My Cousin's Keeper/Tess Naylor

Tess is a main character in the books My Cousin's Keeper and The Last New Start, written as part of NaNoWriMo 2021. In TLNS, she is the protagonist and finds herself involuntarily regressing after moving in with her cousin Gabby, possibly as a result of the way Gabby keeps treating her like she's still a little kid. In MCK, the story is told from Gabby's POV, and it is clearer that Gabby is deliberately tricking and manipulating Tess to force her into a little headspace; including covert use of drugs and hypnosis. By the end of the books, the two perspectives will hopefully be reconciled.

Her parents don't allow her to drink, except for a glass of wine with dinner once at some formal dinner with colleagues. However she has previously drunk with friends twice, and her parents never found out. She gets to mellow-drunk pretty quickly, and has had a mild hangover after Gabby gives her too much wine on her first night.

After that, she gets some advice from Spike and starts leaving a flask of dilute fruit juice (or ice tea) in the fridge. She gets into the habit of taking it up with her when she goes to her room, and going to sleep once it's finished, hopefully forming good habits that might stop her feeling so bad if/when she touches alcohol again.

• she is active on social media/photo sharing app 'Clatter'

Clothes

She's started wearing a lavender robe that was in the room when she moved in. It "looks like the bizarre hybrid of a regular bathrobe and a Disney Fairies halloween costume", but is her size and is pretty comfortable.

She wears a uniform for school, and then changes into comfortable sweat pants and a T-shirt when she gets home most days. She has a few choices of fleece pyjamas, but is happy to go to bed in her T-shirt rather than get changed for bed when she's already sleepy.

Studies

Tess has a usual array of high school classes. She has an almost conversational level in several languages from places where she has lived, but none of them are taught at her school, so she struggles to master French. She takes history, but is almost at the bottom of her class. The one class she really excels in is music.

Room

Tess's room is overwhelmingly pink at the start of the books, having been redecorated by Gabby before she moved in. The walls, blinds, bedsheets, carpet, and furniture are all different shades of pink. There is a bed (which isn't a standard size, being slightly longer and higher so she'll feel small), a changing table, a rocking chair, a desk (pink-painted wood), a desk chair (which looks too small for Tess, but is actually comfortable but the desk itself is a few inches too high). There are also stackable crates filled with toys and decorated with stickers of stars and crowns.

Later, Tess gets to change the blinds to pastel yellow ones which have an engraving that makes a princess picture appear as the sun rises; and the light shade is changed to a simple white one. She puts an clock radio beside her bed, and has her phone charging across the room to force her to get up when the alarm goes off (2-3 minutes after the clock alarm).

Her room is opposite both the bathroom and the spare room. The door to the left of hers is a boiler cupboard, where a shelf holds spare bedclothes. Outside her window, the street lights shine through her window and light up the ceiling if she doesn't close the blinds overnight. they're slightly blueish LED lights; and aren't actually on the street. The lights all have motion sensors so they only light up when people are around as part of the city council's power-saving initiative. But the park opposite had a cycle path across it, and the lights on that use the same system – which is frequently activated by trees swaying in the wind.

Tess has stacked some of the crates of toys so they make a flat surface, and has her suitcases open on top of them. She's been unpacking stuff as she needs it. She hung her school uniform on the wardrobe door handle, and takes casual clothes out of the suitcases when she wears them. Worn clothes go in a pile in the corner, before finally moving to a wardrobe or drawer after they've been washed. Similarly, she gets school books and other accessories out of her suitcase as she needs them, and puts them away in the desk drawers or on a shelf afterwards. (Freeing up a shelf for her school stuff meant she had to find new homes for some soft toys. They're being distributed between the desk and the bed, even though this does make the room feel a little more childish)