The Flower Power Collection

Twinkle twonkle, little Vi, How I really wonder why Lily’s brash and you are shy!

This is a rhyme that I made up, but it is in my Secret Filofax that I keep locked with a key. The key hangs round my neck on a special silver chain. I wouldn’t want anyone reading the things that I keep in my Filofax! Also, I hate it if people call me Vi. I only did it for the rhyme. Violet is bad enough, but Vi is the pits.

The reason we’ve got these weird names is that Mum is a huge gardening person and her two most favourite flowers just happen to be the dear little shrinking violet and a great big blustering lily thing that is covered in spots and grows about eight feet tall.

How she got to be Lily and I got to be Violet was just a mistake. I was supposed to be Lily! I was born first (by five whole minutes) and L comes before V in the alphabet so Lily was going to be me. But what with us being twins, and all babies looking the same anyway, Mum went and got us mixed up. Our nan – Big Nan – had knitted this cute little violet suit for one of us and a sweet little white one for the other, and Mum dressed us in the wrong ones! The only way that she could tell which of us was which when we were first born was by this brown birthmark thingie, in other words spot, that Lily has on her bottom, if you will excuse the expression. It is just as well we have now grown up to look so different because who would want to keep gazing at Lily’s, pardon me, bottom all the time? Ugh! Yuck! What a sight!

On the day of the christening, Mum says she was in such a flap, “I couldn’t remember which of you had the spot on her bot!”

Then she laughs like she thinks it’s really funny. Imagine! A mum not being able to tell her own babies apart! But I was the one that had to suffer. I mean… Violet. It’s a granny name. Well past its sellby date. Lily, I think, is quite cool, though Lily herself disagrees.

“Lily! Yuck. It’s like skimmed milk… all white and flabby.”

Dad once said that we should count our blessings. He said just think how much worse it could have been.

“Imagine if your mum’s favourite flowers were nasturtium or geranium!”

Except that then I could have been Geranium, shortened to Gerry, which would be neat, and she could have been Nasturtium, shortened to Nasty. Which would suit her!

She’s all right really, I suppose. Sometimes she can be quite nice, like when our cat Horatio went missing and I thought we’d never see him again and I cried and cried and couldn’t stop. She put her arms round me and said, “Don’t cry, Violet! He’ll come back.” Of course we were only little, then. It’s as we’ve got older that she’s got horrid. Mum says ten is a bad age. She says, “When I was young you didn’t start throwing tantrums till you were twelve or thirteen. Now it’s happening when you’re ten.”

She said it the other day when Lily went into a simply tremendous sulk about not being allowed to go to a party wearing a skirt that didn’t even cover her knickers. Mum and Lily are always having battles over stuff that Lily wants to wear and that Mum doesn’t think is suitable. The reason I don’t have battles isn’t that I’m a goody goody, which is what Lily says, it is just that I would be too shy. Like with singing and dancing in Tesco’s! She swung upside down on a handrail the other day, in full view of absolutely everyone. I just nearly died! But Lily is a natural show off. She will probably be a movie star when she is older.

Well, anyway, that is about me and Lily. Now a bit about Horatio, that is our cat. Horatio is what Mum calls “a grand old gentleman”. He is two years older than Lily and me! Black, with a white bib.

Horatio is a good cat. He is a kind cat. Once when I was ill in bed he came and snuggled under the duvet with me and stayed there till I was better. I thought that was so sweet of him! Dad laughs and says, “Don’t kid yourself! He just knows when he’s on to a good thing.” But that isn’t true! He didn’t go and cuddle with Lily when she was ill. Just with me because he knows how much I love him.

So. That is Horatio. Now Mum and Dad. Dad is a computer person. I am not quite sure what he does exactly, but he goes into his office every day and does it and it seems to make him happy. Mum is a flower person. She has this flower shop called Flora Green, with a dear little green van with flowers painted on it. Really cute! Sometimes, if Dad is in a rush, she takes me and Lily to school in it. Lily grumbles that it is seriously uncool, being taken to school in a van, but this is because her best friends that she hangs out with, Sarah in a Whittington and Francine Church, are really posh and would think a van beneath them. I don’t care about such things as I don’t have any posh friends and so it doesn’t bother me. I like Mum’s flowery van!

Lily has lots of friends. Sarah and Francine are her best ones, but there is also Ayesha and Haroula and Debbie and Jessica. Lily is tremendously popular.

On account of being silly and shrinking, I am not very good at making friends. I get nervous and blurt out the first thing that comes into my head, which is not always the best thing. Like one day when Ayesha said to me that she was going to go on a diet and lose weight.

“But I’m going to do it sensibly,” she said. “Just a bit at a time. I don’t want to lose too much all at once.”

You will never believe what I said! I said, “No, ‘cos that would look silly with a great fat face.”

I didn’t mean to be rude, or to upset her. It just, like, burst out of me before I could stop it. I couldn’t understand why she went off in a huff and wouldn’t speak to me, not even when we were put as partners for gym. It was Lily who told me.

“You said she had a great fat face!”

“I didn’t!” I said.

“You did, too,” said Lily. “You said if she lost too much weight it would look silly with a great fat face!”

“Oh, dear,” said Mum.

I was so ashamed! I am always doing this kind of thing. Another thing I do, I drop stuff and smash stuff. Like I dropped Haroula’s genuine Victorian glass bubble with a snowstorm inside it that she’d inherited from her great grandmother. It was a family heirloom and I went and dropped it! Fortunately it didn’t break, it just rolled over the floor, but a huge groan went up, like everyone was thinking, “Trust her!”

Like another time when we’d been told to clear the stuff off our dinner plates into one bin and chuck plastic pots, etc., into another, and I got confused and put it all in the same bin and Lily said, “You would, wouldn’t you?”

This is the sort of person I am, and that is why I am not very good at making friends. When I do, it is mostly just one at a time; not hordes, like Lily.

I used to be best friends with a girl called Greta. We did everything together and I really missed her when she went back to America with her mum and dad. We wrote to each other for a while. I quite enjoyed writing letters, but after a bit it sort of faded out. Like I would write a really long letter, and Greta would just send back a postcard, and then I would write again and for weeks and weeks she wouldn’t bother and then it would be just another card, or maybe an e-mail. Hi! How R U? NY is fab! Will write soon. Luv & xxx Greta.

In the end we stopped altogether. I suppose we didn’t really have all that much in common is what it came down to. It was all right while we could do things together, but Greta wasn’t really a word person. Lots of people aren’t. Dad isn’t. Lily isn’t. Mum isn’t. I am the only one in the family!

Anyway, all that was in Year 5. Now we’d moved up to Year 6 and I was sort of going round with this girl called Pandora who is very good-natured and pretty but quite honestly not the brightest. I am not being horrible here, I am just telling it like it is. She is one of those people, she is so sweet and innocent she would trust just about anybody. Like she would take sweets from strangers and go jumping into cars unless there was someone to watch over her. So I was kind of watching over her because I mean someone had to and I didn’t have anyone else. To be friends with, I mean.

Well, apart from this girl called Yvonne that I sometimes hung out with, but she is quite bad-tempered and also bossy, and in spite of being shrinking I don’t like people bossing me and pushing me around. Plus sometimes she makes Pandora cry by saying these really mean things to her, so I only hung with Yvonne on days when Pandora wasn’t there or when I was feeling strong enough to stand up to her. We certainly didn’t see each other out of school.

I didn’t really see anyone out of school. Me and Greta used to meet up sometimes, but now I just did things on my own. Usually on a Saturday I’d go and help Mum in Flora Green. I enjoyed watering all the plants out in the yard, and arranging the cut flowers in their buckets. I didn’t even mind stacking flower pots or sweeping the floor. Lily wouldn’t be seen dead in there! She would be scared her posh friends might catch sight of her. But most often she was out doing things with them, anyway. They rode their ponies in the park, or went ice skating or slept over at each other’s houses. Lily has this really full social calendar. Her life is a whirl!

Sometimes I used to wish that my life could be like Lily’s. I used to wish it so much. Dad always said that I was his little stay-at-home while Lily was Miss Gad About. I always pretended that I thought it was funny and that I didn’t mind. I even pretended it to myself.

It is silly, pretending things to yourself.

One day near the start of the spring term Lily came home all excited because Sarah’s mum, who is something important to do with TV, had said that Sarah could invite some of her friends to visit the set of Riverside.

“She said we could go next Saturday, so is that all right, Mum? It is all right, isn’t it? Sarah’s mum will take us there and bring us back, so can I say I’ll go?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Mum. “Who else is going?”

“Just me and Sarah, and Francie and Hara. Debbie was going to, but she can’t.”

“So what about Violet?” said Mum.

There was a pause. I felt my cheeks go tingly. I did wish Mum wouldn’t!

“She didn’t invite Violet,” said Lily. “Just me. ‘Cos I’m Sarah’s friend.”

“I wouldn’t want to, anyway,” I said.

Well, I wouldn’t! Not with Lily and her crowd. They’re all loud and shrieking, just like Lily. And they don’t really like me, they think I’m freaky.

“Wouldn’t want to?” said Mum. “But you’re such a fan! Even more than Lily is!”

“But she hasn’t been invited” said Lily. “Not just anyone can go. You have to be asked.”

“Well, I’m sure Sarah would ask her if she knew what a fan she was. After all, she is your twin!”

Lily set her jaw in that way that she does, like it’s made out of cement, or something. I felt myself shrivel. Mum does this to me, sometimes. She tries to push me in where I’m not wanted. It gets Lily so mad! And it gets me all hot and embarrassed.

“Mum, it’s all right,” I said. “I’ve got to help you in the shop.”

“You haven’t got to help me in the shop,” said Mum. “I’m very grateful when you do, but it seems a shame to miss out on other things. A visit to Riverside! And if Debbie can’t go —”

“That isn’t any reason for her to come.”