Among Others

is what people always say. It’s like an automatic programmed response, if ever I say I’m not pretty, which I entirely understand that I’m not.
    “He’s so much older anyway.”
    “Eighteen months, not sixty years,” Greg said. “And I’m not blind. I’d say he is interested in you, and you in him. I’ve seen you looking at each other.”
    I couldn’t say Wim was looking at me like that because he thought I could read minds like in Dying Inside (where did he get that idea from?) or that he wanted to go into the woods with me so he could see a fairy. “I’ll be careful,” I said.
    It must be horrible for Wim if everyone he knows, knows, and everyone new he meets gets warned off him like that. That’s what Hugh said. Hugh wasn’t there last night, I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him for ages.
    T HURSDAY 31 ST J ANUARY 1980
    It was great walking away from school at lunchtime to get the bus. It felt like escaping. My leg didn’t even feel particularly bad, which made it all the better, it was like putting one over on everyone. Two buses and a train, and I was in Shrewsbury, easy as that. The train’s a little rattly local, not all that different from a bus. Most of the people who were on it had come from North Wales and had North Welsh voices and said “yes/no” at the end of all their questions just like people in South Wales making fun of them. “Shall I get us a cup of tea from the buffet, yes/no?” “Is this Shrewsbury we’re coming to now, yes/no?” Delete where inapplicable. I didn’t laugh, but it was a near thing. It’s hard when someone is just exactly like a parody.
    The acupuncture went well. It turned the pain off entirely while I was on the table. That’s marvellous, it’s just so nice not to have any pain at all, not grinding away in the background even, just no pain. I lived like that for years, but it’s hard to remember. Pain oozes. Like my dream with the ballerina with the walking stick.
    Afterwards I went to a cafe and had baked potato with egg salad and a tuna mayonnaise sandwich, and a double decker. I sat in a little booth with sides and read my book ( Charisma , which is brilliant but weird), and felt safely alone and anonymous. It’s not as if I’m me, it’s just that I’m “person in crowd” or “schoolgirl reading book in cafe.” They got me from central casting, and when I go there’ll be another one. Nobody will notice me. I’m an insignificant part of the landscape. There’s nothing that feels safer.
    Then I walked back to the station, and on the way I passed that Owen Owens where I went shopping with the aunts. It’s a department store, not just clothes, and I remembered noticing that there was a pen and paper department. I popped in to see if they had nibs for my pen. The problem with writing backwards with a fountain pen is that it destroys the nib—left-handed people have this problem too, going through nibs fast. Because I write in here a lot, and pretty much always backwards, I go through nibs. So I came in to look, and they did, so I bought one, which was good, but what was even better was I saw through that department to a book department.
    Now I did know that some department stores have book departments. Harrods has one. My copy of LOTR in three beautiful volumes with the Appendices came from there, when Auntie Teg went to London. But Howells and David Morgans in Cardiff don’t—probably because they can’t compete with Lears—and I hadn’t thought there might be one in Owen Owens. Well, joy and rapture, there it was. And, best of all, to my total astonishment, a new Heinlein: The Number of the Beast , NEL paperback January 1980, how new is that! I bought it right away, not even needing to go into my put-away money to get it.
    I almost started it on the train, but I was very good and not only finished Charisma but started Doorways in the Sand . Having a whole fat new Heinlein I haven’t read a word of is such a lovely feeling. Like a reward. I feel all bouncy and happy when I think of it sitting there waiting for me.
    F RIDAY 1 ST F EBRUARY 1980
    Rabbits.
    Had a severe warning from Miss Thackerly about cheating at maths. Deirdre and I had the same mistakes. She kept us behind after class and said she wasn’t going to report us this time, and she wasn’t going to ask who had copied whose work, but that if she ever caught us again we’d be looking at expulsion. I had no idea it was that serious. People copy each