The Money, Stan, Big Lauren, and Me

by Joanna Nadin

  So we did. We filled in all the forms and looked up all the answers on Google which I said was cheating because you are supposed to just have them in your brain, but Big Lauren says this is modern life, and if we win them all we will get:

  £10,000

  A year’s supply of baby wipes

  A romantic minibreak for two in the Lake District

  A caravan

  A subscription to Women’s Own magazine

  A CD of Neil Diamond

  A set of steak knives

  A Toners hair dye in ‘Mahogany Shine’

  I said it wasn’t worth doing the last three because no one likes Neil Diamond, Dave is a vegetarian and Mum doesn’t dye her hair because of the chemicals and the baby but Stan said we could always sell them on eBay because Arthur Malik’s mum just sold his old Scalextric on eBay and she got £31.50, and Big Lauren said her stepdad Alan sold a sock that was once on Andy Murray’s foot and he got £372.

  I got the stamps off Mum. She said why did I need so many and I said it was for something for the baby. Which was only half a lie because if we win then the baby will have proper baby wipes instead of Discount Deals ones. And she smiled then and said, ‘That’s nice, Billy.’ And I felt a bit funny then. Because she hasn’t said that in quite a while and it felt good and scary at the same time. Because what if we don’t win anything and the baby doesn’t even have any wipes at all?

  But then I remembered that one of the magazines said it is important to always think positive. So I did – I thought positive and the thought was, all we have to do now is wait for our fortune to arrive in the post.

  Everyone at school has gone Britain’s Got Talent mad. It’s because there’s an advert in the Broadley Echo and it says there’s a big audition in Bristol which is near here and it’s in four weeks and if you have hidden talent it’s time to show it to the world, and also to Ant and Dec who are the presenters and Simon Cowell who is the judge.

  Karen Connolly is going to go and sing ‘It’s Raining Men’ while she dances with an umbrella and Casey Webster who once got stuck in a washing machine is going to swallow a live goldfish. Big Lauren said that was animal cruelty but Casey said he doesn’t kill the goldfish it is a trick because then it comes back out of his mouth again and it’s totally amazing and he will win for sure. Miss Cafferkey asked if I was going to enter but I said I don’t have any hidden talents. She said, ‘Everyone has talent, Billy, you just have to find yours.’ So I said I was good at identifying car makes and models from a distance so maybe that was mine, but Simon Cowell would press the no buzzer for sure if I did that.

  But on the way home from school, Big Lauren said that her cousin from Swansea – not the one who got knocked on the head and goes to special school but his brother – won a talent show at Pontin’s Holiday Camp and he got £500 and a silver trophy, and that if we won Britain’s Got Talent we would get more than that and so we should be in a band and enter. I said what about the competitions in the magazines, but Big Lauren said it is like boyfriends, i.e. you have to keep your options open.

  We did it at my house. Because Mum and Dave were on shift and Nan can’t have us on a Thursday because she’s at bingo with Brenda Gilhooly so I have a key which is attached to a string which is attached to a clip on my school bag so I can’t lose it and I bring Stan home. We’re allowed to make ourselves cold drinks – NOT hot chocolate – and a snack and watch telly and not answer the door but we can answer the phone until everyone gets home.

  Only we didn’t actually do singing because it took too long to decide what to be called, i.e. Lauren wanted to be called Lady Lauren only I said that made it sound like it was all her and what about Double Decker because there are two of us, only Lauren said no because Double Deckers are big buses and she doesn’t want to draw attention to her diet, but how about Double Trouble? I said but that makes us sound like we’re bad and we’re not, but then Lauren said I was being sexist by not letting her decide so we’re called Double Trouble and Lauren is going to sing ‘Pokerface’ and I’m going to join in on the ‘P-P-P-Pokerface’ bits and do the dance routine.

  Stan wants to be in Double Trouble too because he says you always win with someone really small in the band, e.g. Diversity, but I said no because then it won’t be Double it will be Treble and Treble Trouble sounds weird, so he said he was going to ask Mum when she got home and she will say yes and then I will have to let him in. But Big Lauren said rehearsal was over anyway because she had to go and put Lady the hamster in a see-through ball and let her roll around the front room for a bit and so I watched Mythbusters and it turns out you can make a deadly weapon in prison with pant elastic.

  Mum said me and Big Lauren should let Stan be in Double Trouble. I said it wasn’t fair because no one made Cheryl Cole let her brother in Girls Aloud and Dave said maybe that’s why he ended up in prison. And then Stan got upset in case he went to prison so Dave said he would be in a band with Stan but Stan said no because Dave can’t sing, not even ‘Happy Birthday’. Mum said no one was going to enter Britain’s Got Talent at this rate, but I said we had to and we had to win. I must have said it quite loud because Dave said, ‘Blimey, keep your hair on, Billy the Kid.’ I said my hair was on. And Dave said, ‘Not like Brenda Gilhooly then,’ because she wears a ginger wig and you can see the net bit underneath and sometimes when she is laughing it goes down on one side. Mum said, ‘Dave,’ in her voice that is normally for me and Stan when we have done a really loud burp at the table for instance, and he rolled his eyes at me and I felt a bit better then.

  But it didn’t last long because then Nan came round because she had won some money on the bingo and it was £100 and she tried to give it to Mum, but Mum said, ‘Christ, we’re not on the breadline yet.’ So Nan said, ‘Suit yourself. I’ll put it in the coffee jar then.’

  She has £174 in three coffee jars. There was £176 but she used two pounds to pay for the ice cream van last week because she only had a twenty-pound note in her purse and Mr Whippy doesn’t like twenty-pound notes unless you are buying say fifteen Cornettos. No one would do that, not even Big Lauren. She says she once ate three Magnums in a row at Newquay, but she was sick in a Snow White bucket and her stepdad Alan had to rinse it out in the sea.

  Nan went home after that and I Googled breadline. It’s where poor and homeless people queue up for food.

  I don’t ever want to be on the breadline. Not even if it’s sliced white.

  It’s all right for Big Lauren. She says she’ll never be on the breadline because her mum works at the betting shop on Whitehawk Road and she says the recession is good for betting because more people want to win money, e.g. Kyle Perry’s dad Mr Perry who is in there every lunchtime and a lot of Saturday. Last week Mrs Perry who is Kyle Perry’s mum was in there too only she wasn’t betting she was shouting at Mr Perry. Big Lauren says more couples argue about money than anything else and it’s the number one cause of marriage breakdown. I said Mum and Dave weren’t arguing any more than normal, e.g. only stuff like, ‘It’s your turn to do the bins.’ ‘No it isn’t I did them last week.’ ‘Yes, well I’m pregnant.’ Which wins every time except when it was about making a cup of tea because Dave said being pregnant wasn’t a hindrance to turning on the kettle.

  Lauren said it’s only a matter of time though.

  And she was right, i.e. it was only a matter of three and a half hours. Because Saturday night is pizza night and so we went to Slice O’Heaven on Mason Road and normally Dave has Vegetable Feast and me and Stan share a stuffed-crust Pepperoni Dream only the pepperoni is all on my side because Stan says it’s too spicy. Mum has lasagna and garlic bread with cheese on it and a salad, but tonight she didn’t want any garlic bread even without cheese or salad or even Diet Coke, she only had tap water. Mum said she didn’t feel like it, but I think it was a lie because Dave said, ‘Have the garlic bread, Jeanie.’ Mum said, ‘I’m fine, Dave. I’m just not that hungry.’ And Dave said, ‘Jesus, Jeanie, it’s just a piece of garlic bread,
it’s not going to break the bank.’ And then Mum’s eyes got wet and she had to go to the loo and when she got back she didn’t talk any more not even when Dave offered her a piece of Vegetable Feast with three olives on it.

  Dave says the baby is making her cross. It’s huge now and you can see its legs and toes under the skin on her stomach. It’s like in the film Alien only with a baby not a flesh-eating monster. Stan keeps asking how it got in there, but I am not telling him. I don’t want to think about it, or about how it’s going to get out. Big Lauren says when she has a baby, which is going to be after she has won Britain’s Got Talent and married Justin Bieber in Paris, she is going to have a caesarian which is where they cut the baby out of you, or possibly adopt a brown baby from Africa.

  I am never having a baby if I get married. What’s the point? All they do is make everyone shout at each other and run out of money.

  Anyway, when we got home Mum said she was tired and went to bed even though it was only eight o’clock but Dave wasn’t tired so he read Stan some Heidi and then we watched Money Madness which is a quiz show where you can win a million pounds if you answer sixteen questions right. It’s mine and Dave’s favourite quiz show because the host who is called Hutch Hathaway is always saying, ‘It’s madness,’ and me and Dave are allowed a chocolate button every time he says it. Nan doesn’t like Hutch Hathaway because he is American and she says Americans are always up to no good and so are people with beards. She used to say Dave was up to no good even though he didn’t have a beard and was from Swindon, just because he wanted to marry Mum. She likes him more now though.

  Tonight it was a man from Nottingham called Bob Johnson and he got to £250,000 because he knew things like who was the Prime Minister at the start of World War One, which is Herbert Henry Asquith. And how many pence in a guinea which is 105 but then Hutch asked him who won the Wimbledon Ladies Singles in 1988 and he didn’t know so he phoned his friend who was called Una and she said it was Martina Navratilova. But Dave said, ‘Muppet. It’s Steffi Graff.’ And Dave was right, which meant he would have won half a million pounds.

  Which is when I had my next idea to make my fortune which was to enter Dave on Money Madness and win a million pounds.

  I did it on the website. I just had to type in his name and address and answer a question in less than one minute and the question was, Who was the fifth Doctor Who? and it’s Peter Davison and the computer said, Congratulations, you are one step closer to a cool million. Keep an eye on the post for your golden ticket to glory.

  So now there are three options open for fortune, i.e.:

  Winning £10,000, baby wipes, caravan, romantic holiday, etc in the magazines

  Winning Britain’s Got Talent

  Winning Money Madness.

  I would rather win Money Madness because then we would be richer even than Shane Watts and Mum would be able to have garlic bread with cheese every day if she fancied.

  But maybe it would be good to get the romantic holiday too, for Mum and Dave. Big Lauren says having a baby is the end of romance. She read it in a magazine.

  We did more rehearsing today, i.e. we did ‘Pokerface’ on Singstar and then ‘Bad Romance’ which Lauren says is all about her life. Only I don’t know how because she has never had a romance, unless you count when Stephen Warren kissed her at the end of term disco, which I don’t because it was dark and he said he thought she was Kelly Watson.

  But then Lauren said she needed to preserve her voice for the actual audition and we should watch a film instead and it should be Titanic because it’s her favourite ever film and she has seen it thirty-one times, thirty-two including today. It has Kate Winslet in it who is Rose and who is very rich and Leonardo di Caprio who is very poor but he is going back to America to seek his fortune by doing paintings, only the boat crashes into an iceberg before he gets there. If I was going to America to seek my fortune, only not by doing paintings because I am usually a C-plus at art, but by naming all the states in less than five minutes for instance, I would fly because statistically you are more likely to be killed by a donkey than die in a plane crash.

  Maybe I will have to go to America because I don’t think we are going to win Britain’s Got Talent because Big Lauren only scored Wannabe on Singstar which means she doesn’t sound like Lady Gaga at all. She says it’s not all about the sound it’s about the style so she is going to wear a leotard and a hat shaped like a lobster.

  But I don’t think Simon Cowell will vote for a leotard and a hat shaped like a lobster.

  Kyle Perry has got a black eye. He said he walked into a door, but Big Lauren said that is what all victims of domestic abuse say but actually it means their husbands beat them up. She read it in a magazine. So then Kyle Perry said to her, ‘Are you saying I’m gay because if you are I’ll give YOU a black eye,’ so he got sent to Wing Nuts for using threatening behaviour. Big Lauren said it’s probably his dad that gave him the black eye because according to her mum he lost £150 on the horses yesterday. But the good thing is no one will beat Kyle up at secondary school because they will think he is hard. Stephen Warren said she was being sexist and maybe it was his MUM that gave him the black eye and it isn’t hard at all to be hit by a woman. So I said now HE was being sexist and maybe Kyle did just walk into a door because he is usually listening to an MP3 player and not concentrating on where he is going. Only then Miss Cafferkey said she didn’t know who was being sexist, but we were definitely all being silly. And also if we didn’t be quiet we would ALL get sent to Wing Nuts only she didn’t say Wing Nuts she said Mr Braithwaite. So we shut up and did fractions instead and I thought I was glad I wasn’t Kyle Perry because even if Mum is pregnant and Dave is too short and a nurse and vegetarian, they have never given me a black eye.

  Sky TV has gone.

  I know it was there last night because we watched Man Versus Food and it was whether Adam Richman could eat a pizza bigger than a table and the answer was no which means Adam Richman says, ‘In the battle of man versus food, food won.’ Even Dave was surprised at this because Dave 2 who is Dave’s best friend and is also a nurse but comes from Bolton and has a tattoo of Daffy Duck on his arm, once ate two sixteen-inch Meatastics in one evening. Only he won’t do it again because he is getting fit so he can become Ultimate Frisbee Champion, which is also why he doesn’t play WarRaiders any more. I said maybe I could become Ultimate Frisbee Champion and win a million-pound prize but Dave said Dave 2 has only won a silver frisbee so far plus you have to be at least eighteen. And mental.

  But when I got back from school with Nan and Stan it had disappeared, because I went to put Mythbusters on so I could find out whether a thousand bees can lift up a laptop only it wasn’t there and there was just normal telly, i.e. CBBC. I didn’t want to watch Tracy Beaker although Stan did because he is obsessed with being an orphan and living in a care home because you get to paint your bedroom whatever colour you want and eat sweets all day according to CBBC. Nan said someone must have stolen the satellite dish from off the back wall because that is what happened to Brenda Gilhooly right in the middle of her watching Haunted House so you can imagine how terrified she was and it was probably gypsies because Nan thinks gypsies steal most things even though Dave says it’s racist to think things like that. Anyway, I went on to the multicoloured gravel out the front to look at the roof and it was still there, so it wasn’t gypsies and Nan said it’s gremlins then, and Mum could sort it out when she got back from work.

  But Mum didn’t sort it out. She just said, ‘I said we’d have to cut back, Billy, and forty-seven pounds a month is too much to pay just so you and Stan can watch a man eat himself sick and Dave can watch Rovers lose at football.’ I said, ‘But what about Mythbusters? How am I going to know whether or not a thousand bees can lift a laptop?’ and she said, ‘Google it.’ And even though I totally like Google I don’t like it as much as Sky TV and I could feel the anger pushing up inside me until I pushed out some words and they were, ‘I hate you and I wish I was dead
,’ and the words were like Kyle’s dad’s fist, or peas out of Stan’s pea shooter because every time one hit her I could see it left a mark. But I didn’t care I just went to my room and I said the shipping forecast five times and waited for Mum to come up and say sorry but she didn’t and nor did Dave and nor did Nan. And then I thought maybe they are pretending I actually am dead. And then I wished I was Kyle Perry. Because at least his mum doesn’t pretend he is dead.

  And he still has Sky.

  A thousand bees can’t lift up a laptop because one bee can only lift ninety-six milligrammes so it would need 23,000 bees and anyway how would you attach the harnesses? I Googled it in first break and I was going to do it as show and tell, even though it’s just tell really because I don’t have a bee not even a dead one. Only Miss Cafferkey said not today Billy because she wanted to talk about our new project for after the holidays. It’s The Victorians which is 150 years ago when Queen Victoria was in charge and there weren’t any laptops or Sky TV or even any television at all and only the rich children went to school like, e.g. Brooklyn Beckham and the poor ones had to go up chimneys and work in factories. Miss Cafferkey said even Charles Dickens who was a writer and who wrote Oliver which is where they sing ‘Food Glorious Food’ had a job, i.e. he put labels on shoe polish. And Oliver had a job walking behind coffins and his friend the Artful Dodger picked pockets and everyone agreed that would be brilliant, except Miss Cafferkey who said there was plenty of time for jobs when we were older and we were lucky not to live in filthy slums or have to steal for a living. Only Kyle Perry said, ‘Speak for yourself,’ so he got sent to Wing Nuts, and anyway it’s not true he lives in a slum because he has an Xbox, although Big Lauren says she has seen his mum throw a cigarette packet into the front garden which is filthy.