Emily WARMAN – Year 8 – Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella. Runner Up - MIDDLE YEARS SENIOR – Literary Responses Kerry, I am writing to you because I have finally realised that it is time. It is time at last, that you know how emotionally hurt I have felt ever since the day you walked into my house. I came down the stairs and I heard a new voice, a voice which I hadn’t heard before and a smell of perfume ever so strong. There you were drinking a cup of tea. Of course you got special treatment, which was understandable for the first week or two because your mother had just passed away and you had moved in with my family, but then it never stopped. It was like my parents didn’t care about me anymore and my place had been filled by someone who they thought was the perfect child. It was hard, really hard. Especially for a little nine year old girl to have all the attention and love from her parents just taken away and gone so quickly. But I put up with it because there was nothing I could do. You overpowered me. You grew up to be the smarter child and more successful one. But what was I? I was the one who got told to look up to you and get tips from you. When deep inside my head I just wanted to punch the guts out of you. When you needed help I always lent you a helping hand, but when it came to me you just wouldn’t budge. When I was desperate for a job, I wrote you a long letter explaining that I knew it put you in an uncomfortable position but I really needed some work experience. Of course being the selfish person that you are, you declined straight away. Yet I didn’t tell anyone, not even Mum and Dad. Compared to you, I am an unsuccessful business woman who can do better in life. You have to top absolutely everything I do because you can’t let anyone else be better than you. Furthermore, on mum’s birthday you got the same present as me but so much better and more expensive. In addition you lied to me that you didn’t know, straight to my face! Kerry, you are the biggest two faced person I have ever known. You are a selfish, stuck-up and mean person. If you want to live life the way you are right now you are going to be very unsuccessful and unloved. If that’s the way you want it then you can have it but stop trying to get everyone around you to change me because I am not you and I don’t want to be like you! Yours sincerely, Emma