Praise Me, Throne

PROLOGUE

THE PRIZE

──────── ⚜ ────────

EMILY

Nine years earlier

──────── ⚜ ────────

I won a writing prize when I was thirteen. My father took the cheque. My mother spent the drive home explaining why I had still managed to ruin the evening.

Before that, I stood behind a red curtain in the Saint Orla assembly hall and tried not to be sick on my shoes.

The hall was full of parents, teachers and people whose names appeared on plaques around the school. Every chair faced the stage. Hot lights shone through the gap in the curtain, and the folded page in my hand had gone soft at the corners because I kept squeezing it.

Mrs Landon touched my shoulder. “You only have to read the first page.”

I nodded.

“Take your time. Nobody is rushing you.”

Another nod. It was the most I could manage without opening my mouth and finding out whether my breakfast intended to stay where I had put it.

Mrs Landon smiled and went back to the lectern. She taught English and wore silver bracelets that clicked whenever she wrote on the board. They clicked now as she adjusted the microphone.

“Our junior playwriting prize goes to a student who created a funny, moving piece about a girl who keeps a dragon in her family’s greenhouse.”

People laughed softly. My glasses slid down my nose. I pushed them back with one finger.

“The judges loved its imagination and its wonderfully sharp dialogue. This year’s winner is Emily O’Van.”

The applause started. My legs did not.

Mrs Landon looked towards the curtain and held out her hand. My parents sat in the second row. My mother was very straight in a blue dress, already smiling for the people around her. My father had one ankle resting on his knee. He checked his watch before he looked at the stage.

Nora sat beside them. At eighteen, she was the only person in our family who still got told to sit properly. She caught my eye and lifted both thumbs.

I walked out.

The applause grew louder, which seemed unfair. I had already made it to the stage. Nobody needed to make the rest harder.

Mrs Landon gave me the certificate. A woman from the Ashcombe Arts Trust shook my hand and handed me a cream envelope. Then I stood in front of the microphone with my page.

The first line was easy. I had written it myself.

The dragon had eaten six roses, one garden chair and most of Mr Pritchard from next door.

I knew every word that came after it. I had read the whole play aloud in my bedroom, changing my voice for each character while the shower ran so nobody outside could hear me. The words had been funny there.

In the hall, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

Someone coughed near the back. A chair scraped. My breathing filled the microphone, too fast and much too loud.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Mrs Landon said beside me.

I looked at the page.

The letters blurred. I blinked, but they did not come back. Heat climbed from the collar of my white school blouse into my face. My hands began to shake, and the paper shook with them.

My mother’s smile disappeared.

“Emily?” Mrs Landon kept her voice low.

I tried. Air moved into my throat and stopped there.

Mrs Landon waited another few seconds, then placed one hand over the bottom of the page. “Would you like me to read it?”

I nodded.

She took the paper carefully. I moved away from the microphone while she read my opening scene.

The audience laughed in the right places. They laughed when the girl blamed the missing roses on an unusually hungry fox. They laughed harder when the dragon sneezed fire through the greenhouse roof. I stood beside Mrs Landon and stared at the black toes of my shoes until she finished.

Everyone applauded again.

This time I knew it was for the story. That should have helped. It almost did. Then I looked at my parents.

My father’s jaw was tight. My mother clapped with a small fixed smile, each movement neat and angry. Nora was on her feet. She stopped when my mother pulled at the back of her dress.

After the ceremony, Mrs Landon kept me near the stage while parents crowded around the refreshment tables. The cream envelope was still in my hand. Inside it sat a cheque for five hundred pounds and a letter offering me a place at the Ashcombe summer writing programme. I had read both twice in the corridor.

“You did well,” Mrs Landon said.

“I didn’t read it.”

“You wrote it.” She straightened the edge of my certificate. “That was the difficult part.”

My mother reached us before I could answer.

“Emily, there you are.” Her hand settled between my shoulders. To anyone watching, it probably looked affectionate. Her nails pressed through my blouse. “Mrs Landon, thank you for helping her.”

“She didn’t need much help,” Mrs Landon said. “The play is excellent.”

“She has always had a very active imagination.” My mother gave a light laugh. “Getting her to focus it properly has taken years.”

My father joined us and held out his hand. “Let me keep the envelope safe.”

I gave it to him.

The woman from the arts trust appeared beside him before he could put it inside his jacket. She had short white hair and green glasses on a chain.

“Mr and Mrs O’Van, you must be very proud.”

My mother’s fingers softened against my back. “Of course we are.”

“Emily has a rare voice,” the woman said. “The judges were unanimous.”

My father smiled for the first time that evening. “We’ve always encouraged her writing.”

I looked at him.

He had once thrown away three of my notebooks because I had left them on the dining table. He called them clutter.

“The summer programme will be good for her,” the woman continued. “All fees are covered, including accommodation.”

“Accommodation?” My mother asked.

“For two weeks. There will also be a small materials allowance.”

My father’s thumb moved over the envelope. “And the prize money is separate?”

The woman paused. “Yes. The cheque is Emily’s.”

“Naturally.” He put the envelope into his jacket. “We manage her account.”

Nora appeared at my side with two slices of cake balanced on one napkin. She offered one to me.

“Careful,” my mother said. “She’ll drop it down herself.”

Nora handed me the cleaner slice. “Then she’ll match the carpet.”

The carpet was covered in brown and gold swirls that hid almost everything. I took the cake before my mother could refuse it for me.

On the drive home, the certificate lay across my knees. Nora sat beside me in the back seat, holding my school bag between her feet. My father drove. My mother waited until the school gates disappeared behind us.

“All you had to do was read one page.”

I ran my thumb along the certificate’s gold border. “I know.”

“Your teacher had to rescue you. Do you understand how that looked?”

“I tried.”

My father looked at me through the mirror. “Trying would have involved speaking.”

Nora’s shoe pressed lightly against mine.

“People from the trust were there,” my mother continued. “Important people. You stood in front of them and stared at the floor.”

“They liked the play,” Nora said.

My mother turned in her seat. “I’m talking to Emily.”

Nora lowered her eyes. “I know.”

“Then let her answer.”

The car went quiet. Streetlights passed across the windows, bright and dark, bright and dark.

My father tapped the inside of his jacket. “The cheque will cover part of what we’ve already spent on her school fees.”

“It’s her prize,” Nora said.

“And she is our child,” he replied. “We pay for everything she has.”

I folded the certificate once, then quickly opened it again. A pale line remained across my name.

My mother sighed. “Nobody will remember that little play. They’ll remember the girl who couldn’t say a word.”

“I’ll remember it,” Nora said.

“Nobody asked you.”

“I know.”

Nora did not say anything else for the rest of the drive. Neither did I.

At home, my father went into his study with the envelope. My mother told me to change out of my uniform before I creased it, although it was already creased from the seat belt and from her hand.

I put the certificate under my mattress.

The winning play went into the bin beside my desk.

Half an hour later, Nora knocked once and came into my room. She had the stapled pages tucked beneath her arm.

“You left this,” she said.

“I don’t want it.”

“That’s unfortunate. It’s good.”

She placed it on my desk and sat in the small chair by the window. Her knees came too close to her chest because the chair had been mine since I was nine.

“You don’t have to say that,” I said.

“I know.”

I pulled off my glasses and cleaned them on the hem of my jumper. “Mum said it was too strange.”

“Your mum thinks black pepper is adventurous.”

A laugh escaped before I could stop it.

Nora picked up the play. “The bit where the dragon hides under the garden table was my favourite.”

“He doesn’t fit.”

“That’s why it’s funny.” She opened to the page. “And the girl knows his tail is sticking out, but she lies for him anyway.”

Nora had read it. Not only the first page Mrs Landon had read aloud. All of it.

“Why did you like that part?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He made a mess. She kept him.”

The answer sat quietly between us.

Nora returned the pages to my desk. “You should keep writing.”

“What if nobody reads it?”

“I will.”

She said it without smiling, as if it was not a kind thing or a promise I had to earn. It was simply what she planned to do.

My father had the cheque. My certificate stayed hidden beneath the mattress where nobody could decide what it had cost them. Nora remained folded into the tiny chair while I opened a new notebook.

On paper, nobody interrupted me. Nobody answered for me. Nobody told me to speak up and then laughed when my voice shook.

I wrote the first line twice because my hand was still trembling.

Then I kept going.