The Bed and Breakfast Star (13 page)

and best of all I had my very own comedy show and it was a huge success.

Just when I’d got into this happy little routine at the Royal, Mum went and mucked it all up. She stopped drooping. She started dashing about. She said we weren’t going to be stuck in this crummy bed-and-breakfast dump a day longer. She went to the housing department and the social services and the DSS. She armed herself with Hank and Pippa and me, and whenever we were stuck too long in a queue she sent Pippa and me off sniping into enemy territory in quest of a toilet and she primed her Hank hand grenade and set him off howling.

Mum went into battle day after day, but it didn’t make any difference to where we lived. We had to stay put because there wasn’t anywhere else for us to go. But someone down the Social told Mum about this drop-in centre where the kids could play and you got cheap food, so Mum thought she’d give it a go.

I didn’t like the sound of it.

It wasn’t that bad actually, just this big room, half of it for the mums and half a crèche for the kids. It was a bit of a crush in the crèche and there was just this one woman going crackers trying to keep all the kids chirpy.

We soon got them sorted out.

But then someone from the Council came and said the centre had to be closed because there wasn’t any more money to fund it. Mum started moaning and creating, saying this drop-in centre was practically saving her life because we were stuck in a bed-and-breakfast hotel and it was no place for little kids. The Council Someone got a bit stammery because Mum can get ever so fierce when she feels like it, and he promised to put Hank’s name down on the day nursery waiting list.

‘Oh, very funny,’ said Mum. ‘He’ll be twenty-one before he gets a blooming place.’

‘This little girly here will be old enough for proper school soon,’ he said, timidly patting Pippa.

Then he turned to me.

Oh-oh. I should have seen it coming and scarpered.

‘Why isn’t this girl in school, hmm? Now, I
can
help you here. We’ll get her registered at the local school straightaway and she can start on Monday morning.’

Thanks a lot.

It had been the one ultra big bonus of life at the Oyal Htl. NO SCHOOL.

I knew Naomi and Funny-Face and most of the other kids at the hotel had to go. I’d hoped I’d not got noticed. I don’t like school. Well, my first school was OK. There was a smiley teacher and we could play with pink dough and we all got to sing these soppy old nursery rhymes. I could sing loudest and longest.

But then we moved up to Scotland and I had to go to a new school and it was all different and I got teased because of the way I talk. Then we moved back down South and lived in the flats and that school was the sort where even the little kids get their heads held down the toilet. That was a pretty grim way of getting your hair washed. I didn’t go a bundle on that school. But then the next one, my last school, wasn’t so bad. That was when we were living in the lovely house and we were almost an ordinary family and even Mack didn’t smack. Well, not so much.

It was a bit depressing though. They gave me all these tests and stuff and I couldn’t do a lot of it. They thought I was thick.
I
thought I was thick. I had to go to these extra classes to help me with my reading and my writing and my sums. The other kids laughed at me.

I like it when people laugh at my jokes. But I can’t stand it when they laugh at
me
.

But I had this really great remedial teacher, Mr Jamieson, only everyone called him Jamie, even us kids. He was very gentle and he didn’t yell at you when you couldn’t do something. He worked with me and whenever I learnt the least little thing he smiled and stuck his thumb up and said I was doing really fine. So I
felt
fine and I learnt a lot more and then Jamie got me to do some other tests and it turned out I wasn’t thick at all. I was INTELLIGENT.

Jamie asked me about all the other schools and he said that it was no wonder I hadn’t been able to learn much, because I’d had so many changes. But now I could get stuck in and swoop through all the stuff I didn’t know and Jamie said I’d soon end up top of the class, not bottom. So there.

But then Mack lost his job and we lost our house and we ended up in the Oyal Htl, miles and miles and miles away from my old school.

Still, if I had to go to school, that was the one I wanted to go to. So that I could still see Jamie.

‘Of course you can’t go, Elsa. You’d have to get two buses. And then walk miles. We can’t afford the fares. And you’d wear out your trainers in weeks. No, you’re to go to this Mayberry School where the other kids go.’

Only they didn’t all go, of course. Naomi went. The Asian kids went. One or two others. But Funny-Face and nearly all the boys bunked off every day.

I decided that’s what I’d do. I might know I was intelligent, but this school might give me the wrong sort of tests. I could easily end up being thought thick all over again. There was no guarantee at all I’d find another Jamie.

I started hanging around more with Funny-Face and the others. I had to work hard to get them to like me. I had to tell them lots and lots of jokes. They soon got sick of my usual repertoire. Get that fancy word. I’m
not
thick. I know lots and lots of things, though they’re not usually the sort of things they like you to know in school. All comedians have to have a repertoire – it’s all the jokes in their act. So to impress Funny-Face and his Famous Five followers I had to tell a few rude jokes. Naughty jokes. Blue jokes. Dirty jokes. You know the sort.