After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby by Natasha Farrant Page A

Chatsworth Square being made to do endless chores and schoolwork. He said how weird it was without all the shouting and thumping and slamming doors from our house. Zoran goes out to feed the rats every morning, but other than that and the occasional burst of opera there’s no sign of life at all. Write to me before I die of boredom! he said. What are you all doing? What colour is Flora’s hair today? I need a Bluebird fix to stop me from going nuts!
    He came online while I was reading, and that’s when Grandma’s fifteen-minute rule went out the window. He wanted to know everything, so I told him all about the horses and the rain and Flora and me galloping and falling off, and I told him about filming the others gardening and he said he’d love to see that, especially Jas dressed as a Russian peasant and Flora on her knees in the mud. And then we just chatted about nothing, and everything, like I told him about the Facebook friend requests and he said he would send me one too, and I said that Flora can cook now and is going to make us peanut-butter cookies, and he said he wished he could be with us to taste them and I said I wished he was here too.
    And then I told him about today. I said ‘there is something I have to tell you’, and he said ‘that sounds ominous’ and then I just came out with it. I said, ‘I used to have a twin sister but she died three years ago this Christmas.’ Just like that. One sentence. It felt so easy but afterwards I wanted to laugh and cry all at once, because I have never told anyone about it before, I have never said those words. Joss swore and asked why I hadn’t told him earlier, and I said because it didn’t feel right, and then I told him about the tree and crying with my arms around Iris and that this was the first time since she died that I have told anyone about it. Joss said that he was deeply honoured, and I cried a bit more, and then we said goodnight and logged off at the same time.  
    I’m still in the study now. I am sitting on the window seat, behind the padded tartan curtain. It is completely dark outside, like it never gets in London . I can just make out the trees in the garden, blowing this way and that in the wind. I’m so tired, but I don’t want to go to bed. 

The Film Diaries Of Bluebell Gadsby
    Scene Nine (Transcript)
    Happy Families
    EXTERIOR. SUNSHINE!!!
     
    JASMINE and TWIG are fighting a duel in the walled garden at Horsehill Farm. They use long sticks which they hold with both hands. Twig is merciless in attack, but Jasmine is nimble in defence, which means she runs away whenever he comes in for a strike. FLORA lies on the low branch of a magnolia tree, apparently asleep. FATHER sits in a deck-chair, supposedly watching but secretly writing in a notebook.
     
    TWIG
    (roars)
    STAND STILL AND FIGHT LIKE A KNIGHT!!!
     
    JASMINE
    (shrieks and hides behind Father’s deck-chair)
    Save me, Daddy, save me!
     
    FATHER
    (absent-minded, not looking up)
    Fair maiden, thou must learn to defend thyself.
     
    Flora frowns, opens her eyes and peels herself off the tree, calls Twig and Jas over, takes their sticks, and creeps up to Father’s deck-chair.
     
    FLORA
    (poking deck-chair really quite hard)
    ON GUARD, YOU COWARD!!!
     
    Father is good, but Flora is better, the result of endless fencing lessons as a child. She dances around him, laughs as she parries his blows, shouts ‘Ha!’ when he stumbles under her attack. She disarms him with an elegant flick of the wrist and forces him to kneel before her in the wet grass. She places one foot on his shoulder and raises her stick to the sky. In her purple Wellington boots, with Grandma’s duffel coat over her pyjamas and her pink and purple dreadlocks tumbling down her back, she looks mad but also strangely warrior-like.
     
    FLORA
    Ignoble knight! Do you yield?
     
    FATHER
    Never!
     
    FLORA
    (pokes him with her stick)
    DO YOU YIELD?
     
    FATHER
    I yield!
     
    FLORA
    KNIGHTS! TO ARMS!!
      
    Jasmine and