• As far as Claire could remember, there had been money. Money was at the breakfast table, passing from mouth to mouth, and money was there at night when she had been tucked in by an Au Pair who was doing it all for the money. She had never been able to tell whether this had a negative impact upon her or not - for she had nothing to compare it to. It was always there.

    When she thought really hard - and quite painfully - about it, money had been there much more than her parents. Daddy had forever been away - at work, in his office, and even when they sat down for dinner (because her mother had insisted that this promoted a strong nuclear family environment) he was away, his eyes drifting off into the hardwood panels on the wall as he counted and thought and breathed money. And her mother... Mummy was there, but like Daddy at meal-times, she wasn't, too. Mummy was never really anywhere. Every sentence was dreamy, every thought seemingly coming from a long way away, as if she'd detached herself from the world of money and gone somewhere where it could never reach her.

    And yet, when Mummy emerged from her changing room, arm-in-arm with Daddy and dripping with diamonds and silver and gold and platinum (although not all at once; she thought that looked tacky), Claire always thought that her mother hadn't done a particularly good job of it. Claire had decided at a young age that she was going to escape from money, and properly too. No half-hearted efforts like Mummy's. She traded her fine dresses and expensive blouses and skirts with the cook's daughter's clothes - jeans with the knees worn in and t-shirts with purple, red and brown stains. She'd gotten away with it for a whole morning, 'til Mummy had seen her and sent her and the cook's daughter upstairs to get changed again. But for just the tiniest moment, Claire had been sure that she'd seen a trace of a smile on her mother's lips. And so she kept trying.

    Once she'd found out she couldn't try on Claire's clothes any more, the cook's daughter seemed to have no more interest in her. That was probably her first experience of being used and being aware of it. Looking back now, it surprised her just how much it'd affected her. She'd moped about for days, looking devastated (and beautiful, oh so beautiful, in her fine dresses and silky ribbons), gazing out from her parents' balcony window onto the rolling grassy banks before her.

    And then she'd been struck on the head with a football. She'd been too surprised to cry elegant, heart-breaking tears, and probably would have remained in this shocked state had a voice not called out;

    “Sorry! Can you pass that back?” Claire was aghast. The voice had come from a straggly-looking boy, about a couple of years older than herself (and when you are ten, a couple of years is devastatingly significant), with hair that looked like a straw-coloured scrubbing brush. With nothing else to say, she called back,

    “This,” she winced, her voice sounding so... plummy in comparison to the boy's (had she always sounded like that? She was sure she hadn't), “is private property!” The boy flushed, and his stutter soon gave away what he said next was a lie.

    “I-i didn't know!”

    “Yes, you did,” Claire said simply, staring curiously at his ears, which seemed to have turned red. He fidgeted for a moment or two, before saying,

    “Can you just throw the ball back to me?” Claire, still slightly stunned, picked up the ball (with her fingertips only - it was filthy), and clumsily threw it back to the scrubbing brush boy. It was a very poor throw - even with her added height it barely passed a few metres - but the boy ran forward and caught it expertly.

    “Ah... thanks!” And with that, he retreated, clutching the football to his chest. Claire noticed his laces - scruffy, like the rest of him, were undone. She rather hoped he didn't trip.

    Later that day, she told her father - although she'd thought he wasn't listening to a word - about the boy she'd met. Surprisingly, her father turned to her and gave her a stern look - almost as if she'd been the one to invite him.
    “I hope,” he said solemnly, his pale blue eyes matching her own, “that you told him what we do to trespassers.” Claire frowned.
    “I don't know what we do to trespassers,” she admitted. “What?”
    “We take them to court,” said her father a little smugly, and Claire sighed inwardly. Money, again.



    It was two years later when she next met someone wandering outside in their garden. It was a girl, this time, her hair slicked back in high, gelled pony-tail, a golden stud in her nose and hoops in her ears. It was late at night, and so this time it was her own bedroom window she was looking out of. The girl hadn't noticed her watching, and Claire was intelligent enough to know better than to alert her.

    She watched, in utmost horror, as the girl removed a carton of eggs from her jacket, and... Oh no. She wasn't, was she? But as Claire watched the other girl walk backwards and forwards, trying to get her aim right, it became blatantly apparent that she was. Unable to contain herself any longer, she yelled out indignantly,

    “What do you think you're doing?!”Even as she said it, she knew it was a silly thing to ask. It was obvious what she was doing - what Claire really wanted to know was why.

    “What's it look like?” The other girl shouted back, an ugly expression on her face. Claire was taken aback - never in her life had someone been so rude to her - nor had anyone she'd spoken to ever used such terrible grammar.
    She took a cautious step forward, and pointed a shaking finger.

    “If... if you duh, uh don't go right now... I'll call the police.” The girl's pony-tail swung from side to side as she stomped away - but not before throwing an egg which only just missed Claire's open windows, swearing loudly as she went.

    Claire spent a large amount of time in the weeks that followed wondering why the girl disliked their family so much (had she even known any of them? Claire thought not). She told her mother briefly, during one of the many hours she and her mother stood in front of the largest bathroom's mirror, as Claire had layers of foul-smelling cream smeared over her face to 'keep her beautiful' (quite frankly, Claire would have settled for being only slightly beautiful if it meant she could have not have had that stuff put on constantly). Her mother had equally briefly told her the girl was probably just jealous of Claire's family and riches (money again), and then, in a far more verbose manner, told Claire off for thinking so much - it would give her premature age lines.

    Claire didn't stop thinking, of course. She merely made sure that her face remained perfectly impassive whenever she did.




    She was thirteen when she saw someone trespassing in their garden for the last time. He was a lanky boy, with scrubbing brush hair. He might have been the same boy she had seen three years ago, he might not. Claire had never asked. She didn't really care. She watched as he looked around, completely failed to see Claire, and pulled a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans. She rolled her eyes in disgust, and waited until he'd taken his first puff before calling out sweetly,

    “You're destroying your lungs, you know.” The boy looked up in horror, but seemed to relax at her smile, and casually flipped her off. Claire returned the greeting.

    “What if I said I don't care?” He asked smugly, running the cigarette-free hand through his hair. Claire rolled her eyes once again.

    “You're destroying my lungs, you know,” she said, looking coyly down at him. The boy looked slightly off guard for a moment or two, before grinning back at her and waving a hand loftily.

    “What if I said I don't care?” He repeated. Claire laughed airily, before clambering daintily (well, as much so as possible) down from the balcony and landing slightly ungracefully a few feet below. She brushed herself off - a slightly unnecessary motion - and walked towards the boy, smirking.

    “Then that's really quite rude of you, isn't it?” She asked rhetorically, dragging a finger underneath his chin. “You said you'd quit,” she said quietly. He had the decency to look embarrassed.

    “Yeah, well...”

    “You lied?”

    “...”

    “It's all right. I,” Claire said, gesturing at herself with an exquisitely manicured finger, “lie too.”

    And the two kissed, the taste of cigarette smoke and cherry lip-gloss lingering and mixing in their mouths. It wasn't love, it wasn't a situation to rival Romeo and Juliet, and when her father caught them half an hour later and forbid her to meet with him ever again, she barely even cried.

    She did a bit though. Just a bit.



    The Girls' School (for the girls whose fathers were both wealthy and wanted them away from the boys who were not wealthy) was more of an annoyance than anything else. Claire was treated kindly, because their fathers had money and Claire's father had money but what her father had also was power.

    And it was there that Claire realized that she also wanted power but a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl was not at the best position to gain it conventionally. Instead, she manipulated, she lied, she learned to control everyone with a few words. She wasn't liked, she was respected, and Claire understood that it was still because of her father and his riches that she wasn't thrown anyway. She now understood it as a circumstance to be appreciate, rather than abhor.

    Aged thirteen-and-a-half, Claire stopped rebelling and decided that if she couldn't detach herself from money, she would let it work in her favour.