‘Sometimes I pretend Basil’s a spaceman,’ said Alice, holding him up and making him swoop through the air, his long ears flapping.
Basil is the name of her blue toy rabbit. He’s very big and soft and cuddly. She has an entire rabbit warren in her bedroom. Basil is the biggest. The smallest is Little Titch, a weeny china rabbit only as big as my thumbnail. There are all shapes and sizes of rabbit in between, and different colours too – red and green and pink as well as white and brown.
‘I often pretend that they’ve all escaped, and then they hide all over the house,’ said Alice. ‘Or sometimes they’ve got rabbit flu, and I lie them on their backs with their paws in the air, and I’m the vet and I have to give them medicine and nurse them back to health. I play all kinds of rabbit games. Ava says I’m a hopeless baby, playing with cuddly toys at my age.’
‘Doesn’t she have cuddly toys herself?’
‘She has bears. Three of them.’
‘Does she pretend she’s Goldilocks?’ I said, joking. I couldn’t imagine Ava playing a pretend game in a million years.
‘They’re those very expensive bears with a yellow tag in their ear. Ava says you’re not supposed to play with them, they’re more like ornaments. She’s got fed up with them anyway and says I can have them, but I don’t really want them. They look like they’d bully my rabbits,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll show you.’
She took me to have a peep in Ava’s room. We had to be very quiet because Alice isn’t allowed to go in there. It was a much deeper blue, with lacy white curtains and lots of framed pictures on the wall – and a special fitted wardrobe.
‘She keeps it so neat – look,’ said Alice, opening it up.
Most of Ava’s clothes hung on hangers – her shirts, her dresses, her jackets, her coats. Her T-shirts were in a neat stack, her jumpers too, and her jeans lay side by side, their legs tucked up tidily. Her shoes were on racks, all clicking their heels together, though they were already home.
‘Goodness,’ I said. ‘It must get annoying at times, having a sister like Ava.’
Alice nodded in agreement.
‘If I had a sister, I’d much prefer her to be like you,’ I said.
‘Perhaps we can be friends,’ Alice suggested. ‘Friends are better than sisters because you can choose them.’
‘Do you have a best friend?’ I asked.
Alice went a bit pink. ‘Not really. At school I’m in a sort of threesome with Katie and Angela, but they like each other best.’
‘I’m not even in a threesome,’ I said. ‘All the other girls had made friends before I started at my school.’
‘Then we could be best friends,’ said Alice. ‘If you’d like to … You don’t have to if you don’t want.’
‘I do want!’
I couldn’t quite believe it. I’d been hoping to find a best friend for so long, and now, just like that, I had one.
Mum called up to tell us that the cakes were cool enough to ice, so we ran downstairs. Icing was the best bit. We dripped it on and then spread it like butter. Mum had found a big packet of Smarties for decoration.
‘Our granny gave us the Smarties. We’re only meant to have one a day,’ said Ava.
‘One a day?’ said Mum. ‘Oh well, suit yourself.’
It suited Alice and me to decorate our cakes with copious Smarties. I picked out the blue ones and made a B for Basil cake for Alice. She was very touched.
She made me a face cake, with two brown Smartie eyes and a big red Smartie smile.
Ava iced her cake very carefully indeed, and designed a perfect flower. Alice and I looked at her enviously.
‘Whose cake do you think is best, Tracy?’ Ava asked.
Mum pondered as she finished adding icing to her own cake. She made a face cake like Alice’s, giving it two eyes and a red smile. Then she went to the larder and brought out a packet of currants. She pressed lots of them round the edge, making curly black hair.
‘It’s you!’ said Alice.
‘Yes,’ said Mum. ‘And mine’s definitely the best cake.’
‘You can’t choose your cake. That’s not fair. You’re an adult,’ said Ava.
Mum just smiled at her. She never sticks to any of the rules. My mum’s Tracy Beaker.
We were still quite full of McDonald’s, so we saved our cakes to show Marina when she got home. She was very impressed. We had tea with her and ate cake. Mum and I had proper brown tea, and Marina and Ava had green tea, though it looked brownish too. Alice had milk. She wouldn’t eat her Basil rabbit cake.
‘Go on, Alice. They taste OK actually,’ said Ava, nibbling her flower cake enthusiastically.
‘Yes, but I want to keep it. Jess made it for me and it’s lovely,’ she said.
‘It’ll go stale, silly.’
‘I don’t care.’
I’d already had a mouthful of my face cake, but I kept the rest of it. It was only a little nibble. We both ate plain iced cakes instead.
Then Marina looked at her watch. ‘Goodness, it’s late – and it’s a school night too. Bedtime, girls! Say goodnight to Tracy and Jess, and thank Tracy for looking after you so well.’
‘Night. Thank you,’ said Ava. Then she smiled at us. ‘It’s been fun,’ she added surprisingly.
‘It’s been the best ever,’ said Alice, and she gave me a hug. ‘It’s not fair, I don’t want to go to bed. I want to stay up with Jess. She’s my friend.’
‘We’ll come again,’ said Mum. She looked at Marina. ‘In fact, we could come permanently, if you like, seeing as your au pair has done a runner.’
Marina had started to tidy the kitchen, wiping down the sticky surfaces. Then she threw the cloth into the waste bin. She saw all the McDonald’s cartons inside and frowned.
Mum sighed. So did I. It looked as if she’d blown it.
‘Well, we’ll have to establish a few ground rules,’ said Marina. ‘But we could give it a trial for a week or so and see how we all get on.’
So now Mum works for Marina and we all get on splendidly. Mum likes it much more than the car-showroom job, especially as she split up with her car-salesman boyfriend and it was awkward still working for him. And I love it because I get to see my friend Alice every day, and Ava isn’t too bad, though I don’t like her anywhere near as much.
I didn’t mind not having a best friend at school any more, now that I had Alice out of school. It was great going to their house. And then it was great going back to our flat, just Mum and me.
Only now Mum has this boring old Sean Godfrey for a boyfriend, and he keeps coming round. He stays ages after I get sent to bed – I often can’t get to sleep. I lie awake worrying about him.
Still, they’ve been seeing each other for just over three months – he’s already past his sell-by date. Mum will be getting sick of him any day now.
IT WAS SEAN Godfrey’s birthday yesterday, and he asked Mum if she’d celebrate with him that evening. Mum doesn’t usually go out on school nights. We all have tea at Marina’s (sometimes pasta and fish and the dreaded broccoli, worst luck – it looks as if the McDonald’s meal was a one-off). I get to play with Alice, and then, when Marina gets home, Mum and I go home too. We cosy up at either end of the sofa and have a little chat or watch television, and then I go to bed and Mum reads to me.
I can read, obviously, but it’s lovely to share a story. Mum says she’s catching up because no one ever read to her when she was young – not until Cam fostered her. Then I go to sleep. Once Mum nodded off mid-sentence as well, and didn’t wake up until the middle of the night.
She doesn’t go out on school nights because it would mean I’d have to stay with Cam. There would be a huge rush in the morning because Mum would have to drive over early to collect me, and then drive the other way to pick up Ava and Alice, and we’d all be late for school.
But Mum has a thing about birthdays. They’re very special to her. When she was at the Dumping Ground she hated having the same birthday as Peter because they had to share the
cake. Mum didn’t like sharing the cake and the candles and her birthday wish. The wish was the most important part. She told me she always wished her mum would come back – but she didn’t.
My Granny Carly is OK with me, but she wasn’t a very good mum to my mum. Sometimes she gave Mum heaps, sometimes nothing at all. Mostly she still doesn’t turn up when she’s supposed to.
Mum always makes my birthdays extra special. Last year she took me out for a meal in a posh Italian restaurant, and they made me a special ice-cream cake with sparklers, and everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’. She gave me a book about mermaids and a book about dogs, and a silver bangle, and a big box of colouring pencils, and a bottle of my very own blue nail varnish – though I’m not allowed to wear it at school.
Mum makes a big fuss of Cam on her birthday too. She gives a lovely present to each of Cam’s foster girls on their birthdays, even if they’re only staying for a few weeks. Anyone just has to say to my mum, ‘It’s my birthday,’ and she’ll rush around buying cards and flowers and chocolates.
So she felt she had to go out with Sean Godfrey on his birthday.
‘But Thursday’s a school night,’ I reminded her.
‘Yes, I know. I asked if we could go out on Friday or Saturday instead, but Friday is his special social night at the gym, and on Saturday a whole crowd of his football mates are taking him for a lads night out,’ said Mum. ‘So it’s going out on Thursday, his actual birthday, or not going out at all.’
‘How about not going out at all?’ I said.
‘Oh, come on, Jess, don’t give me a hard time,’ said Mum. ‘What’s up with you, eh?’
I shrugged. I still can’t stand Sean Godfrey. For a start I don’t like the way he looks. He’s so big. When he takes Mum out, he wears very bright suits in daft colours like pale blue and orange. Mum says they’re ‘bespoke’, which means they’re very expensive because someone makes them specially for him. I don’t think they’re very good at their job because his suits always look way too tight – the jacket hardly buttons up and his legs look silly.
He wears very flash jewellery too – a big watch and chunky rings and a gold bracelet with his name engraved on it. It makes him look like a little kid at nursery school with a name badge because he can’t talk properly yet. He doesn’t talk very clearly actually. He mumbles. Mum tells me to speak up when I mumble.
Sean Godfrey’s always OK with me. He tries to be nice. He tries much harder with me than my dad, but he does it all wrong. He cocks his head and winks and says, ‘Hey, kid,’ out of the side of his mouth like he’s a gangster or something. He fishes out his smartphone – the very latest model, naturally – and asks if I’d like to play around on it, as if it’s a big treat. Well, it is, but after a few seconds I give it back, pretending I’m not interested.
Then he crumples up some paper and starts playing keepie-uppie – he can do it for ages. He counts, just to show you how good at it he is. He’s always fidgeting around. Sometimes he does shadow-boxing, demonstrating how to punch someone. I suppose it might come in useful the next time Tyrone knocks me flying. Still, he’s kept out of my way recently.
If Mum puts on some music, Sean Godfrey will play invisible instruments. If it’s piano music he’ll waggle his fingers. If it’s rock music he’ll play air guitar, pulling silly faces. He hams it up to make me laugh. I just look at him.
Sometimes he ruffles my hair and says I’m a funny kid. He’s the one who’s funny. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha.
I just don’t get what Mum sees in him.
‘Yeah, he’s a bit of a whatsit,’ said Mum. She always says ‘whatsit’ when she means a rude word. She’s very careful not to swear in front of me. ‘But deep down he’s OK. Quite sweet actually, when you really get to know him. Maybe I wouldn’t think that if I’d only just met him, but we go way back.’
Mum and I go way back too, but she insisted she really had to go out on Sean Godfrey’s birthday, whether I liked it or not. So it was a real hassle on Thursday. Mum picked Ava and Alice up from school and gave us all tea at their place, and then Marina came home early as Mum had to take me to Cam’s for the night.
‘Why can’t Jess have a sleepover with us?’ Alice asked.
‘Oh yes, could I?’ I asked.
‘That would be fine,’ said Marina.
‘Yes, but it’s my job to look after your girls, not the other way round,’ said Mum.
She’s very independent. She never asks for favours. Well, she asks Cam, but that’s different, she’s family. I love Cam second to Mum. She’s much, much nicer than Carly. If I was just staying with Cam, it would be a real treat, but I’m not so keen on her foster girls. They’re ‘hard to place’, which means that most people don’t want them because they’re not little and cute any more.
Nowadays they try not to put kids in children’s homes like the Dumping Ground. They think they’ll do better in proper family homes. Cam did a great job fostering Mum, who was considered very hard to place, so when a teenage girl ends up in care nearby, they ask Cam to look after her. Cam generally says yes, even when her house is completely full up.
She always has two girls in the loft extension. It always feels a bit weird, because that’s where Mum and I used to live. We had our own little living room and shared the bedroom, and we even had our own bathroom – though it wasn’t big enough for a bath, and if I sat on the toilet while Mum was having a shower I got soaking wet too. We didn’t mind a bit, we thought it was funny, but Cam’s girls moan and complain.
On the first floor there are two lovely bedrooms, but the girls sometimes fuss about them too because they’re a bit shabby. Cam herself often has to sleep downstairs on the pull-out bed in the study where she does her writing, but she never moans or complains.
Some of Cam’s girls stay for a long time. Jax and Rosie have been there for ever. Jax is very loud. It’s not just her music or her voice – the whole house rocks when she thunders up and down the stairs, and there are always smashing noises in the kitchen when she does the dishes. She broke the special elephant mug that Cam keeps just for me, and didn’t even say sorry.
Rosie is the exact opposite – she’s as quiet as a mouse. She even cries quietly. At mealtimes she sits there silently with tears running down her cheeks. She doesn’t like eating. Cam has to coax her like a baby.
There was once a real baby called Micky, who came with his mum, Lorraine. She was very young, so Cam looked after her too, but she left ages ago. And Jean and Sarah and Chantelle. And Lily. She was my favourite. She was lovely. Whenever I was at Cam’s she made a big fuss of me because she missed her little sisters and brother. When she went back to her mum I felt sad, though happy for her.
A most horrible girl called Renée came in her place. She was mean to everyone and made the whole house smell of cigarettes even though there’s a strict no smoking rule. She said it wasn’t her, even when you could see the smoke coming from behind her back.
Another girl, Marie, kept staying out really, really late – sometimes the police brought her back and she yelled at them, and yelled at Cam too. But she said sorry the next day and begged Cam to keep her. That’s the thing. No matter how mad and scary the girls seem, they all behave like little kids wanting to be Cam’s favourite.
I’m actually her favourite because I’m family. When Mum dropped me off I had to go into the sitting room with all the others. I felt shy because I didn’t know two of the girls, and Rosie was doing mad press-ups in a corner, and Jax was jumping about practising some daft dance routine, making the floorboards creak. The new girls were lounging on the comfiest sofa and boasting about their boyfriends.
I don’t get why girls want boyfriends. I don’t think much of any of the boys in my class. Especially Tyrone. I don’t see why Mum has to have boyfriends either, Sean Godfrey in particular.
For a while Cam was busy with the girls, but then we went off to her bedroom to sort out my camp bed, and we had a lovely time together, just her and me. She asked
all about school, and I asked her all about her latest story, and then we cuddled up on her bed with the old photo album and she showed me photos of Mum when she was little. There’s only two of her when she was a baby. In one she’s yelling her head off. In the other she’s with Carly. This one’s all tattered and smeary, because Mum used to take it to bed with her and hold it to her chest. Then there’s one when she’s about my age, and scowling. It’s the photo they used in the papers to see if anyone wanted to foster her. No one did.
So Mum stayed at the Dumping Ground. There are a few photos from those days, but they’re all group ones. There’s Mum’s birthday party, but she’s scowling at Weedy Peter. There’s a whole series of photos of all the Dumping Ground kids at the seaside. Mum’s charging around in the thick of things, making a sandcastle, frying sausages, doing handstands on the beach. I like the photo of her racing against a little boy, and grinning because she’s in front. I think the boy is Peter.
There are lots of photos of Mum after she went to live with Cam. I like them all, but my favourite pages are when Mum’s grown up, with a big bump making her jumper stick out.
‘That’s me!’ I said.
There’s a photo of newborn me, looking like a hideous, wrinkly little monkey with a head of frizzy curls, but Mum is sitting up in bed and cuddling me as if I’m the most beautiful baby in the world.
‘My girls,’ said Cam, stroking the photo of Mum and me together.
‘I love Mum so much,’ I said. ‘Though she can be a bit embarrassing at times.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Cam.
‘The worst time was when she got mega-stroppy with Miss Oliver,’ I said.
My Mum Tracy Beaker Page 4