S3, Account 1: Esme
I don’t have any brothers or sisters which makes me sad sometimes. I wish I had someone to play with all the time. Probably a little sister, because then we could play dolls together. I do have Xavier though. We’re the same age and he’s my best friend in the whole wide world. I love going to his house. He’s got lots of brothers and sisters, and when I go round we all play together and it makes me feel so happy. His sisters are older than us and they let me play dress up with them. They have the best outfits! I have really nice clothes too which my mum gets me, but I only wear them on my birthday or at Christmas.
Xavier’s oldest sister Leeta is 16 and sometimes she plaits my hair in the best styles. She puts the coloured clips on the ends and it makes me feel like a princess. I look so pretty! Sometimes when I go home though, my mum takes them off. She says they’re distractions and that young girls should focus more on being intelligent than being decorated like a Christmas tree. She leaves in Leeta’s plaits though. She said they’re “quite nice actually”. I saw her give money to Leeta once for doing it. Ever since then, Leeta does it every week.
Something makes me sad though. Xavier’s dad is not well. Xavier said his dad has cancer. We’re not sure what that is, but Xavier says sometimes his dad is so tired sometimes he can’t speak to him and he has to have some tube things going in and out of his arms. I don’t see his dad much. He stays in a room at the back of the house on the bottom floor on a special bed and usually the door is closed. One time I saw Xavier’s mum leaving the room and she was crying. I went up to her and hugged her, and she started crying more. I don’t know what happened, but I don’t like it when adults are sad. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me Xavier’s dad was going to go to sleep forever soon. I didn’t understand because I thought when people go to sleep they always had to wake up, but before I could ask about that, Xavier called me to play with him in the garden.
Sometimes my mum is sad. I can tell because she goes round the house not really talking to me much or ignores my questions. It makes me really upset and I always go to hug her — sometimes she lets me, but sometimes she asks me “Why do you need me so much?”. I don’t understand what she means, but it doesn’t make me feel nice. That’s when I ask if I can go to Xavier’s house (he lives a few doors down), and usually she lets me. Xavier’s mum always lets me in whenever I knock and sometimes I have dinner with his family too and that makes me feel happy again. I wish Mummy would have some more kids so we can have dinners like that. I think it would make her happier because when Xavier’s mum looks at us around the table, even if she’s shouting at us to behave, she’s always smiling too.
Originally posted: March 29, 2021