Miranda is not doing that exam. She is not doing anything.

They are strange, the twins. I am not sure if My hand hurts already. But I must go on!

Finally Mummy. Mummy is painting. She is in her studio, down at the end of the corridor. She is a famous painter. ‘Famous painter’ – I am not sure if that is a good thing or not, but it is how she is always referred to by people. The Picture Post did a spread on us a couple of years ago.

‘Famous Painter at Home with her Family’. As if her fame is as important as her painting. I wonder if it annoys her. Mummy has an exhibition this autumn & she is making me sit for a portrait. I don’t like sitting for her except we talk, which I like. I sat for her this morning. The exhibition is soon & she is painting furiously, she is behind. She is short with Dad, but he doesn’t notice. She smokes & looks out of the window a lot, & I hear her pacing up & down in the studio when I’m in my room. She’s doing it now.

Anyway, I will write more about them all I am sure. We are to be joined in a few days by Frank and Guy Leighton, Frank is a schoolfriend of Jeremy’s & he is Louisa’s boyfriend. Guy is his brother. Mummy loves having people down. I do too, it’s more fun when there are more around.

There are so many things I want to read & see & do, so many thoughts I keep having. I want to write it all down, to experience things I haven’t (please excuse me Diary, I will try & write as much as possible). I want to Broaden my Mind, & summer holidays are the time to do something about this, & I undertake it in earnest. I shall read the papers & comment on them so this diary is also a well-informed record of the times.

For example, I was interested to see that the memorial service of the Rev Cuthbert Creighton took place yesterday near Worcester, & that Miss BP Hards (that is a funny name) has got engaged. Also that the Duke of Edinburgh will be attending a lunch of the Heating & Ventilation Engineers next Tuesday at Grosvenor House in London.

The bell for dinner has not gone yet. So here is some more information, this time about me.

Name: Cecily Ann Kapoor

Age: 15 (16 in November)

School: St Katherine’s School for Girls

Favourite Subjects: English! Drama, Art, History, Latin.

Best Friends: Margaret, Jennifer, Rita. (NB. I should like Linda Langley to also be my friend but she is not, as she is the year above.) Favourite Teacher: Miss Powell

Favourite Book: Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan

Favourite Poem: The Prisoner, by Emily Brontë

Favourite actress: Kay Kendall RIP. Jean Seberg in Bonjour Tristesse the film, I want my hair cut short like her, so chic & gamine but Mummy says NO.

Favourite actor: Stewart Granger in Moonfleet, SWOON! Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird DOUBLE SWOON, also Dirk Bogarde & Rock Hudson.

Favourite film: It used to be Moonfleet but it’s a bit babyish for me now. Bonjour Tristesse, I LOVE that film, & the book, it is all so chic glamorous. And To Kill a Mockingbird, which is a marvellous & extremely wonderful evocation of the Deep South & its problems.

Favourite song: NOT The Beatles, everyone likes them & it’s so dull! Miranda & Louisa practically weep every time they come on the radio.

They play Please Please Me every day on the gramophone. They only like them because they are boys & from Liverpool ie dangerous, according to my Aunt Pamela, Louisa’s mother, but she thinks the bin man on her road is a dangerous communist because she once saw him reading the Tribune. Miranda & Louisa are silly when it comes to B.O.Y.S. anyway. I don’t like boys (apart from Gregory Peck & Stewart Granger

& they are men). I am concentrating on becoming an interesting & accomplished person because one day I want to be a writer & writers don’t become writers by sitting around listening to Please pleasezzzzzzzz me. Or Frank Ifield. Can you believe it, Louisa actually has an album by Frank Ifield. zzzzzzzzzz again.

Anyway my favourite song & album is Juliette Greco. I also like the Four Seasons, & the Beach Boys. She is French, they are American, & I like that, it is something different. Not boring old England, all the time. Sometimes you would think it was the only country in the world.

Other interesting things about me: My father is from what is now Pakistan. My skin is darker than the other girls at school & so I don’t need to lie in the sun to tan, which is good. Some of the girls like Annabel Taylor make me feel awful about it & say nasty things, I wish they wouldn’t, I am as English as them. Mrs Charles, the Deputy Head, called me a clumsy little wog when she was cross after I dropped all the blackboard dusters

& made chalk cloud fly in her face & make her cough. I asked Archie what it meant & he was very cross with me.

Dear diary, (the truth is I really don’t like writing about this) but they are worse to Miranda, her skin is darker than mine. I feel sorry for her but I don’t tell her, she gets cross. We are the only girls like it in our school. Dad came with Mum to drop us off last year & I don’t know why he did, he barely knows we exist. I shouldn’t say this diary but I was embarrassed of him. He is small & quite eccentric & doesn’t make sense when he talks, because he talks in riddles. Even though he is a famous writer, the girls at school don’t know that, or at least they don’t care. I wish they did, but they don’t.

Thank god for Mummy. She looks like a film star, always has done. She is very beautiful, I’m sure Miranda & I are a sad disappointment to all who gaze upon our visages. Mummy has ‘it’ – I don’t know what ‘it’ is, but she can put on her overalls or an old shirt & look stunning. I just look like a boy.

No dinner bell yet, what’s going on? I’m ravenous.

Sometimes I wonder about where Dad came from, too, I imagine palaces made of gold & the burning heat & markets with silk & exotic foods, like in The Horse & His Boy by C.S. Lewis. Dad says it is a bit like that but not really. He is from Lahore. It is a fortress town, Akbar lived there, he was one of the greatest Indian rulers, we did him in school & I could say that was where Dad came from. It was in the Punjab, now it is in Pakistan. It is because India is not ours any more. I love the idea of it, the Mughal emperors & the forts & bazaars. I want to go to India. I will one day, when I am grown up & a famous writer. I shall have a scarf from Liberty, & smoke those Russian cigarettes, and do my hair like Juliette Greco –

We have been called for supper, I must go. I have been writing for well over an hour, it is nearly seven & my left hand hurts, a LOT.

I will add my exercises after I have done them tonight.

Bust exercises: 30

Nose squashing exercises: 5 mins

Love always, Cecily

Sunday, 21st July, 1963

Dear Diary,

After yesterday’s writing marathon my hand STILL hurts so I will be brief. I feel we have made a good start. It is lovely being home but it is funny how the things you forgot about that are always there start to come back after a few days. It is even funnier, reading them as you write them down. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but if I didn’t record what happens and what I think about my family I wouldn’t be being truthful, would I.

I was out all day at the beach & then went for a long walk with Jeremy to Logan’s Rock. Very tired now. We talked about his walking holiday in Switzerland, it sounds most interesting. I tried to sound like an interesting person back, but I have never really been anywhere and done anything, and it’s hard. I expect Jeremy is all the time with wonderful interesting girls up in London. I rather hate to think about it.

Had another sitting with Mummy this morning. We are in her studio, I never go in there so it’s interesting only from that point of view. It’s very white & quiet & she wasn’t like my mother when we were in there.

I can’t explain it. She is much more . . . definite. Tells me how to sit & what to do. Doesn’t care I’m her daughter. She asks questions to be polite, like Sandra, the hairdresser we go to in Penzance. It is uncomfortable after a while, staying still like that. I like it because I get to wear the ring I love so much round a chain on my neck. It is Mum’s ring, she let me take it to school last year and look after it. She says I can have it one day, if I’m good.

The only thing I should record is that Mummy kept asking about Miranda. If there was anything I thought we could do about her that we weren’t doing, as she has left school & has nothing in sight. I don’t know what to say as it’s been decided that Miranda is a ‘problem’. By Mummy.

(I don’t think Dad has noticed any of us is actually back from school, let alone that M has actually finished school & needs something to do).