Nathalia Buttface and the Most Epically Embarrassing Trip Ever
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Copyright
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2015
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,
HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Nathalia Buttface and the Most Epically Embarrassing Trip Ever
Text copyright © Nigel Smith 2015
Cover illustration © Sarah Horne 2015
Nigel Smith and Sarah Horne assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007545230
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007545247
Version: 2015-02-13
To Michèle. Because mums who live with embarrassing dads suffer just as much.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
The Bit After the Book’s Finished
A Sneek Preview from Nathalia Buttface
Also by Nigel Smith
About the Author
About the Publisher
The Most Embarrassing Dad in the World paused. He hadn’t expected this reaction. In fact, he had come home from the pub with his Great French Holiday Idea feeling really pleased with himself.
Dad liked France. He liked the weather and the food and the wine and talking to local people.
“You wear STUPID shorts, your bald spot goes pink and peely, you drink red wine every day and get silly and even more embarrassing than usual and your teeth look like a vampire’s,” Nat went on, not pausing for breath, “and THE VERY WORST thing is, you talk in a funny accent.”
“It’s called speaking French.”
“It is not, Dad, it’s called ‘speaking English in a silly voice’. You don’t even bother to change the words. You are literally supposed to change the words to actual French ones. I know that and I’m eleven. BUT I didn’t know it at my primary school, did I? In my first French lesson.”
Dad put the kettle on. He knew what was coming; he’d heard this story about Nat’s first French lesson a lot. He looked around the kitchen for support from Mum but she was in the living room. She was pretending to do emails, but she was really playing a game on her phone and having a quiet giggle at Dad being in trouble again.
“Cos of you, when Madame Hérisson asked us who could speak any French, I put my hand up.”
“Biscuit?” said Dad, still trying to avoid the story. “There might be one left as your nan’s not been here for a couple of days.”
But Nat wasn’t going to let him escape. She was an angry blur of stick arms and legs and flying blonde hair. Dad was already regretting getting her out of bed to tell her about the Great French Holiday Idea.
Nat advanced on her father. “I put my hand up and said ‘Yes, I know French,’ and Madame Hérisson said ‘Wonderful, come up and tell the class what you had for breakfast, in French.’”
“No custard creams,” said Dad, popping the lid of the biscuit tin back on. “I could do you a cheese toastie though?”
But Nat was too busy remembering that horribly embarrassing lesson.
“’Ello my leetle class mateys,” Nat had said, confidently, “for brek-farst, I ’ad a sliss of tost.” She waited for applause.
“Very amusing,” said Madame Hérisson coldly. She didn’t look amused. Nat’s classmates giggled.
“Zere is nuffink zat iss fuh-nee about a sliss of tost,” Nat continued, still speaking what she now called ‘Dad French’.
“Do it properly or sit down,” snapped Madame Hérisson, marking Nat out for special attention that year.
Nat pressed on. Perhaps her accent wasn’t big enough. She tried Dad French again. “I ’ad ze sliss off tost, and I ’ad a leetle beet of butt-urgh wheech I spred weeeth a ker-nurf.” The giggling got louder.
“A ker-nurf?” said Madame Hérisson. “A KER-NURF? What are you talking about, girl?”
“Like a ker-nurf and furk,” said Nat. By now the class was in uproar.
“Class clown, are you?” said Madame Hérisson. “Detention.”
Dad was always embarrassing her. He could even do it when he WASN’T THERE. Of course, it was way worse when he was there. Which was why she had tried so very hard to stop him interfering at her new school.
Epic fail.
It had started on day one. Nat’s form teacher, Miss Hunny, was an old friend of Dad’s (aaarrggh!) and had encouraged Dad to ‘join in’ at school events (double aaarrggh!).
Dad had very much joined in.
He organised a school trip and lost a pupil AND a teacher.
He put on a quiz night that ended in a riot.
And he was DJ at the end-of-term school disco and accidentally projected Nat’s NAKED BABY PHOTOS six metres high in the school hall!
But at least the summer holidays were about to start. After tomorrow, her classmates would have eight weeks to forget about all the disasters Dad had caused. And with a bit of luck they might even forget her horrible surname too.
Even THAT was Dad’s fault. Not just because it was his stupid name, but because he had managed to reveal it live on air on the breakfast radio show that EVERYONE at Nat’s school listened to.
And it didn’t matter how many times she explained ‘Bumolé’ was pronounced Bew-mow–lay. She was still going to be Bum Hole for the rest of her school life, unless everyone developed a very short memory over the summer holidays.
Even her best friend, Darius Bagley, called her Buttface.
Dad was talking again now, doing his gentle voice that drove her nuts.
“Yes yes yes. But let me tell you about my Great French Holiday Idea. It’s just brilliant. And the best of it is – it’s free.”
Dad liked free. Dad liked free a bit too much, if you asked Nat. Mum said that in life you get what you pay for. Which is why when Mum went food shopping they got pies with super fluffy crusts full of chunks of tender chicken and veg enfolded in a lovely tasty sauce, perhaps with some rustic hand-cut golden chips.
When Dad went food shopping they got a brown pie in a tin.
With a big yellow sticker on it saying: ‘Final reduction – eat today if you know what’s good for you. May cause swelling and rash if rubbed on skin.’
Mum walked into the kitchen, not smiling any more. Nat started smiling. Mum had heard the word ‘free’ too, and she didn’t like the sound of it either.
“What do you mean, Ivor, when you say ‘free’?” she purred dangerously.
“I met Posh Barry down the Red Lion tonight,” Dad began. Both Nat and Mum groaned. They didn’t like Posh Barry very much. To be fair, Nat didn’t like any of Dad’s friends very much. Because they were all idiots. And when Dad was with them, he became more of an idiot too.
“Posh Barry isn’t even posh,” said Nat. “He’s just one of your stupid old friends from school. He sells scrap. He’s always got bits of wire in his hair and he smells like a tin can, so I don’t know why you all call him Posh Barry.”
“His wife’s worse,” said Mum, joining in. “‘Even Posher Linda’ used to be a hairdresser in the high street. She met Barry when he asked her to get the bits of scrap out of his hair. He said it would save him money at the hairdresser’s if she married him, so she did. Now she doesn’t work and spends most of her time back at her old salon getting her own hair done.”
But the absolute worst thing about Posh Barry and Even Posher Linda was their ghastly daughter, Mimsy. Mimsy was the year above Nat at school. She was spoilt rotten. She was also very popular, mainly because she gave people gifts all the time. It was only stuff she didn’t want any more (or already had a dozen of) but it guaranteed she had loads of friends.
Worse, she had a stupid blog that EVERYONE at school read where she posted about ponies and iPhones and sparkly new trainers and lots of other things that Nat had to pretend she didn’t want and wasn’t massively jealous of.
Whenever Nat was forced to hang out with Mimsy, Mimsy would always make fun of Nat’s clothes, and her rubbish old phone, and, obvs – her embarrassing dad. Which Nat really hated because SHE was the only person who was allowed to do that. Mimsy liked to put embarrassing photos of Nat’s dad on her blog – which, let’s be frank, were not hard to find – so everyone at school could have another good laugh at Nat.
“There’s no way I’m going to spend my summer holidays hanging out with Mi—”
“Wait! You don’t have to. They’re not going to be there. Posh Barry has said we can stay in his lovely new house in France this summer – for free! How about that?”
Nat and Mum eyed Dad suspiciously.
“It’s a lovely old farmhouse right down in the south, near the sea, with a pool, surrounded by woods, and it’s all ours.”
“Honestly?” said Mum cautiously.
“Honest!” said Dad. “They said they wouldn’t DARE come over till we’ve finished anyway.”
A small warning bell went clang in the back of Nat’s head. She ignored it, which, she soon realised, was daft.
“In that case, it sounds nice,” said mum warily. “I suppose I should say well done.”
“Thought you’d like it,” said Dad, giving her a hug.
Eww, Nat cringed. Parents hugging …
“Why won’t they be there?” said Nat. She knew her dad and his Great Ideas, and had a horrible feeling that there was more to this story than met the eye.
Dad suddenly looked a bit shifty. She’d got him. “Ah well, there is one tiny little catch,” said Dad. “But it’s so small it’s hardly worth mentioning …”
Just mention it, Baldy, thought Nat.
“It might need a tiny bit of work.”
Posh Barry wasn’t absolutely sure there was a ghost, but his wife Even Posher Linda had ‘sensed’ something the first night they had stayed there and wasn’t going to set foot in the place again until it was got rid of. That was a while ago now, and since then the little French farmhouse had been left to rot.
“A ghost,” Nat told Darius the next day at school. “We’ve got to stay in an old, damp, smelly falling-down house with a ghost. And ghosts don’t exist so it’ll probably be an axe murderer, hiding out.”
“A ghost would be the best pet,” said Darius, whose own pet collection consisted of a one-legged frog called Hoppy, a dead slug and a jar of flies. “I could train it to haunt Miss Hunny.”
Nat had just moved to the area and so had only been at her new school for the summer term, but Darius Bagley had quickly become her best friend. This was despite him being the naughtiest boy in the school/town/country/world. No one quite knew how this had happened, least of all Nat.
But Nat, being fiercely loyal, argued that Darius wasn’t so much naughty as just MISUNDERSTOOD. She was also one of the very few people to realise he was both super-bright and super-funny, though she did have to admit he was also super-embarrassing (but still not as bad as Dad).
The hot afternoon was dragging on and Nat shifted uncomfortably at her desk. “It’s just this woman Linda. She’s soft in the head. Dad says when she was a little girl she was scared by a lady with a scarf at Blackpool pleasure beach and since then she’s been very sensitive to reverberations.”
Nat frowned as she tried to get the story right. “I think it was a lady with a scarf. It might have been a donkey with a straw hat; I wasn’t really listening. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, point is she’s bonkers and there’s probably no ghost.”
Nat was being quite loud but their teacher, Miss Hunny, didn’t tell them off for chatting because everyone was chatting. It was nearly the end of term and it was too hot even with all the windows open, and Miss Hunny was flicking through the pages of Last-minute Budget Breaks Magazine. Rather than getting on with her marking, she was trying to work out how long she could afford to stay in a lovely beach house on a Greek island. On her wages it was about an hour and a half. She slammed the magazine shut sharply.
“I suppose we should get back to our book,” sighed Miss Hunny. The class groaned. “Oh don’t be like that,” she said. “It’s a classic.”
That made it worse.
Nat knew there were two sorts of classics: old classics and new classics. They were both terrible, especially when the sun was shining outside.
OLD CLASSICS are written by someone who is dead. Women in these books wear bonnets and faint. They are called Mistress Bindweed. Men are rich and rude and have a secret. They are called Captain Stain.
Popular words in old classics include: periwig, effervescent and rapscallion.
NEW CLASSICS are written by intense people about things that REALLY MATTER, OK? And no one faints.
Popular words in new classics include: innit, aggro, issues, empowered and minging.
No one in the class was keen to get back to Edna O’Dreary’s award-winning novel, My Life, Your Fault, so a cheer went up when Nat’s dreamy friend Penny Posnitch shouted out: “What are you doing in the holidays, Miss?”
It was the old ‘ask the teacher about themselves’ tactic. Now THAT’s a classic.
Miss Hunny was glad to take the bait. She’d had quite enough of Edna O’Dreary too.
“I was invited on a cruise with some friends,” she said, “where I could have watched palm trees and golden beaches slip by as I lazed around the ship’s pool.” Miss Hunny had a faraway look in her eyes. Then she frowned. “But I can only afford a return ticket on the Mersey Ferry.”
The class laughed and Miss Hunny muttered something rude under her breath.
Nat hadn’t been invited on holiday with any friends that summer, or even round to anyone’s house. She had a horrible suspicion part of the problem was the creature sitting next to her, picking his nose and eating the crispy bits.
“What are you doing this summer?” Nat asked Darius. “Mutating into a human?”
“I’m going to Norway with My Filthy Granny,” he said offhand. Nat was puzzled; she didn’t know he had a granny. In fact, she had a theory that Darius was created in a laboratory somewhere.
At home time she found Darius trudging along with her to the school gates. Dad was parked round the corner in his terrible old van, the Atomic Dustbin, because she’d forbidden him to bring it anywhere in sight of the school. Ever since it had exploded in the school car park.
“Give us a lift?” asked Darius. “Oswald can’t fetch me, he’s in a meeting.”
A meeting? thought Nat. Oswald?
Darius didn’t have any parents; Nat had never asked why, and Darius never wanted to talk about it. Oswald Bagley was Darius’s terrifying older brother, who was looking after him. The way wolves sometimes look after man-cubs lost in the forest. Only Oswald was hairier, with more teeth and fleas. He certainly wasn’t the kind of person to have a meeting. No one wanted to meet him, for a start.
They were just about to leave the school gates when Nat heard a sniggering sort of voice behind her.
“So, I hear you’re going to stay in our house in France over the summer?” said Mimsy with a showy-off flick of her hair. “You do know it’s a wreck right now, don’t you? Good luck to you and your TOTAL FAIL of a dad fixing that up … It’ll probably look even worse by the time he’s done with it.”
Then Mimsy walked off laughing with her friends and Nat heard the words she’d been dreading: “Don’t worry, I’ll be blogging all about it when I get there. I’ve got a lush new camera. Wait for the pictures.”
“Thanks for sticking up for me, chimpy,” Nat said to Darius as he rejoined her.
Darius was staring hard at Mimsy. “Do you fancy her or something?” said Nat crossly.
“Wait,” he said mysteriously. “Three … two … one …”
Just then Mimsy shrieked as a huge hole opened up at the bottom of her bulging schoolbag and all the contents spilled out on the floor. Everyone laughed as she scrabbled to pick them up.
For a second Nat thought maybe her suspicions had been right all along and Darius actually WAS the devil, but then she saw him folding up his little pocket knife.
And she remembered why they were friends.
Dad smiled when he saw Darius at the school gates, and the Dog leaped out of the van, scattering pans and boxes and all the other usual van rubbish out on to the pavement as he went. The Dog loved licking Darius as he was the stickiest and therefore the tastiest child he’d ever licked. Nat liked it when Darius got licked by the Dog; at least that got him clean.
Dad chatted about his Great French Holiday Idea all the way to Darius’s house. All Darius wanted to know about was the ghost. “Is it a strangling ghost, a restless spirit that throws things about, or a blood-sucking phantom?” he asked.
“Oh, a bit of all three I should expect,” said Dad cheerfully. “Which reminds me, did Nathalia tell you about the time she thought the kettle was haunted?”
“Shuddup, Dad,” hissed Nat.
Obviously he didn’t shuddup, and Nat had to endure the story all over again.
“… Turns out it was just a faulty plug!” laughed Dad, finishing his tale. “But she still won’t make a cup of tea after nine o’clock at night.”
“Thought you didn’t believe in ghosts?” said Darius. Nat looked for something heavy to brain Dad with.
The van groaned to a halt as they pulled up in front of Darius’s little house. The garden, as usual, was full of rubbish.
“This garden looks like the inside of your head,” Nat said to Dad.
Parked next to the house was a large black van with pictures of corpses playing musical instruments all over it. In big bloody red letters someone had painted the words:
My Filthy Granny
“Has the circus come to your house?” asked Dad.
Darius was very quiet. He didn’t seem to want to get out.
Dad thought for a minute and said: “You going to invite us in for a cup of tea then?”
Nat thought he’d gone mad. What was Dad thinking? No one went for a cup of tea at Oswald Bagley’s house. An evening of mayhem and animal sacrifices, maybe, but not PG Tips. But Dad was already walking down the path, arm round Darius. Nat followed warily.
Inside the small, dark sitting room it looked like a meeting of the Zombie Council of Great Britain. Five scrawny young men, all dressed in black with white faces, blood-red lips and green-tinged eyes, lolled around drinking out of cans. Oswald grunted when he saw his younger brother and nodded at Dad and Nat. He didn’t speak.
One of the creatures grabbed Darius playfully, though it was a bit rough for Nat’s liking. “Here’s our other little roadie. Where you been – school?” There was something sneery and unpleasant in his voice. Darius was smiling but Nat knew it wasn’t a real smile.
Nat saw a poster lying on the floor. It read:
On tour – My Filthy Granny. Heavier than heavy metal, blacker than black metal, thrashier than thrash metal, speedier than speed metal, deader than death metal.
There were a bunch of dates in towns whose names Nat didn’t recognise, but guessed were in Norway. So this is what Darius meant.
“A band, are you?” said Dad. The Grannies stopped throwing Darius about and turned bloodshot eyes towards him. “I used to play all the time …” Dad burbled on. “Course, I was a bit thinner in those days.”
Nat began to get that familiar nasty creeping sensation down the back of her neck and in her stomach – the sign that her dad was about to be horribly embarrassing.
“I’ve got something in the van you’ll like,” he said, jumping up and running out the front door. The Grannies turned their pale faces to Nat. She tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t get her eaten. She started with Darius. “You never said your brother was in a band.”