Belonging by Umi Sinha

masters, and other boys. Jagjit made an effort to include me, as he always did, but I could tell it was making Simon impatient so I wandered off to collect some bluebells and wood anemones and wove them round with wild honeysuckle to make three crowns and some bracelets. I placed mine around my head and wrists and wandered back.
    As I approached the clearing where the boys were sitting I heard Simon say, ‘Why does she have to do everything with us? It’s so boring.’
    I stepped behind the trunk of a beech and waited for Jagjit’s reply.
    ‘Come on, Simon. She’s hasn’t got anyone else.’
    ‘Do you always have to be so dashed kind to every lame dog?’
    ‘Isn’t that why we’re friends? Have you forgotten what a bad time you were having at school before I intervened?’
    There was a silence, and I imagined Simon’s face flamingas he struggled for words. He stammered out, ‘I th-thought you l-liked coming home with me. You could always stay at the b-beastly school if you prefer.’
    I heard him stamp off.
    Jagjit sighed and stretched out on the rug in a patch of sunlight.
    I crept silently into the clearing but as I approached him he opened his eyes. His mouth pulled up, creasing his cheek. ‘You look like a peri – a fairy – in that crown. Are those wings you’re hiding behind your back?’
    I showed him the two other crowns.
    He smiled. ‘Is one of them for me?’
    I nodded.
    ‘Why don’t you put it on for me?’
    He reached up and lifted his turban off, preserving its stiff pleated shape, then untied the white handkerchief securing his topknot and shook his hair out. The long black rope of it uncoiled as far as his waist. He sat up and I knelt in front of him and placed it on his head.
    ‘You heard us, didn’t you?’ His eyes searched mine.
    I hesitated, then nodded.
    ‘I thought so. He didn’t mean it, you know. It’s just that he’s a bit nervy. He had a bad time at school when he first arrived. New boys do, especially those who’re young for their age, and it doesn’t help if you look like him. You get the wrong sort of attention from the older boys.’
    I wondered what he meant.
    ‘What are you thinking, Lila?’ He dipped his head until his eyes were so close to mine that they blurred into one giant Cyclops eye. ‘You notice everything, don’t you? What do you really think of us all? That we’re a lot of fools with our yak-yak-yakking?’
    I shook my head, but he’d already turned away. ‘I’d better go and find Simon or he’ll sulk for the rest of the day.’
     
    That evening, alone in my room, I tried to make myself speak aloud, but it was harder than I’d imagined. I had always thought that when I was ready I would open my mouth and speech would come, but it felt ugly, unnatural, as though there were two tongues in my mouth, tangling round each other. The words slid away as I fumbled for them, and the sounds that emerged were more like frogs than pearls. The thought of talking in public filled me with dread: I imagined the attention that would be focused on me, the fuss that would be made. And once I started there would be no turning back; I would have to speak to everyone, not just to Jagjit and Simon and the Beauchamps and Aunt Mina, but to Cook and the maids, and to people at church and in the village and to people I had not even met yet. And by now everyone was so used to my silence that no one ever asked what I thought, or left a gap in the conversation for me to fill. I should have to force my way in and I shrank from that. No, I was not ready. And then the blizzard came unexpectedly, bringing deep snow, and, by the time the path was passable again in May, the boys had gone back to school.
     
    A month later, the suffragettes held a huge demonstration in London and for weeks beforehand the Beauchamps’ house was full of women sewing banners and tabards in the W.S.P.U. colours of purple, white and green. I went over after lessons to help. I did not sew, but I could cut