All the Fun of the Fair: A hilarious, brilliantly original coming-of-age story that will capture your heart

by Caroline Hulse

I started swinging, even though I never swing anymore, not even when no one can see, on the swing in our garden. Only little kids swing. I just swung that day because we were there, doing surveillance.

  I swung high enough for the chains to jolt, pointing my legs upwards, and made sure not to look at the sky. It’s something about how big and empty space is – how the planets are just floating there and nothing’s strapped in and there’s so much nothing. It makes me dizzy.

  Looking down, from this height, I could see the whole park. And there was no angry man going into the second-biggest bush to look for his treasure.

  I’d done it. I’d taken the magazines and it was Finders Keepers, fair and square.

  I was safe.

  But I didn’t have long to celebrate.

  I’d said goodbye to Lewis and was heading back home, thinking how pleasingly full my rucksack felt, when I saw it.

  I stopped and stared. I wrapped my arms around my body.

  Opposite the petrol station, where there had been an advert for cat food that morning, there was now a new billboard.

  Monkford Fair. Festival Field. Fri 19–Mon 22 July.

  A clown face loomed out of the picture, the clown’s smile so wide it looked mean. A cartoon picture of a Waltzer car whirled so fast that the people inside were just a blur.

  I kept staring.

  It’s time.

  My heart got fuller. My breath tighter.

  I had to get this right this year. I had to think.

  I had thirty-eight days to work out how to get to the fair.

  4

  In some families, the well-behaved kid is the bad one.

  (paradox)

  Thirty-eight days to the fair

  Mum was in the kitchen when I got home, putting her homemade cover over the sewing machine. Next to the machine, a pair of curtains with horrible big flowers lay flopped over the peninsula. I could tell she’d finished making the curtains because she’d wrapped them in clear plastic.

  Mum makes curtains for people around the village. She says she likes it, and it makes her extra money. It’s really annoying.

  ‘Hi.’ I decided to work my way up to the billboard. ‘Some kids from Radcliffe High were playing chicken on the railway and a kid got hit by a train.’

  ‘What?’ Mum stopped moving. ‘Is the kid OK?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘How old was the child?’

  I shrugged again.

  Mum’s eyebrows hunched up in the middle. ‘That’s really upsetting.’

  With her face all screwed up with sadness, Mum looked old. Of course, she was old – fifty-two – she and Dad were so much older than other kids’ parents. But she looked older still when she was upset.

  ‘Mrs Vernal gave the assembly,’ I said. ‘She said being a teenager is hard.’

  Mum shook her head. She started packing up the sewing machine again.

  ‘She said kids should be the stars of their own lives.’

  Mum slid the heavy machine under the peninsula. ‘What does that even mean?’

  I took a breath. ‘I sometimes feel like I’m not the star of my own life.’ I bunched up my hands. ‘Mrs Vernal said I need to be my own flower and grow for myself. Or something.’

  Mum gave me a look. ‘I’m thinking I might need a little chat with this Mrs Vernal.’ She looked younger again now she’d found a reason to be annoyed rather than sad.

  I watched Mum reach for the plastic-covered curtains. She started folding them carefully, like she was handling a baby.

  Don’t say it.

  But the words came out anyway. ‘Mum, I’ve seen a billboard.’

  Mum’s movements slowed. ‘No.’ Her voice was calm.

  ‘Everyone else gets to go.’ My voice wasn’t calm. It went wavy and uphill.

  ‘When you’re an adult, living an adult life, you can choose to go to the fair yourself.’

  ‘But everyone else gets to go!’

  Mum stared at the curtains, not folding anymore.‘You know why we don’t want you to go? You know why, Fiona!’

  ‘Just because Danielle died there doesn’t mean I’ll die!’

  ‘Of course you’re not going to die, that’s not the point of the—’

  ‘And I don’t care about Danielle!’ I screamed.

  It’s not my fault I do things like that. Every family has a good one and a bad one – fact. It just isn’t always obvious because sometimes it’s complicated.

  Take Lewis’s family.

  Lewis should be the good one. He does his homework and picks up crisp packets in the street. But his dad likes Lewis’s brother better, even though his brother doesn’t pick up crisp packets and sometimes blocks us with his massive body when we try to get on the bus.

  But it’s simpler with my family. Danielle did loads of stuff that made my parents happy. She helped Dad put the toppings on his pizzas. She laid the table without asking and always cleaned her plate. She had a dance routine with Mum to songs on the radio and they danced round the kitchen together.

  It’s fair enough that I’m the bad one.

  I’m the odd one out in my family. I’m the only one who’s left-handed. You can tell we’re related because I have the same small nose and big chin as Danielle, but my parents are tall and fair and so was Danielle – the tallest girl in her class, Mum never gets bored of saying, like Danielle managed it on purpose. I’m one of the shortest, and my hair’s dark and heavy and stays where it is. It never falls out of a clip like Mum’s.

  If my family were The Lion King family, they would all be Simbas and I’d be Scar.

  I don’t want to be the Scar. But when you’re the Scar, you don’t get to choose.

  Bad Scar Things I’ve Done – Countdown

  6.Cut Off Martha’s Plait

  Everyone else thinks this was bad, but this was the least bad. Because Martha deserved it.

  5.Put Grandma’s Money in the Claw Machine

  This wasn’t really bad either. But it made Grandma sad and disappointed, and nothing feels worse than that. So it’s on the list.

  4.Scratched My Special Shape Everywhere. The Shape Made from F for Fiona-s

  This one definitely wasn’t my fault. And now I know what a swastika is, I don’t want it to be my special shape anymore.

  3.Asked Candy’s Mum How Much Money They Had

  Candy lived in the big house at the end of the road last summer, because her mum was working at the medical plant on secondment, which means you live somewhere new where you have no friends.

  And, I admit, I got this one wrong. But Mum kept asking me questions – ‘they went on a skiing holiday in January and now they’re going to Rome?’ and ‘a taxi to take her from school to the dentist, how much would that even cost? – and I honestly thought she wanted to know.

  2.Stole Candy’s Pencil Topper

  I wanted Candy’s Easter egg collection, all lined up on the shelf, even though Easter was ages ago. I even wanted Candy’s mum instead of mine sometimes, like when she made us pancakes even though it wasn’t pancake day.

  But most of all, I wanted Candy’s pencil topper. It was a perfect pale purple and shaped like a house, with a little fence and a cat in the garden.

  Even though I’m not into stationery, I wanted it so much, it burned inside me. On one visit, I took that pencil topper and put it in my cardigan pocket.

  When I went home, I put the pencil topper in my bottom drawer and said to Mum, ‘I don’t want to play with Candy anymore.’

  And Mum looked really upset and said you have to be open if you’re going to have friends and not everyone’s perfect and she got angry then and said beggars can’t be choosers. And then got upset again, and started apologising, even though it was fine – she wasn’t lying.

  I don’t like to think about Candy.r />
  I was happy when she moved away.

  1.The Monkey Bars

  This is the worst one. And everyone knows about it.

  In the last year of primary school, the year I turned double-digits, we went to church services with the vicar once a month. And Mum got sad there because it was where they held Danielle’s funeral.

  One time, the vicar put his hand on Mum’s shoulder and said, ‘God takes the best of us and keeps them to himself.’ And I thought and thought about that. About how God took Danielle, but let my parents keep me.

  The next day at school, I hung upside down from the playground’s monkey bars so my skirt flipped over my chest, showing my pants. Everyone pointed and shouted. Even when teachers shouted ‘COME DOWN NOW!’ – even when the headteacher came out – I stayed on.

  Two teachers had to pull me off the monkey bars, bruising my legs. I clung to that metal pole till it hurt. Then there were letters and doctors and people asking questions quietly, and I had to say that I’d bruised my own legs. That it was all my fault.

  Which I had. And it was.

  Proving I was the bad one. Proving it, once and for all. Just in case people weren’t sure.

  To Go to the Fair I Need:

  1)Money for the rides

  2)Girl friends, so the boy from the Waltzers will push my car

  3)Mum and Dad to let me go

  Sometimes the shortest lists can be the longest ones.

  Paradox.

  5

  For surveillance, a good spy moves his eyes but not his head to throw his adversary off the scent.

  The Junior Spy’s Secret Handbook™

  Thirty-seven days to the fair

  The next morning, I waited with Lewis as we watched Sean slow-walk towards our lamppost, kicking puddles as he went. White socks – again – peeked out from between his trousers and his shoes.

  The New Head was going to kill him if she saw those socks. Sean was playing with fire, but I guessed that was the point. Still, after seeing the New Head’s face in the chicken assembly, how she shut down Liam with just a look, I would have shivered pulling those socks on that morning.

  Sean arrived at the lamppost. ‘All right.’

  We walked for a moment. Lewis turned to cross the road towards school.

  I followed Lewis, but Sean just watched us. ‘Why do you two always cross the road at this postbox?’

  Lewis stopped in the road. I stopped so I didn’t walk into the back of him.

  ‘Every day,’ Sean said, ‘you always cross exactly here.’

  Lewis and I looked at each other.

  We shuffled back onto the pavement, facing Sean.

  ‘We just do,’ Lewis said. ‘Habit.’

  ‘And on the way home, you two always cross there. At the big tree.’

  I turned to Lewis and we blinked at each other. Sean was right.

  It was funny he knew stuff about us that we didn’t.

  Lewis turned to me. ‘I cross here because you do.’

  I frowned. ‘I thought I crossed here because you do.’

  ‘Maybe it just feels like the best place,’ Lewis said.

  I thought about this. ‘Maybe it is me. Mum always crosses here too.’

  Sean pointed at a house. ‘It means, in both directions, you never walk in front of that one.’

  I looked at the house. ‘Huh.’

  His point made, Sean finally set off walking, talking about the weekend’s England game. I took one last look back at the house, then Lewis and I followed.

  In the park, Lewis turned to me. ‘Shall we go into the bush then?’

  I made big eyes at him. Shush.

  ‘Oh,’ Lewis gave a little laugh. ‘I forgot you’d taken them already.’

  I made my eyes bigger still.

  That’s when Lewis started to panic. He staggered to the left. ‘I – I –’

  Sean looked from one to the other. ‘Taken what?’

  I glared at Lewis.

  I don’t know exactly what it looks like when an eleven-year-old has a heart attack, but I bet it was something like this.

  I looked back at Sean. ‘Don’t tell anyone. But I found some magazines, and they’re mine now.’

  Sean looked at the bush and back. ‘What kind of magazines?’

  I looked at Lewis and back. ‘You promise you won’t tell?’

  ‘On my dog’s life.’ Sean made round eyes. ‘And you know how much I love Alfie.’

  I nodded. I looked at Lewis and took a breath. ‘They were sexy magazines. With girls in.’

  ‘Not only girls,’ Lewis said. ‘Old ladies. Remember Readers’ Wiv—’

  ‘I told you to stop talking about Readers’ Wives!’ My mum is a wife. Lewis’s mum is a wife. Mrs Vernal.

  I turned back to Sean. ‘I took the magazines home because Finders Keepers. I’m going to sell them at the car boot sale to make money for the fair. For when I get to go. Because I will get to go.’

  Lewis shook his head and kicked a stone in his path.

  ‘Of course you will.’ Sean nodded like I was the wisest person in the world. ‘Can I, erm, see these magazines?’

  ‘No.’

  Sean leaned over when I was in English later. Spoke to me, in front of other people.

  ‘How many magazines? And how much do you want for them?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘People are asking.’

  ‘How do people know about the magazines?’ I glanced round but Mr Kellett was on the other side of the room. ‘Have you told people about them, Sean?’

  He shook his head.

  Things were going topsy-turvy.

  Sean was speaking to me in English and yet Richard Plant, the popular kid who moved here from Edinburgh and trains for Stoke City’s youth team, walked through corridors alone. Everyone stuck their legs out extra-long to trip him in corridors now. Nino the Swiss kid was off the hook because England played Scotland in three days.

  Now, when Richard Plant walked down the corridor, people wrinkled their noses and said, ‘Can you smell Haggis?’ or put their hands to their ears – ‘Is that bagpipes?’ Or, from the kids who couldn’t be bothered with the effort of thinking, he got a shove in the back and ‘Your team’s shit, aaah!’

  When Lewis and I walked out of the school gates that afternoon, Mum was waiting at the roundabout, leaning against the Gail Larson, Driving Instructor car.

  I felt someone lean closer to my ear. A pretend cough. ‘Gail!’

  I wished my mum wasn’t a driving instructor. I wished that it wasn’t seventeen-year-olds who learned to drive. I wished our school didn’t have a sixth form.

  That’s a lot of wishes – but just one of those things would make my life better.

  I usually pretend I haven’t seen Mum. It’s not great to admit to having a mum at the best of times, and it’s worse when your mum’s so much older than everyone else’s.

  But Selina Baker, the best girl in sixth form, was the one hurrying up to Mum’s car today, so I decided to own my mum, for once.

  I wandered over but Lewis hung back. Like I said, he’s terrified of my mum.

  ‘Hi.’ Mum smiled at me, like she couldn’t remember me screaming at her the night before. She was always happy to own me as her daughter – even though, in our school, that wasn’t a good look for her. ‘Selina, do you know my daughter, Fiona?’

  ‘Hi, Fiona!’ Selina was beautiful, close up. As beautiful as Kelly from Winchester. ‘Nice to meet you. I love your mum. I’ve been so nervous about learning to drive since I got my provisional licence, but Gail is so patient!’

  I looked at Mum. She kept smiling.

  ‘My parents can’t teach me at all,’ Selina said, ‘they get really frustrated. But your mum is so calm and so nice, and she n
ever even raises her voice.’

  Mum caught my eye. She kept smiling.

  On the other side of the road, Lewis frowned.

  I couldn’t believe this. ‘What about people who cut her up at roundabouts? People in BMWs? Does she not even shout at them?’

  Mum’s smile cracked. ‘I’m very patient in a professional capacity.’

  ‘We all love your mum,’ Selina said. ‘And she’s funny. You’re so lucky, Fiona.’

  ‘Right.’ I felt dazed. ‘Bye.’

  I headed over to Lewis.

  ‘That conversation just got weirder and weirder,’ he said.

  I nodded.

  I could hear Selina talking as we walked away. ‘Oh. I can do the appointment next Saturday after all, Gail, if you’ve still got it? Shopping with my boyfriend’s cancelled because all the lads from school want to go to some lame car boot sale all of a sudden.’

  That made up my mind. I was never going to get a chance to get money for the fair like this again. This was my one shot. So on the way home, for research, I made Lewis go with me into Paper Rack, the newsagent’s in the precinct.

  When I say precinct I mean the bad, British kind – the square shopping area off the high street lined with shops. It has an off-licence, a Chinese takeaway and a tiny Co-op where everyone buys the things they forgot at the big shop. I don’t mean precinct, like in an American cop show. No one here ever rolls over car bonnets with guns, shouting freeze, punk!, not here, outside our Co-op. We don’t get that kind of good stuff in Monkford.

  I walked past the pile of kids’ bikes, piled up outside Paper Rack, and pushed open the door, Lewis following.

  A bell rang above my head. I strode up to the counter and queued behind a bigger kid – one who’d taken off his jumper and tie, but was still, clearly, in school uniform. ‘Two singles and a pack of Euro ’96 please.’

  The bald man in the stretched polo shirt didn’t say anything. He reached behind the counter and got two cigarettes out of an open pack. He handed them over with a pack of stickers, and the kid pushed a fiver at him and hurried out of the shop.

  I glanced at the magazines on the top shelf. They were all tucked behind each other, so you could only see a little bit of the title, a Fi- or Ra-. No boobs, just a tiny sliver of thigh or arm.