The Re-Set

Diplomatic Relations

"Sit still and concentrate on the service, Olivia." Caroline hissed, tapping the hymn book she was holding between us, as if she expected me to follow it, word for word. It was the Sunday morning of course, half an hour into the morning service, and as I emerged from the aftereffects of my meltdown, I was struggling to keep up with the terms of our fresh start, because I did not much like my new routine.

"It's so boring..." I muttered, choosing brutal honesty over blind obedience. Not only had I been dragged out of my cot at the crack of dawn for yet another bath with Felicity, administered by the alliance of grandmothers still in residence, and dressed up to the nines in yet another gruesome outfit, but I had learned that we were attending two services, not one. My previous visit to the large, modern church had been to the family service, which started at ten-thirty, but for some unfathomable reason, we had arrived at eight-thirty, an ungodly hour on a Sunday in my view, so that we could all attend something called Matins, and then Felicity and I could take a nice bible class before joining the later service. All in all, I reckoned that I was in for three and a half hours of church, and I was not happy about it. Not that anyone else seemed to care about that, of course.

"Olivia...?" Dad growled, from the other side of Felicity. I was sitting next to Caroline, and my stepsister was next to her new daddy, which did not bother me. But it meant that Caroline had me right by her side and was watching my every single move, and the look on dad's face suggested that he was not very pleased with me. But it was all right for him clearly, because he was the proud bridegroom, and had been relentlessly feted by his wife and all the grandmothers as well as most of the other guests at the long reception, and then got the exact same preferential treatment over breakfast, like some sort of Lord or something. But whilst he was just enjoying himself, I had been uncompromisingly babied at the wedding and the rather tedious party, and that had continued as the Sunday dawned. I knew my grandmother would fuss over me, because she always did whenever we saw her, as she liked lavishing attention on me. But Gran did not usually treat me like a toddler, and I almost lost my temper when I saw the ghastly yellow and white sailor dresses Felicity and I were expected to wear, and the yellow summer coats that went with them.

"Well, it is?" I mouthed back at him, as the Pastor started his sermon. "I am not supposed to tell lies!"

"You will sit here still and quiet...and you will concentrate on the service...like a good little girl, Olivia." Caroline said, her mouth right beside my ear. "Or you will not enjoy sitting down for lunch when we get home."

So, I settled down to behave, fuming inside, but not willing to volunteer for another spanking when we got back to Broomwaters. I was dimly aware that I was being a pain, but I did not feel that was so unreasonable. Not when my parents seemed to want to transform me into something totally different to the old me. I obviously knew that I had to go to church to keep my place at Deepdene, but our church, the one that Caroline had been taking Felicity too every week for several years, according to my stepsister, appeared to be a lot more serious about things than some of the main alternatives locally. I had talked to a few girls at school, also Deepdene sign ups, and most of them were already churchgoers, as it happened. One girl, in the year above us, had raised her eyebrows when I told her that we were going to the Reigate Church of Christ the Reformer, and said that her Church of England one was much easier. Shorter services, she said knowingly, and quite happy to sign diaries, even if you missed the odd week. And her parents were not so anal about her uniform, either.

"Nothing annoys Mummy more than messing around in church, Olivia?" Felicity cautioned as she took my hand, as instructed, and walked me down the side of the church to the hall where our bible class apparently took place. I had survived an hour of Matins, which had been on the verge of making my ears bleed, but whilst the adults had coffee and a nice chat before the main family service started, we had lessons to endure.