The Bed and Breakfast Star (3 page)

There certainly wasn’t going to be room for a new baby too. (That was Pippa. She wasn’t born then. She was just a pipsqueak in Mum’s tummy.) Mum had our name down for a bigger council flat but the waiting list was so long it looked like we’d be waiting for ever.

Then one of Mack’s mates up in Scotland offered him a new job up there so he went back up to Scotland and we had to go too. We stayed with Mack’s mum. I was scared. I thought she might be like Mack.

But she wasn’t big, she was little. She didn’t smack, but she wasn’t half strict all the same. I wasn’t allowed to do anything in her house. I couldn’t even play properly. She wouldn’t let me get all my toys out at once. She said I had to play with them one at a time.

So I started playing with some of her stuff. She had some lovely things – ornaments and photo albums and musical boxes. I didn’t break anything at all but she still went spare.

‘You’re no allowed to go raking through my things! Away and watch the television like a good wee bairn.’

That’s all you were supposed to do in her house. Watch the telly. We watched it all the time.

My Scottish sort-of Gran wasn’t so bad though. She did pass the sweets round while we were watching her telly. She called them sweeties.

‘Are you wanting a sweetie, hen?’ she’d say to me.

And I’d go cluck-cluck-cluck and flap my arms and she’d laugh and say I could be awful comic when I wanted. On Sundays we had special sweeties, a home-made fudge she called tablet. Oh, that tablet. Yum yum YUM.

I could eat tablet all day long. I didn’t eat much else at my sort-of Gran’s. She said I was a poor wee bairn who needed fattening up but she kept giving me plates of mince and tatties. I don’t like mince because it looks as if someone has already chewed it, and I don’t like mashed potatoes because I’m always scared there’s going to be a lump. So I didn’t eat much and she got cross with me and Mum got cross with me and Mack got cross with me.

The worst bit about living there was the bed. BED number five. Only it wasn’t my bed, it was my sort-of Gran’s. I had to share it with her. There wasn’t room in her bedroom for my campbed, you see, and she said she wasn’t having it cluttering up her lounge. She liked it when I stopped cluttering up the place too. She was always wanting to whisk me away to bed early. I was generally still awake when she came in. I used to peep when she took her corset off.

She wasn’t so little when those corsets were off. She took up a lot of the bed once she was in it. Sometimes I’d end up clutching the edge, hanging on for dear life. And another thing. She snored.

We were meant to be looking for our own place in Scotland but we never found one. Then my sister Pippa got born and Mack fell out with his pal and lost his job. Mum got ever so worried. She didn’t get on very well with my sort-of Gran and it got worse after Pippa was born.

So we moved back down South and said we were homeless. Mum got even more worried. She thought we’d be put in a bed-and-breakfast hotel. She said she’d never live it down. (Little did she know. You don’t have to live it down. You can live it
up
.)

But we didn’t get put in a bed-and-breakfast hotel then. We were offered this flat on a big estate. It was a bit grotty but Mack said he’d fix it up so it would look like a palace. So we moved in. It was a pretty weirdo palace, if you ask me. There was green mould on the walls and creepy-crawlies in the kitchen. Mack tried slapping a bit of paint about but it didn’t make much difference. Mum got ever so depressed and Mack got cross. Pippa kept getting coughs and colds and snuffling, because of the damp.

I was OK though. My campbed collapsed once and for all, so I got to have a new bed.

BED number six. It had springs and it made the most wonderful trampoline.

I had a lot of fun in those flats.

I didn’t want to leave.

But Mack got this new job and started to make a lot of money and he said he’d buy Mum her own proper house and Mum was over the moon.

I thought it was great once we’d moved into the new house. I liked that house ever so much. It wasn’t damp, it was warm and cosy and when Pippa and I got up we could run about in our pyjamas without getting a bit cold. Pippa stopped being a boring old baby and started to play properly. She shared my new bed now but I didn’t really mind that much because she liked my stories and she actually laughed at my jokes. We kept getting the giggles late at night when we were supposed to be asleep, but Mum didn’t often get cross and Mack didn’t even smack any more. Hank the Hunk got born and he was happy too.