I loved the costumes: my brother and I would start discussing them in the summer, late at night in the enormous lumpy bed that we shared at our granny’s house. He was creative: one year, he made a mandrill mask out of papier mache and teamed it with a smart shirt, tie and trousers; another, he was ‘a man with a sword through his head’ which involved aluminum foil and for some reason, a fez made out of Shredded Wheat packets. I, on the other hand, just wanted to be a beautiful something.
But it was what came after the costumes - after our dad took the traditional photo of us beaming in front of the fireplace - that I didn’t like so much. It was difficult to be a beautiful princess (or beautiful witch, or beautiful whatever) when your mum made you wear a puffy coat over your beautiful costume. And it was inefficient, I realised, long before I studied economics, to trudge over hill and dale (tarmacked hill and dale) in our neighbourhood to collect fun-size bars of chocolate from every house as opposed, say, to staying home where it was warm and counting on my mum buying me a bit of chocolate now and then.
Is it time to go home? I said, as my friends pressed towards another block, across another lawn.
Live a little, Jean, they said. Live. A. Little.
We were ten, and it was already clear that I was never going to be a party girl.
