(The stage is dimly lit. There is a small bed in the centre and a desk to the far right that is currently covered with a sheet. CHARLOTTE is sat on the bed with a pad of paper, she is sucking thoughtfully on the end of a pen. She sighs, looks at the paper and begins to write, speaking as she does so.)

CHARLOTTE: Dear…Anwen… (She sighs with frustration and throws down the paper and pen.) No. Scratch that. Dear Sweetheart. Sweetheart. We have never met, although you have attempted to contact me on numerous occasions over these past few weeks. Somehow, sweetheart, I have found myself in the unfamiliar position of wanting to explain my situation. But first. A memory. (Music begins to play quietly; it is a low thumping song with no real lyrics or structure, simply something to dance to. As the music begins the lighting changes to a dark orange that floods the stage and pulses in time to the rhythm. The atmosphere begins to resemble that of a club. CHARLOTTE looks around at this and smiles gleefully.) I am sixteen years old and lucid- in the mood to drag my feet rather than my knuckles along a brick wall. (As she says this she drags her knuckles along the edge of the bed, pushing them deep into the surface, her voice and expression becoming hard and focused. When she releases her hand she gives a small, stifled gasp. She clutches the hand for a moment and then smiles again, resuming her previous demeanour.) I am in a hall or a club of some kind; there is a bar and a band and I am surrounded by people who are young. I am young too and we are all pulsing together with it, the sort of young that is not a state of mind but energy and skin and hair and body and a way of moving and thinking. We are young and we are glorious, untarnished, intelligent, indifferent, beautiful… After we have filled our bodies with all sorts of delicious poisons, we dance and scream and passionately assert our opinions. If we could rule the world, oh sweetheart, what a world it would be. (She clambers off the bed and makes her way to the front of the stage whilst moving her hips, her feet and her body subtly in time to the music.) I seem to know everyone- I can’t take three steps without having a hug or a kiss pressed upon me, or without hearing my name yelled across the crowd.

BOY’S VOICE: Charlotte!

GIRL’S VOICE: Charlie baby!

CHARLOTTE: (Laughing softly at this.) Everyone is older than me; this was always the way, about eighteen or so…Peter’s age. On this particular night he is there too. (A spotlight illuminates PETER, who has been standing in the shadows.) He is stood in the corner with a bottle of something to keep his hands busy and he is angry. There’s no way of telling because he is just watching us… as if we were a television set a couple of metres in front of him. I think he is angry. (She walks to the covered desk and rests her arm on it as if it were a bar.) I reach the bar and bang, bang (she mimes pointing a gun to her head and shooting herself twice.) Two shots. Bullets of scorching hot liquid slide down my throat and soon…the air feels heavy; the music and the smoke and the atmosphere all cling to me. Bang. (She mimes doing a shot.) He looks concerned. Bang. (Mimes a shot.) He walks over. (PETER walks over.) Bang, bang. (Mimes a shot.)

PETER: Perhaps you should slow down?

CHARLOTTE: But by now he’s worked his way through several bottles and I convince him to join me. Bang, bang, bang (they both mime doing shots.) I like the way he seems to be throbbing. Not in a way you can see but he’s beating all of the time and I can see it; he’s a vein or a heart in his entire self, all of him. I can see it; his arms and his chest and his head and every inch shrinking inwards and rushing back outwards to the rhythm of the music, or his anger. It’s the only way you can tell, the only thing that shifts in him and I’m the only one who can see it. (PETER and CHARLOTTE stare at each other for a few moments and then move back to the centre of the stage, CHARLOTTE leading PETER.) I want to dance and he is there, Peter, my brother and he is tall, my eyes reach his chin. (She moves close to him as she says this and takes hold of his hands. They step backwards, arms outstretched, fingers linked, looking at each other.) I find people for us to move with but we are really dancing with each other, best friends, brother and sister, our heads spinning with love and necessity.

(The music stops, the lighting returns to its previous state, PETER exits. CHARLOTTE is left standing alone and laughs in a soft yet manic way and moves back to the bed. She sits down.)

Brother and sister is an odd relationship. It’s completely different, from…sister and sister, from brother and brother, mother and son. It takes a mixture of elements; of love, of bitterness, anger, protection, hatred, passion- each of them in exactly the right proportions. Usually you get these elements from sharing a life, from sharing a relationship, sharing parents, sharing your toys; and we just didn’t have that. Peter was sent to boarding school when he was eight years old. I was six and I… don’t really remember how we were before then. He never came home for Easter, only for a few days at Christmas and hardly at all during the summer; he would stay with relatives or work when he was older. When he did come home he was like a visitor in my house, like polite friend of my Fathers who my Mother only tolerated because it wasn’t for very long and it was important to Daddy.  I suppose I avoided him. He was shy, and nothing to do with me really. Somehow, when I reached sixteen, we had managed to go two years without seeing each other at all and it was…as if we had just met. He was surprised, at how I looked obviously (she smiles to herself in a self-indulgent way) but not at the way I talked, the things I said. He didn’t call me funny or charming or intelligent and I wasn’t an idea to him. Which I liked, I mean…I’m a person not a concept (laughs). We understood each other, without having to say a word and with words, with lots of them, on into the night without any of the sheen, without trying to make him smile or laugh. We were allies, despite the fact that beneath her civility Mummy hated him almost as much as she loves me, which is a lot. I’m her baby girl, her princess, her miracle, her blessing, her shopping partner, her confidante, the perfect, beautiful, intelligent daughter she can boast about. Does it sound like I mind sweetheart? I don’t, because this is what she needs and I can be this for her as easily as anything so why not? She didn’t need Peter, he couldn’t be anything for her and so she resented him, hated him, sent him as far away as possible. He…thought there was more to it than that.

Did you know that his name is really Pétur? It’s Icelandic; P-E-T-U-R with a little accent over the “e”. Our parent’s holidayed there before he was born and liked the name but mostly he’s just called Peter…which I never think fits him somehow, like a jumper that’s just too big. He was always fascinated by Iceland, “the most beautiful place” he said, and he wanted to go there, would read books about it, find photos. He started to think this was it. The answer to why his Mother neglected him so much, why she always called me a miracle baby. Perhaps he wasn’t hers and perhaps he came from Iceland. Adopted. This theory was soon blown out of the water; the dates didn’t correspond, their going to Iceland and his being born were two years apart, but the adoption idea, that stayed. It was like the name Peter, he just didn’t fit into the family, he didn’t even look like the rest of us and she called me her miracle baby (laughs mirthlessly). It all came to a head, these ponderings and wonderings and theories, when he found a piece of yellowing paper stuffed at the back of my father’s desk that could have been there for years. It said, “A. Taylor, birth mother”. This was around the time that I decided to demonstrate the condition of my sanity. I was nearly eighteen and about to pass my exams with flying colours. I had a perfect future in front of me; a doctor, a lawyer, a business woman in a pencil skirt with stockings and red lipstick- completely un-fucking-touchable. I didn’t want it, that wasn’t me and besides what if… (For the first time she looks disturbed and insecure and begins to hug her arms before she realises what she is doing. When she begins to speak her grandeur is emphasised, as if she is overcompensating.) I would have been brilliant; of course, can’t you imagine me at University sweetheart? Fucking all the Professors (laughs with relish) and not to get top grades, because I would already have them, but because I was the only one they wanted, or the one they wanted the most at least. But my way, what I did, it worked too. Insane, maybe, but still beautiful, tragically beautiful and still so smart, a tortured genius. They shut me away for a while but it wasn’t for long and when I got out Mummy and Daddy paid for this flat and I was close to Peter which was all that mattered. He’d got a job as a porter in a hospital by this time and a crappy little flat of his own, decked out in as many mirrors as he could afford. You don’t like mirrors do you sweetheart? He needed them though, how else would he talk to his imaginary friend? (Laughs.)

Do you want to know what I did? (She stretches out on the bed, wriggling her fingers and toes sensually and enjoying the effect of her words.) My parents came home to find my exquisite skin all cut open and a hundred different words on the wallpaper in my blood. I’d been up all night with a thesaurus, picking just the right ones; annihilate, irrelevant, trepidation, distorted… perhaps the amount of preparation made it a little hollow but, sweetheart, I had to let them know somehow. (Sits up again.) Nothing much changed over the next few years. I carried on in my new way and so did Peter. I called him Brother but he wasn’t really, not in the terms of those elements and in all likelihood not even biologically. But he was always there, always understood me. That was until he began looking for A. Taylor, breaking into people’s houses, searching through their things for evidence, a scrap of information that told him he was there, he’d existed for these people in a way he never had for our Mother. (She sighs and stares sadly at the paper in front of her on the bed. She picks up the pen and begins to write once more.) Yours, Charlotte.

(CHARLOTTE exits.)