The Re-Set

Party Animals

"I think your grandmothers are all going to want this one printed and framed...come on, you two...say cheese?" Dad laughed, as he lined up his camera for another picture. It was Saturday and I had been hoping for some respite, after four days of excruciating obedience, but Caroline had other ideas. Not that it was her fault that we had been invited to a birthday party, but it was her fault that it had turned into such a production number. I had been hoping for a quiet day to get over a hard week of studying and would have kicked up a fuss about attending the party of a ten-year-old girl I had never met, but my strategy was still intact, so I had to just surrender to the inevitable fuss.

"Sausage curls are so cute, aren't they?" Caroline almost purred, clearly delighted with the results of her labours over almost two hours. Attacking our hair with curling tongs had taken up at least half of that time, after a good scrub in the bath, and then she had got the two of us into red velvet dresses with huge gold sashes and massive matching bows in our fiddled-with hair. With white satin tights and red velvet shoes to complete the outfit, dad had demanded that we pose for photographs. "You look so pretty, girls!"

"Thank you, Mummy." I mumbled, less enthusiastic than Felicity, who was looking forward to seeing some of the friends she had left behind at Reigate Grammar School.

"Olivia is nervous because she won't know anyone, Mummy?" My concerned sister said, as if to explain my lack of exuberance. She was visibly excited, and ever since I had told her that I liked having a sister, she was always trying to help me impress her mother. Beth had no doubt been reporting on me all week, but Felicity constantly made sure that Caroline knew all about every single good thing I had done during the day from her point of view. She was really sweet and I was growing increasingly fond of her, even if her puppy-like eagerness to please could be exhausting. Mind you, my whole life was exhausting to be honest, and I stifled a huge yawn as Felicity babbled on. "But she will be fine when she gets there, won't she, Mummy?"

"You'll look after her, so of course she will be, sweetheart...and I am staying to help with the party food...so I won't be far away." Caroline grinned, patting my cheek affectionately as she tried to encourage me. "Do you like your party dress, Olivia?"

"Yes, Mummy." I lied, and she seemed to buy it, amazingly. Maybe she thought that I was just being polite, which was what she wanted, because no one could change that much in the space of a week. I thought the dress was an abomination, the sort of thing Princess Charlotte might wear to a posh royal event, and she was half my age. "Good...because you will be having a party of your own in August...so try not to spill jelly and ice cream down it this afternoon my darling?"

"I'll try not to, Mummy." I assured her, finding it impossible to imagine what we would be doing when my birthday rolled around, because the last two weeks had been a whirlwind, which I was still struggling to get my head around. If I could be transformed so much in a fortnight, I could be anywhere in four months.

"But enjoy yourself, sweetheart," Dad said, resting his hand on my shoulder. "You've done really well this week and I am looking forward to seeing your first grades of the term next week for the first time in a long time."

"Thanks, Daddy," I said, giving him exactly the same sort of childlike loving respect I had been giving Caroline since Tuesday. I wanted to make them both trust me, so that they would call off Beth at least, and maybe they would tone down some of their other irritating attempts to transform me into their perfect daughter. But it also felt better not to be in trouble, or arguing with them all the time, even if it did come at a price. In a way, I think, I needed to calm down and just stop getting so annoyed, or upset about everything that was happening to me. Behaving was definitely easier than the alternatives, not to mention less stressful, and less painful, which allowed me to catch my breath and just take stock of things. Because it was not just me who was being transformed, of course. Caroline had said something really interesting when she was giving me my final warning on the Monday evening, after Beth had told her about me hiding in the toilets at break, not eating my lunch and generally resisting her authority over me. She had basically admitted that dad was worried about me, long before they decided to get married and I had to meet her, so she was obviously already planning to help him sort me out, but then Deepdene had appeared out of nowhere, and she thought that the combination of her parenting skills and a much stricter school would be good for me. But I was beginning to realise that they had not planned on Deepdene as part of my new routine. I was fairly sure that they had been discussing it long before the new school became a reality. And that was important, I thought to myself, because Deepdene School, in cahoots with the Church of Christ the Reformer, was the catalyst for change for a lot of people, not just me. And although Sarah Peters had obviously done something pretty serious to provoke her rebirth, as it were, by her own admission, that could not possibly be true of all of the other early Deepdene adopters. Catherine Martin, for instance, had never been in any trouble that I was aware of, and Redstone was such a small school, everyone was always aware of everything almost as soon as it happened. Lots of girls were signing up for Deepdene School, and then abruptly turning into 'good little girls' almost overnight, especially the ones who were attending the Church of Christ the Reformer.