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Jenny was not unaccustomed to lying to officials.

When her father died, she had lied to the police officers and said yes, she was quite happy to stay with her step-aunt. When she had taken the teaching job at Crunchem Hall, she had lied to her university supervisor and said it was the best job offer she had received.

Perhaps that one hadn’t been such a lie, as it was the only offer she had received. It had been made quite clear that she was not allowed to apply to other schools.

Once Miss Trunchbull had run for the hills and Mr and Mrs Wormwood had summarily abandoned Matilda, Jenny found herself telling all sorts of lies to all sorts of officials: unfortunately, she told the council, the school had suffered some vandalism, the shock of which, she told Ofsted, had led their dear headmistress to resign in some haste, and of course, she told the social worker, she could handle taking over the school at the same time as taking care of a little girl.

Said social worker, Angie, raised her eyebrows.

Jenny just smiled.

“I’m very well-supported,” she lied. “It’s a very strong community of teachers at the school and we’re not making any major changes. I was something of a personal assistant to Miss Trunchbull anyway, so it’s not quite such a step up as you might imagine.”

Angie nodded, making a note on her clipboard. “And how long have you lived here?”

Jenny glanced around the kitchen of her childhood home. “Oh, all my life,” she lied. “It has felt quite large and empty of late, though. It’s lovely to have Matilda here to fill it with a bit more life.”

That one was not such a lie either.

“She has pointed out that it needs a lick of paint,” Jenny continued. “I think perhaps I hadn’t noticed. You grow used to a place, don’t you?”

“You do,” said Angie. “Well, I think I agree with Matilda. And,” she lowered her voice, “if you’re not averse, it might help her feel at home. Letting her have her own stamp on the place. For children leaving a difficult home situation, having control over their surroundings can be very beneficial.”

“Of course,” Jenny agreed.

“Well then,” said Angie. “I’ll need to have a bit of a chat with Matilda on her own, and then we can make a decision about an interim care order. She really has no other family?”

“Not that she knows,” Jenny lied, or perhaps fudged slightly. There was a paternal grandfather, but Matilda had never actually met the man and had only wrinkled her nose when asked if she wanted to make contact. “Would you like to speak to her here, or up in her room? We’ve already made a bit of a start on brightening that one up.”

Angie nodded approvingly. “I’ll head upstairs and ask if she’s happy to show me her room. Thank you, Miss Honey.”

“Thank you,” Jenny said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she lied.

~

Matilda was a remarkably self-sufficient child.

Jenny knew many a very clever adult who had no skill at all in home economics, but Matilda had no such issues. From the day they moved back into the big house, she set about like a proper housewife, busying herself arranging the cupboards, familiarising herself with the pots and pans and crockery and cutlery that Miss Trunchbull had left behind.

“You don’t need to do this,” Jenny said, more than once.

“I know,” said Matilda, and carried on.

She had no particular interest in cleaning, it seemed, but cared for herself meticulously: perhaps she had once read the word “unkempt” and resolved never to exemplify it, cleaning her teeth for two minutes exactly, brushing her hair with precisely one hundred strokes.

“Where did you learn that?” Jenny asked.

“Journey to the River Sea,” said Matilda. “I read it when I was five.”

Jenny looked it up later and was unsurprised to find that it was aimed at children of around ten years of age.

Some things, however, it was more difficult to learn from books. She could make simple recipes, but had little idea of flavour or seasoning. She could brush her hair, but had never learnt how to braid it.

“Would you like some help, Matilda?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t need help,” Matilda replied, and went about with her hair loose.

She even stepped in with Jenny’s work when she was careless enough to leave it available. One morning, she came down for breakfast to find that Matilda had made her a cup of tea, set out the butter and jam for toast, and finished off the school’s accounting.

“That’s not your job,” she tried to tell Matilda.

Matilda looked up at her, wide-eyed. “But it’s easy for me,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but darling…”

“I like that,” she interrupted.

“Like what?” asked Jenny.

“When you call me darling,” said Matilda. “Did you know it comes from Old English? The -ling ending was used to make personal nouns out of other nouns. It’s sometimes used in modern English today, like Earthling.”

“You are very dear to me,” Jenny promised.

Matilda nodded, satisfied, and went on eating her cornflakes.

The next day, Jenny found that all of her marking for year five’s mock SATs had been completed for her.

~

The librarian hammering on the door came as quite a surprise.

“Why have you taken this girl away from her parents?”

Jenny blinked. “Hello. Who are you?”

“This is Mrs Phelps,” said Matilda, and there she was, edging out from behind the woman. “She’s a librarian. I tried to explain.”

“She has spent three years telling me how much her parents love her,” said Mrs Phelps, “and now she tells me that they abandoned her? I smell a rat, Miss Honey.”

“I was lying,” said Matilda.

Jenny repressed a sigh. “Why don’t you come in and we’ll have a cup of tea? And Matilda, perhaps you could put your books up in your room?”

Because of course the child was carrying a stack of books. She toed off her shoes and hurried up the stairs.

“Careful!” Jenny called after her. And then, to Mrs Phelps, “Please, come through to the kitchen.”

She got the kettle on and the nice teacups out, the china teapot she hadn’t used since she was a child. The kitchen cupboards were now covered in all her schoolchildren’s drawings. Angie had given more approving nods the last time she had visited.

“You’ve known Matilda for a while then?” she asked Mrs Phelps.

“She has come to my library since she was four years old,” said Mrs Phelps. “She would bring a little cart with her for all of her books.”

Jenny could only smile at that image. “And did you know her parents?”

“No,” said Mrs Phelps. “But whenever she had to leave, I would say to her, your mother will be missing you. And she always, always said yes, my mother will be missing me terribly, I must go home to my mother. When she took home all those long, complicated books, I would say to her, your father must be very proud of you. And she would say yes, my father is very proud of me. He says that I am a miracle.”

Jenny set out a little bowl of sugar. “Do you take milk?”

“Yes please.”

So she poured out milk into a jug and set that out too. The kettle boiled and she busied herself with the teapot.

“So?” said Mrs Phelps. “What do you have to say?”

Jenny set the kettle carefully back on the stove, settling the lid of the teapot gently in place. “She was lying,” she said, her back to the table. “Her mother never missed her, and her father was never proud of her.”

“A four year old child does not lie,” Mrs Phelps pointed out.

Jenny turned. “A four year old child doesn’t read - what was she reading, back then?” she asked.

“Enid Blyton,” said Mrs Phelps. “C. S. Lewis. Alright, I take your point.”

Jenny sat down. “I think she was probably telling you whatever she needed to tell you to make sure that she could come back to your library,” she said. She had set the teapot slightly askew in the centre of the table; she adjusted it by a fraction of an inch. “Somewhere she didn’t need to think about what it was like at home. On her first day in my class, she told me that reading books was an escape for her.”

Mrs Phelps’ eyes were wide. “So for all of those years…”

“You weren’t to know,” said Jenny. “I didn’t, not straight away. Children in difficult situations can be quite prolific liars if they need to be.”

“Then what on earth happened?”

And so Jenny poured out the tea and explained as best she could about Mr Wormwood’s dodgy business deals and his decision to leave the country post-haste.

“Matilda didn’t want to go,” she said. “And so I offered to take her in.”

“Just like that?” Mrs Phelps asked, setting down her teacup. “You’d only taught her for a few weeks.”

“At the moment, it’s just an interim care order,” Jenny said. “If there were a better option for Matilda, somewhere else she would prefer to go, then of course I would support her. But she is an exceptional little girl, I saw that immediately.”

“That does not automatically mean that you should be her guardian,” Mrs Phelps argued. “Anyone could see that child is exceptional.”

“I didn’t mean clever,” said Jenny. “She is, of course, but she is also empathetic, with a strong sense of justice. There was a bit of a bullying situation at school and she stepped right in and sorted it out herself.”

Mrs Phelps sniffed at her tea. “That should be your job,” she said.

“Yes,” Jenny agreed. “But it’s quite difficult to tell Matilda that.”

“She told me there was a bully at school,” said Mrs Phelps. “And I told her she should tell someone. I told her two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Jenny nodded. “Sadly, she hasn’t really seen that work in action, so far. But we’re working on it,” she lied. She raised her voice. “You can come in now, Matilda.”

The little girl slipped into the kitchen on socked feet. “I don’t want it to be an interim order,” she said stubbornly. “I want it to be a full adoption. But the council has a process.”

Jenny caught Mrs Phelps’ eye, looking for commiseration. She found instead a gentle fondness.

“Well then, we’d best follow it,” said Mrs Phelps. She set down her teacup in its saucer. “I’ll be by the church tomorrow, Matilda.”

“Yes, Mrs Phelps,” Matilda chirped.

Jenny showed the librarian out. When she came back to the kitchen, Matilda was making herself a cup of tea.

“Isn’t it stewed?” Jenny asked.

“It’s a little bit strong, but that’s alright,” said Matilda. “I’ll just add more milk.”

Jenny sat down again. Her own cup was still mostly full and she wrapped her fingers around it. “I hope you don’t mind that I told Mrs Phelps a little bit of your story,” she said.

“I don’t mind,” said Matilda. “I told her most of yours too, before I knew it was your story and not mine.”

Jenny paused, the words pinching at something in her chest. “Does she know that it’s my story?” she asked.

Matilda considered, tilting her head to one side. “I don’t think so,” she said. “But she thought that someone should have called the police on your aunt. I told her it was just a story.”

“I see,” said Jenny. “I thought we might arrange for Lavender to come over to tea next week. How do you feel about that?”

~

The council considered Matilda to be a Looked After Child, capital letters mandatory.

“That’s silly,” was Matilda’s opinion. “All children should be looked after.”

“I suppose Looked After Children are the ones where the council needs to double-check,” Jenny suggested.

Matilda was unimpressed. “I think it’s all the other ones who need to be double-checked.”

Being a Looked After Child entailed a social worker visiting occasionally and a full annual health review from a designated nurse, who checked that Matilda was registered with a local doctor and dentist, measured her height and weight, and asked how Matilda was feeling in her new home.

“I’m very happy to live with Miss Honey,” said Matilda.

“That’s good,” said the nurse. “What makes you happy here?”

That took Matilda half a second to process, but then she was rattling off answers like there was no tomorrow: she could read all of the books she liked, and Miss Honey had let her move up into the year six class at school, and they visited libraries and museums together on Saturday afternoons.

“You really like learning,” the nurse said.

“Oh yes,” said Matilda. “I want to learn everything.”

“And what about Miss Honey?” the nurse asked. “What makes you happy about her?”

Matilda clearly felt she had already answered this question. She stared at Jenny with laser-like focus, as if she were hoping that she could dig out the correct response directly with her magic powers.

“She’s kind,” Matilda said eventually. “And she’s interested. And she asks me if she can help.”

“Does she take good care of you?”

This time the answer was obvious and therefore immediate: “Yes,” said Matilda, and Jenny didn’t dare contradict her.

The questioning continued: who would Matilda go to if she had any worries (an easy question: Miss Honey), what was her favourite subject at school (English literature, although it was frustrating that the other students read so much slower than her), her least favourite (phys ed, because she was in a class with older students and she was smaller and not as quick or strong as them), and what was her biggest worry at the moment?

Another difficult question, another hard stare.

“Tell the truth,” Jenny said, gently.

Matilda’s eyes narrowed. She turned resolutely away from Jenny and back to the nurse. “I’m worried that my parents might want me back,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to them. So I want Miss Honey to adopt me properly so they can’t take me away again.”

A lie.

Jenny wasn’t sure how she knew, but there was something in the set of Matilda’s mouth, some stubborn angle to her jaw or quirk of her frowning eyebrows. But the nurse softened and set down her clipboard.

“Thank you for telling me that,” she told Matilda. “I want you to know that we would never put you back with your parents unless we were very sure that you were going to be safe and happy. Alright? It’s okay to be worried, it’s very normal to be worried. But I want you to remember that we won’t let your parents just take you away again. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Matilda.

True: Matilda had read The Children’s Act 1989 and every document she could find from the local council about how their social work department operated. She understood perfectly well that the safeguarding nurses and social workers would not put her back with neglectful parents when there was a better option available.

She also knew that her parents did not care enough to want her back in the first place, let alone go through the rigmarole of engaging with child protection procedures, so all of this information was largely irrelevant.

Later that evening, settling Matilda into bed, Jenny tried to ask again.

“Can I braid your hair, darling?”

Matilda blinked. “Oh. Alright then.”

So Jenny settled behind her on the bed and picked up Matilda’s hairbrush, sweeping her hair back from her face to start a simple plait.

“Earlier, when we were talking to the nurse,” she said, “I think that perhaps you didn’t tell the whole truth about your biggest worry.”

“Yes,” said Matilda.

Matilda’s hair was soft and fine. Jenny had to concentrate on not pulling it too tight, letting it slip through her fingers a little.

“Would you tell me what your biggest worry really is?” she asked.

Matilda sat perfectly still, her spine poker-straight. Jenny twined a few more curves into the braid.

“My biggest worry,” Matilda said, “is that you’re not really okay.”

Jenny suddenly realised that she didn’t have a spare hairband with her. With one hand, she pulled a ribbon from her own hair instead and started to tie off Matilda’s braid.

“You have a lot of work,” Matilda continued. “And you’re doing a lot of things you haven’t before. Like paying all these new taxes because you have a proper house now. And making sure all the paperwork looks proper for the school and for me. And you spent quite a lot of time with Miss Trunchbull in charge, didn’t you? I think that must have been very scary, for a very long time.”

“Yes,” Jenny agreed. “It was, rather.”

She stroked one finger down the centre of the plait.

“And I think you’re worried that she might come back,” said Matilda. “And that she might take you away.”

She shifted on the bed, turned around so she could look Jenny in the eye. “Or that she might take me away. From you.” Then she shook her head a little, feeling out her new hairdo. “Thank you for the braid,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” said Jenny. Her voice caught in her throat; she cleared it and repeated herself: “You’re very welcome, sweetheart.”

“I don’t think she will come back,” said Matilda. “But if she does, we must just make it as difficult as possible.”

“Alright,” said Jenny. “And how do we do that?”

Matilda tilted her head to one side, a perfect little affectation which had nothing to do with how hard she was thinking. “You can’t tell the social worker or Ofsted or anyone that you were lying. But I think you need to tell someone else. Like a doctor, or a counsellor.”

“I see,” said Jenny.

“That way,” Matilda explained, “there’s a record of what she did, but it won’t go anywhere until we need it. Did you know you can ask for a copy of your own medical records?”

“I hadn’t looked it up,” Jenny replied.

“Well, that’s what I think you should do,” said Matilda.

Jenny swallowed. “Alright,” she said. “But that’s not your biggest worry, about Miss Trunchbull taking you away. That’s my biggest worry.”

Matilda shrugged. “Yes. Mine is that you’re not okay. Like I said. I think you need to tell a counsellor.”

“Darling,” said Jenny. What else could she say? What else was there to say to this precocious little liar, who had so neatly manipulated her, handled her just as she did every other adult in her life? Except, “Alright.” And then, “But not right now. You know I have to have a medical exam too, to adopt you? They’ll need to check my health records for that.”

Matilda frowned. “Oh,” she said. “Yes. But after the adoption?”

“Yes,” Jenny agreed, and found herself bundled up in an awfully big hug, Matilda’s arms wrapped around her waist with all the strength in her tiny little body. Jenny hugged her back, pressed a kiss to the crown of her head.

“Matilda, I want you to promise me something,” she said. “You and I - we’re quite different to some other people, and our family will be quite different too. But part of being a family is that parents - mothers - take care of their children. Their daughters.”

Matilda drew back. Jenny ploughed on.

“I know that sometimes, you’ll be able to fix my problems much more easily than I can fix yours,” she said. “But I want you to promise me that you won’t ever hide them from me. Even if you’re worried that I can’t fix them, or that it will make me upset. I want you to give me the chance to take care of you. Can you promise me?”

“Is that something that will help?” Matilda asked.

“Yes,” said Jenny. She said it quickly, without thinking, and was almost surprised to find that it was true. “I want - I want to adopt you, Matilda. I want to take care of you, and make you happy. I want to give you a proper childhood, like - like both of us should have had from the start. I want to be the sort of mum who makes you homemade food to take in for your packed lunch, and takes you on exciting days out, just the two of us. I want you to tell me what’s going on in your books, or what happened at school, I want to listen to all of it.”

“You want to be my mum,” Matilda repeated. “My proper mum.”

This time, Jenny took a moment before answering. She knew what she would say, of course, but she looked into Matilda’s eyes, brushed a wispy piece of hair behind her ear, and decided that her answer would be true.

“Yes,” she said. “Is that what you want too?”

Matilda thought about it.

“You know,” she said, “there aren’t a lot of books with very good mums. I think it’s because if children have good mums, they don’t have to face quite so many problems on their own, and that means their stories aren’t as interesting.”

“Maybe,” said Jenny. She stood up and adjusted the pile of books on Matilda’s bedside table so they were slightly less likely to tumble to the floor. “Shall we say goodnight then?”

Matilda tucked herself under the covers. The plait caught under her neck and she lifted her head to draw it out and set it on the pillow behind her head.

“Goodnight, darling,” said Jenny.

She reached for the light switch.

“Goodnight, Mummy,” said Matilda.

As the light went out, Jenny wondered if that was a lie, too.