13th December

Hello my name is Elizabeth Nancy Moots I’m ten years old and I live in London with my family and the Whites. We’re very lucky, me and my family, we only have to live with one other family and there’s only five of them. My best friend Jane lives with four separate families and one of the mothers is pregnant.

I suppose I should tell you about my family. Well, there’s Thomas Wilfred, he’s twelve and thinks he’s all high and mighty. The nine-year-old twins, Robert Joseph and Charlotte Mary, they don’t say much. Then there’s my favourite, Millie. Full name: Mildred Lorraine Moots. She’s seven and just started work, which is worrying, but you have to work. The baby, Henrietta Ruth, Ma, Pa and Granma.

It was Granma who taught me how to write. She was going to teach Tom, but he’s an aragont pig and refused to learn. So, I started this diary to practise.

The other family, the Whites, have a Ma and Pa too, but they are older than mine and much sadder. The children are older than us a well, Ted is thirteen, Lulu is fourteen and Polly is sixteen.

I think Ma White is called Cynthia and lived on a farm when she was younger. Her own children are bored of the stories, claiming that times have changed, whatever that means, but I could listen to her forever. I often fall asleep while she is talking and dream of sheep that look like clouds on legs, big green fields were you can shout and no one will hear you and blue skies unclouded by smoke.

Just the idea of grass is strange to me. Sometimes I see pieces growing through the cobbles, but it always dies after a few days.

Jane, my best friend, has three brothers: Edwin, Jack and George. There all too young to work yet, but Edwin only has one year to go and Jane’s really worried. The ones who die are usually the newies, Granma told me we had an older sister once and that she died when she was six.

When Millie asked how she had died, I had to think on my feet, so I said, “The monster got her. The one that eats children who don’t do their jobs right.”

Of course, the only the monster is the machine, closely followed by The Boss, Mister Finnfit, but he’s a slave to the machine too. I think the monster story has kept Millie alive, so it can’t have been a bad thing, right?

Martha had been her name. My sister; the one who died. Martha Judith Moots, she would have been fourteen years old, older than Tom. Same age as Lulu. I had been two when she died, Tom had been four, so he must remember her.

Not that I’d talk to him about it.

Jane’s especially anxious because when she was seven her little sister died of illness, but she doesn’t like talking about her.

I’m going now, Toms in the room.