‘Joseph isn’t like a boyfriend, silly.’
‘Who are you calling silly?’ says Jack, but he’s deliberately pulling a silly face. ‘Now, let me get on with my marking.’
‘Jack, if I go to tea with Joseph, I don’t have to go to after-school club, do I?’
‘No, I suppose not. They’d probably ban you anyway.’
‘So I don’t ever have to go again?’ I say delightedly.
‘No, hang on, you’ve got to go. We’ll just have to grovel to Mrs Matthews. And listen, Ella, keep away from Martha, do you hear me? No more fighting.’
‘It was you who told me to stand up to her.’
‘Yes, well, maybe that was a stupid suggestion. I’m glad it worked once, but I can’t have you kicking off like that again. The school is worried enough about you as it is. You just keep your head down and behave. Ignore Martha. If she opens that big mouth of hers and starts sounding off, pretend you’ve got little flaps over your ears so you can’t hear a word. Block her out. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Right then. Marking time. And why don’t you see what you can salvage of your whale project? You can use my special sellotape if some of the pages are ripped.’
I sit down, take all the pages out of my file, and do my best to smooth them out and fix them. ‘It’s just going to look total rubbish now,’ I say sorrowfully.
‘Well, you can always redo the worst pages.’
‘That blooming Martha. I’d like to rip her in half,’ I mutter.
I think about her. I think about her stepfather.
‘Jack, are grown-ups allowed to hit children nowadays?’
‘No – though it’s very tempting at times.’ He sees me staring. ‘I’m joking.’
‘Do some grown-ups hit kids, though?’
‘Yes, of course they do. Though it’s very wrong.’
‘What’s a whack? Is it like a smack?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘You wouldn’t ever give me a whack, would you, Jack?’
‘What? No, of course not.’
‘I’m glad you’re my stepdad,’ I mutter, sticking another torn page with sellotape.
Now Jack’s staring at me. ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ he said.
I think about giving him a hug, but that might be going a bit too far.
‘Shall I phone Joseph back then, and say it’s a definite yes for tomorrow?’
‘Yep, and I’ll have a word with his mum.’
Samson starts wailing fretfully while Jack’s on the phone to Mrs Antscherl. I pick him up and change his nappy and then get him ready for bed, putting him in his little spouting whale sleepsuit.
‘There now, who’s a nice clean boy, all ready to snuggle up in your cot and go to sleep?’ I say.
I put Samson’s mucky day clothes in the washing machine, and then I wander round with him on my hip, collecting up the rest of his grubby clothes and some of my stuff and Jack’s, and get the load started.
‘Hey, you’ll be qualifying for the Best Daughter of the Year awards if you keep this up,’ says Jack. ‘Here, let me take over, sweetheart. You have a little time on your whale book. Or have you got homework?’
‘No,’ I say quickly. Then I sigh. ‘Yes, but it’s spelling, and I h-a-t-e spelling.’
‘I’ll help you,’ says Jack.
He sings silly little songs to help me remember the words: ‘Remember two As in separate, I can spell it, isn’t that great! Attention has three Ts, if you please! Deceive will deceive you unless you sing with me, I before E except after C!’ As we sing, we munch the rest of Toby’s chocolate.
Guess what! I get ten out of ten for my spelling test the next day, the first time ever. Joseph gets ten out of ten too, but that’s only to be expected.
‘Well done, Ella,’ says Miss Anderson. Then she adds quietly, just for me to hear, ‘I’m surprised you had time to learn your spellings last night. I hear you had quite an eventful time at after-school club.’
I look down.
‘Yes, well may you hang your head. I feel thoroughly ashamed of you and Martha. Why don’t you stop all this nonsense and make friends?’
Miss Anderson must be quite mad. I hate Martha and Martha hates me. She’s weirdly quiet today, sulking on one side of Dory. Sally and Dory are going whisper whisper whisper, giggle giggle giggle, and it feels a bit lonely being stuck beside them – but Joseph taps me on the back and passes me a little note:
I’m so pleased you’re coming to tea. I hope you like macaroni cheese! And salad and fruit jelly and chocolate fudge. I made the fudge and it truly tastes terrific, Joseph xx
I write him a little note back:
I’m looking forward to going to tea with you. It all sounds yummy! Ella xx
I’m not usually a kissy-kissy person, but it might seem rude if I didn’t return the compliment to Joseph. I pass it to him. Toby looks a little left out, so I pass him a note:
Thank you for the chocolate. I did enjoy it. Ella xx
Toby writes back:
Your welcum and I have MOORE in my school bag, Toby xx
Toby only got one out of ten for his spelling test.
The three of us are soon circulating notes like crazy, and it’s great fun. Toby shares some of his chocolate with us at break time, but keeps a few squares back for us to eat when we work on our Tudor food project together.
I dash into the girls’ toilets just before the bell goes. There’s Martha sitting in a sink, moodily swinging her legs and glaring at all the little kids scuttling in and out. She glances at me and makes a very rude sign at me with her finger. I make it back at her and charge into a toilet cubicle. She’s still sitting there when I come out and wash my hands.
‘Watch out, stupid baby, you’re splashing me,’ she growls.
‘Well, you shouldn’t be sitting there, should you?’ I say. I pause. The bell goes but I don’t hurry away. ‘Martha?’
‘What?’
‘Did you get whacked last night?’
She blinks at me. ‘How did you know?’
‘I just wondered. Did it hurt a lot?’
Martha shrugs. ‘What do you think? But I don’t care. I got my own back on that pig. I spat in his beer and he didn’t notice and drank it all. He’s such a loser. He’s not my real dad, he’s just my stepdad.’
‘I’ve got a stepdad.’
‘Is he a pig too?’
‘Yes, totally,’ I say, and I make snorty noises.
Martha giggles.
‘Well, he’s not always a pig. In fact he can be quite nice sometimes,’ I say, a little guiltily.
‘Mine’s never nice, he wouldn’t know how. I hate him,’ says Martha, and she looks as if she might cry.
My tummy’s churning. If she was Sally or even Dory I’d put my arms round her.
‘Still, you’ve got your mum,’ I say.
‘I can’t stick her either,’ Martha mumbles. ‘She’s mean to me too.’
Now I’m truly shocked. ‘My mum’s never been mean to me ever,’ I say.
There’s a little silence. Then, ‘Well, your mum can’t be mean, can she? If she’s just lying there like a vegetable. Like a cabbage.’
‘Stop it!’
It’s as if a great white light has flashed inside my head. Martha is being horrid now simply because it makes her stop feeling so unhappy.
‘Like a carrot, like an onion.’
I can’t stand her saying all this vegetable stuff. I want to slap her hard. But I also feel sorry for her.
‘This is crazy, Martha. Don’t let’s fight all over again. Let’s surprise everyone and make friends instead.’
‘I wouldn’t be friends with you if you were the last person on earth,’ says Martha – but she jumps out of her washbasin. ‘You mean, like best friends?’ she says, wrinkling her nose incredulously.
‘Just friend friends,’ I say.
‘So do you think Sally’s still your best friend?’ Martha asks.
/> ‘Nope.’
‘Don’t you mind?’
‘Yes, but I’ve got another best friend now.’
‘Who is it, then? You haven’t!’
‘I have so. Joseph’s my best friend.’
‘Now I know you’re crazy. Joseph’s a boy – and he’s a total geeky freak.’
‘Well, I like him,’ I say.
‘Oh please. He gives me the creeps. Mind you, you give me the creeps too,’ says Martha.
‘Creepy-creepy-creepy creep,’ I say, tickling her.
She tickles me back until we’re both shrieking with laughter.
‘What are you girls playing at?’
Oh heavens, it’s Mrs Raynor. Now we’re for it. She comes right into the toilets, crossing her arms and shaking her head.
‘I can’t believe it! Ella and Martha again! I’ve just had a report that you both behaved abominably at after-school club, fighting – and now here you are, a full five minutes after the bell has gone, leaping about and laughing like hyenas!’
She pauses. Martha and I stand very still. What is she going to do? Mrs Raynor is terribly strict. We’re surely going to be severely punished. She’s still shaking her head.
‘Make up your minds, girls,’ she says. ‘Yesterday you seemed like deadly enemies, now you’re acting as if you’re friends. Which is it?’
‘Both!’ we say in unison.
‘Girls!’ says Mrs Raynor. ‘I give up. Run off to your classroom now and stop giving me grief, do you hear?’
We run, unable to believe our luck. Miss Anderson is cross with us though, and gives us a right old telling off, but when it’s over I settle down with Joseph and Toby, doing our Tudor project. They work on a description of the kitchen in a Tudor palace while I draw a picture of a great big hog roasting on a complicated spit. There’s a little kitchen boy turning the handle and a big fat cook making an enormous pie with little bird beaks poking through the pastry. Then I draw Joseph and Toby in those funny Tudor-trousers like puffy rompers, and me in a ruff and a sticking-out skirt. We’re all sitting at the table, sharing a honey cake – while in real life we sit in our school uniform with our mouths full of Toby’s chocolate.
I think Miss Anderson maybe knows about the chocolate again, but she’s pretending not to see. Maybe she’s tired of telling me off today.
I try extra hard in lessons, wanting to please her. I stick my hand up every time I know the answer to any question. I try even harder in our art lesson. Miss Anderson shares out some wonderful brightly coloured dough, pink and yellow and red and blue, and gives us an assortment of wheels and sticks, and tells us to invent a child’s toy. I decide I’ll make a little toy for Samson, a pull-along whale on wheels. I’d ideally like a lump of black dough and a little white for the markings, but I have to make do with blue. I fashion a humpback whale, taking great care with its long flippers, making little nobbles on its head, and marking a pattern underneath its tail.
‘That’s very good, Ella,’ says Miss Anderson. ‘Is it a blue whale?’
‘Well, it’s actually a humpback, but I haven’t got the right colours.’
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Can I take it home? It’s a present for my little brother Samson.’
‘Well, I’d like to put it on display for a while. But you can take it home at the end of term. I’m sure Samson will love it when he’s a bit older. Listen, as you’re so good at making things with dough, maybe I can give you a little piece to play with when you go to after-school club? It will keep your hands busy so you won’t bop poor Martha on the nose.’
I giggle.
‘I’d love some dough but I won’t need it today, because I’m not going to after-school club.’
‘Oh dear. Mrs Matthews hasn’t banned you, has she?’
‘I think she’d like to! No, it’s not that. I’m going to tea with Joseph.’
‘Oh, that’s good.’ Miss Anderson sounds really pleased.
When she goes to look at someone else’s model, Sally moves her chair away from Dory, nearer to me.
‘Did you say you’re going to tea with Joseph?’ she says, sounding astonished.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I like him. And he’s going to show me his books about whales.’
Sally rolls her eyes. She carries on making her pink dough doll. It’s a very basic doll, and the head keeps falling off its puny little neck.
‘Oh, drat this wretched thing,’ she says. ‘Listen, Ella, I was going to ask you to tea. Mum said you could come for a sleepover.’
‘That would be lovely,’ I say.
‘Maybe Dory can come too?’ Sally suggests.
I feel that would not be anywhere near as lovely, but I keep smiling. ‘Fine.’
‘Well, come tonight then. You can get out of going to tea with Joseph. You don’t want to go to his house, it’ll be dead boring,’ says Sally.
‘No, it won’t. I want to go.’
‘Look, you’re not his friend, you’re mine,’ says Sally, looking peeved.
I want to yell, Make your mind up! At her. But I still stay smiling. ‘It’s all arranged for tonight. I even know what we’re having for tea. But maybe I can come to your house another time?’
I’m trying to be Miss Sweetness-and-Light, keeping friends with everybody. I shall end up going to tea with Martha at this rate. No, maybe not.
I’m going to tea with Joseph – and in the last lesson before going-home time I start to worry about it a little bit. Joseph talks in a very precise voice. Even though he looks a bit scruffy, with untidy hair and crumpled school shirts, I have a feeling he’s very posh. Perhaps he lives in a really big house. I have a sudden image of Joseph and me sitting at a very long polished table with a complicated set of knives and forks and spoons in front of us, being served our macaroni cheese from a silver platter by a maid in uniform. And what about his mother, Mrs Antscherl? I start imagining her like Miss Raynor, our head teacher, wearing a neat grey suit and a silk scarf, raising her eyebrows if I say anything silly.
It’s a wonderful relief to meet the real Mrs Antscherl. She’s plump and smiling, with long, very curly hair. She’s wearing a skirt with little mirrors sewn all over it so that she twinkles as she walks. She gives me a big hug as if she’s known me for ages.
‘I’m so glad you’re coming to tea, Ella. It’s such a treat for Joseph. He talks about you non-stop.’
‘Mum!’ says Joseph, going pink.
Their car is comfortingly small and old, with books and maps and sweet wrappers on the floor. Their house is big and posh, with three floors and a basement, but it’s not grand at all. There are untidy bookshelves everywhere, with further books spilling into every corner, even in piles going up the stairs. The sagging sofa and armchairs in the living room are covered with bright throws and lots of cushions – there’s one with little mirrors just like Mrs Antscherl’s skirt. We sit there for ten minutes while we have juice and chocolate raisins, and chat to Mrs Antscherl. Then she goes off to the kitchen and we go down to the basement.
It’s like a giant playroom just for Joseph, with all his books, and his computer, and an entire set of encyclopaedias. There’s an old-fashioned train set laid out all over the floor, and a wooden Noah’s ark too, a special old one with carefully carved animals – heaps of them, at least fifty pairs.
‘There’s a Noah’s ark at Aunty Mavis’s house – she looks after my baby brother – but it’s nowhere near as big as this one,’ I say.
‘It was my mum’s when she was little – and the train set was my dad’s. I don’t really play with them. I like reading best,’ says Joseph, but he obligingly shows me how the train set works.
‘Can we take the littlest Noah’s ark animals on a train trip?’ I ask. ‘We could pretend they’re a travelling circus, a special troup of performing animals.’ I grab a handful out of the ark. ‘Look, here are two performing rabbits who can turn somersaults, and these are little birds who are excellent tr
apeze artists.’
‘You are so mad, Ella,’ says Joseph happily. ‘OK, OK, put them in that open carriage there, and we’ll take them for a ride.’
I’ve never played with a train set before and it’s great fun, especially when we have two trains on the line and have to divert them to avoid a major collision and tragic animal extinction.
‘There are no whales in the ark, not even little dolphins,’ I say.
‘I expect they swam along beside the ark,’ says Joseph. ‘Shall we look at my whale books now?’
He’s got such wonderful books – not just about whales, about everything under the sun.
‘You don’t need to go to the public library, you’ve got an entire library here,’ I say when he shows me his library books too.
‘I’d like a real library of my own one day,’ says Joseph.
‘Well, maybe if I work some more on my whale project, it’ll get long enough to be made into a proper book and you can keep it in your library.;
‘In its own special glass case, and only very important people can borrow it – i.e. me!’ says Joseph. ‘Let’s have a look at it now.’
‘Martha tore up a lot of it,’ I say mournfully.
‘Martha’s a really scary girl. I hate it when she picks on you. Ella, do you think I should stick up for you more?’
‘No, I can stick up for myself. Well, sometimes. Look, here it is. I tried sticking the ripped pages with sellotape but they don’t look very good.’
‘Why don’t you rewrite them?’
‘Well, it will take such ages.’
‘I’ll help you. I’ve got paper exactly that size. I’ll do all the writing if you like, and you can do the drawing. You could come round to tea heaps and heaps and we could work on it together. Would you like that?’
‘Oh yes!’
I settle down to redrawing the title page, with an even more elaborate letter W. Joseph doesn’t just have good felt tips with tiny points – he has coloured inks! I’ve never used these before and they are totally brilliant, especially the gold. My title page is going to look almost like a real illuminated manuscript in a museum.
Joseph doesn’t just copy out a page or two, willy-nilly. He’s getting my project organized, shifting all the pages around into chapters on humpbacks, killer whales, blue whales, etc.