Secret Scribbled Notebooks by Joanne Horniman

frocks with sprigs of flowers, and sandals.
    When she wasn’t studying maths and physics, Marjorie baked cakes. She did it with scientific precision, weighing the ingredients on a scale and sifting the flour from a good height so it would be beautifully aerated. She wore an apron when she baked and, in their cream and green renovated 1930s kitchen, she could have been someone in an old-fashioned advertisement.
    That day, she had baked a sponge and filled it with jam and cream. She poured the tea from a silver teapot and I sliced the cake. Marjorie ate delicately, with a cake fork. Lil always said that I fell upon my food like a starving man, and that day was no exception. I picked up my slice and took enormous greedy mouthfuls. There were not many moments of the day when I was not starving hungry.
    Marjorie and I had been friends since primary school. Both of us, in different ways, were unlike the other girls at school, so it suited us to stick together. For me, Marjorie was a safe friend; with her there were none of the passions and uncertainties that characterised Sophie’s relations with Carmen and Rafaella.
    I enjoyed the calmness of being with her. I enjoyed her quiet and ordered household in contrast to my own, which was so often intruded on by strangers.
    â€˜Have you been studying?’ Marjorie asked.
    â€˜Not much,’ I said, feeling slightly guilty.
    â€˜Well, what else have you been up to? The exams aren’t that far off, you know.’
    Furtively, remembering my recent encounter with Alex, I shrugged.
    â€˜You needn’t look as if I’m interrogating you.’
    â€˜On the way here today I drank mint tea with a Russian prince,’ I blurted out.
    â€˜Of course! What else is there to do, on a Monday morning?’
    â€˜But really,’ I said. The sweet taste of his exotic tea still seemed to be in my mouth.
    â€˜What’s his name?’
    â€˜Alex.’
    I hesitated. ‘I told him my name was Persephone.’
    â€˜After all, that is your name.’
    â€˜He’s a writer.’
    â€˜Really? What’s he written?’
    â€˜Nothing. He told me he’s writing a novel, but he has writer’s block.’
    â€˜Very painful.’
    I stared at Marjorie across the table; we started to giggle. I felt an instant pang of disloyalty, to be laughing about Alex with Marjorie so soon after meeting him, and the mint tea, and everything. I had meant to keep him as my secret. Now, here I was, blabbing it at the first opportunity.
    But Alex did look like a Russian prince. Perhaps he was one. Anything was possible.

The Red Notebook
    I am sitting in the dark in my fig tree and my bottom is icy cold. I am discovering that you can write without seeing what you are writing and that is somehow very liberating, though it’s bound to be indecipherable.
    Behind me is the river. The water glimmers in the moonlight, and it looks better than it does in the daylight, when it is oily-looking and sometimes muddy and you can see the scrappy weeds along the banks. My nostrils are cold, and I can smell where the weeds along the roadside have been mown today by the Council tractor.
    When I was a child I considered this tree my second home. Actually, it was my real home, because it was all mine, and it was where I felt most myself. Only Marjorie was ever invited in. Sophie used to sit on the ground at the bottom and call up to me. I have never told anyone this, but I used to pretend that I lived here with my mother and father. When I got home from school my mother was waiting with a glass of milk and biscuits just like old-fashioned Moms in American movies and my father was in a chair smoking a pipe.
    This tree is vast, like a cathedral or an ocean liner. When I was little I had parts of it all mapped out into kitchen and bedrooms and living room, all connected by the passageways of broad branches.
    But I intended to write about the here and now, not the past. I am staring out