No One Will Tell Me How to Start a Revolution

Luke Barnes

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781786822796
• eBook ISBN: 9781786822802
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Susie, Edwina and Lucy have moved to a new school in a new town. Three very different sisters who will do anything to fit in and yet are desperate to be noticed. But how far will they go to break out of the roles in which they've been cast and will they ever be able to truly change their lives when they're swimming against the tide? A captivating, lively and poignant portrait of the pressures of being a teenager and the fight for acceptance.

OUR HALF TERM, AUTUMN TERM – THE BIT WHERE WE ARRIVE AT THE BIG HOUSE.

SUZIE: Okay. We’re sisters.

LUCY: Can’t you tell?

SUZIE: I’m the oldest.

LUCY: Youngest.

EDWINA: And I’m the fucking middle one.

SUZIE: This is the story about when we move into a new, suburban town, to try and finish our exams in a good school.

LUCY: And it’s not boring like a lot of plays.

SUZIE: Lucy likes plays. Could you give an example of a boring play?

LUCY: No I don’t want to offend our lovely audience. I do like plays though – I like all written down stories – books and poems too. I think they sound better in my accent than they do posh – it makes every line feel like poetry.

EDWINA: Plays are shit.

SUZIE: Okay. Let’s start the story. We’ve moved house.

LUCY: The new house is absolutely gigantuous.

SUZIE: Huge

LUCY: Nearly as big as this Moby Dick.

SUZIE: Oi.

EDWINA: It’s got like a big fucking bath that’s just a bath and a shower that’s just a shower. Not a bath that is also a shower. That’s a big thing for us. We used to have one of those nozzles you put on the taps that made a bath into a shower. And this is a power shower.

LUCY: Dad sold our family home so we could rent this little pied-à-terre.

EDWINA: Stop using fucking stupid words. He did it so we could be at school and we can like do all our dreams and be happy and that.

SUZIE: It was a big risk for him. A lot could go wrong.

LUCY: Yeah if you’re pessimistic. If you’re optimistic you might say a lot could go right.

EDWINA: Well yeah but when you’re older and that you’ll understand that things never go right like you hope they only go wrong. So yano.

SUZIE: Well. Dad had to try.

LUCY: Mum wanted this too.

EDWINA: It was her idea.

SUZIE: And it’s not about being rich.

LUCY: Well it would be nice to be rich.

EDWINA: Yeah but it’s really about us… Yano… Finding a life we like. Yeah. And if we were to be rich that would be great. But really… It’s like, yano, about finding ourselves.

SUZIE: Right let’s get on with the story.

LUCY: It’s got big bay windows like in Midsomer Murders, gravel on the drive, massive bedrooms and it’s made of old brick, you can see the cement overflowing like a proper old Victoria sponge cake…

SUZIE: It’s like Downton Abbey.

EDWINA: No it isn’t that’s like a bit of a unnecessarily big image isn’t.

SUZIE: Yes it is like Downton Abbey only it’s not a manor house it’s just a house with like four bedrooms.

EDWINA: And it’s Semi-Detached

SUZIE: Okay.

EDWINA: And it’s on a main road.

SUZIE: Alright it’s just a Victorian semi on a main road. Ok fine. But if you go down the road, like in one big long straight line you come to these woods that are full of pine trees, and sand dunes and squirrels and it’s magic. We didn’t have that where we came from.

EDWINA: Where we came from some people here might think was rough.

SUZIE: Yeah. Is. It is. Rough.

EDWINA: Alright is rough.

LUCY: But that doesn’t mean we don’t like it.

EDWINA: It, the world we come from. Tell them what it’s like.

LUCY: It’s hard to describe it without making it sound like what people would probably think a place like that is like that.

SUZIE: Okay. Okay picture in your head the type of place that doesn’t have a lot of money but the people are really nice. That’s it. That’s where we grew up. Okay let’s take a second to imagine that.

The AUDIENCE take a second to imagine the girls’ home town.

SUZIE: Okay. Now do the place where we’ve moved to. Let’s imagine a quite well-to-do area. We’re not talking mansions. We’re just talking nice houses. Victorian type houses. With grass. Tennis Clubs. Golf… That sort of thing. Okay. Let’s take a second to imagine that.

The AUDIENCE take a second to imagine the girls’ new home.

EDWINA: Well that’s us.

LUCY: We loved it at home.

EDWINA: Yeah was mint.

SUZIE: At home people wanted to talk about things that weren’t themselves.

EDWINA: Or their fucking new kitchens

SUZIE: Or how much they hate their jobs.

LUCY: All their nice things – their home comforts. Yano like how good spiralizers are.

SUZIE: I mean obviously we had nice things where we came from too.

EDWINA: But different types of nice things.

SUZIE: Yeah not like “nice things” like cars and that but it was full of different nice things.

LUCY: Yeah no one had like a BMW or a Mercedes or anything.

SUZIE: The dealers did.

EDWINA: Yeah but no one had fucking… a fancy kitchen. Or like… A bird bath. It’s just for show isn’t it. What’s the fucking point?

LUCY: It was nice in a sort like experiential sort of way. Like it was the people really. Theo next door in the garden. Talking to him was a nice thing. Just chatting with his feet in a paddling pool smoking those little rollies.

EDWINA: Shame everyone fucking hates us there now.

SUZIE: Yeah. Everyone hates us there now. They think we’re snobs.

EDWINA: They think that we think that we’re fucking better than them but really we think we’re not because actually we think we’re shit and we can’t believe that Dad thinks this was a good idea because we know how much of a risk it is for him but he thinks that Mum thinks that it’s what she wants so we can see why he thinks it’s a good idea. We liked where we were.

SUZIE: I mean the school was shit.

LUCY: And it was full of thick weirdos.

EDWINA: Yeah but we were happy. Let’s be fair we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Characters
• Our Half Term, Autumn Term – the Bit Where We Arrive at the big House.