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with special pumps if they are too thin. The pumps will inject calories into them, as many as they want. And if they are too fat they will take the calories out. It will be a bit like the sludge-gulping machines that go round the gutters gulping sludge.

      It is interesting to speculate how people will say it when it is 2086. Will they say, twenty eighty-six? Or just eighty-six? Or will they say it in full? The year two thousand and eighty-six?

      If they are American they will probably say two thousand eighty-six without the “and”. I have noticed that Americans do this. They shorten things. Like they say math instead of maths and wash-up liquid instead of washing-up. I expect they do it to save time, as they are always frantically rushing everywhere and talking very fast and being busy.

      The way I know about this is because of Susie Smith, at school. You’d think she was American, the way she talks, but she isn’t. It’s just that she lived there for a year. So now she calls her Mum “Mom” and writes these essays about her little sister wearing diapers.

      Mrs Rowe says, “Diapers, Suzanne? What are diapers?” making like she doesn’t understand. She’s ever so English, Mrs Rowe.

      She doesn’t mind people speaking American when they are American, but she can’t stand what she calls “apeing”. But it’s difficult not to pick things up. Like when me and Sarah saw this film where people kept shouting “Way to go!” and it started us off saying it, so that whenever we met we used to yell it at each other. “Way to go!”

      We didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded good.

      We were only little, then; we were still nine. I always wanted to be nine. I don’t know why. It used to be my favourite age. And then when I got to be it, it didn’t feel all that much different from being eight, and so I decided that the next thing I wanted to be was eleven.

      I never specially wanted to be ten. Perhaps it was because ten reminded me of decimals. I hate decimals. I also hate adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing and everything that has numbers in it, including telephone numbers because I can’t ever remember them.

      Gran once told me that before I was born we didn’t have great long telephone numbers like we have now. Instead of being 020 7373, for instance, you’d be a name, like Bluebell, maybe, or Elgar. Those are the only two that I can remember, but there were lots of them. I think Bluebell and Elgar are really pretty. Much better than boring old numbers.

      Maybe that’s why I didn’t specially want to be ten. Or maybe it was because eleven was like a sort of goal. Like eleven was a really Great Age and if I got to be eleven I would have achieved something. Except that now I’m here it doesn’t seem like very much at all.

      My present ambition is to be twelve. If I get to be twelve I am going to go to Wonderland. In America. Mum has promised.

      Mum always keeps her promises; she’s really good about that. Sarah’s mum forgets. She once told Sarah she could come swimming with me and then at the last minute she said she hadn’t said it and that Sarah had to go and visit her aunt and uncle instead.

      Mum isn’t like that. She always keeps her promises. So I know I shall go to Wonderland. I’ve got to. I want to so much!

      It said in a book I read that if you want something badly enough you’ll get it, but only if you keep it in front of you the whole time, like a vision, and “work steadily towards it”. That is what I am doing. I am keeping Wonderland in front of me and I am working towards it.

      I told this to Uncle Eddy and he squeezed my hand and said, “That’s my girl! Go for it!”

      I am going for it. Definitely, absolutely, and without question. I AM GOING TO WONDERLAND. And maybe Sarah could come with us. That would be fun!

      It would be lovely if Zoë could come as well, but I know her Mum couldn’t afford it and I don’t think she’d let us pay because she’s what Mum calls “proud”. That means she doesn’t like accepting charity, even for Zoë. But I could always get Mum to ask. It would be brilliant if Zoë could come! She would be so excited and we could keep it in front of us together. That would be like double determination, and then we would be bound to go.

      If only one of them could come, it would have to be Zoë, because although Sarah is my oldest friend, and my best friend, Zoë is my special friend. And Sarah could go to Wonderland any time she wanted, so for her it wouldn’t be such a treat.

      I think it is ever so unfair that some people are rich and some people are poor. Like it is unfair that some people are born ugly and some people are born beautiful, and some are born stupid while others are born clever.

      I know what Uncle Eddy would say. He would say, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles, kiddo.”

      He is always using these quaint and colourful expressions. Sometimes I try using them in essays, but Mrs Rowe just puts big exclamation marks by them.

      All I can say is that whoever crumbles the cookies doesn’t make a very good job of it, what with big heaps here, and little heaps there, and even occasionally just crumbs.

      Even sometimes nothing at all.

      Being born, I must say, is a very strange and unsatisfactory experience. Why is it, for instance, that no one can ever remember it? You would think you would remember such an amazing event. For nine whole months you live in the dark, all warm and safe and tucked away, with nothing bad happening to you, and then quite suddenly you’re pushed out into the world in really a very brutal rough fashion, like being squeezed headfirst out of a tube, gasping for breath and wondering whatever can be going on.

      I would think it must be quite frightening. Maybe that is why you don’t remember it. Maybe it is so terrible that your brain seals it away in a little corner, never to be thought of again.

      It is spooky, when you think about it. All these poor defenceless little babies being expelled from the womb with absolutely no idea what the future is going to hold. Some people, if they knew what was going to happen to them, might not want to be born at all.

      If everyone was allowed to look into their future before they were born, then they could decide whether they liked it or not, and if they didn’t then they wouldn’t have to come, and that way perhaps there wouldn’t be any more awful things such as illness and accidents and starvation.

      Zoë told me that she believes everyone who dies is born again as someone else. She said, “You don’t really die, because you always come back again.” She told me that she read this somewhere and she most firmly believes it.

      It is a nice thought but I don’t understand how it can be, since the population of the world is getting bigger all the time. For example, there were probably only about – oh, I don’t know! – about five hundred people, maybe, before the Stone Age, whereas now there are about five hundred million, I should think. Five hundred billion. Five hundred trillion. So where have all the extra people come from?

      It doesn’t really make any sense, though I suppose it would be a comfort to think that you weren’t just going to disappear.

      I asked Zoë, if you did come back, whether you would come as someone quite different or as just another version of yourself, and she said she’d thought about this and she reckoned you’d come back as another version of yourself. She said this would account for people sometimes claiming to remember being alive in another age.

      That is true. People do make these claims. Like there was this woman who could remember being an Egyptian slave and could even speak ancient Egyptian.

      I

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