Elizabeth dug her stiff little fingers into the pockets of her anorak. The wind was beating her about the head. ‘I want to go home.’ Her mother put a gloved hand on her daughter’s shoulder and tried to pull her in close. ‘Get off. I’m not a baby.’ She shrugged off her mother’s hand and folded her arms over her chest. It was a miserable afternoon. In fact it had been a miserable day. ‘Fat Mandy’ had called her a boy in front of her whole class and she had cried. Elizabeth marched on ahead of her mother, stomping only in the deepest puddles. ‘ Elizabeth… Elizabeth wait.’ She rubbed her chin on the zip of the anorak and squished her top lip up to her nose to catch the drips. Her hair rustled noisily under the hood so she swiped it away.

‘Stupid coat. I hate wearing this stupid coat.’ She stopped, unfolded her arms and waited for her mother to catch up. ‘Why do you make me wear it all the time?’

‘ Elizabeth, you can’t talk to me like that. It’s very rude.’

‘It’s rude to make me wear this horrible jacket all the time.’ Elizabeth felt the rain soaking her bare neck.

‘Elizabeth, don’t be so ridiculous. I only make you wear it when it rains and that’s so you don’t get wet. Look I know you’re still upset about the haircut, but there was nothing else we could do.’

‘How could you let her cut it all off?’ Elizabeth wanted to cry, but didn’t in protest.

‘If you hadn’t stolen your father’s chewing gum, and got it stuck in your hair, we wouldn’t have needed to cut it all off. But you were silly and now you have to pay the consequences.’ Elizabeth was furious. Her little hands curled up into tight fists and she yelled, ‘I hate you.’ With a final boot of her pink wellie she sloshed puddle water at her mother and ran towards the Art gallery.

Elizabeth usually enjoyed the art gallery, but today she was in the foulest mood. ‘Hello Sweetheart. Nice to see you again. It’s awfully wet outside isn’t it?’ Elizabeth forced a smile at the friendly receptionist. Elizabeth did not want to miss out on the chewy caramel which Wendy always gave her when she left the gallery; even if she was in a bad mood.

‘That’s a lovely coat you have on-’

‘No it isn’t. It’s a horrible, nasty coat.’ Elizabeth snapped at smiley Wendy.

‘Well I know I wore a jacket just like that when I was your age. Did your mother buy it for you?’ Elizabeth nodded, not wanting to snap again at the chewy caramel, provider.

‘Is that a new haircut too? Did you go to the hairdressers with Mum yesterday? Where is Mum anyway? Have you left her to wash away out there?” She tried desperately not to cry, but she couldn’t bear the the uncomfortable sadness building up inside her.

‘I hate my jacket, I hate my hair and I hate my Mum.’ She ran away from reception and began to climb the marble steps which led to the rest of the gallery.

The rain slid off her jacket and on to the polished floor. Her footsteps were louder without her mother’s to accompany them and she felt very alone. Her boots squeaked in a different tune to her jacket and she felt very silly. Ghoulish faces glared out of the large paintings and their tiny eyes met hers. They sneered at her horrible jacket and laughed at her boyish hair cut. ‘I don’t want to look like a boy. I’m a girl and I want to be pretty again.’ She cried heartily. Her hot tears streamed down her face and she began to get a headache. She pulled off her jacket and threw it on the floor.

She stopped sobbing in order to catch her breath and became aware that her arms no longer squeaked against her ribs and the wet cuffs no longer itched her wrists. She felt liberated; jacketless and motherless. She stomped on the anorak as if were the deepest of murky puddles, relishing in her victory. ‘Nasty blue jacket. Horrible wet jacket. You are dead.’ She finally kicked it to one side and began to run zig zag up the room, making sure she looked at every painting before she left the little people and their prying eyes.

After tiring herself out with all the running, hopping, skipping, marching and stomping, Elizabeth slowed to an amble. These were her favourite paintings and she didn’t want to zip past them too quickly. There were miniature farms and toy pigs, stick labourers and their stick wives dancing with their children. There were ladies all sat together playing with each other’s hair. They lay spread out in pastures, staring into blue skies, drinking wine and eating apples the size of marbles. School boys who wore sailor hats played with ponies and clapped hands with school girls in puffy dresses.

There were so many different worlds, so many different stories. ‘How do you do, how do you do, how do you do?’ Elizabeth held out her giant hand and acquainted herself once again with the perfect little people. She called these ‘the happy paintings’. Her mother always made her look at other rooms before she was allowed into this one. ‘You’ll get bored of these ones soon’ her mother would tell her. She didn’t believe it. She could look at these paintings for hours. But there was one painting in particular that she felt she could look at for longer than any of the others. Her mother had told her it was a painting of a lady called ‘Venus’. She didn’t like that name, so she called her ‘Sophia’. Sophia was a pretty name for a pretty lady.

Elizabeth wondered whether her mother was looking for her. She hoped that her mother would forget she had a daughter and disappear forever. ‘One day you’ll look at this picture for so long, you’ll fall into it’ her mother would warn. Elizabeth longed to fall into it, fall into the picture world and meet Sophia, the pretty lady.

Sophia was a honey haired woman, who wore a beautiful yellow dress. It billowed all around her in an autumn landscape. Small birds hovered around her bare feet and the flowers appeared to be watching her, reflecting the same tawny yellow of the dress. Elizabeth held her arms in the same pose as the tall lady in the painting. She twizzled on one pink boot and closed her eyes. She sprung from one foot to the other, trying to point her feet, as she had been taught in her ballet classes, but the boots were too stiff. She pulled them off shaking mud all around her before she continued to dance in front of the painting.

She caught sight of the shadow she cast on the floor of the gallery and stopped abruptly. ‘I do look like a boy. I want my hair back. I want my long hair back.’ She didn’t care if there was chewing gum in it. She pulled at the tufts around her face and whispered, ‘I want to look like you.’ She pressed her hands to the frame – like she knew she was not allowed to do – and knelt her head against the lady’s dress.

As she closed her eyes, she realised how cold she was without her anorak. She shuddered a little, opened her eyes and hugged her skinny arms around herself. She looked up at the painting to find that Sophia was gone. ‘Where did you go?’ Elizabeth whispered. She rubbed her arms and stepped away from the painting to look for her, but she had to shield her eyes from the light emanating from the painting. Cool wind whistled through her hair and leaves landed at her feet. ‘The painting is alive everyone,’ she told the miniature people, but the other paintings remained motionless.

She stepped closer to the painting, that was no longer a painting. It looked real now. She reached out tentatively and rubbed the bark of a tree. ‘It’s real, it’s really real.’ She gripped onto the bottom of the frame and tried to pull herself up. Her fingernails dug into crusty soil and she could smell grass. Once she’d looped one of her feet on to the frame, she used it to swing the rest of her body up. She rolled into the painting and knelt up on the hard ground to take a better look. ‘Wow. I’m here. Where are you Sophia? Where did you go? I won’t tell them you’re real,’ she lied. She would tell ‘Fat Mandy’ at school that art is fun, and it does come to life when you want it to. She would run down to reception and tell Wendy, who might give her lots of chewy caramels for being so clever.

As she stood up she unsettled pieces of crunchy bracken and felt the grass tickle her feet. She basked in the hazy sunshine and no longer felt cold. It was exactly how she had imagined it would be. It was like the dream she’d had; about Sophia and the painting. She did hope that this wasn’t a dream though. She thought it would be a horrible shame if none of it was real. ‘Birds.’ She jabbed a finger at the busy birds beating their wings against the breeze, and folds of yellow fabric swished over her hand.

She wasn’t wearing her school jumper any more. ‘I’m wearing her dress.’ She swayed it about like a real lady. She adjusted the silky ribbon in her hair as she felt it slip and twisted a soft tendril around her fingers squealing with joy, ‘I have hair. My hair is back. I am pretty again.’ She pulled up the bottom of the dress to reveal her pink toes scrunching the grass and bent down to pick up one of the peeping flowers. The sun’s rays made everything look rusty or slightly tarnished, just like in the painting, not like the real world at all.

Birds began to congregate at her feet. From the outside, they had always looked quite plump and fluffy, but up close their feathers were greasy and their eyes were beady. ‘Hello. Do you know where the lady has gone?’ Elizabeth wasn’t so sure she wanted to cradle one in her hand like she had done in her dream. They grew closer, clawing the ground with their twiggy feet. ‘Not so close. I’m afraid.’ But they crept closer and began to peck at her ankles. ‘Ouch, Ouch. That hurts. Get off. There is no food for you there’, she told them, trying to pull her feet away from their sharp beaks. But she couldn’t. ‘Why can’t I move Sophia? Sophia?’ She wriggled her toes but she could not pick either of her feet up.

The clouds thickened and the sun began to fade. She gathered the reams of wispy material around her in attempt to keep warm, but the material was uselessly thin. ‘If I could just fetch my jacket…Where are you pretty lady? I don’t know where I am. I think I’m lost.’ She tried to run away, kick the birds away, but some invisible force was sucking her feet to the soil. ‘Sophia, is this a dream? Am I dreaming…Elizabeth wake up, Elizabeth wake up.’ She screwed her eyes up and repeated the words to herself.

Her feet were so numb with cold that she barely noticed the blood which began to trickle from her white ankles. The bottom of her dress was torn, black with mud and blood. She began to cry into her small white hands. ‘Nasty birds leave me alone! I want to go home. I want to see my Mum.’ Elizabeth began to suspect that she was paying more of those horrible consequences.