The Three Versions
Mira had been three names.
Until she was four, she had been *Mihaela* — her grandmother's name, picked by her mother because her grandmother had died the year before Mira was born. Mihaela was a careful, slightly old-fashioned, eight-letter name. It was a Romanian name. Mira's mother was Romanian and Mira's father was British and the family lived in a small town near Liverpool.
From four to eleven, she had been *Misha*. This was her father's nickname. He had started it when she was tiny — *little Misha, my little mouse* — and it had stuck. Her primary school had known her as Misha. Her birth certificate said Mihaela. She had kept the inconsistency without thinking about it the way children keep all sorts of inconsistencies without thinking about them.
When Mira was eleven, the family had moved sixty miles south for her father's work. New town, new school, no friends. On her first day at the new school, she had been asked at registration what name to put on the register. She had stood there for a long time. She had not — for reasons she could not have explained at the time — wanted to be Misha at the new school. Misha was the name a small child went by. Misha was the name her father called her. Misha did not sound like anyone she wanted to be at age eleven. But she had not, also, wanted to be Mihaela. Mihaela was too long. Mihaela would get mispronounced. Mihaela would, she