Novel Excerpt (Novel in progress)

Vivienne, 1941

A girl of six draws different shapes on a piece of white paper. A star, a square, a circle, a heart. She uses a different colour for each one. She stops drawing when she runs out of colours; she only has four. She draws them again over and over and fills the page with shapes that never touch. They are outlines because colouring them in would take too long, but she has hours here. The children around her cough and sleep and sing. Quiet conversation murmurs beneath the endless ticking of the clock. The empty beat soothes her. She watches it and pushes down on her wrist to feel her heartbeat.

A piece of hair, the colour of copper, dangles down in front of her eyes. She is sitting cross-legged on a low bed. She is in the one next to the window. The light streams in, casting shadows on the floor that look like puppets. Her skin is pale; she's been wearing this nightie and socks for over a week now. Her scarlet cheeks have now faded and she doesn't feel unwell anymore, but she knows there is no use saying this. It'll be this way for at least another month, she heard one of the nurses say.

Tuesday 4th August.
Penny said her dad is coming to see her. He didn't.

The child plays with her hair between her fingers, twisting it tightly so when she lets it go it corkscrews up. She talks to the objects around her: the light, the bed frame, the toys she keeps lined up on the bed. There is an empty space in the middle. Penny asks her what she is playing. Schools, she replies. She writes each of their names on paper and takes the register. Penny watches her silently.

When the clock hits twelve, she knows another hour has passed. She mustn't stare at the clock too much because that makes time slower. Sometimes she thinks of her mother and wonders where her father is. She imagines him asleep. She keeps the necklace that he gave her under her pillow. The nurses forbid her to wear it. It's not as shiny as it was before.

The nurse pushes around a trolley with toast. Her humming is a constant in the mornings. She smells breakfast before it arrives. Penny is dressed and sitting on her bed. Yesterday she told her that her family were rich, but when her mother came she had dirty shoes. Hum, hum.

Wednesday 5th August
Penny let me play with her doll. It has a blue dress and a long plait at the back. Mummy says she'll try and get me one.

Mr Phillips has fallen out with Mr Phillips. She pushes his paw out and he turns away.

"Now come on, Mr Phillips, he's trying to say sorry. You do hold a grudge," she whispers.

She lifts him to her ear.

"Now that's not a nice thing to say."

She forces them together.

"There, friends again."

Tick. Tick.

Saturday 9th August
The new boy is called Fred. He wet the bed last night. He cried and woke us all up. Then they made us go downstairs because the walls were shaking again.

Her mother will be here soon. She always comes at eleven. The hand is nearly there. The nurse will appear at the door and her mother will walk through, and then they can talk in mumbles through the glass. She hopes her mother is wearing her coat with the big buttons because when she looks closely she can see herself in them. It makes her eyes look big.

Tick.

Her mother arrives and rushes over to the glass. She has a paper bag with her and a new set of colouring pens. The girl's eyes light up.

"Open them," she mouths through the glass.

Red, purple, blue, green, pink, and a new pad of paper too, and a cake. It's wrapped in brown parchment and the bottom of it is darker. She hopes it is vanilla. She loves vanilla. Or cherry, but she can't see any red bits on top.

They talk through the glass and her mother gets tears in her eyes. They look big and shiny. She cannot sit beside her or cuddle her. She knows that. And after this amount of time she doesn't ask anymore.

"Not long," her mother mouths through the glass. "I love you, darling. Home soon."

"I feel better," she says.

"You look better."

As her mother talks her mouth opens wide, and the girl can see right to the back of her throat. It's red and soft and wet, and the dangly bit wobbles. She wants to get a mirror and look at her own throat, and she thinks about it whilst her mother talks.

Soon the time runs out and her mother has to leave. She rummages around in her purse and takes out a postcard. It has a picture of a man in a hat on the front and the letters BURMA along the bottom.

The girl sits up.

"Daddy," says her mother, "...he wrote again... from far far away."

She shows her daughter the back, and she tilts her head to examine the fast-moving inky scrawls. She loves his writing. It's all messy and long. She wants her writing to be like that, but the teacher at school tells her off.

Tuesday 12th August.
Penny said she's going home tomorrow. I don't want her to.

Soon she'll go back to school and see her friends, Trudy, Alison and Elsie. She'll run around the concrete and collect daisies from the cracks, and then hide behind the woodshed and spy on Jonathan and Bill. She remembers how hot the concrete was, how she'd put her hand on the ground and it burnt her skin. That was the day she grazed her knee and watched Alfie get the cane. It wasn't his fault she fell, but she didn't say anything and they did him anyway. Alfie with the mousey hair and the scar on his chin. One day they would marry and live in the house with the red door.

Her mother blows her a kiss and they reach their palms to the glass. Her mother's hand is not much bigger than her own. The girl thinks it is strange that her mother's hand is so small, or maybe that her own hand is big. When her mother stands, she notices the size of her belly. It looks bigger behind glass. It will come at Christmas. If it's a girl, she will call her Penny and put pink ribbons in her hair and walk her up and down the road in a big pram.

When her mother leaves, she doesn't cry. She used to, but now she just goes back to her bed.

Tick tock.

She tries to calculate how much time has passed. She covers her teddies in a blanket and tells them to sleep. Penny is reading in her bed. She waits for the nurse to come round. She imagines the new shapes she will draw, a blue cloud, a purple umbrella. She waits until teatime, but nothing comes. In the morning she listens for the hum. The nurse hands Fred a parcel. Maybe tomorrow.