There’s a girl at school who Lulu likes. According to Lulu, this girl is kind and generous and funny. She wants to be a health worker when she grows up. Says she wants to save people.

Awhile back, a writerly friend told me about the literary trend in which the girl character is often sacrificed. It’s the plot twist, a narrative turn, the device that serves for the other characters’ arcs. After she told me, I went back and looked at the books on my bookshelf. Oh crap. She was right – it was everywhere. The sacrificial girl character.

When Lulu told me about her friend, I thought of this literary trend. Then, after Lulu left to go to school this morning, I told Jack what she’d told me about this girl.

He processed the information. ‘Should we call the school? Is it wrong of us to sit back?

I don’t know. I don’t know this girl. I don’t know whether the school would protect my anonymity if we called and reported what we’d heard. I wouldn’t like everyone to know that it was Lulu’s mum and dad who spilled it. Lulu’s already being derided for quick boyfriend turnarounds. Things for her would definitely get worse.

I don’t know too, of course, if the words were completely accurate, or whether Lulu had heard them in an already misinterpreted form. Though she did see with her own eyes some abusive sexual behaviour by this girl’s so-called, needs a good kicking and a night left in the yard with the rest of the feral animals, boyfriend. He’s the same young age as they are by the way. I’m sorry for any child-directed hatred. But who waves and wipes girl’s fluids everywhere for perceived entertainment? Caged animals have more natural dignity.

Weighing up everything Lulu told me, I do know – no, I feel there is something very wrong with the overall situation here. With the boyfriend of course (the pig sty being a good starting point for his first sleepover), but definitely with this girl. It seems to me that a girl wouldn’t be so sexually aware at this young teenage age unless she’d been conditioned to it already. She is no young witch and no slag – she is a 13-year-old girl. Kind and generous and funny.

Of course all I have here is instinct. Not exactly a weapon of choice. Meanwhile, the girl is being sacrificed.