?” muttered Rose, but she was starting to look a bit shamefaced.

      “If she got a commercial,” said Laurel, “she’d probably earn enough money to pay for herself.”

      “Huh!” Rose didn’t mean to sound cynical, but how often had she heard Mum and Dad say the very same thing? If I could just get a commercial …

      “Well, I know,” said Laurel, reading Rose’s thoughts. “But she can dream!”

      Rose sighed. “I s’pose we’ll have to do it for her. Even though,” she added, with a flash of spirit, “we’d never be cast as Little Women. This was America! We’d probably have been slaves!”

      “Oh, don’t start!” begged Laurel. “Daisy, go and tell Jazz we’re sorry.”

      “Why me?” said Daisy.

      “’cos

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