The Money, Stan, Big Lauren, and Me

by Joanna Nadin

  Me and Stan weren’t allowed in the betting shop because it’s against the law until we are eighteen even though Big Lauren goes in. But it’s only to get say seventy pence off her mum for a Mars bar. Nan said we could pick a horse each off the list and she would put a pound on to win and I chose Majestic Rose because of Titanic and Stan chose Lady Jameela because it’s two pop stars in one and then we sat on the step by the door with a can of Fanta between us and watched everyone go in. Kyle Perry’s dad was first and then about ten minutes later Kyle Perry’s mum. And then we heard shouting and Mrs Perry came back out again and her face was screwed up like a used-up piece of paper and she was saying swear words to herself. Stan thought it was brilliant but I thought it was at least seventy pence in a swear box. Mr Perry didn’t come out. He stayed inside and the next person out was Nan, and me and Stan hadn’t won anything and nor had Nan. But Mr Perry had won £450 on a horse called Arnold Lane, which is a stupid name for a horse if you ask me, but no one did. Instead Stan said, ‘Why was Mrs Perry swearing then?’ Nan says it just goes to show that money does not buy you happiness, e.g. look at Gloria Venables who used to work on the perfume counter in Boots until she won half a million on the Lottery and spent it all on fancy clothes and fancy men. Mr Venables didn’t like that so she ended up divorced and cutting pastry at Gaskell’s pie factory until that shut, so now she has nothing. Then Nan asked did we want to go to bingo on Mason Road because we are allowed in there. And I was thinking it isn’t even true because money CAN buy happiness, e.g. a house with an ensuite or even just custard creams even Discount Deals ones. But I didn’t say that, I said, ‘Yes, please.’

  And the bingo was brilliant because you get a card with numbers on and a fat pen that smells of chemicals and when the man at the front who is called Bingo Jim calls a number out you check your card. If you have that number you put a dot on it with the fat pen and whoever dots everything wins. Only the numbers aren’t normal numbers like twenty-three for instance, they are ‘Legs Eleven’ which is eleven and ‘Gordon’s Den’ which is ten and ‘Kelly’s Eye’ which is one and which doesn’t even rhyme. And Nan let us dot her card and she got every single one even before Brenda Gilhooly and so she got to stand up and shout ‘Bingo’ and so did me and Stan. She won forty pounds which Stan said was a fortune, but I knew it wasn’t, not really. But it was still excellent though. Because she didn’t put it in a coffee jar, she took us to Slice O’Heaven and we had stuffed crust and garlic bread with cheese and knickerbocker glories for pudding with sparklers in. No one said, ‘We can’t afford it,’ or ‘I’ve paid for it so you have to eat it all’. And I was so busy being happy it wasn’t until I was lying in bed again that I felt sick when I remembered about the care home.

  And it’s one day nearer now because the baby is coming one day sooner.

  And I didn’t find my fortune. All I got was a nine-inch Pepperoni Dream and an ice cream that I couldn’t even finish.

  It’s Good Friday today which is when Jesus was nailed on the cross at Calvary, but I don’t see what is good about that at all, it should be called Bad Friday really if you think about it. Big Lauren says but if Jesus wasn’t nailed on the cross today then he wouldn’t have got up again on Sunday and we wouldn’t get Easter eggs, so it’s good after all. Then she asked did I want to go into town with her to buy some because you can’t get Creme Eggs in Florida, she has checked – plus, Easter doesn’t count in the diet because it’s a religious holiday. And I said no because I can’t afford one, not even a Creme Egg which are only fifty-nine pence, even though I really wanted to because Easter eggs are my favourite chocolate. Mum says they are a rip-off because for, e.g. £3.99 you could buy eight bags of chocolate buttons but instead you just get one small bag inside some normal Dairy Milk chocolate and it’s just because it’s egg-shaped. But on normal Dairy Milk you don’t get a box or foil that smells of chocolate for a month afterwards. Plus egg Dairy Milk tastes better than a bar of Dairy Milk. I have done a blind test like Mr Feinstein so I know it’s a fact.

  But after about an hour I wished I had gone with her. Because something BAD happened. Not as bad as Jesus on the cross. But almost.

  We weren’t even doing anything mad. We were just on the computer and I was saying, ‘Yes you can build a bridge across a hundred-and-four-foot gap using only duct tape,’ and Stan was saying, ‘No you can’t,’ and Mum was saying, ‘Oh for crying out loud, I don’t know why either of you even want to know about bridges made of duct tape in the first place.’ Only then she said something else, which was ‘Oh’ in a confused voice. And then she said ‘Oh’ again but in a different voice, which wasn’t confused it was scared. Because there was some red on the front of her skirt and it wasn’t hair dye or ketchup or even Stan’s Crayola marker pen which is leaking. It was blood. And it was from the baby.

  And then stuff happened very fast and slow all at once. Mum had to call an ambulance on the normal phone, and I had to call Dave on her mobile phone and tell him Mum was coming to the hospital and to meet her at A and E, which means Accident and Emergency. Stan had to get her handbag, but he got her the red one which she only uses for parties not the brown one for everyday. I shouted at him and Mum said, ‘Please don’t shout,’ only not in her normal way, i.e. shouting but in a very quiet way and that was when I knew something was really wrong. And it was the baby. The baby was broken. And it was my fault because I had wished for it that time.

  I had wished it to go away and now it was going.

  Me and Stan weren’t allowed in the room, we had to wait outside with Dave 2 and it felt like we waited for a million years but it was only an hour and thirty-seven minutes. I timed it on my glow-in-the-dark watch and then the doctor who was called Dr Gupta and who was as short as Dave came out and so did Dave. I waited for him to say the words like they do on Doctors, i.e. ‘I am so sorry but it’s bad news. We did all we could. But the baby could not be saved.’

  But he didn’t.

  He said, ‘False alarm. But your mum needs rest and NO stress. Do you know what stress is?’ And I nodded because I knew exactly what stress was, and it was me and Stan. And he nodded back, and Dave said, ‘You can go in now.’ Stan went in and climbed on the bed and showed Mum the syringe he got off Dave 2, but I didn’t, I stayed outside because my brain was too loud and crowded with all the thoughts that were in there. The thoughts were, ‘This is your fault’ and ‘You are the stress’ and ‘Now you are definitely going away’. And they kept going round and round and getting louder and louder until in the end Mum came out and sat on the chair next to me and said, ‘I’m OK you know, Billy. I can come home. But I can’t go back to work. Doctor’s orders. There was only a week left to go anyway.’ And the thoughts got a bit quieter then. But they didn’t leave completely. They were still there, whispering at me in the car on the way home. And they were still there when Dave made vegetarian shepherd’s pie for tea. And when we watched Finding Nemo. And when Stan didn’t want to go to bed, but he had to because it was gone half-past eight and he knows that Nemo gets back in the end because he has seen it fourteen times, which isn’t as many as Lauren’s seen Titanic but is still a lot.

  And they were still there when Mum said what she really fancied was a Bounty only we didn’t have any because Nan ate the last one when she came round last week. But then another louder thought came into my head and said, ‘You have to look after her. You have to be excellent and kind, and then maybe, just maybe, you won’t be the one to go, it will be Stan.’ And the thought was right, so I said, ‘I’ll go and get one from Mr Patel’s.’ And Mum said, ‘Oh don’t worry, Billy, it’s already dark out. Besides, it’s just the baby fancying coconut,’ which is odd when you think about it because when babies come out they do not go round fancying coconut. They only fancy milk and crying. But Dave said, ‘Let him go, Jeanie. He’s eleven, and it’s only round the corner. Here’s a couple of quid. Why don’t you get one for each of us? I think we could all use the sugar after today.’ Which isn’t true beca
use your brain only needs a teaspoon of sugar an hour to work properly but I took it anyway and I went.

  Mr Patel said, ‘Bit late to be out, Billy Grimshaw-Jones.’ So I said, ‘It’s the baby. It fancies coconut.’ And Mr Patel smiled and said Rupi wanted bananas on toast when she was inside Mrs Patel, only now she won’t eat even a mouthful of banana. And babies are funny old things aren’t they, and did we have any names yet? I said no because Mum and Dave are still arguing about whether Charlie is a girl’s name or a boy’s name and whether Willow is brilliant or just mad. And Mr Patel said, ‘Sunita is a fine name,’ because Mrs Patel’s name is actually Sunita, only everyone calls her Sunny, which she is, because she is always smiling. Only there is no way Mum is going to call a baby Sunita, even if it’s a girl because Nan would go mental, so I just said, ‘I’ll tell her, bye.’ And I took the Bounties and the change and walked back down Beasley Street towards our road.

  But when I got near the corner, which is Kyle Perry’s house, I stopped. Because something wasn’t normal. Because in the front garden, as well as the bit of old car and the concrete, there were a pair of Chinos and a white polo shirt. The shirt looked orange because of the street lamp at the end of their gate, but no one wears actual orange polo shirts not even Stan. But then another polo shirt came falling out of the sky like a shot bird, and landed on the bonnet of the car, and I looked up to see where the clothes were coming from in case there was a tornado. In tornadoes the wind sucks stuff up and then drops it, and once in France a whole load of frogs fell out of the sky, I saw it on Weatherwatch. But it wasn’t a tornado, it was just Mrs Perry hanging out of the window throwing boxer shorts and a Chelsea top and some books out and she was shouting, ‘Go on then, go. I’ve had it.’ And Mr Perry came out of the front door and said, ‘For God’s sake, woman. Have you gone totally doolally this time?’ I thought, ‘Probably yes,’ because then out of the window came some books and they went further and hit Mr Wrigley’s red Vauxhall Astra and two went into Mrs Peason’s garden. Mr Perry was shouting at Mrs Perry to stop, but she didn’t stop, she just kept throwing things – a radio and a flip-flop and then an envelope which flew right across the road and landed on my trainers. And so I picked it up and was thinking I will just throw it back into the garden or something then they won’t even see me when someone did see me and that was Kyle Perry.

  He was in the garden and his face was bright orange under the lights and he looked like Mum’s friend Stacey or an Oompa Loompa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Only in the film the Oompa Loompas weren’t crying and Kyle Perry was because he had orange juice on his cheeks only I knew it wasn’t really juice, it was tears. And I wanted to say ‘Sorry’, even though it wasn’t my fault, but just because I felt bad for him.

  But I didn’t feel bad for long because then he started shouting too and said, ‘What are you smiling at Nut-job? Piss off. Just piss off, all right.’

  So I did piss off. I ran down the road and over the multicoloured gravel and in the back door and it wasn’t until I was hanging up my coat on the hook in the hall that I noticed I still had the envelope in my hand. But I couldn’t go back. Not then. Because Kyle had told me to piss off, and because the baby needed the coconut so I thought I will take it back tomorrow. I will just post it through the door really early because Kyle does not get up until ten in the holidays. He just lies in bed and eats crisps and plays his DS, he told Stephen Warren. So I took the envelope up to my room and hid it under the duvet so Mum wouldn’t see it and do any worrying.

  But I worried. Because, even though my eyes were watching Wife Swap USA, which is where men swap their wives over to see if the other wives are better, and they never are, my brain was thinking, ‘There is an envelope in my bed and it’s Mr Perry’s and what is in it?’ I tried to make it go away so I could eat my Bounty bar, but it didn’t want to, so in the end I said the baby could have mine as well and actually I was a bit tired and I was going to bed. Mum said, ‘Oooh lucky me,’ and I said, ‘Night’ and kissed her, and she said, ‘Sleep tight.’

  But I didn’t. I lay in the dark and I counted the glow stars three times. But all the time I was counting I could feel the envelope at my feet, so I started saying the shipping forecast. I said, ‘Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher.’ But the envelope started saying things too, it said, ‘Look inside me, Billy. You know you want to. What could be inside me?’ And I thought. ‘It’s nothing in there. Just paper and bills.’ So I said my words louder: ‘BISCAY, TRAFALGAR, FITZROY, SOLE, LUNDY FASTNET.’ But the envelope was louder still, saying, ‘OPEN ME, BILLY. OPEN ME, BILLY, OPEN ME, BILLY . . .’ Again and again.

  Until I did. I opened it.

  And that was when I knew nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing. Because it wasn’t paper. And it wasn’t bills.

  It was money. A lot of money.

  And no one knew I had it except me and the envelope.

  And now the Bad Friday had turned Good.

  I couldn’t sleep. Because even when I shut my eyes I could see it. The money glowing inside the envelope. Each note shining madly and talking, saying, ‘We’re yours, Billy, we’re yours. All of us. But how many of us are there, Billy?’ And I had to know. I had to know how many notes were mine. So I got up and I counted it. I counted it seven times altogether because my hands were all shaky and I kept dropping some and forgetting where I had got to, and getting different numbers. But the last two times I got the same number. I got 5,540.

  It’s amazing how so much money can fit into such a small space. I thought even a thousand pounds would take up a whole table but it’s smaller than a shoebox lid.

  And I knew I had to give it back. I knew it wasn’t really finders keepers like it is with ten pence. And I meant to, I really did. But things kept happening to stop me, e.g. after breakfast Mum said we all had to go to Dr Singh’s because he wanted to check on the baby’s heartbeat so I thought, I will take it back after that. But we didn’t come straight home we went to the airport so that Mum could get her stuff and say goodbye to everyone because she is never going back now. And then Mum was sad so we went over to Stacey’s because she doesn’t start her new job for a few days. And Stacey made me and Stan toasted cheese and pickle sandwiches and let us watch Sky while she and Mum did talking in the kitchen. Mum ate her toasted sandwich which was just cheese because the baby doesn’t like pickle, and Stacey smoked a Benson and Hedges out of the window because the baby doesn’t like that either and nor does Mum. And then when we got back home which was nearly three o’clock, Big Lauren was there with a cage and Lady and two Creme Eggs, one each for me and Stan, saying, ‘Can you look after her while I go to Florida? She only needs feeding once a day and she can be in the front room and she is almost as fun as Sky because she can do tricks, for example she will eat almost anything even her own poo and hang off the bars with one foot and then fall on her head. And here is my uncle and aunt’s address so she can send me a postcard.’ And Mum said yes and so did I even though I do not know how Lady is supposed to write a postcard. Although she can do excellent tricks. So we were busy watching her fall on her head, and seeing if she would eat her poo until it was time for Lauren to go and tidy her room. She said her mum doesn’t want to come back from Florida to a bombsite, plus she can’t find her red bikini top, but it’s definitely on the floor somewhere.

  And then Mum said, ‘What a good idea,’ because it’s nearly time for the move, i.e. for Stan to come into my room. She said Dave doesn’t want to be wading through pants and socks and broken Transformers, he wants to just carry the chest of drawers and the bed down the landing and put them next to mine, so we could go and tidy our rooms too. So I did tidy. I put away all my Doctor Who Top Trumps cards and my Cars of the World books and my collection of fifty-seven different crisp bags. But all the time I was tidying, the envelope was saying things to me from under the mattress. It said, ‘You could take me back. Or you could spend me. Think of what you could buy, Billy.’ And I tried not to think but thoughts happe
ned anyway, e.g. a DS and new football boots with Reebok or Nike on them and maybe even a new house not 17 Mornington Road because the matching girls are there now but in Rigby Mansions where Shane Watts lives. But then another bit of my brain had a thought too which was, ‘But it’s not yours, Billy. It belongs to Mr Perry so you have to take it back to him.’

  And it was like one of the quizzes in Big Lauren’s magazine where it says, You have found your biggest enemy’s purse on the floor outside Topshop do you:

  a) Keep it, no one will ever know

  b) Hand it in to the police and hope no one else claims it so you can keep it or

  c) Give it back to your enemy.