But I have spent nine years building a story in which my sister is the one who was given everything — and the actual nineteen-year-old in that story said thank you for a car she did not want, in front of a camera, and then found out four days later what it had been instead of.
My mother did that to both of us in about a fortnight, and I have spent nine years pointing at the wrong person.
And the medals, which about forty people looked at before they looked at my face and which I have had to be honest about.
I did not have to wear blues.
It was a wedding. The invitation said lounge suits. I own two perfectly good dresses and one of them is navy and cost rather more than I like admitting.
I put the uniform on in a Travelodge at half past one on the eighteenth of October and I did it on purpose, and I knew exactly what it would do in that room, and I had known since the invitation arrived in the June.
