Also by Anne Fine

You can visit Anne Fine’s website www.annefine.co.uk

Contents

1 Bad News Bear

2 All goody-goody and old-fashioned

3 Ugly stuff!

4 Trash or treasure?

5 Quieter around here

6 ‘Why are you torturing him like this?’

7 The golden rules

8 A little, secretive, one-person crime wave

9 Mad Model Movers PLC

10 By popular request . . .

1
Bad News Bear

I’m not a total lame-brain. Nor am I intergalactically stupid. And I don’t go wimpeyed and soggy-nosed when bad things happen to me. But I confess, as I looked round the dismal swamp that was to be my new classroom, I did feel a little bit cheesy. Oh, yes. I was one definite Bad News Bear.

‘Lovely news, everyone!’

Miss Tate clapped her hands and turned to the lines of dim-bulbs staring at me over their grubby little desks.

‘We have somebody new this term,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ She beamed. ‘And here he is. He’s just flown in from America and his name is Howard Chester.’

‘Chester Howard,’ I corrected her.

But she wasn’t listening. She was busy craning round the room, searching for a spare desk. And I couldn’t be bothered to say it again. I reckoned she was probably bright enough to pick it up in time. So I just carried my stuff over to the empty desk she was pointing towards, in the back row.

‘And that’s Joe Gardener beside you,’ Miss Tate cooed after me.

‘Hi, Gardener Joe,’ I muttered, as I sat down.

It was a joke. But he was clearly even more of a bean-brain than Miss Tate.

‘Not Gardener Joe,’ he whispered. ‘Joe Gardener.’

I didn’t have the energy to explain.

‘Oh. Right,’ I said. And my spirits sank straight in my boots, setting a personal (and possibly a world) record for getting to hate a new school. I’ve moved more times than you’ve watched Sesame Street. I’ve managed bookish schools, and sporty schools, and schools where the teachers keep hunkering down to your level to look you in the eye and ask you how you really feel. I even managed four months in a school where no one else spoke English. But I never took against a place so fast as I took against Walbottle Manor (Mixed).

Some Manor! I reckon the building was designed by someone who was taking a rest from doing morgues and abattoirs. The walls were shiny brown and shiny green. (The shiny made it worse.) The windows hadn’t been washed since 1643. And all the paintings pinned up round the room looked like eight sorts of pig dribble.

But, hey. Nowhere’s perfect.

I gave Gardener Joe a nudge. ‘So what’s she like?’

‘Who?’

I nodded towards the front. ‘Her, of course. Crock at the top.’

He stared at me. ‘Miss Tate? She’s very nice.’

My turn to stare. Was my new neighbour touched with the feather of madness, or what? Here was this epic windbag, droning on and on about whose turn it was to be the blackboard monitor, or some other such great thrill, and Gardener Joe was sticking up for her. I knew right away that this was the sort of school where everyone lines up quietly to do something really exciting, like opening the door for a teacher. And if you gave them something wild to play with, like a wobbly chair, they’d probably be happy all through break.

I looked at my watch.

‘Six hours,’ I muttered bleakly. ‘Six whole hours!’

Joe Gardener turned my way. ‘Six hours till what?’

‘Till I can complain to my mother,’ I explained.

‘Complain?’

‘About this place.’

His face crumpled up in bewilderment. ‘But why complain?’

And he was right, of course. Why bother to complain? It never gets me anywhere. ‘Marry the woman, marry the job,’ my father always says.

‘But I didn’t marry her. You did,’ I point out to him. ‘So why should I suffer?’

‘It could be worse,’ he warns. ‘Your mother could get fired. Then we might be stuck here for ever.’

That usually snaps me out of it pretty fast.

‘You’ll like it here,’ this Joe was telling me. ‘We do a lot of art.’

I stared at the pig dribble pictures. ‘Oh. Very nice.’

‘And we have fun at break.’

‘Watching the puddles dry?’

Joe’s puzzled look came back to take another quick bow. And then he finished up: ‘And we have singing on Fridays.’

‘No kidding? Not sure I can wait that long.’

But this Joe Gardener was turning out to be a bit of a sarcasm-free zone.

‘I feel that way sometimes myself,’ he said. ‘But wait and see. It’ll come round so fast.’

His eyes shone as if he were talking about his birthday, or Christmas.

‘Singing on Fridays,’ I said. ‘Right. I’ll remember that when things get grim.’ And I looked up to see how we were doing with today’s great excitement – choosing the blackboard monitor.

‘So that’s agreed, then, is it?’ Miss Tate was saying. ‘Flora this week, and Ben the week after.’

I suppose, when something of world-shattering importance like this is decided, it’s always best to check things one last time.

‘Everyone happy with that?’

I’d have put money on the fact that no dill-brain in the world could give a flying crumpet who was blackboard monitor, this week or next. But – whoa there! I was wrong. Quite wrong.

This hand beside me shoots up in the air. ‘Miss Tate?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘I think it would be nice if Howard –’

‘Chester,’ I couldn’t help correcting.

But he wasn’t listening. He was busy fixing my life.

‘If Howard was made blackboard monitor. Because he’s new. And I don’t think he’s very sure he’s going to like it here. Because he’s already worked out that it’s six whole hours –’

See my eyes pop? But what was staggering me most was that this bozo meant well! He was trying to be kind!

‘– till he gets home.’

I flicked on all exterminator rays, but nothing could stop him. He was being nice.

‘So I think it would be a really good idea if we made him blackboard monitor.’

Joe sat back, satisfied.

Miss Tate spread her hands like someone glowing in a holy painting.

‘Flora? Ben? Would you mind?’

Surprise, surprise! Ben didn’t burst into tears, and Flora didn’t gnash her teeth at not being blackboard monitor for one more week.

So, that’s it. Ten minutes in, and I’m Head Wiperoony. What Great Luck!

‘Well!’ Miss Tate said brightly, giving me a meaningful smile. ‘My blackboard looks as if it could do with a thorough good wiping, just to start the day.’

I sighed. I stood up. What else could I do? I took the little furry wooden block from Flora’s outstretched hand, and smiled back sweetly when she smiled at me. I wiped the board, then set the little furry thing carefully on its ledge.

‘Very good,’ Miss Tate said. ‘Excellent. A lovely job.’

You’d have thought that I’d balanced the budget, or something.

Modestly, I wiped the chalk dust from my fingertips.

‘And now let’s give Howard a nice big round of applause as he goes back to his desk.’

I didn’t put up any further fight. Chester. Howard. What’s in a name? I was a broken reed, ready to slip my head in a noose, or walk the plank, or do anything I was asked. Don’t get the wrong end of the stick. I am no wimp. I’ve smacked heads in my time. Young Chester Howard here has stuck up for himself in schools where the pudding plates go flying, and schools where, if you don’t watch yourself, someone’s infected teeth are in your leg, and schools where the staff need cattle prods.

But Walbottle Manor (Mixed)! Their sheer bloodcurdling niceness had defeated me, and I ran up the white flag.

Howard it was.

2
All goody-goody and old-fashioned

You wouldn’t believe the playground. Half of these goofballs were wandering round offering their last crisp to anyone who looked in the slightest bit peaky, and the rest were all skipping.

No kidding. They were skipping. Two rosy-cheeked milkmaids in pigtails were swinging this great long rope, and everyone else was jumping up and down, all thrilled to bits, waiting their turn.

Then, each time someone rushed in under the rope, everyone burst into song.

I stood on the steps and listened. First I heard:

Miss Tate bent down to pick a rose.

A rose so sweet and tender.

Alas! Alack! She bent too far,

And bang! went her suspender.

And then I heard:

Mandy Frost was a very good girl;

She went to church on Sunday

To pray to God to give her strength

To kiss the boys on Monday.

I turned to Joe. ‘Is this some kind of special day?’

He trotted out his puzzled look. ‘What do you mean?’

I didn’t quite know how to put it. ‘What I mean is, are you all pretending to be sweet little orphans, or something? Is this some sort of History Day?’

I wasn’t ringing his doorbell, you could tell.

‘History Day?’

‘You know. Like when all the girls dress up in pinafores, and everyone sits with their arms folded neatly on their desks, and the teacher pretends that it’s a hundred years ago.’

A light came on in his attic at last.

‘Oh! Like when we did our Victorian School Day?’

I shrugged.

‘Whatever. Something all goody-goody and old-fashioned, anyhow.’

He stared round the playground. In one corner, two of the bigger boys were putting their arms round a sobbing toddler who’d lost his pet marble, or something. By the porch, boys and girls were practising a hornpipe. (I am serious.) Next to the gates, a gaggle of merrymakers were doing a complicated clapping game. And all the rest were ambling around, smiling and waving to one another, or loyally waiting for friends outside the lavatories.

‘What I mean is,’ I said, ‘where are we? On the planet Zog?’

Joe’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, yes! That would be fun. Let’s both be visitors to the planet Zog, and you –’

I gave him my hardest killer stare. Who did this blintz-brain think I was? Some bedwetter, keen to play his Betsy-wetsy games?

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I think maybe it’s time that I explained something to you.’

But he’d clapped his hand to his mouth.

‘Oh, Howard,’ he told me. ‘It’ll have to wait till after break. Because I’ve just remembered I promised Miss Tate I’d help her cut the covers for our new How-to books.’

And just at that moment, the lady herself appeared on the steps.

‘Jo-ey!’ she warbled. ‘Jo-ey Gardener!’

‘Coming, Miss Tate!’ he trilled.

And he was off.

I slid my back down against the nearest wall and sank my head in my arms. Oh, just my luck. I’ve made my way in schools where the uniform is so itchy it brings you out in hives, and schools where you have to stand and pray five times a day, and schools where they make you do your work over and over again, until it’s right.

But never had I fetched up somewhere like this. Already I could hear the scuffling of anxious little feet. Nervously I looked up, and found myself encircled by worried faces.

‘Howard?’

‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s difficult for anyone on their first day.’

‘You’ll soon get used to us, honestly.’

‘Do you want to come and skip?’

I opened my mouth. I was about to speak. The first words were just rising to my lips when the bell rang.

Just as well . . .

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