The Bed and Breakfast Star

by Jacqueline Wilson

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  The Bed and Breakfast Star

  Bed

  Bed and Breakfast

  Tea at McDonald’s

  Sugar Sandwiches for Breakfast

  Sweets for Treats

  Mega-Feast for Lunch

  One Slurpy Square of Yorkie Bar

  Pizza and Porky-Pies

  Television and no Tea

  Kentucky Chicken Takeaways

  We Nearly Have Our Chips!

  My Best and Biggest Ever Breakfast

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  Epub ISBN: 9781407045368

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  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  For Frances Stokes

  (Froggy to her friends)

  THE BED AND BREAKFAST STAR

  A CORGI YEARLING BOOK : 9780440867609

  First published in Great Britain by Doubleday

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  Doubleday edition published 1994

  First Corgi Yearling edition published 1995

  This Corgi Yearling edition published 2006

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Jacqueline Wilson, 1994

  Illustrations copyright © Nick Sharratt, 1994

  The right of Jacqueline Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  The Random House Group Limited makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in our books are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed and credibly certified forests Our paper procurement policy can be found on www.randomhouseco.uk/paper.htm

  Corgi Yearling Books are published by

  Random House Children’s Books,

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  THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

  www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire.

  I think Elsa is one of the cheeriest, kindest children I’ve ever invented. She has such a tough time too. Her mum is so tired and depressed she hasn’t got much time for her and her stepdad is a bit of a scary nightmare. Elsa is expected to look after her half-siblings Pippa and Hank and generally make herself useful. It’s very grim losing your house and having to stay in bed and breakfast accommodation but Elsa adapts rapidly and makes the best of the situation.

  Sometimes she’s a little too relentlessly cheery. She wants to be a comedian when she grows up so she tries her hardest to be funny all the time, endlessly cracking jokes. She’s not very good at making up her own jokes just yet so she tells really awful old corny jokes that make you groan.

  I’m not very good at making up jokes either. I knew I’d need lots and lots of silly jokes for Elsa, and wondered what I was going to do. Then one day when I was giving a talk to some children I told them I was writing a new book about a funny girl who kept cracking jokes and asked if anyone knew a really good joke. There was suddenly a forest of waving hands. I got out my notebook and started scribbling down all these suggestions. I couldn’t write all of them down. The funniest were frequently too rude and naughty to be put in a children’s book!

  I used to live in a street where there were several bed and breakfast hotels for homeless families. I could see it was very tough for any adults in that situation, but the children seemed to be able to make the most of it and have fun, just like Elsa. I used to meet up with them in the sweet shop and the video and DVD shop and have a little chat. They’d often make me crack up laughing.

  They were always eating chocolate and crisps and chips, quick easy food. Elsa has a very healthy appetite (though her diet isn’t exactly a healthy one!) It was fun choosing all the food she’d like best. Then at the end, when the whole family is staying in the swish Star hotel I loved deciding what they’d all choose for their very elaborate breakfasts.

  Elsa ends up a real heroine and gets to be on television, interviewed by a lady who cares passionately about children and has a weakness for silly jokes herself. I based her on the well known television personality, Esther Rantzen. I’d never met her when I wrote the book, but now I’m proud to say that I’ve been given a special Childline award and Esther has become a special friend.

  Do you know what everyone calls me now? Bed and Breakfast. That’s what all the kids yell after me in the playground. Even the teachers do it. Well, they don’t say it to my face. But I’ve heard them. ‘Oh yes, that Elsa. She’s one of the bed-and-breakfast children.’ Honestly. It sounds like I’ve got a duvet for a dress, cornflake curls, two fried-egg eyes and a streaky-bacon smile.

  I don’t look a bit like that. Well, I hope I don’t! I’m Elsa.

  Do you like my name? I hope you do like it or Elsa’ll get upset. Do you get the joke? I made it up myself. I’m always cracking jokes. People don’t often laugh though.

  I bet you don’t know anyone else called Elsa. There was just this lion called Elsa, ages ago. There was a book written about her, and they made a film. They sometimes show it on the television so maybe you’ve seen it. My mum called me after Elsa the lion. I was a very tiny baby, smaller than all the others in the hospital, but I was born with lots of hair. Really. Most babies are almost bald but I had this long tufty hair and Mum used to brush it so that it stood out all round my head like a lion’s mane. I didn’t just look like a lion. I sounded like one too. I might have had very tiny little lungs but I had the loudest voice. I bawled day and night and wore all the nurses out, let alone my mum. She says she should have left me yelling in my hospital cot and slipped off out of it without me. She was joking. Mum’s jokes aren’t always funny though – not like mine.

  That was my very first BED.

  It’s not very comfy-looking, is it? No wonder I bawled.

  Here’s my second BED.

  I used to pretend I was a real lion in a cage. I didn’t half roar.

  We’ve still got my old duck cot. We’ve lost lots of our other things but we’ve always carted that around with us. I used to turn it into a play-house

  or a car

  and once it was even my castle.

  But then my sister Pippa was born and I lost a house and a car and a castle and she gained a bed. I gave it a good spring-clean for her and tried to make it as pretty as possible, but I don’t think she really appreciated it.

  Pippa did a lot more sleeping and a lot less yelling than me. She’s not a baby now. She’s nearly five. Half my age. She’s not half my size though. She’s not a little titch like me. She’ll catch me up soon if I don’t watch out.

  I’ve also got a brother, Hank. Hank the Hunk. He had the duck cot too.

  He only fitte
d it for five minutes. I’m tiny and Pippa is tall but Hank is enormous. He’s not just long, he’s very wide too. He’s still not much more than a baby but if you pick him up you practically need a crane and if you put him on your lap you get severely squashed. If you stand in his way when he comes crawling by, then you’re likely to get steam-rollered.

  Pippa and Hank aren’t my proper sister and brother. They’re halves. That sounds silly, doesn’t it. As if they should look like this.

  We’ve all got the same mum. Our mum. But I’ve got a different dad.

  My dad never really lived with Mum and me. He did come and see me sometimes, when I was little. He took me to the zoo to see the real lions. I can remember it vividly though Mum says I was only about two then. I liked seeing those lions. My dad held me up to see them. They roared at me, and I roared back. I think I maybe went on roaring a bit too long and loud. My dad didn’t come back after that.

  Mum said we didn’t care. We were better off without him. Just Mum and me. That was fine. But then Mum met Mack. Mack the Smack. That’s not a joke. He really does smack. Especially me.

  You’re not supposed to smack children. In lots of countries smacking is against the law and if you hit a child you get sent to prison. I wish I lived in one of those countries. Mack smacks a lot. He doesn’t smack Pippa properly, he just gives her little taps. And he doesn’t smack Hank because even Mack doesn’t hit babies. But he doesn’t half whack me. Well, he doesn’t always smack. But he lifts his hand as if he’s going to. Or he hisses out of the side of his mouth: ‘Are you asking for a good smacking, Elsa?’

  What sort of question is that, eh? As if I’d prance up to him and say, ‘Hey, Uncle Mack, can I have a socking great smack, please?’

  Mum sometimes sticks up for me. But sometimes she says I’m asking for it too. She says I give Mack a lot of cheek. I don’t. I just try out a few jokes on him, that’s all. And he doesn’t ever get them. Because he’s thick. Thick thick thick as a brick.

  I don’t know why my mum had to marry him. And guess who got to be the bridesmaid at their wedding! Mum wanted me to wear a proper long frilly bridesmaid’s frock but it looked ever so silly on me. My hair still sticks out all over the place like a lion’s mane and my legs are so skinny my socks always wrinkle and somehow they always get dirty marks all over them and my shoes go all scuffed at the toes right from when they’re new. The bridesmaids’ frocks in the shop were all pale pink and pale blue and pale peach and pale lilac. Mum sighed and said I’d get my frock filthy before she’d had time to get up and down the aisle.

  So we forgot about the frock and Mum dressed me up in this little black velvet jacket and tartan kilt because Mack is Scottish. I even had a sprig of lucky Scottish heather pinned to my jacket. I felt like I needed a bit of luck.

  Mack moved in with Mum and me after the wedding. After I grew out of the duck cot I used to share the big bed with Mum and that was fun because there was always someone to chat to and cuddle.

  That was my third BED.

  But then Mack got to share the big bed with Mum and I had a little campbed in the living-room. BED number four. And I kept falling out of it every time I turned over at first. But I didn’t mind that campbed. I played camping.

  But it was really too cramped to play camp. We only had a little flat and Mack took up so much space.

  There certainly wasn’t going to be room for a new baby too. (That was Pippa. She wasn’t born then. She was just a pipsqueak in Mum’s tummy.) Mum had our name down for a bigger council flat but the waiting list was so long it looked like we’d be waiting for ever.

  Then one of Mack’s mates up in Scotland offered him a new job up there so he went back up to Scotland and we had to go too. We stayed with Mack’s mum. I was scared. I thought she might be like Mack.

  But she wasn’t big, she was little. She didn’t smack, but she wasn’t half strict all the same. I wasn’t allowed to do anything in her house. I couldn’t even play properly. She wouldn’t let me get all my toys out at once. She said I had to play with them one at a time.

  So I started playing with some of her stuff. She had some lovely things – ornaments and photo albums and musical boxes. I didn’t break anything at all but she still went spare.

  ‘You’re no allowed to go raking through my things! Away and watch the television like a good wee bairn.’

  That’s all you were supposed to do in her house. Watch the telly. We watched it all the time.

  My Scottish sort-of Gran wasn’t so bad though. She did pass the sweets round while we were watching her telly. She called them sweeties.

  ‘Are you wanting a sweetie, hen?’ she’d say to me.

  And I’d go cluck-cluck-cluck and flap my arms and she’d laugh and say I could be awful comic when I wanted. On Sundays we had special sweeties, a home-made fudge she called tablet. Oh, that tablet. Yum yum YUM.

  I could eat tablet all day long. I didn’t eat much else at my sort-of Gran’s. She said I was a poor wee bairn who needed fattening up but she kept giving me plates of mince and tatties. I don’t like mince because it looks as if someone has already chewed it, and I don’t like mashed potatoes because I’m always scared there’s going to be a lump. So I didn’t eat much and she got cross with me and Mum got cross with me and Mack got cross with me.

  The worst bit about living there was the bed. BED number five. Only it wasn’t my bed, it was my sort-of Gran’s. I had to share it with her. There wasn’t room in her bedroom for my campbed, you see, and she said she wasn’t having it cluttering up her lounge. She liked it when I stopped cluttering up the place too. She was always wanting to whisk me away to bed early. I was generally still awake when she came in. I used to peep when she took her corset off.

  She wasn’t so little when those corsets were off. She took up a lot of the bed once she was in it. Sometimes I’d end up clutching the edge, hanging on for dear life. And another thing. She snored.

  We were meant to be looking for our own place in Scotland but we never found one. Then my sister Pippa got born and Mack fell out with his pal and lost his job. Mum got ever so worried. She didn’t get on very well with my sort-of Gran and it got worse after Pippa was born.

  So we moved back down South and said we were homeless. Mum got even more worried. She thought we’d be put in a bed-and-breakfast hotel. She said she’d never live it down. (Little did she know. You don’t have to live it down. You can live it up.)

  But we didn’t get put in a bed-and-breakfast hotel then. We were offered this flat on a big estate. It was a bit grotty but Mack said he’d fix it up so it would look like a palace. So we moved in. It was a pretty weirdo palace, if you ask me. There was green mould on the walls and creepy-crawlies in the kitchen. Mack tried slapping a bit of paint about but it didn’t make much difference. Mum got ever so depressed and Mack got cross. Pippa kept getting coughs and colds and snuffling, because of the damp.

  I was OK though. My campbed collapsed once and for all, so I got to have a new bed.

  BED number six. It had springs and it made the most wonderful trampoline.

  I had a lot of fun in those flats.

  I didn’t want to leave.

  But Mack got this new job and started to make a lot of money and he said he’d buy Mum her own proper house and Mum was over the moon.

  I thought it was great once we’d moved into the new house. I liked that house ever so much. It wasn’t damp, it was warm and cosy and when Pippa and I got up we could run about in our pyjamas without getting a bit cold. Pippa stopped being a boring old baby and started to play properly. She shared my new bed now but I didn’t really mind that much because she liked my stories and she actually laughed at my jokes. We kept getting the giggles late at night when we were supposed to be asleep, but Mum didn’t often get cross and Mack didn’t even smack any more. Hank the Hunk got born and he was happy too.

  But we didn’t live happily ever after.

  Mack’s job finished. He got another for a bit but it didn’t pa
y nearly so well. And then he lost that one. And he couldn’t get another. Mum worked in a supermarket while Mack looked after Pippa and Hank. (I can look after myself.)

  But Mum’s money wouldn’t pay all the bills. It wouldn’t pay for the lovely new house. So some people came and took nearly all our things away. We had to leave our new house. I cried. So did Pippa and Hank. Mum cried too. Mack didn’t cry, but he looked as if he might.

  We thought we’d have to go back to the mouldy flat. But they’d put another family in there. There wasn’t any room for us.

  So guess where we ended up. In a bed-and-breakfast hotel.

  We went to stay at the Royal Hotel. The Royal sounds very grand, doesn’t it? And when we were down one end of the street and got our first glimpse of the Royal right at the other end, I thought it looked very grand too. I started to get excited. I’d never stayed in a great big posh hotel before. Maybe we’d all have our own rooms with satellite telly and people would make our beds and serve us our breakfasts from silver trays. As if we were Royalty staying in the Royal.

  But the Royal started to look a bit shabby the nearer we got. We saw it needed painting. We saw one of the windows was broken and patched with cardboard. We saw the big gilt lettering had gone all wobbly and some of it was missing. We were going to be staying in the oyal H t 1.

  ‘O Yal Htl,’ I said. It sounded funny. ‘O Yal Htl,’ I repeated. I thought of a song we sang at school about an old man river who just went rolling along. ‘O Yal Htl,’ I sang to the same tune.

  ‘Will you just shut it, Elsa?’ said Mack the Smack.

  ‘I can’t shut, I’m not a door,’ I said. ‘Hey, when is a door not a door? When it’s ajar!’