by Joanna Nadin
Only when she came over she brought her new hamster with her. He’s white and is called Ashley and runs around the front room inside a see-through ball. But then Stan kicked the ball and Ashley spun too fast and Dave told Stan off. I said, ‘You can’t tell him off, you’re not our dad.’ But Mum said, ‘No, but he’s a grown-up and Stan just kicked a hamster.’ I said, ‘It was an accident, wasn’t it Stan?’ and Stan said, ‘No, I just wanted to see how fast he would go.’ Then Mum said it would be better if Lauren went home with Ashley because all the shouting probably wasn’t good for him, and I went upstairs and now I’m too angry to do Plan A and I have to count the glo-stars instead.
There are still fifty. I checked twice.
Tuesday
10th June
We did evacuation with Miss Horridge today. Evacuation was where about 1.5 million children got sent out of the big cities where all the bombs were, and had to live with new families in the countryside and work on farms and stuff. Sometimes they didn’t see their mums and dads for four years. And all they were allowed to take was a coat, a comb, a pair of wellies, soap, a toothbrush, plimsolls, sandwiches, raisins and barley sugar. I don’t even like barley sugar.
Then I thought that maybe that’s what Dave wants to do. He’s always saying our street’s too dangerous because all the cars whizz down it to get to Park Road instead of using Mason Road, which has traffic lights and a hump. Maybe he wants to evacuate me and Stan to Nan’s house on Beasley Street, which is one-way, so he can be alone with Mum.
Anyway, we got to wear a gas mask which is what all the evacuees had to carry with them all the time to stop them breathing in mustard gas, which wasn’t actually mustard but was poison. And when I had the mask on, the smell was like old tyres or Nan’s hot water bottle. And I didn’t think I could breathe and panicked and couldn’t get it off and Miss Horridge had to help me. Kyle Perry said I was a mental case, and Miss Horridge reminded him I am just different. But then he put the mask on and pretended to be a stormtrooper and hit Sean Hawkes with his ruler, and he got sent to Wing Nuts again.
Miss Horridge stopped doing evacuation then and told us that for our project we had to find someone in our family or our street who remembers the war, and ask them all about it. I’m going to do Nan. I’ll ask her on Friday when she picks me and Stan up from school. Maybe she was evacuated to a farm, which is why she doesn’t like sheep any more. She says they’ve got the devil’s eyes. Plus they’re daft, because if one sheep runs somewhere they all follow, even if it’s just going to look at a tree.
I still haven’t done Plan A. It’s because Mum was out with Stacey tonight and Dave let me and Stan watch Doctor Who Confidential while we ate our vegetarian cheese on toast. I watched Dave doing the grating and put it under the grill to make sure he didn’t add anything extra from the hospital, like warfarin, which is for heart attacks but can also make you bleed to death from the inside out. But it was just Sainsbury’s cheddar and Mighty White. When we were watching I had to have my legs on the sofa in case a Vashta Nerada or a Dalek got me. Dave said Daleks wouldn’t fit under the sofa and I just needed to stop thinking about them. But it’s like when you’re on the loo and you think, ‘What if a crocodile that lives in the sewer comes up and gets me?’ and then you can’t get it out of your brain and you have to jump off the toilet really fast. So Dave said I could put my legs on his. So I did, for a bit. But I took them off before Mum got home.
Wednesday
11th June
Today was excellent because a) Miss Horridge told us we are going on a school trip to London. It’s to the Imperial War Museum to look at all the things from World War Two.
Also b) we learnt about Enigma, which was a German machine for inventing code, and about all the spies who worked out how to break the code and that’s how we won the war. Lauren was pleased because it turns out there were loads of women spies in World War Two who worked on Enigma, and Kate Winslet played one in a film and Lauren says she’s like Kate Winslet, i.e. big-boned, although with Lauren it’s not just bones because bones don’t wobble unless you have rickets.
And c) I’ve actually done Plan A. It’s:
MAKE DAVE LATE FOR WORK
I did it during tea in my head, when we were eating our Hawaiian pizza (with hardly any pineapple because Stan does not eat pineapple, or the monkey ones in Animal Biscuits even though they taste the same as hippos, and no ham because Dave does not eat pigs, so it was mostly just cheese and tomato pizza really). Mum asked Dave to take us to school tomorrow morning because she has to do an early shift to cover for Stacey who’s having her hair done. Dave said can’t she get it done another day and Mum said no because the hairdresser Hayley is going to Formentera for two weeks. So Dave said it would be tight because his shift starts at nine on the dot and there’s no way he can be late because parking is a total nightmare because of the meters, so he’ll have to drop us off on the way, and there had better be no messing. So that’s when I had the idea. I’m going to stop him getting to work on time and then he’ll get sacked by the Sister of No Mercy and Mum will tell him to go and live on Pilkington Street again because she can’t afford his vegetarian preferences, and they won’t get married and he won’t poison Nan for her coffee jars and Post Office book.
It’s totally the sort of thing Zac Black would do to Dr Van Fleet. Or maybe it is the sort of thing Dr Van Fleet would do to Zac Black. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because this time I have a Plan B, i.e. vegetarianism. And I can do the details if Plan A goes wrong. But it won’t. Because I know exactly what I’m doing, and it’s going to go like clockwork.
Thursday
12th June
When I woke up I was so full of electricity I had to count my glo-stars three times, and then I did some press-ups and jumping, which Dr Singh told Mum was a good way of getting rid of adrenalin, which is the chemical in me that makes the electricity and the sick feeling. Today the adrenalin was because of the PLAN.
At eight o’clock Dave shouted up the stairs and said, ‘Get a bend on, Billy boy.’ But I was busy getting dressed properly. I put clean pants and socks and my uniform on, which is grey trousers and white shirt and green sweatshirt with St Laurence sewn in yellow on the front, and I brushed my hair a hundred times which is what Big Lauren says you’re supposed to do to make it shine, even though hers doesn’t really shine, it is more like wiry copper that you get inside telephone cable. And then Dave came upstairs, put the hairbrush away and said, ‘Breakfast. Now.’
So I went downstairs for breakfast, which was Cheerios, because it’s a school day. But I ate them one O at a time, and chewed each one ten times. Dave said, ‘What’s up, Billy? Usually you wolf the lot down so quickly you make Jabba the Hut look refined.’ And I said, ‘I’m just chewing properly like you’re supposed to, I saw it on TV.’ Then Dave said, ‘Well, get a move on, kiddo, because we’ll all be late, and I don’t want the Sister of No Mercy on my case again.’ So I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to choke, so you’ll have to wait.’ Then Dave said, ‘Are you trying to make me late?’ So I said, ‘Yes’ because it was the truth, and I’ve already done at least three lies, even though they’re for the Greater Good. So he said, ‘Right, you’ve got one minute or there’ll be trouble.’ And I said, ‘What sort of trouble?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’ll have to walk to school on your own because me and Stan are going.’ And I said, ‘Stan will wait with me.’ But Stan already had his coat on and said, ‘No I won’t, I want to go in the car.’ So I said, ‘I’ll phone Mum at the airport and tell her you abandoned me home alone, like in that film with the burglars and the paint that hits them in the face, which is totally illegal.’ And Dave said, ‘Be my guest.’ So I did ring Mum at the airport. I know the number by heart because Nan makes me dial for her when we’re there for tea because her fingers have arthritis and are quite fat and get the wrong buttons and sometimes she rings the Jade Garden Chinese by mistake and they say, ‘Take-away or delivery’, but she doesn’t want either. I didn’t get t
he Jade Garden. I got Mum. She answered in her airport voice and said, ‘Jetways, how may I help you?’ and I said, ‘It’s Billy. Dave’s trying to choke me to death on my Cheerios and is going to abandon me home alone like in that film, with the burglars and the paint that hits them in the face, which is totally illegal.’ Mum went quiet. And I thought she was going to say, ‘Run out of the house and go to Nan’s where you’ll be safe.’ Or something like that. But she just said, ‘Is Dave there?’ And I said, ‘He’s waiting in the car.’ And she said, ‘Well, he hasn’t abandoned you then, has he, so leave the Cheerios and go to school now and stop being so flaming childish.’ So I did.
When Mum picked me and Stan up she was still angry. She said, ‘I’m sick and tired of whatever nonsense was going on this morning, Billy Grimshaw. It’s high time you grew up and stopped trying to play silly beggars. Dave was helping me out this morning and you’re lucky he’s there to take you in the car at all. You should be thanking him, not making life difficult for everyone. It’s just selfish. That’s what it is. Selfish.’
But it’s not selfish. It’s not just for me. It’s for her. And for Stan. And for Nan. For all of us. It’s so everything can go back to the way it was before. When we were happy. When Dad was here.
Friday
13th June
Big Lauren says I should’ve done more detail. She’s right. Zac Black would never have let Mum tell him to get in the car and stop messing about. Plan B is going to be miles better. Lauren’s going to help me think of it, only we have an actual detective agency job to do first and it is HIGH PRIORITY, i.e. FIND DOLLY.
What happened is that Nan picked me and Stan up after school and when we got back to her house, which took ages because Stan has got a verruca and he says he has to limp or it hurts too much, the telly was on Deal or No Deal but Dolly wasn’t watching it. He wasn’t there at all. Nan said he went out last night at 10.05 precisely and she knows this because it was when the Prime Minister with the huge shiny face came on the news and Dolly doesn’t like the Prime Minister, but then he didn’t come back in this morning for cornflakes. Nan says she was hoping he would come home for Noel Edmonds. But he didn’t.
So I thought of what Zac Black would do, and it was check out his old haunts. So we looked in the shed where he sometimes sits on a sack of compost, but he wasn’t there. Then we went to Mr Patel’s, because Dolly likes Mr Patel because he sometimes gives him jelly worms, even though he’s been told a million times not to. Mr Patel says he feels sorry for Dolly because he looks sad, but Nan says that’s just the way his face is made. Anyway, he wasn’t there. Or at the park, or at the bus stop.
So I said we had to make a MISSING poster with a photo of Dolly and a list of distinguishing features. I am excellent at distinguishing features because in the Zac Black Annual 1985 it says you should practise observation by doing descriptions of people you know, e.g.
NAN
Hair: Grey and white and wiry.
Eyes: Blue and watery with a black dot on the right one.
(Nan got a bit annoyed when I was looking at her distinguishing eye but I said she would be glad when someone kidnapped her and I knew all about it then.)
Other: Clacky teeth and says blimey a lot.
I asked Nan to think really hard about Dolly’s distinguishing features so we could make a list. There was a bit of an argument about whether Dolly was the same colour as smoke or cardboard and how tall he is, but we have agreed on the following:
DOLLY
Hair: Grey.
Expression: Sad.
Height: About an average coffee table.
Nan has given me a photo of Dolly for the poster as well. It’s of him with a pair of sunglasses on, which isn’t brilliant as his eyes are disguised, but in most of the others he was either half out of the picture or wearing a pink sequinned coat from when Nan entered him into Broadley Fête pet show.
When we got back Mum was still at work, but Dave said he’d help make the posters. I said no thanks, because I thought he might try to sabotage them because he doesn’t like Dolly. But he said I could use his scanner for the photo so in the end I said yes, as long as I got the final say on all the words. He said, ‘Of course, Billy.’
And he didn’t actually try to sabotage them. He showed me how to do a border so the picture really stands out, and laminated them with his laminator machine so the rain doesn’t wash the ink off. Then we laminated some other things too, like a receipt from Sainsbury’s and Stan’s swimming certificate, just for fun. And it was. Fun, I mean. But then I remembered how Dr Van Fleet is nice to Zac Black, and says he’s reformed, but it turns out it’s all a pretence and he tries to drown Zac in the Sea of Screaming Eels, so I thought some bad things about him before I went to sleep, just to remind me he’s my mortal enemy.
Saturday
14th June
When I woke up I remembered that I’d forgotten to ask Nan about World War Two, because of Dolly going missing, so I asked Mum if I could go round there this morning. Dave said he’d drop me in the Ford Fiesta Zetec but I said I’d go on my own thanks all the same, because it’s just a ploy to make Mum think he likes me. Mum said OK, but she’s going to pick me up from Nan’s at half past eleven because we’re all going into town minus Dave. I said, ‘What for?’ and she said, ‘It’s a surprise.’ But I don’t like surprises. The last surprise was her marrying Dave and the one before that was Dad leaving. So I’m not excited at all.
On the way to Nan’s I put up Dolly posters with drawing pins and some blu-tack. I put one on our gate, one on the bus shelter and one in Mr Patel’s window. Plus there’s one in our window and one in Nan’s, which is five. I said to Nan we’d find him soon, definitely. But Nan said she didn’t think so, because she thinks he’s been stolen by Mr A M Feinstein. According to Nan, Mr A M Feinstein went out at twenty-five past eight last night and didn’t come back until the bongs went on the news and then he was carrying something big and heavy, i.e. Dolly. She said that’s why he’s been casing her joint, i.e. he’s a catnapper. She says she’s been watching her letterbox all morning for a ransom note demanding her coffee jar money. I said Mr A M Feinstein doesn’t know about the coffee jar money but she said he could have seen her counting it last Tuesday because one of the nets was in the wash and so her security was compromised. I said I would investigate. I’m going to do it tomorrow instead of football, because Dave’s at work and Mum has to take Stan to Arthur Malik’s in the morning, so I’m walking to football on my own. Except I won’t be. Because I’ll be walking to Beasley Street instead.
Then I asked Nan about World War Two. She said she was six when it started and twelve when it finished and mostly it was brilliant because everyone was full of something called Dunkirk spirit, and they sang a lot of songs and her mum knew every single person on her street, not like now where there are two families who never say hello to her, and Mr A M Feinstein who Nan never says hello to. The bad things were that a) Great Grandpa O’Hagan, i.e. Nan’s dad, got his leg blown up and couldn’t walk for the rest of his life and b) there weren’t any sweets because of rationing. Rationing was a bit like where we’re only allowed Coco Pops on Sundays, except it was everything on every single day, and instead of Mum checking the packet to see if any are gone, it got marked in a special book at the shop and if you had any secret food in the house then the police might come and confiscate it. Also there were no bananas at all.
Then Nan got a bit teary remembering all the singing and fun, and even more teary because normally when she is sad her and Dolly drink Baileys to cheer themselves up, but now Dolly is gone. But then Mum arrived with Stan and honked the horn to make me come out, otherwise she has to get Stan out and strap him in again because he goes mental if he’s left alone in the car. And then Nan stopped looking sad, and said, ‘Mr Feinstein did it, mark my words.’ So I did. I wrote them down in my schoolbook, where I was writing about the rationing, and went out for the surprise.
The surprise wasn’t a good one. It was sui
ts for the wedding. They’re blue and shiny and have shirts and stripy ties. Stan wore his home and is watching TV in it. Mum says he has to take it off before tea in case he gets spaghetti hoops down the front because it’s dry clean only which costs a fortune. Mum tried on her wedding dress in the shop as well. It’s gold and the skirt sticks right out and she said she’ll have to shave her legs because she looked like a yeti so we’d have to imagine that bit. Then she said, ‘How do I look?’ And I said, ‘Whatever.’ So Mum asked Stan instead and he said like Princess Leia in Star Wars. He is obsessed with Star Wars mainly because Dave is. But she did look a bit like a princess I suppose. I hope Dave doesn’t wear a Jedi outfit to the wedding like he wore to Big Lauren’s mum’s fancy dress party last year. Although obviously none of us will be wearing anything. Not that we will be in the nuddy. I mean that the wedding will be off. Because of the DOWNFALL.
