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To be fair, she had been a bit cross the entire week leading up to the trip, so the torrential rain that had been hammering down like wet nails all morning wasn’t likely to cheer her up.
“This campsite we’re going to has a website as well,” said Penny. “Don’t tell me you wrote something rude on that.”
“Nah,” said Darius, “better than that. I put this picture on it.”
He showed Penny a picture. She shrieked.
“And I can make that bit wiggle,” cackled Darius, chewing a toffee.
Penny peeped. “OK, now that’s funny,” she said.
“How about a singsong?” said Dad, standing up in the middle of the coach, holding his ukulele.
Nat threw Darius’s toffees at him. “Go away, sit down, shush. No one wants to sing,” she said.
“It is a bit early,” said Miss Hunny from the front seat. “At least wait until we get there.”
“Where we can hide in our tents,” sniggered Miss Austen.
“With earplugs in,” sniggered Miss Eyre.
Nat didn’t know why Misses Austen and Eyre had volunteered to come, as they were the laziest teachers in the school and she couldn’t imagine either of them rock climbing.
She grinned. She suddenly DID imagine them rock climbing. They were dangling in mid-air just as she pushed a massive boulder over the cliff …
PLINKY PLINK PLINK, went Dad on his stupid useless instrument.
“Oh, we’re off on a coach and it isn’t very quick, but two of the class are already travel-sick …” he sang.
“Join in on the chorus, kids,” he said.
“Dad, we haven’t got out of the one-way system yet and you’re already showing me up,” said Nat, jumping up and snatching his ukulele. “And you promised you wouldn’t.”
“I just want to make a good impression, for my certificate,” whispered Dad, sitting down on the back seat. “Budge up.”
He pointed to a man Nat didn’t recognise, sitting up by the coach driver. “That’s the organiser, Mr Dewdrop, from the Nice ’N’ Neat Countryside Alliance. It’s their essay competition that Darius won—”
“That I won.”
“Oh yes, whatever. But anyway, Mr Dewdrop is going to do a report on me this week. He’ll judge me to see if I can get my Approved for Kids certificate. Should be easy. Kids love me; I’m totally down with them. I watch all the soaps they like and I can rap and everything.”
“Please stop talking,” said Nat.
“It’ll be me getting top marks, obvs.”
Dad plunked a few notes on his tiny little guitar.
“Although, just to be on the totally safe side, it would be great if you and your friends could tell Mr Dewdrop just how utterly brilliant you all think I am. All the time, every day, as often and as loudly as possible.”
Nat groaned. It was so unfair. Not only was she expected to put up with her mega-embarrassing dad all week, but she was also supposed to say he was great! She wouldn’t do it.
BUT another thought struck her. If Dad did well on this trip and then got his certificate, he could finally get a proper job and be out of her hair …
Dad pottered back to his seat at the front, trying to high-five the children as he went past. No one high-fived him back, so he pretended he was waving to passers-by outside. Someone outside waved back. Not nicely.
Nat cringed. It was going to be SO hard …
After a few hours, they were driving through yet another small soggy village, glistening and grey in the rain. Nat and Penny were sharing headphones, listening to Princess Boo’s new album, and Darius was working on verse 768 of his epic poo poem, “Diarrhoea”.
He kept pulling out Nat’s earpiece, asking her to suggest rhymes for words like “squelchy” or “explode”.
She was grateful for the interruption when Mr Dewdrop came and sat nervously by Darius.
Mr Dewdrop was a young man, very thin and pale, with ash-brown frizzy hair. He reminded Nat of a sickly reed, struggling for life in a marsh. He had encouraged a straggly moustache to cover up some of his red spots.
“Mr Bagley?” he said.
Darius looked around.
“He means you, idiot,” said Nat.
“What?” Darius said dangerously. He didn’t like strangers. He started shaking a can of fizzy pop and flicking at the ring pull as if to open it. It made Nat think of a rattlesnake shaking its tail, just as a casual warning.
“He doesn’t like people sitting too close,” said Nat, trying to be helpful, “although he probably won’t bite.”
Mr Dewdrop backed away and nervously checked a form he was carrying.
“Are you the Darius Bagley who wrote the prize-winning essay?” the young man said. “Or is there perhaps another Darius Bagley?” He sounded hopeful.
“That’s him,” said Penny, who was drawing fairies on a big sketch pad. “Have fun. And actually, Nathalia, he DOES bite.”
“We’re all very impressed with your hilarious essay,” said Mr Dewdrop quickly. His voice was sometimes high and trembly, sometimes deep and croaky, like a frog playing a flute. Darius just stared. Mr Dewdrop ploughed on.“We’d like to give you free tickets to our new garden centre, in Lower Totley Village. You can get a half-price cream tea too. Yum.”
Nat sniggered. She wasn’t jealous of THAT rubbish prize. Darius looked at Mr Dewdrop blankly.
The young man coughed. “Right. And I hear you’re team leader. So that means you get to stay in one of our luxury log cabins, with outdoor plunge pool and indoor table football.”
“Get in!” yelled Darius, jumping up.
“Where do WE stay?” said Nat, who was suddenly jealous. Darius was making a big loser ‘L’ on his forehead at her.
“The rest of you will be in our cosy eco-yurts, made from natural – well, let’s just say it’s very natural. Don’t worry about the goaty smell – you soon get used to it.”
Darius burst out laughing, which lasted all the way to the next village, when Nat pinched him into silence.
“I looked up ‘yurt’,” said Penny. “I think it’s like a tent, but not quite as good.”
Flipping luxury log cabins for the flipping team leader, thought Nat, as the coach wound its tedious way through the wet roads. Table football? Plunge pool? So not fair.
She stewed for a while, and then finally snapped at Darius, “How come you get a luxury log cabin and we have to live in rubbish tents made of recycled goat bum?”
“Stop moaning. You get to bring your dad.”
Nat always forgot that Darius actually thought Dad was great. She had NO IDEA why.
“We’re here,” shouted Miss Hunny, before Nat could carry on her row.
The coach stopped dead with a squeal of old brakes.
Nat looked out of the window and just saw trees, dripping with rain. In the distance she thought she could see a sliver of grey sea.
“You might wanna put your macs on. There’s a very light drizzle,” shouted Dad, “or possibly only a sea mist.”
The rain thrashed down harder. No one wanted to get out.
“It’s a good job I’M here to keep everyone’s spirits up,” said Dad.
He was met with a stony silence.
Mr Dewdrop made a note in a little black notebook he had stuck to a clipboard.
Their depressed geography teacher, Mr Keane, stood up. “The even better news is that there’s hail mixed in with the rain. That’s unusual for this time of year. Perhaps it’s global warming. We could go out and study it. Won’t that be fun?”
If silence could get even stonier, that’s what it got.
“No, I don’t blame you. Geography’s terrible. I wanted to be a vet when I was your age, but I didn’t pass the exams,” said Mr Keane, sitting down and putting his head in his hands. “Why didn’t I work harder at school?” he cried.
No one quite knew what to say.
Finally, Miss Austen took charge. “Come on, children,” she said bossily. “Last one off the coach is a Bagley.”
“Hey,” said Darius, as the stampede for the exit started.
They all ran helter-skelter from the coach towards the shelter of a large wooden hut in the middle of a clearing in the forest. Through the rain, from under her plastic hood, Nat could make out a sign reading:
Lower Totley Eco Camp
Parked next to the large hut was a gleaming-new white coach, with cool tinted windows and sleek curved lines. On it were emblazoned the golden words:
SAINT SCROFULA’S COLLEGE
And in smaller words underneath:
Gosh, what a great school!
Inside the smart coach, Nat caught a glimpse of a square-jawed driver in a uniform and peaked cap, watching a big TV screen. Then she heard a hacking cough behind her. It was their coach driver, Eric Scabb, sucking down on his first ciggy for two hours. He spat on a bush.
“Better out than in,” he said.
Nat’s coach had SCABB’S BUDGET COACHES FOR HIRE painted in flaking letters on the side.
“Their coach probably cost more than our entire school,” Nat muttered to Penny, as they squished through the mud and into the wooden building.
Inside, the teachers went into a small reception area to fill out forms while Dad led the damp, hungry children into a large dining hall. It was full of long wooden tables and benches. And it was also full of other children, who stopped their chattering and stared at the newcomers.
The kids from the other school were those “sit-up-straight” kind of children. They were scrubbed clean and shiny and had smart blazers and even smarter haircuts. All the girls were blonde, Nat noticed, and not even slightly murky blonde like her, but almost white, dazzling blonde.
AND NOT ONE OF THEM ATE THEIR PEAS OFF THEIR KNIVES.
Nat looked at her wet, bedraggled, muddy classmates. We look like survivors from a shipwreck, she thought.
The other children continued to stare at Nat’s class.
“You know in those cowboy films when they walk into the wrong saloon and it goes dead quiet?” Nat said to Darius. Then she thought for a minute. “Oh, I suppose you get that all the time, tee-hee,” she said.
He glared at her.
There was a long, makeshift kitchen counter at one end of the hall, where two large ladies were splodging food on to wooden plates. Behind them bubbled cauldrons of something or other. From a distance it looked like brown porridge.
Rank brown porridge.
Nat’s plan was to grab some food and sit somewhere away from the other kids as quietly and with as little fuss as possible. Which was pretty much the plan of everyone else in 8H too.
Except Dad.
Dad walked right slap bang into the middle of the dining hall and said, loudly, in his best ‘down with the kids’ kind of voice:
“Hey, dudes, how’s it going down?”
Nat felt that familiar burning sensation trickle down the back of her neck.
“I’m Ivor,” the big idiot continued, “but you can call me Mr Fun.”
“Dad, stoppit,” hissed Nat.
“Best to break the ice as soon as possible,” said Dad cheerfully, while Nat tried to find a deep dark shadow to hide in.
Mr Fun turned to the perfect St Scrofula’s children. “Anyone want to see a magic trick?”
“Yes, I think we’d all like to see you disappear,” said a large boy with very short blond hair and startling blue eyes.
“We have a comedian,” said Dad. “Ha ha, I love a bit of banter.”
“Banter off, there’s a good fellow,” said Blue Eyes.
“As long as no one ever finds out he’s my dad, I might be OK,” Nat whispered to Penny.
“What’s brown and sticky?” said Dad, trying out his favourite joke.
“A stick,” said a bored blonde girl, who Nat reckoned was almost certainly called Jemima but who was actually called Plum.
“A stick,” said Dad. “Oh, you guessed it!”
“He’s an annoying little chap. Do you think we could pay him to go away?” said Blue Eyes.
“Oi, that’s my dad you’re talking about,” Nat shouted angrily, stepping forward.
The shiny bright children from St Scrofula’s turned to her and STARTED LAUGHING.
Oops, she thought. I’ve gone and blown it already! This is gonna be a loooong week …
Nat was wrong. It was a long day.
After a brown lunch of brown rice and brown lentils and brown bread, all the children were treated to a welcome talk by the owner and the team who ran the campsite.
The woman who owned Lower Snotley Eco Camp was called Mrs Ferret and she looked like a weasel. She had brown hair, sticky-out sharp teeth and little round glasses. She spoke so quickly and quietly that Nat had no idea what she was saying.
“I thought she said something about pooing in a hole in the ground,” Nat whispered to Penny, who was looking deeply unhappy.
“I think she did,” said Penny, “and then she said something about recycling everything.”
“Everything?” said Nat, alarmed.
“I love it here.” Darius grinned.
Mrs Ferret the weasel then introduced the man who ran all the outward-bound activities, a huge, leathery kind of fellow called Mr Bungee. Nat couldn’t tell how old he was; she thought he’d just grown out of the ground like a tree. He was hard and bulgy, like a sock tightly stuffed with walnuts. Mr Bungee had a broad-brimmed leather hat decorated with sharks’ teeth and a voice like a man on a mobile phone going through a long train tunnel.
“G’day, you little creatures,” he shouted in a nasal twang. “I’m here to toughen you lot up. Get you used to the outdoor life. I’m gonna make men of the lot of you, eh?”
“Men? How about the girls?” said Nat, offended.
“ESPECIALLY the girls,” said Mr Bungee.
“I bet you’re brilliant at banter,” said Dad, stepping forward.
Next to Mr Bungee, Dad didn’t look like a sock filled with walnuts; he looked like a glove puppet filled with custard.
“Less banter, more action, that’s what your blooming country needs,” said Mr Bungee.
“Oooh, I think he’s lovely,” said Miss Austen, drooling a little.
“So do I, and I saw him first,” said Miss Eyre.
“I can see you’re a fair dinkum ocker, mate. G’day, Blue. How’d you do there, wallaby, to be sure,” said Dad in a bizarre, strangulated accent. He sounded like a cross between a cowboy, a Jamaican, and someone involved in a road traffic accident.
“You feelin’ all right?” said Mr Bungee.
“Yeah, kangaroo woologoroo koala,” said Dad. “I’m just saying, I can tell you’re an Australian. I’m dead good with accents. I’m a bit theatrical.”
“You’re a bit SOMETHIN’ all right,” said Mr B, “and I’ll have you know I’m from NEW FLIPPING ZEALAND.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?” said Dad.
Mr Bungee went red. “Bit of a drongo, are you?” he said angrily. “Australians speak funny for a start, and they can’t play rugby. Not that you’d know – you lot speak REALLY funny, and you’re even WORSE at rugby.”
Everyone laughed at his joke, and Misses Eyre and Austen even gave him a round of applause.
Ew, thought Nat, total suck-up alert.
Mr Bungee picked up a list of names and read down it. “Ah, I know who you are,” he said. “You must be Mr Bu—”
“Bew-mow-lay,” shouted Nat, who knew how EVERYONE pronounced their hated surname.
“It says on my list that you’ve specially asked to be in charge of the entertainment, eh?” said Mr Bungee.
“I’m a born entertainer,” said Dad.
“Well, you make me laugh all right,” said Mr Bungee.
The St Scrofula’s kids sniggered.
“Glad to help,” said Dad, smiling.
Nat sighed.
“Now, I usually do the entertaining round here,” said Mr Bungee, putting a thick arm around Dad, “but you know what they say at the urinals: there’s always room for a little one!”
Dad smiled.
Nat DID NOT.
Her day didn’t improve. Soon, Class 8H were shown to their “super” yurts.
So not super, thought Nat miserably, as she looked at the little round huts made of brown and yellow canvas and animal skin, propped up on bricks. Little coloured flags and ribbons fluttered from their ropes.
The rain had stopped but the campsite fields were still damp and muddy.
“All the stars have these yurt things when they go to festivals,” said Penny brightly. “This is dead glamorous.”
“They look like inflatable garden sheds,” said Nat, “and there’s nothing glamorous about a garden shed. Our local nutter, Plant Pot Pete, lives in a garden shed.”
“You can imagine you’re Princess Boo,” said Penny, “just before a big concert.”
“No, I can imagine I’m some mad old man in a string vest with a plant pot stuck on his head,” grumbled Nat.
The biggest and best yurts were at the top of the slope, where the ground was less soggy and there was a lovely view over rolling green fields and out to sea. Annoyingly, those yurts had already been taken by the St Scrofula’s kids.
The yurts at the bottom of the hill were near woods, were in permanent damp gloom, and the view was mostly of a pigsty. The smell was mostly of a pigsty too, but at least that covered up the smell of goat from the tents.
“Two to a yurt,” said Miss Hunny. “Except Darius – you get a leader cabin with Rufus from St Scrofula’s. Follow me.”
“See you, Buttface,” said Darius, leaving Nat behind.
She was more cross about him getting the nice cabin than she was about him dropping in her horrid nickname. (And it had taken her AGES to get him to use THAT name and not something far, far worse.)
Sulkily, Nat watched the leaders start up the hill. She stomped off and chucked her things into the dark yurt she’d be sharing with Penny.
“Which half of the floor do you want?” asked Penny kindly. “You can have the muddy, soggy half or the lumpy, rocky half.”
“This isn’t fair! I’m gonna see what the cheaty chimp Darius has got,” said Nat, leaving.
She jogged jealously up the hill to watch as Darius and Rufus were shown to their smart log cabin nearby. It turned out that Rufus was the blue-eyed boy from St Scrofula’s.
The two boys stood outside their cabin, eyeing each other.
Casually, Darius picked his nose and flicked it at Rufus. Rufus grabbed him and tried to bring him down, and the two of them went flying into the cabin. Miss Hunny closed the door on their bashing noises.
“Nothing to see here,” she said, walking quickly past Nat. “Back to your yurt, please.”
“I thought I was supposed to be looking after Darius,” complained Nat.
A howl of pain floated towards them. It was Rufus.
“Oh, I’d say he’s looking after himself right now,” said Miss Hunny.
“Can’t I have one of the nice cabins?” pleaded Nat.
“No special treatment, Nat. It wouldn’t be fair,” said Miss Hunny gently. “You’re already super lucky because your dad’s here. We don’t want everyone getting jealous.”
“No one who’s met my dad is jealous of me,” said Nat. “They either feel sorry for me or have a right good laugh.”
Miss Hunny had a right good laugh.
“Your father always tells me how funny you are,” she said, “and he’s so right.”
They walked past St Scrofula’s nice yurts. Queen Bee of Year Eight, the amazing Flora Marling, was talking to Plum, the girl from St Scrofula’s who had ruined Dad’s joke.
This’ll be interesting, thought Nat. The best six days of her school life so far had all involved Flora actually talking to her. Even if it had just been to ask Nat why on Earth she was friends with Darius Bagley.
Nat watched as Plum and Flora examined each other. Plum tossed her hair back; it was yellow in the pale sun. Then Flora flicked her hair and the sun broke through the clouds. All around Flora the air was golden. Plum gasped and Flora, victorious, smiled gracefully.
“Have my yurt,” said the awestruck Plum, “please.”
Flora smiled graciously then floated into the yurt, like a passing dream.
Nat trudged down the slope to the grotty yurts.
“You know, it could be really cosy in here,” said Penny inside. “It just needs some brightening up.”
“Brightening up?” Nat groaned, looking around her.
It was dark, damp and dismal.
“I wouldn’t even mind, but we have actually invented hotels,” grumbled Nat, unrolling her sleeping bag.
“You should be less grumbly and more proud of yourself,” said Penny, whose favourite Princess Boo song was “Be More Proud of Yourself”. She added, “Look on the bright side: if you hadn’t written such a great essay, we wouldn’t be getting a week off school.”
“You’re right,” said Nat, cheering up. She squished a bug with her foot. “No school is good, you’re right. I am pretty awesome, I suppose.”
“And so modest,” said Penny quietly.
“I just wish people would listen to me when I try and tell them I wrote that essay,” said Nat. “It would be nice to get some credit for something once in a while.”
“OK, I promise that next time anyone mentions it, I’ll definitely tell them it was you,” said Penny.
Nat smiled. “Ta,” she said. She looked around. “I would help you with the brightening-up, but I’m plotting how to get Bagley out of his cabin, and I need to concentrate.”
She lay back on her sleeping bag and closed her eyes.
She was woken from her nap by Dad, who pottered in a little later. “Not too bad, is it?” he said.
Nat had already forgotten she had been cheered up. She wasn’t going to miss a chance to complain at Dad. Somewhere, somehow, it was always his fault.
“Dad, the other school is horrible. The kids are rotten and spoiled and they’ve nicked all the best yurts. They ate all the pizza at lunch too, so we had to have slop. I think it was worms, and I’m not even joking.”
“Mmm. Cracking good school though. Those children are just used to getting what they want. Nothing wrong with that.” He looked at Nat in a rather odd, thoughtful way. (It was odd because it was thoughtful.) “I’ve been chatting to the St Scrofula’s teachers,” he continued, “and they’re all amazing. They’re at school two hours early every day to organise extra lessons and activities.”
“Yuk,” said Nat.
“And next term they’re going to extend school hours to seven o’clock at night.”
“I’d feel sorry for them if they weren’t so horrible,” said Nat.
“Their last school play went to the West End, the head boy’s going to be an astronaut, last year’s sixth form are all doctors, and their football team are in the third round of the FA Cup.”
“I’m not impressed,” fibbed Nat, who was impressed.
“The head of media studies used to work on Star Wars, the head of art has a picture in the Tate Gallery, and guess who did their prize-giving? The flipping prime minister.”
“Blimey,” said Nat, “remember who did our prize-giving? Brian Futtock from Futtocks Coach Hire and Pest Control.”
“Urgh, and all those rats got out,” shuddered Penny, remembering the screams.
“Yeah, that was Darius,” chuckled Nat. “He got a three-year detention – even broke his brother Oswald’s school detention record.”
“Maybe your mum’s right,” said Dad. “Maybe YOU should go to that school.”
There was a horrible pause when Nat realised Dad wasn’t joking.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said, going all hot and cold. “It’s taken me ages to get to know THIS bunch of idiots. No offence, Penny.” She turned to her friend.
“What was that?” said Penny, who was drawing a picture of Princess Boo, dressed as a fairy and riding on a unicorn, on the yurt wall.
“You writing that essay for Darius has done us a great favour,” said Dad. “It’s given us a chance to compare both schools, side by side.”
Nat felt sick. She didn’t want him to compare schools. Dad comparing the schools could be a DISASTER.
Dad left the yurt with a big smile on his face.