First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2021

Published in this ebook edition in 2021

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HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

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HarperCollinsPublishers

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Text copyright © Charlie Brooks 2021

Illustrations copyright © Katie Riddell 2021

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Charlie Brooks and Katie Riddell assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively.

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Source ISBN: 9780008328085

Ebook Edition © February 2021 ISBN: 9780008328092

Version: 2021-03-01

For Big Bean and Little Bean

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Characters

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Whiff of Bad News

Chapter 2: The Grim Reality

Chapter 3: The Long March

Chapter 4: Low-Cost Housing for Animals

Chapter 5: Desolate Farm

Chapter 6: Settling in … and the Bleak Reality of Our Lives

Chapter 7: No Way, José

Chapter 8: Dig in Holly Time

Chapter 9: Day Before My Official Birthday

Chapter 10: Like a White Sheet Floating in the Air

Chapter 11: Mum’s Reject-present Drawer

Chapter 12: Chocolate and Reinforced Concrete

Chapter 13: A Clash of Vultures

Chapter 14: Watch Out, World

Chapter 15: Implementation

Chapter 16: Overcooked

Chapter 17: Not Very Susceptible

Chapter 18: The Chequers Business Centre

Chapter 19: Grandpa’s Little Earner

Chapter 20: The Village Cultural Events Organising Committee (VCEOC)

Chapter 21: International Travel News

Chapter 22: Holly Hopkinson, Private Investigator

Chapter 23: Dick Whittington Returns

Chapter 24: The Royal Society of Young Gardeners

Chapter 25: Royal Approval

Chapter 26: Back to the Diving Board

Chapter 27: Officially a Laughing Stock

Chapter 28: An Overambitious Venture

Chapter 29: What Went Wrong with Dinner?

Chapter 30: The Mystery Box

Chapter 31: Like a Barnacle on the Backside of a Killer Whale

Chapter 32: A Bit of Bottom Music

Chapter 33: The Cake Off

Chapter 34: A Silk Fist in an Iron Glove

Chapter 35: I Don’t Even Look Like a Duck

Chapter 36: A Very Dark Hour

Chapter 37: The Rest is Down to You

Chapter 38: Getting Back in the Saddle

Chapter 39: The Gig is Up

Chapter 40: Fasten Your Seatbelts

Chapter 41: A Very Emotional Day

Chapter 42: Holly Hopkinson’s School of Rock

Chapter 43: My Eureka Moment

Chapter 44: The Look of Eagles

Chapter 45: Quite a Lot of U-Bend Stuff

Chapter 46: Roll Up, Roll Up

Chapter 47: Dick Turpin-ry

Chapter 48: Rank Being Pulled

Epilogue: Annual Report of Holly Hopkinson Group of Companies

About the Publisher

I am writing them by my own fair hand so that historians and people from all over the world will have a real-life account of what life was like in twenty-first-century London without all the usual rubbish that adults put in.

Who knows how far in the future it will be before you get to read them, dear reader. I imagine it could be hundreds – even squillions – of years before they are dug up,

published to international bestselling acclaim,

set behind glass at the British Museum,

studied in schools across the country

turned into a Hollywood movie …

My family, THE HOPKINSONS, live in a lovely, warm, clean, modern house, thank you very much. My dad has a job in an office. I have no idea what he does, but he always wears a suit.

Mum works in PR. When I ask her what that is, she says it’s

Harmony Hopkinson, my elder sister, is going through a difficult stage – well, that’s what I heard Mum saying to her teacher in her serious voice.

Harmony treats me like a little sister a bit too much. She needs to think more about how she’s going to look when these memoirs are published.

She’s only happy when she’s going off to demonstrate* about something she disapproves of.

* DEMONSTRATE – to shout and scream like the devil.

Harold Hopkinson is my older brother. He’s a bit stroppy and talks a load of codswallop. And he gets double-whopper spots on his nose these days. Dad says he was like Harold when he was younger, and Mum just says,

But I really don’t know why Dad says he was like Harold, because he flipping well still is.

We also have a dog called Barkley, who likes eating and going to the park.

He also thinks the poodle who we sometimes bump into is the bee’s knees. If he doesn’t tone down his stuff we’re going to get into serious trouble with the authorities.

Finally, there’s Aunt Electra, who lives in Hackney and visits us all the time.

Despite our fab house and the corner shop at the end of our cul-de-sac, which stocks everything we need, Mum wants to move to a different area. (Dad says she’s ‘upwardly mobile’. I think it’s caused by her classes.)

But we’ll see about that – the rest of our family are quite happy being immobile, thank you very much.

I quite like my school, in spite of the teachers who are a . At least they don’t bother much about homework, and if I sit at the back of the classroom, I can talk as much as I like to my best friend in the world, Aleeshaa.

And Aleeshaa always has loads of pocket money, so after PE we’ll gallivant across the park to the corner shop to buy stuff.

Once a week I’m allowed to go to Aleeshaa’s house for tea. They live in a very swish flat above her father’s art gallery up on Notting Hill.

Dad’s always been a bit funny about Aleeshaa’s father since they met at what Mum calls

‘Anyone would think he invented art,’ Dad said.

‘Excuse you, Dad,’ I said in my unforgiving voice. ‘Aleeshaa’s father knows a lot about art … and so does Aleeshaa … she’s going to art school, and she’s got a mobile phone.’

‘Fancy that,’ Dad replied, pulling one of his goofy faces to Mum. ‘But I can’t quite make the connection between—’

said Mum. ‘And you would still have a phone, Holly, if you hadn’t dropped your old one down the loo.’

Thanks for the reminder I don’t need, Mum.

Anyway,

Aleeshaa and I have an

whatever my dad thinks. She says I should go to art school with her, so I’m probably going to do that.

Yes. All in all, my life is pretty

Or so I thought.

When I woke up this morning, I was very, very happy. Probably even happier than the queen; unless she had something special planned for breakfast.

Mum was flitting* around the kitchen looking like a packet of vacuum-packed bacon. She was going to a dance class on her way to work.

* FLITTING – flying and sitting pretty much at the same time while eating toast.

‘Holly, your turn to take Barkley out,’ she shouted as her Lycra-clad bottom disappeared out of the door.

The poodle doesn’t get up very early, so at least we wouldn’t have any bother on that front.

Dad left late for work, as usual. He says,

when he is running late – well, more like walking late, really.

Harold was the least happy person in our family this morning. The neighbours complained (again!) to the coppers about his drumming, and now his drum kit is about to be the subject of a court order.

Which will be a setback to his career as a platinum-record-selling, stadium-filling

Harmony was being fine for her – she’s planning a outside someone’s embassy on social media, with some new friends who she’s never met.

I tried to get some intel on what she’s up to, but she won’t tell me, as per usual. Harmony likes to support a lot of causes in her spare time – particularly when the weather’s nice.

School was quiet today, and then Aleeshaa and I went to ‘after-school coding camp’; which is secret code for eating sweets and listening to music on Aleeshaa’s phone because the teacher didn’t turn up, as usual.

When I got home, I could tell all was not well. The air was hanging heavy with the

Dad was on his phone to Aunt Electra in one room.

I heard him say,

But Mum was on her phone in the kitchen to one of her book-club friends. She said, ‘He’s been fired … can’t say I’m surprised.’ But this is the weird bit. Mum then said,

What I can’t work out is how Dad going freelance means that Mum can finally make us all mobile upwards?

IT JUST DOESN’T MAKE SENSE

And we’re not just moving down a little bit; if life is a game of Snakes and Ladders, we have just flipping well landed on a jumbo .

We are moving out to the countryside, to live on a farm with our grandpa near Chipping Topley.

I rang Aleeshaa straight away to tell her the horrible news, and all she said was,

Erm, it’s a bit more than random, bestie.

But Mum made an expression like she’d sat on a very cold loo seat when he said that, so it will probably be for ages.

I pointed out to Dad that Dick Whittington didn’t bolt for the hills when he lost his job and went freelance.

But Dad just said,

So the Hopkinson family are being sentenced to a life of poverty, manure and people who speak funny – because of the price of CAT FOOD?

Then I popped round to Aleeshaa’s swish flat to say goodbye – maybe forever? I asked her if she wanted to come and wave us off, but she said she had to help in her dad’s gallery today.

She seems to be getting over my bombshell quite well; too well, in fact. I mean, it wouldn’t have hurt her to do a bit of desperate wailing, would it?

Anyway, when I got home there was still masses of our junk to load up.

What was clear was that we were not going to get all of our stuff in the lorry. So Dad said he was making an ‘executive decision’ about what we had to leave behind.

Harold’s drum kit made it on to the lorry, of course. But my Wendy house did not. I put up quite a stink, but Dad said I haven’t used it for years and we all have to make . So I said,

None of our neighbours came to wave us off – not even the ones who called the coppers about the drumming. And to make matters worse, when we drove off down the road, guess what crossed in front of the lorry?

Several hours later, we are a very demoralised bunch as we head ‘out into the sticks’, as Mum calls it. Dad says he’s felt better. Mum has certainly looked better. And I am very nervous and DOWNCAST.

Harmony has decided to wear BLACK for our pilgrimage.

Sulky Harold, of course, is the winner here. Even he can work out that he and his drum kit are wriggling from the grasp of the by doing a sunlight flit.

So these could be the last words of Holly Hopkinson, if I disappear from the face of the Earth and my literary legacy is tragically cut short.

Dad moaned that the service was ‘terrible’. Mum blurted out that she must have eaten a dodgy prawn last night and she had to rush to the bogs* very fast.

* BOGS – toilets.

Clearly things would have been a LOT MORE TERRIBLE if the ‘terrible service’ station hadn’t been there.

Dad said, ‘Unlucky to get a dodgy prawn in spaghetti bolognaise,’ when Mum was out of earshot.

Harmony spotted a lorry load of sheep at the ‘terrible service’ station.

she suggested in her ‘’ voice.

‘Why would you want to do that?’ Dad asked.

‘Cos, like, it’s so cruel,’ Harmony pronounced.

‘And what exactly, like, is letting a gang of sheep loose in a service station?’

Dad always likes to say ‘like’ to Harmony. He thinks he’s hilarious.

After we’d eaten, we set off again on our sorry voyage – hours and hours fighting our way down the motorway – well, at least two, anyway.

‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Mum asked for the squillionth time.

‘Why are the fields full of animals?’ Harold asked Dad as we got near Chipping Topley. ‘Haven’t they got any to live in?’

‘Well, Harold, one of the great things about coming to live in the countryside is that you can learn all about animals,’ Dad replied.

Harold rolled his eyes grumpily.

‘What’s, like, another great thing?’ Harmony asked unhelpfully.

‘Well, err, let’s see,’ stammered Dad, ‘ERR …’

‘We’re waiting,’ said Mum, ganging up with Harmony.

‘Hey … that’s where the animals live,’ Harmony shouted from the back of the car. ‘See in that field … that’s, like, low-cost for animals.’

‘I think you’ll find that’s, like, SOLAR PANELS, Harmony,’ Dad corrected.

‘They look cool anyway. The whole countryside should be covered in them,’ Harmony declared.

Two minutes later the sat nav announced,

We were at the end of a skew-whiff track in the middle of a field.

‘ARE YOU KIDDING?’ asked Harmony.

‘That’s very strange,’ said Dad. ‘I’m sure I put the right postcode in.’

‘Please tell me we’re not lost,’ Mum muttered.

‘Please tell me we are lost,’ chirped Harmony. ‘Otherwise this is, like, where we’re soooo going to live – ugh – basic.’

‘You have been to your father’s before, haven’t you?’ Mum asked Dad.

‘It was a while ago,’ he said nervously, ‘and Grandpa picked me up from the station. And it was dark. And, by the way … if it wasn’t for you thinking that shoes only work on , perhaps you and the kids might have been here before … that would have been helpful.’

‘Calm down, everyone,’ I said. ‘Let’s just ring Grandpa and ask him for directions.’

said Dad.

‘Slight problem,’ said Mum, looking at her phone.

Dad started rubbing his forehead.

‘We should protest,’ cried Harmony. ‘It’s basic human rights … the downtrodden country folk are being silenced by the government.’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ Dad shouted. ‘Can I have some shush to think – and stop drumming on my sodding car seat, Harold, please.’

WE ARE REFUGEES – and this is officially the opposite of the best day of my life.

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