by Nigel Smith
The only people Dad didn’t like were people IN UNIFORM. He couldn’t help it, he just hated being told what to do. (Unless it was by Mum, which slightly confused Nat.)
Nat felt sure that even if the manager wasn’t in a uniform, they would still count as someone who was telling Dad what to do. She couldn’t risk another long stand-off like the one at airport security last year when they tried to take a jar of jam off him. The customs people said it was a possible weapon; Dad said it was strawberry jam. Eventually he was taken into a little room for an hour and they missed their flight.
Nat knew what to do, even though she hated doing it, especially in public. But there was no other way. She put on her sweetest little girl voice and turned her sweetest ickle little girly face to her dad.
“Daddy, the clothes you like are lovely and I know they’ll fit, they’re the right size and everything, but I’m ever so thirsty and I really need a drink, please can we go to the café, please, Daddy?”
Thirty seconds later they were in the café. Victory, thought Nat, sucking on a box of juice. Sort of. Even if she did have a new wardrobe’s worth of dodgy clothing.
“Righto,” said Dad after they’d both got their breath back, “now it’s your turn to help me.” Nat groaned inside. But the next thing he said made her heart skip an evil beat.
“What can I cook for Miss Hunny? It’s been ages since we saw each other; I’d like to give her something memorable.”
Oooh, thank you, Dad, thought Nat, having an immediate, awesome, evil idea, I’ll make sure we give her something she’ll never forget.
OW, DAD’S MEALS WERE FAMOUSLY RANK AT THE BEST OF times. Dad’s meals were something starving celebrities would refuse to eat in a television competition. Nat reckoned they should only really be used as a method of persuading criminals to confess.
His efforts usually came out of packets and involved something pale in lots of crunchy batter. Vegetables were only ever peas (tinned), or peas (mushy), which Dad said were the King of Veg. To be fair, not everything came out of packets – Dad was quite fond of a pie in a tin too.
He also had a huge soft spot for pickles. If there was something floating dangerously in a jar full of brown liquid at the back of the cupboard, Dad was on it in a flash. “Vinegar is nature’s own wonder food,” he’d say, eyeing up the last pickled egg in the chip shop greedily.
Dad’s idea of a varied diet was a pork pie, some oven chips, a pickled herring, a spoon of Marmite and maybe a green ice lolly – as green was the colour of vitamins. That lasted until Nat wrote an essay about ‘What I had for my tea last night’ and Dad got a letter from a social worker.
But Friday’s meal was going to be the worst ever – Nat was going to make sure of that. Dad was very nearly the worst cook in the world. With her help he could be the worst, and Miss Hunny would never dare to set foot in their house again.
“I suppose we could have Chinese takeaway,” Dad said as they lingered over rank meats at the deli counter.
“No, we can’t,” said Nat loudly. Chinese was what they had with Mum. There was no way Miss Hunny was stuffing her soppy face with spring rolls and crispy duck pancakes in Mum’s house, no way at all. She grabbed Dad’s hand and tugged him away.
Nat’s mind raced as she pulled Dad down the aisles, her GENIUS EVIL PLAN OF DOOM evolving in her head as she went. His most revolting meal of all time was something he called the Surf, Turf and Smurf Mash-up. The memory of this meal was so terrible she’d tried to block it out for over a year, but she’d failed. She swallowed hard as it all came back to her – rather like it had done when she ate it. She suddenly remembered the sight and smell and – gack, here comes a little bit of sick – taste of the stuff, and she felt clammy all over. Perfect.
“How about the Surf, Turf and Smurf Throw-up, I mean Mash-up?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“Really?” said Dad doubtfully. “Didn’t you make me promise never to make it again on pain of death?”
“No, I quite liked it, once I’d got used to it.”
“I seem to remember there was some performance with you rolling about on the floor pretending you’d been poisoned.”
“I wasn’t being serious.”
“You said you felt sorry for the bin when you chucked it away.”
“Joke, Dad, come on. Let’s get the ingredients. What was in it?”
Nat was genuinely interested to know what was in it. Her best guess so far was: flour, milk, butter, eggs, potatoes, glue, dog chews, iron filings, bran flakes, sardines, cheese, cough medicine, toothpaste, knicker elastic and a pinch of salt. And she wasn’t too sure about the salt.
“I’m not convinced it was a recipe AS SUCH …” said Dad.
You surprise me, thought Nat.
“ … it was more improvising on a theme.”
What the heck was the theme? thought Nat, with a shudder. A theme from a horror film, perhaps. But Dad was now wandering round the aisles with that familiar blank expression that meant he was looking for something. “There were definitely some frozen prawns and a meat pie filling in the mix somewhere,” said Dad, dragging his eyes from the shelves of beer. Sounds about right, thought Nat, already feeling a bit queasy.
Half an hour later, their trolley was full. Nat looked inside with a feeling of triumph. None of these ingredients should ever have been in the same trolley, never mind the same plate. For once Nat felt ahead of the game. This revolting meal would see off Miss Hunny in no time and make sure she NEVER EVER CAME BACK.
T WAS FRIDAY MORNING AND NAT WAS IN HER FIRST lesson. It was quieter than usual because Darius had already been sent to sit outside the Head’s office even BEFORE registration. Nat reckoned this must be a personal best.
With her gibbering friend gone, she couldn’t cheat in maths any more, but something else rather wonderful happened to make up for it. Someone else sat next to her, someone she’d only managed to say hello to a few times, but thought might be nice. Someone NORMAL.
Penny Posnitch was a small, pretty girl with a dark brown bob and clear blue eyes that Nat was immediately jealous of. She always seemed to be happy and smiling, which made Nat wonder what it was Penny knew that she didn’t. What would be so great about making friends with Penny was that Penny was exactly halfway up the class popularity ladder.
At the very top of the popularity ladder was a girl so amazing that everybody wanted to be her friend, despite the fact that she didn’t appear to like anybody back. Flora Marling was tall and slim and had her ears pierced TWICE in both ears. She wore a bra and was said to have a boyfriend in Year 8. Her older sister was in a shampoo commercial. The whole class was convinced Flora Marling had a secret tattoo, she was THAT awesome.
Anyway, that was the top of the ladder, so far up that Nat wouldn’t even dare try to be her friend. Right at the bottom of the popularity ladder was Darius. Other kids might move a few places up and down the ladder over time, but these two were already fixed at either end. Everyone knew that they were there for good.
But little smiling Penny was definitely halfway up, way higher than Nat but not quite out of reach. And now, here she was, sharing a desk with her! Nat tried to think of something to say to her as Mr Frantz droned on about adding x to y. She panicked briefly when she couldn’t think of a single interesting thing about herself to say. Fortunately, Penny was a chatty creature and she went first.
“Do you like Princess Bo?” whispered Penny, who was drawing pictures inside her right-angled triangle. Nat guessed that was a pop star.
“Course,” she fibbed. It’s not really a fib, she told herself. I probably will when I hear her. Which actually means I do like her.
“I don’t any more,” said Penny.
Great, thought Nat, this is going well. But Penny was chatting on.
“Ever since I saw my dad dancing to her new single. In the kitchen. In his boxer shorts, in front of Mum and everything. He’d been drinking wine. Can you imagine what that was like for me?”
“Did it make you want to find the biggest, deepest darkest cave in the universe and then get a digger to make it deeper and darker and then jump in it and get the digger to fill it up again on top of you?” asked Nat.
“Um … Something like that,” said Penny, slightly alarmed.
“Well join the club. The last time my dad danced around to a pop record wasn’t in the kitchen, it was in IKEA. Just after he put a sink plunger on his head and said he was a dalek.”
“Oh – my – gosh,” said Penny. “Well mine still sends me valentine cards with ‘from your secret admirer brackets Dad’ on.”
“Mine puts my birthdays in the paper with PHOTOS.”
They both squealed with shared horror, little toes curled inside their socks.
Penny lent Nat her third best ink pen and Nat thought this business of making friends might not be so hard, after all.
It was an unusually warm sunny day and maybe that’s why everyone was in a good mood, but it could have been raining cats and dogs and Nat would have been happy. Break time whizzed by in a blur. Thanks to Penny, Nat met a whole bunch of OTHER GIRLS, like Abi Plummer who was the thirteenth fastest swimmer in the county, and Frankeee O’Riordan who spelled her name with three e’s.
True, they were only sort of friendly, and kept asking Nat nervously where her weird friend Darius was, but Nat didn’t care. By the time she went in for her geography lesson with Miss Austen, she was certain she’d cracked it. Finally, she was getting ‘in’. And it felt great. Better yet, Darius had now been sent to pick up litter as he was clearly unable to sit outside the Head’s office without doing handstands and Penny sat next to Nat AGAIN! Nat caught a glimpse of him outside through the window, shoving crisp packets in a big plastic bag. Guiltily she turned her head away. Towards her new friend Penny Posnitch.
It’s true that Penny doesn’t make me laugh as much as Darius, reasoned Nat, but that’s probably my fault. Look at Dad. He doesn’t make me laugh either and he’s funny for a living. And though she had to admit she found Penny’s constant babble about pop music and hair bands and TV soaps a tiny bit, well, boring, it didn’t matter. She watched as Penny drew pictures of animals inside her volcano and decided to push these thoughts out of her head. The important thing was she was making the right sort of friend at last. She smiled at Penny, who wrinkled up her nose.
“Who’s done that?” said Penny. “Has Darius come back in?”
Nat sniffed. There was a funny smell coming from somewhere. Funny, as in farty.
“She who smelt it, dealt it,” Nat said without thinking, before she could stop herself. She put her hand over her mouth. She’d been sitting next to Darius for too long.
“She who did the rhyme, committed the crime,” countered Penny, who looked a bit upset.
Well, thought Nat, if you’re going to be like that. “She who denied it, supplied it.”
Penny looked genuinely hurt. Her lip trembled. Her eyes started looking a bit watery. Uh-oh, thought Nat.
Darius would have continued that game pretty much all lesson, thought Nat, getting ruder and funnier. He was a poet of poo. So far, his greatest contribution to lavatory-based literature was the epic poem, Diarrhoea, now one hundred and six verses long. Obviously it’s too rude and disgusting to print, but some of his more inventive rhymes were:
Nathalia was still chuckling at this when she noticed Penny had her hand up.
“Please, miss, can I move, something really smells.”
“It can’t be that bad,” said Miss Austen, coming over and sniffing. “Oh lord, it is – yes, sit by the window.” Miss Austen cast a cold eye over Nathalia. “Do you need to be excused?” she asked in a whisper that was loud enough for everyone to hear.
Nat felt her cheeks burning. “It’s not me,” she said.
But the smell was getting worse. And it continued to get worse as the lesson dragged slowly on. By the time the class had finished colouring in their lava flows, her eyes were watering and everyone had moved their desks away from her.
It was only when Nat was sitting – on her own – at lunch that she discovered Dad’s warm, smelly egg and cress sandwiches in her bag. The clingfilm had peeled off and there was now yolk and gunge sticking to all her books. She remembered with horror that she’d moaned about how rubbish school dinners were. Then she saw a little note next to the eggy mess. It read:
‘Darling girl, I thought I’d surprise you.’
You did that, Dad – well done, she thought. The note went on:
‘Hope these are nicer than your usual lunch. The eggs are organic so we need to use them up as they probably won’t stay fresh for very long.’
Nat sighed and started scraping her English book clean.
“Oy, Buttface, what’s that smell?” said Darius, barging in next to her. “She who coughed, cracked one off.”
Nat sighed again. Back with Darius. Though she had to admit it was quite nice to see him, and just to make that totally clear, she rubbed egg in his hair.
In fact, she was so relieved to see him, all thoughts of Miss Hunny’s visit that night went out of her head, right up until she went into her next lesson. Which was English – with Miss Hunny. Nat noticed coldly that she was wearing very different sorts of clothes to those she’d had on all week.
Normally Miss Hunny favoured frills and high collars and cardigans. Nat thought she usually looked like a receptionist, or a woman that worked in a chemist’s shop. Or even an English teacher. But not today. Today she had on her ‘going out for dinner with an old friend who I’m going to see lots and lots of in the future’ outfit. She was wearing a fitted skirt and a pretty, lacy blouse. Nat didn’t approve of teachers looking like ordinary people at the best of times. They should let others know they are teachers, she thought. So we can avoid them.
Miss Hunny gave Nathalia a big smile when she came in. A smile as if to say: “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere and I’m going to come to your house all the time and I’m going to find out all your little secrets and everyone in your class will think we’re friends and, yes, this will basically ruin your life forever. Compare and contrast that, little girl.”
It took Nat a while to realise what was different about this lesson but finally she worked it out. Darius wasn’t sitting under the desk, or trying to eat his pencil case. In fact, she realised, Darius never sat under his desk or ate his pencil case in Miss Hunny’s English class. And today, Darius was sitting exceptionally still, looking straight at Miss Hunny. When she came over to tell him to please stop writing his letter ‘r’s the wrong way round, she put a hand on his shoulder, and rather than just bite her as he normally would, Darius smiled. It was an odd smile and it took Nat a long time to realise why it was odd. He suddenly looked more like an ordinary boy and less like the deranged monster he usually resembled.
Nat decided she preferred him flicking bogeys at Dennis Skinner’s head.
But she couldn’t waste time puzzling over his strange behaviour. Time was running out and what if her menu from hell plan wasn’t enough … Then, just before the end of the lesson, she came up with another GENIUS EVIL PLAN. You are on a roll, Nathalia, she thought. You go girl. And so when Miss Hunny came over to help Darius spell ‘disembowel’ in his ‘What I did in my holidays’ essay, Nat went for it while Darius gurned happily.
“Miss, you still coming round tonight?” she asked quietly. She didn’t want anyone else to hear.
“That’s the plan,” Miss Hunny smiled.
“Only I’ve invited Darius. And he’s definitely coming.” She kicked Darius under the desk, but he wasn’t paying her the slightest bit of attention.
“Oh,” said her teacher, startled. “Well, that’ll be – er – nice.”
“Yeah, Dad says he’s really looking forward to seeing him.” Again, not really a fib, she thought.It’s the kind of stupid thing Dad WOULD say …
“Did he?” She sounded doubtful. She looked at Darius, who was grinning stupidly.
“Didn’t he tell you? Pr
obably didn’t think it was important.”
Miss Hunny was silent for a moment. This is it, thought Nat. This is where she thinks of an excuse not to come. Tonight she’ll be washing her budgie/decorating her fridge/ironing her cat/getting arrested, ANYTHING other than spending more time with Darius, the terror of 7H. But hang on, thought Nat. The terror of 7H was now acting more like a teacher’s pet than a classroom monster.
“How many esses in ‘explode’, miss?” he asked meekly.
Miss Hunny flicked a bit of egg out of his hair kindly.
“Maybe we can do an extra half an hour on this when I see you tonight,” she said.
Nat put her head on her desk, hard.
Oh well, she thought, at least I still have Dad’s mash-up. She almost told Miss Hunny to book next week off sick in advance.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she said to Darius, as he followed her to the Atomic Dustbin. School had just ended and although he’d been back to his usual monkey-like self in Miss Eyre’s tedious history class, it was all too late and she was still annoyed with him. He had been her last chance to stop her teacher coming round and he’d blown it by being nice. When was he ever nice?
“You invited me,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
His hands went in his pockets and he looked down at the ground. His scuffed shoes traced a rude word on the tarmac.
“Well …” Nat paused. “Won’t you need to arrange it with your parents, though?”
“Oswald’s not around this weekend,” he said.
“So who’s supposed to be looking after y—” Nat stopped. What did it matter? She caved in. “Oh, get in,” she said, opening the van door and dodging a falling cricket bat. “Dad, Darius is coming for dinner tonight.”
“Lovely,” said Dad. “Hop in, whoever you are.”
Darius hopped, and was suddenly covered in Dog.
“He likes you,” said Dad, as Darius rolled around the floor, getting licked to within an inch of his life.
“I like him,” said Darius. They spent the journey home under the table together, barking.