Billionaire Boy (14 page)

Authors: David Walliams

“Hello, children!” said the headmaster’s secretary brightly. Mrs Chubb was a very fat jolly lady who always wore glasses with brightly coloured frames. She was always sitting in the headmaster’s office behind her desk. In fact, no one had ever seen her stand up. It was not inconceivable that she was so big she was permanently wedged into her chair.

“We are here to see the headmaster, please,” declared Joe.

“We have a petition for him,” added a supportive Lauren, holding the piece of paper in her hand demonstratively.

“A petition! What fun!” beamed Mrs Chubb.

“Yes, it’s to get Miss Spite her job back,” said Joe in a manly way that he hoped might impress Lauren. For a moment he toyed with the idea of thumping his fist on the desk to add emphasis, but he didn’t want to topple over any of Mrs Chubb’s abundant collection of lucky gonks.

“Oh, yes. Miss Spite, wonderful teacher. Don’t understand that at all, but children I am sorry to say you have just missed Mr Dust.”

“Oh, no,” said Joe.

“Yes, he just left. Oh, look, there he goes.” She pointed one of her bejewelled sausage fingers to the car park. Joe and Lauren peered through the glass. The headmaster was edging his way along at a snail’s pace with his Zimmer frame.

“Slow down, Mr Dust, you’ll do yourself a mischief!” she called after him. Then she turned back to Joe and Lauren. “He can’t hear me. Well, in truth he can’t hear a thing! Do you want to leave that little petition thing with me?” She angled her head and studied it for a moment. “Oh dear, it looks like all the signatures have fallen off.”

“We were hoping for more,” said Joe, weakly.

“Well, if you run you might just catch him!” said Mrs Chubb.

Joe and Lauren shared a smile, and walked slowly out to the car park. To their surprise Mr Dust had abandoned his Zimmer frame and was clambering astride a shiny new Harley Davidson motorbike. It was the brand new jet-powered Vortex 3000. Joe recognised it, because his dad had a small collection of 300 motorbikes and was always showing his son brochures of new ones he was going to buy. The superbike, at £250,000, was the most expensive motorbike ever produced. It was wider than a car, taller than a lorry, and blacker than a black hole. It shone with a very different chrome to that of the headmaster’s Zimmer frame.

“Headmaster!” called Joe, but he was too late. Mr Dust had already put on his helmet and revved the engine. He put the beast into gear and it roared past the other teachers’ humble cars at a hundred miles an hour. It went so fast that the Headmaster was clinging on by his hands, his little old legs dangling up in the air behind him.

“YYYIIIIIPPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEE…..!” cried the Headmaster as he and his preposterous machine disappeared off into the distance, becoming a dot on the horizon in a matter of seconds.

“There is something very strange going on,” said Joe to Lauren. “The Witch gets the sack, the headmaster gets a £250,000 motorbike…”

“Joe, you’re being silly! It’s just coincidence!” laughed Lauren. “Now, am I still invited for dinner tonight?” she added, rapidly changing the subject.

“Yes yes yes,” said Joe eagerly. “How about I meet you outside Raj’s in an hour?”

“Cool. See you in a bit.”

Joe smiled too, and watched her walk away.

But that bright golden glow that surrounded Lauren in Joe’s mind was beginning to darken. Suddenly something felt very wrong…

Chapter 19
A Baboon’s Bottom

“M
aybe your headmaster is simply having a mid-life crisis,” pronounced Raj.

Stopping off at the newsagent’s shop on the way home from school, Joe had told Raj about the curious events of the day.

“Mr Dust is about a hundred. He’s got to be more than mid-way through his life!” said Joe.

“What I mean, Clever Clogs,” continued Raj, “is that perhaps he was just trying to feel young again.”

“But it’s the most expensive motorbike in the world. It costs a quarter of a million pounds. He’s a teacher not a footballer, how could he afford it?!” proclaimed Joe.

“I don’t know… I am no detective like Miss Marbles, or the great Shylock Holmes,” said Raj, before looking around his shop and lowering his voice to a whisper. “Joe, I need to ask you about something in the strictest confidence.”

Joe lowered his voice too. “Go ahead.”

“This is very embarrassing, Joe,” whispered Raj. “But do you use your dad’s special toilet paper?”

“Yes, of course, Raj. Everybody does!”

“Well, I have been using his new one for a few weeks now.”

“The mint-flavoured bum wipes?” asked Joe. There was now a huge range of Bumfresh products including:

HOTBUMFRESH – warms your bottom as you wipe.

LADYBUMFRESH – specially soft wipes for ladies’ bottoms.

MINTYBUMFRESH – leaves your bottom with a cool, minty aroma.

“Yes, and…” Raj took a deep breath. “My bottom has come up all… well… purple.”

“Purple!” said Joe with a shocked laugh.

“This is a very serious matter,” chided Raj. He looked up suddenly. “One copy of the
Daily Mail
and a packet of Rolos, that will be 85p, be careful with those Rolos on your dentures, Mr Little.”

He waited for the pensioner to leave the shop.
Ding
went the bell on the door.

“I didn’t see him there. He must have been lurking behind the Quavers,” said Raj, a little shaken at what the pensioner might have heard.

“You are joking aren’t you, Raj?” said Joe with a quizzical smile.

“I am deadly serious, Joe,” said Raj gravely.

“Show me, then!” said Joe.

“I can’t show you my bottom, Joe! We’ve only just met!” exclaimed Raj. “But let me draw you a simple graph.”

“A graph?” asked Joe.

“Be patient, Joe.”

As the boy looked on Raj grabbed some paper and pens and drew this simple graph.

There is video content at this location that is not currently supported for your device. Caption for this video is diplayed below.

Purpleness

“Wow, that is purple!” said Joe, studying the graph. “Is it painful?”

“It is a little sore.”

“Have you seen a doctor?” asked Joe.

“Yes, and he said he had seen hundreds of people in the local area with brightly coloured bottoms.”

“Oh no,” said Joe.

“Maybe I will have to have a bum transplant!”

Joe couldn’t help but laugh. “A bum transplant?!”

“Yes! This isn’t a laughing matter, Joe,” chided Raj. There was hurt in his eyes that his bottom had become the subject of mockery.

“No, sorry,” said Joe, still giggling.

“I think I will stop using your dad’s new Bumfresh wipes and go back to the shiny white my wife used to buy.”

“I’m sure it isn’t the bum wipes,” said Joe.

“What else could it be?”

“Look, Raj, I’d better go,” Joe said. “I have invited my girlfriend over later.”

“Oooh, girlfriend is it now? The pretty girl you came in with when I sold you the ice lollies?” said the newsagent brightly.

“Yes, that’s her,” said Joe shyly. “Well, I don’t know if she really is my girlfriend, but we’ve been spending lots of time together…”

“Well, have a lovely evening!”

“Thanks.” Arriving at the door Joe turned back to the newsagent. He couldn’t help himself. “Oh, by the way, Raj, good luck with the bum transplant…”

“Thank you, my friend.”

“I hope they can find one big enough!” Joe laughed.

“Out of my shop! Out! Out!” said Raj.

Ding
.

“Cheeky boy,” muttered the newsagent with a smile, as he rearranged his Curly Wurlys.

Chapter 20
A Beach Ball Rolled in Hair

B
umfresh Towers pulsated with music. Coloured lights spun in every room. Hundreds of people swarmed around the house. This was a party that was going to get complaints about the noise.

From people in Sweden.

Joe had no idea that there was a party at the house tonight. Dad hadn’t mentioned anything at breakfast and Joe had invited Lauren over for dinner. As it was a Friday night they could stay up late too. It was going to be perfect. Maybe tonight they might even kiss.

“Sorry, I had no idea about all this,” said Joe, as they approached the giant stone steps at the front of the house.

“It’s cool, I love a party!” replied Lauren.

As darkness fell and strangers tumbled out of the house clutching bottles of champagne, Joe took Lauren’s hand, and led her through the huge oak front door.

“Wow, this is some house,” shouted Lauren over the music.

“What?” said Joe.

Lauren put her mouth to Joe’s ear so she could be heard. “I said, ‘wow, this is some house’.” But Joe still couldn’t really hear. Feeling the heat of her breath so close to him was so exhilarating he stopped listening for a moment.

“THANK YOU!” shouted Joe back into Lauren’s ear. Her skin smelt sweet, like honey.

Joe searched all over the house for his dad. It was impossible to find him. Every room was oozing with people. Joe didn’t recognise a single one of them. Who on earth were they all? Guzzling cocktails and gobbling finger food like there was no tomorrow. Being short, Joe really found it hard to see over them. His dad wasn’t in the snooker room. He wasn’t in the dining room. He wasn’t in the massage room. He wasn’t in the library. He wasn’t in the other dining room. He wasn’t in his bedroom. He wasn’t in the reptile house.

“Let’s try the pool room!” shouted Joe in Lauren’s ear.

“You’ve got a pool! Cool!” she shouted back.

They passed a woman bent over vomiting by the sauna as a man (presumably her boyfriend) patted the small of her back supportively. Some party guests had either dived or fallen into the pool, and were bobbing around in the water. Joe enjoyed swimming, and the thought that none of these people looked like they would get out of the pool if they needed a pee, clouded his mind.

Just then he spotted his dad – wearing just a pair of swimming trunks and his curly afro toupee, and dancing to a completely different song than the one that was playing. Covering the wall behind him was a vast mural of a strangely muscle-bound version of himself reclining in a thong. The real Mr Spud boogied badly in front of it, looking more like a beach ball that had been rolled in hair.

“What’s going on, Dad?” Joe shouted, half because the music was so loud and half because he was angry his dad hadn’t told him anything about the party. “Who are all these people? Your friends?”

“Oh no, I hired them in. £500 each. Partyguests.com.”

“What’s the party for, Dad?”