“Meredith Audrey Cressida Katherine IV.”

Yes. I’m one of those. Well-mannnered, miserable posh girls who go to an all-boarding school. my opinions matter. Because i am rich. Even when i am wrong, i am right .no one questions me or challenges me or talks to me.

But i don’t have a pony or a butler or a maid. I have a dog called It. Daddy just shoves sweaty fistfuls of notes at the vet telling her to “keep It alive” so he can spend more time with the family
His work family that is. I don’t know what he works as. Something important that rakes in the cash of course. I assume a job where your required to stand in front of a graph in board room, carry business cards, nod intelligently and mumur something or another about “logistics”. What i do know is that his job makes him irritable, rude to waiters and his hair thin quickly.

I have a friend. Like all common teenagers are supposed to. Her name is Julia or jemima or something like that.She’s got loose curls and a tight neck.but im friends with her nonetheless because daddy says we need to keep “wealthy connections” anddaddy’s always right.All the poor girls, hate me. Which is fair i suppose because i hate them too.we have to drive around the estates because the parents don’t want the wild reckless youth there corrupting me. But perhaps life would be easier without trying to keep the family image slipping through the cracks.

There was a time we stopped going to mass somewhere between the Summer Garden Event  and daddy’s  affair, everybody know’s he did it but nobody knows he liked it. But daddy stays because mother lets him (“He’s so...interesting, your father, he’s so strong and powerful, I don’t expect you to understand that darling but he ...stimulates me, you know?”).She pretends to be asleep whenever she hears his key turn in the lock. Whatever she’s doing, wherever she is, she just falls onto the nearest and softest landing. Mind you, i found it particularly amusing finding mother amongst the dirty laundry hamper that one time!

She takes medicine to escape it all “Be a dear and Fetch me the whisky bottle Meredith!” I don’t even know if she remembers my name, only when she’s drunk and sated. It’s haunting to see her drink herself into oblivion, to mother mother, the best part of her marriage is now meaningless and shapeless and having to step over a great divide. But i can look after her for now, before i hand her over to the vet , instructions being to “keep It alive” but deep down i know soon she’ll be gone, lost like a whisper, amongst the hum of the streetlights blinking.