The Bed and Breakfast Star (14 page)

The trouble was that Pippa still hung round me most of the time, and she heard some of the jokes too. I told her and told her and told her that she mustn’t repeat them, but one time she forgot. She told Mack.

And then guess what. SMACK.

‘It wasn’t my fault this time,’ said FunnyFace afterwards.

‘It was my fault,’ said Pippa, and she burst into tears.

‘You didn’t mean to,’ I said, giving her a cuddle. ‘Here, don’t cry, you soppy little thing. It’s me he smacked, not you.’

‘You don’t hardly ever cry,’ said Pippa.

‘She’s tough,’ said Funny-Face, and he sounded admiring.

‘Yeah, that’s me. Tough as old boots,’ I said, swaggering.

So on the Monday I was due to start school I set off with Naomi, but the minute we got down the road I veered off with Funny-Face and the Famous Five.

‘Hey, Elsa. Why don’t you come with me?’ Naomi said, looking disappointed. ‘I thought we were friends. Why do you want to go off with all the boys?’

‘We are friends, Naomi. Course we are. I just don’t want to go to this dopey old school, that’s all. I’ll see you after, same as usual, and we’ll play in the toilets and have fun.’

‘But it isn’t a dopey school, really. And I hoped we’d get to be in the same class. I even swopped desks with this other girl so there’d be a place for you to sit beside me.’

‘Oh Naomi,’ I said, fidgeting. She was starting to make me feel bad. But I really didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t even want to be in Naomi’s class and sit beside her. Naomi looked like she was really brainy, being a bookworm and all that. I knew I was intelligent, Jamie said so, but I hadn’t quite caught up with all the things I’d missed, and maybe it would still look as if I was thick. I didn’t want Naomi knowing.

So I went off with Funny-Face and the others. I bunked off with them all day long. It was OK for a while. We couldn’t hang about the hotel or risk going round the town because someone would spot us and twig we were bunking off school, but we went to this camp place they’d made on a demolition site. It wasn’t much of a camp, just some corrugated iron shoved together with a blue tarpaulin for a roof. It was pretty crowded when we were all crammed in there knee-to-knee, and there was nothing to sit on, just cold rubbly ground.

‘Well, you could make it a bit comfier, couldn’t you?’ said Funny-Face.

‘Yeah, you fix it up for us, Elsa,’ said one of his henchboys.

‘Why me?’ I said indignantly.

‘You’re a girl, aren’t you?’

I snorted. I wasn’t going along with that sort of sexist rubbish. They seemed to think they were Peter Pan and the Lost Boys and I was wet little Wendy.

‘Catch me doing all your donkey work,’ I said. ‘Hey, what do you get if you cross a zebra and a donkey? A zeedonk. And what do you get if you cross a pig and a zebra? Striped sausages.’ I kept firing jokes at them as the resident entertainer, and so they stopped expecting me to be the chief cook and bottle-washer into the bargain.

They started bullying the littlest boy, a runny-nosed kid not much older than Pippa, getting him to run round the site finding sacks and stuff for us to sit on. He tripped over a brick and cut both his knees and got more runny-nosed than ever, so I mopped him up and told him a few more jokes to make him laugh. It was heavy going. His name was Simon and he certainly seemed a bit simple. But he was a game little kid and so I stuck up for him when the boys were bossing him around and when we were all squatting on our makeshift cushions and Funny-Face started passing round a crumpled packet of fags, I wouldn’t let Simon sample a smoke.

‘You don’t want to mess around with ciggies, my lad, they’ll stunt your growth,’ I said firmly, and I gave him a toffee chew instead.

I spurned Funny-Face’s fags too. I can’t stick the smell and they make me go dizzy and I’ve seen my mum cough-cough-coughing every morning. But even though Simon and I didn’t participate in the smoking session it still got so fuggy in the camp my head started reeling. It came as a relief when the blue tarpaulin suddenly got ripped right off and we were exposed by this other dopey gang of boys also bunking off from school. They threw a whole pile of dust and dirt all over us as we sat there gasping, and then ran away screeching with laughter.

So then, of course, Funny-Face and the Famous Five started breathing fire instead of inhaling it, and they went rampaging across the demolition site to wreak their revenge. I rampaged a bit too, but it all seemed a bit ridiculous to me. There was a pathetic sort of war with both gangs throwing stones rather wildly. Simon got over-excited and wouldn’t keep down out of range, so he got hit on the head.

It was only a little bump and graze but it frightened him and he started yelling. The boys just stood about jeering at him, though they looked a bit shamefaced. So I rushed over to him going ‘Mee-Maa Mee-Maa Mee-Maa’ like an ambulance, and then I made a big production of examining him and pretending his whole head had been knocked off and he needed a major operation. Simon was so simple he believed me at first and started crying harder, but when he twigged it was all a joke he started to enjoy being the centre of attention as a major casualty of war.

The war seemed to have petered out anyway, and the rival gang wandered off down the chip shop because it was nearly lunchtime.

That proved to be a major drawback to bunking off. None of us lot had any lunch. We didn’t have any spare cash either. As DSS kids we were entitled to a free school lunch but they just issued you with a ticket, not actual dosh you could spend. So as we weren’t at school we were stuck. I began to wish I hadn’t been so generous with my toffee chew.

One of the boys found half a Yorkie bar he’d forgotten about right at the bottom of his bomber-jacket pocket. The wrapping paper had disintegrated and the chocolate was liberally sprinkled with little fluffy bits and after he’d passed it round for everyone to nibble it was all slurpy with boy-lick too – but it was food, after all, so I ate a square.

I was still starving all afternoon and getting ever so bored with bunking off. I had to keep an eye on the time so as I knew when to go back to the Oyal Htl as if I’d just been let out of afternoon school. When you keep on looking at the time it doesn’t half go s-l-o-w-l-y. Half a century seemed to plod past but it was only half an hour.

But e-v-e-n-t-u-a-l-l-y it was time to be making tracks. And then I found out I’d been wasting my time after all. Mum had decided to trot down to the school with Hank and Pippa to see how I’d got on for my first day. Only I wasn’t there, obviously, so she went into the school to find me and of course the teacher said I hadn’t ever arrived.

Mum was MAAAAAAAAAD.

And then Mack got in on the act and you can guess what he did.

So I stormed off in a huff all by myself.

I sat there and it hurt where Mack had hit me and my tummy rumbled and I felt seriously fed up. But I didn’t cry.

And then I heard footsteps. The clacky-stomp of high heels. It was Mum come to find me. I thought at first she might still be mad, but she sat right down beside me, even though she nearly split her leggings, and she put her arms round me. I did cry a bit then.

‘I’m sorry, sausage,’ she said, nuzzling into my wild lion’s mane. ‘I know he’s too hard on you sometimes.

But it’s just that you won’t do as you’re told. And you’ve got to go to school, Elsa.’

‘It’s not fair. I don’t want to go to that rotten old school where I don’t know anyone.’

‘You know that nice Naomi. She’s your friend! Oh, come on now, Elsa, you’re never
shy.
You!’ Mum laughed and tweaked my nose.

‘The others all bunk off. The boys.’

‘I don’t care about them. I care about you. My girl. Now listen. You don’t want to go to school.
I
don’t want you to go to school. I’d much sooner have you round the hotel keeping the kids quiet for me. I’ve missed you something chronic today.’

‘Really?’ I said, cheering up considerably.

‘Yes, but
listen
. You’ve
got
to go to school because it’s the law, see, and if you don’t go they can say I’m not looking after you properly. You know the Social are always on to us as it is. We don’t want to give them any excuse whatsoever to whip you into Care.’

She’d got me there. So I had to go the next morning. I set off with all the other kids – and then when we got to the end of the road, Funny-Face and the Famous Five all called to me.

‘Come on then, Elsa.’

‘Come with us, eh?’

‘Come to the camp.’

Little Simon even came and held my hand and asked if I’d come and play ambulances with him. His face fell a mile when I had to say no. So I gave him a packet of Polos and showed him how to poke his pointy little tongue through the hole. That cheered him up no end.

‘Elsa! Why aren’t you coming?’ said Funny-Face. ‘You chicken or something?’

‘Hey, why did the one-eyed chicken cross the road? To get to the Bird’s Eye shop.’

‘That is a fowl joke,’ said Funny-Face.

We both cracked up.

‘Come on. You can be good fun . . . for a girl,’ said Funny-Face.

‘You can be quite perceptive . . . for a boy,’ I said, and I waved to him and walked off with Naomi.

‘Is he your boyfriend then?’ she said.

‘Look,
I’m
the one that’s meant to make the jokes,’ I said. ‘Him!’