Lovey

If you spill something, Lovey says, "Oh, never mind, it happens to everyone."

If you get it wrong, Lovey says, "You tried, and that is the brave bit."

If you are sad, Lovey sits down beside you and says you are lovable exactly as you are, and somehow, when Lovey says it, you believe it.

Then, one evening, Neaty walked past Lovey's room and heard Lovey talking.

"You're useless," Lovey was saying. "Why are you like this? Everybody else can do it. You always ruin everything."

Neaty stopped dead in the corridor.

There was nobody else in the room. Lovey was talking to the mirror.

Neaty knocked. "Who were you talking to?"

Lovey went the colour of a beetroot. "Nobody."

"You said you're useless."

"It's only me," said Lovey. "It doesn't count."

And Neaty, who is hard on Neaty in exactly the same way and had never once thought of it as odd, said: "Would you say that to me?"

Lovey looked horrified. "Never."

"Then why is it alright to say it to you?"

Lovey had no answer. Lovey had been doing it for years, quietly, under everything, in a voice nobody else was supposed to hear.

"Do your own trick," said Neaty. "Go on. In the mirror. One nice thing."

It was agony. Lovey stood in front of the mirror with Neaty in the doorway and could not get a single word out for about a minute.

Then: "You were... kind to Mopsy today."

The face in the mirror went wobbly.

"Again."

"You're doing your best. Most days you're doing your best."

And then, in the smallest possible voice, the one Lovey had been handing out freely to everybody else for years:

"I'm lovable just as I am."

Lovey cried a bit. Neaty had the sense not to make anything of it.

They do it together now, once a week, which is faintly ridiculous and helps enormously.

Because Lovey has worked out the thing that makes Lovey who Lovey is: being kind to yourself out loud is how other fluffs learn that they are allowed to.