The Money, Stan, Big Lauren, and Me Read online

  For Rik Mason,

  who once inspired a street,

  and now inspires a whole world

  First published in Great Britain in 2011

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Joanna Nadin, 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Joanna Nadin to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 227 7 (paperback)

  978 1 84812 228 4 (ebook)

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Cover design by Simon Davis

  Cover illustrations by Sarah Kelly

  Contents

  Prologue

  Monday 23rd March

  Tuesday 24th March

  Wednesday 25th March

  Thursday 26th March

  Friday 27th March

  Saturday 28th March

  Sunday 29th March

  Monday 30th March

  Tuesday 31st March

  Wednesday 1st April

  Thursday 2nd April

  Friday 3rd April

  Saturday 4th April

  Sunday 5th April

  Monday 6th April

  Tuesday 7th April

  Wednesday 8th April

  Thursday 9th April

  Friday 10th April

  Saturday 11th April

  Sunday 12th April

  Monday 13th April

  Tuesday 14th April

  Wednesday 15th April

  Thursday 16th April

  Friday 17th April

  Saturday 18th April

  Sunday 27th September

  My World

  by Billy Grimshaw-Jones

  Year 6, St Laurence School

  My name is Billy Grimshaw-Jones. It used to be just Billy Grimshaw, but my mum got married to Dave last year and so now we’re double-barrelled, which Stan who is my little brother says makes us sound rich but we’re not really. We could have been if Mum had married say Shane Watts who is the Number 7 for Rovers and who lives in Rigby Mansions, but we live at 23 Brunel Street and Dave is a nurse and Mum is on the ticket desk at Jetways so we’re just average. But if we sell our house, which is 99.9 per cent likely according to Enderby Estate Agents but only 70 per cent likely according to Google, then we’re moving to 17 Mornington Road which has four bedrooms and an ensuite. We need an extra bedroom because Mum’s having a baby. It’s due to come out on the 30th of May which is in nine weeks and five days. Mum and Stan want a girl and Dave wants a boy. I’d rather have a puppy. My nan, who is seventy-six and who lives at 20 Beasley Street which is one road away from us, says we should get a cat because they are less bother and don’t need walking. This is because her cat who is ginger and called Tammy even though it is a boy doesn’t do any exercise. It does a lot of watching horse racing and Murder She Wrote. She did have a cat called Dolly but he died and is buried in a Walkers Prawn Cocktail crisps box in our back garden which is why Nan doesn’t want us to move. Also Nan says being near family is more important than an ensuite but Mum doesn’t agree. Nor does Lauren Hooten who is my best friend and who lives on Beasley Street too. She says all celebrities have ensuites, e.g. Victoria Beckham and Prince William. She read it in a magazine. She is always reading magazines. And watching Glee. We don’t watch Glee because it clashes with Man Versus Food which is on Sky TV and what happens is an American man called Adam Richman has to eat say 180 oysters in not very much time without being sick. It is Stan’s favourite programme and my second favourite after Mythbusters and Dave’s third favourite after Doctor Who and Stargate Atlantis. Mum says I’ll have to stop watching telly when I go to big school in September because I’ll have too much homework. But Lauren says last Wednesday she went round to see her cousin Gethin Davies who is in Year 9 and who once got a fork stuck in his hand, and he had done his homework before even The Story of Tracy Beaker which is on CBBC. Lauren knows everything about big school, e.g. you can’t call it big school you have to call it secondary or you will get your head flushed down the toilet. I would rather stay at St Laurence because even though Kyle Perry once stamped on my Leonardo, who is a Ninja Turtle and who is in charge when Splinter isn’t around, he has never flushed my head down the toilet. Or maybe I could not even go to school at all like Clara who is rich and in a wheelchair and is in Heidi which is Stan’s favourite book at the moment. She has a govarness which is like your own private teacher just for you, and the rest of the time she is just ill. If we were rich, like if Mum had married Shane Watts, maybe I’d have a govarness. I wish I was rich instead of just average.

  Everything has gone wrong, just like Nan’s friend Brenda Gilhooly said it would. She read it in my tea leaves after school, i.e. she saw a hat at the bottom of the Charles and Diana mug. Nan said it looked more like a tent to her which means a holiday, but Brenda said it was definitely a hat and that meant CHANGE. Nan said that didn’t definitely mean a BAD change, it could just be about the baby or moving house, but Brenda said the last time she saw a hat George Clooney left ER the next day and it was all downhill from there. Stan wanted his fortune read then, but he had Cup-a-Soup and Brenda said she can’t see anything in cream of vegetable.

  And when Mum picked us up I knew Brenda was right because Mum’s eyes were all red, which was clue number one. Nan said, ‘Hormones playing up, Jeanie? That’s what happens when you have babies.’ But Mum said it wasn’t her hormones and anyway she had already had two babies, i.e. me and Stan so she wasn’t completely stupid. Nan did a snorty noise but Mum didn’t say, ‘Why are you doing that noise?’ She said, ‘Come on, boys, into the car. And for heaven’s sake take those off, Stan.’ Because he was wearing Brenda’s glasses which are pink with a diamond on the side.

  But she didn’t tell us what was wrong in the car. Or even after tea, which was fishfingers, oven chips and peas, which was clue number two because we never have oven chips except on Fridays. She waited until Dave got back in the Ford Fiesta Zetec, which was at 5.53 p.m. according to my glow-in-the-dark digital watch, which is accurate to a nanosecond. Stan said, ‘Dad’s home’ even though Dave isn’t his genetic dad he is his stepdad, and switched the telly over for Man Versus Food. Only I was watching Mythbusters and Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman were about to prove whether or not you can shoot round corners so I turned it back and then Stan turned it over again because he said I could watch it on Plus One but he was already on Plus One because he was waiting for Dave. Then I was about to hit Stan with the remote control when Dave and Mum came in and Mum turned the telly off at the wall, which was clue number three. Stan said, ‘But Adam Richman is going to eat the world’s biggest pancake stack today!’ Only Mum said her news was more important than the world’s biggest pancake stack. Stan said nothing was more important than the world’s biggest pancake stack, but Dave said, ‘Enough, kiddo,’ so I knew for sure then that Brenda was right and whatever Mum was about to say was a change, and it was bad.

  Stan said, ‘Is it the baby? Has it got three legs like in that programme on the Discovery Channel? Or is it a boy?’ But Mum smiled then and said we didn’t have to worry because the baby was fine and definitely didn’t have three legs, but wasn’t definitely a girl or a boy. The thing was that Jetways, which is where she works at the ai
rport, is closing after the Easter holidays because of the recession, which is when no one has enough money, so she wouldn’t have a job any more. Except Mum didn’t say ‘closing’ she said ‘going into liquidation’ which she explained wasn’t like water but just shutting down.

  And that’s when I could feel it: the electricity in my tummy. It hadn’t been there for ages. Not since the time I thought Sean Hawkes was dead only it turned out he had fainted. Because after that nothing really bad had happened.

  Not until now.

  Dave said, ‘It just means a few cutbacks here and there. It’s not the end of the world.’

  But he’s wrong. It is the end of the world. OUR world anyway. Because without Mum’s job we won’t just be average.

  We’ll be poor.

  I used to count glow stars when the electricity came in my tummy. Fifty of them on my ceiling. But Big Lauren said no one at secondary school has glow stars they have posters of Katy Perry and Jessie J and I should take them down if I didn’t want to get beaten up, so I did. Instead I just lay on the bed on the Spider-Man duvet and said the shipping forecast. Mr A M Feinstein, who is Nan’s friend, and is from Berlin only now he lives on Beasley Street, taught me it. It is on the radio. It divides the sea around Britain into areas with funny names and tells boats where the weather is bad, e.g. ‘Dogger, Fisher, German Bight – moderate to calm.’ German Bight used to be called Heligoland which I think sounds better, like it is an island in a comic for instance where everyone has jet boots and X-ray eyes, but Mr Feinstein says it is just a big bit of grey water really.

  Anyway I said all the areas in order three times but the feeling didn’t go away, so I tried to think of things that made me happy, like Dr Singh who is our doctor and who has big hands told me to. So I thought about 17 Mornington Road and about the wallpaper in my new bedroom which isn’t spacemen like here it’s blue striped which is more grown-up and the staircase which is twenty-seven steps and the gold taps in the bathroom which aren’t real gold but that isn’t the point.

  But then I had another bad thought which was if Mum doesn’t have a job then we won’t be able to move to 17 Mornington Road at all. So I asked her when she came upstairs and sat on my bed. I didn’t look at her because I had tears in my eyes and no one at secondary school cries according to Big Lauren. I just stared really hard at where Stan had picked off a spaceman’s helmet on the wallpaper and said, ‘Are we still moving?’ She said, ‘It’s complicated, Billy, love. There’s not so many jobs out there right now – not for pregnant women anyway,’ which meant no. I said, ‘I wish you weren’t pregnant then or I wish the baby DID have three legs or a tail or something because then it would be a phenomenon and we could be on telly and be millionaires.’ Mum said, ‘You don’t mean that, Billy.’ I said, ‘Yes I do.’ Mum said, ‘There’s more to life than money, Billy.’

  But there isn’t. Not at our school anyway.

  You can’t shoot round corners. Big Lauren told me on the way to school. Dave said he would give me a lift with Stan because Mum was already at work, but I said no thanks because Stan is wearing a white glove and hat like Michael Jackson again. Dave said Stan can wear a white glove and hat if he likes, even though he isn’t black or a pop star, it’s all about expressing himself. I said if he expressed himself at secondary school he’d get his head flushed down the toilet. Dave said, ‘Don’t believe everything that Lauren tells you.’ I said I didn’t. Like when she said she’d seen a vampire I knew THAT wasn’t true. But I told Dave that Gethin says Dane Luton in Year 7 got it done to him just because he had the wrong trainers on. Dave said, ‘Christ on a bike,’ which is supposed to be 10p in the swear box, but I didn’t say anything because I was too busy thinking about being poor and having the wrong trainers.

  When we got to the school gates I told Big Lauren about Jetways closing. She said it is like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Mr Bucket loses his job and they are even too poor to have cabbage soup. I said Dave still had his job even though he is a nurse and we still had Cheerios for breakfast this morning but she said, ‘For now.’ Big Lauren said she knows for a fact that Kyle Perry who is on free dinners only has crisps for breakfast because she has seen him outside Mr Patel’s with his mum and he has a packet of pickled onion flavour Monster Munch and his mum has a Benson and Hedges cigarette. Plus they don’t shop in a normal supermarket like, e.g. Sainsbury’s, they shop in Discount Deals which is where you don’t get beans with Heinz on them they just say Beans and they don’t taste right. I said I don’t really like beans I prefer spaghetti letters. Big Lauren says they don’t have those in Discount Deals at all.

  Then it got worse because when we got into class Miss Cafferkey gave us our essays back. Mine had a C-minus on it which is better than Kyle Perry who got a D, because his essay said he is related to Wayne Rooney which isn’t true. But not as good as Stephen Warren who got an A for writing all about when he gets to watch Rovers training because his uncle is the linesman and when he grows up he wants to be an international football star or maybe a linesman too. Miss Cafferkey said if I had spent more time focusing on the things I do rather than on how much they cost I would have got a better mark. Plus I spelt ‘governess’ wrong and forgot to use enough commas. I asked if I could do it again, but she said no because they are all being sent to our new teachers at secondary school so they know about us and about our abilities. And then I could feel the electricity again because I knew my essay was a lie because we won’t be moving and Mum won’t be working at Jetways and we won’t be average at all and then they will put me in a class for poor children and I will get my head flushed down the toilet for sure. Miss Cafferkey said, ‘Do you need to go and see Miss Butterworth, Billy? You look a bit peaky.’ But I said no thanks because Miss Butterworth who is the school secretary and also the nurse would ring Mum. And also because I had had my idea.

  It just popped into my head, which Mr Braithwaite, who is our headteacher and is called Wing Nuts because his ears stick out like wing nuts, says is a lightbulb moment. Like suddenly the words were shining all bright and lit up in front of me. And the words spelt, Make Your Fortune, Billy. Because then it won’t matter when Mum loses her job. Because I’ll be able to buy 17 Mornington Road and a puppy AND the right trainers.

  So that is what I’m going to do. I’m going to make my fortune.

  Stan wants to call the baby Taylor. He said it at breakfast when we were having our Cheerios, which are still actual Cheerios and not pretend ones and there is still a half a box left so it is all right for now. Mum said she’d add it to the baby’s name list but I can tell she isn’t keen because she looked at Dave and so I did too and I saw him roll his eyes. This is because Stan has already added five names to the list and they are Jaden, Harper, Tallulah, Cheryl and Heidi and Dave said no child of his is being named after a goatherd. I said it was inside Mum so she should get to decide but Mum said we’re all in the family so we all get a say and did I want to add anything. I said no thanks and Mum looked at Dave again but he didn’t roll his eyes this time he just shrugged, and I don’t know what that means.

  When I told Big Lauren after school she said I was mental and I should have said Lady. This is because Lady Gaga is her favourite celebrity of all time at the moment. Last week it was JLS and before that it was Leona Lewis. But I said Lady isn’t really a name plus her new hamster is called Lady and it would be weird having a baby and a hamster called the same thing. Lauren said maybe she could call the hamster Ashley again like the last one who is lost under a floorboard in the dining room, but I said that’s OK because what if Ashley 1 came back? And anyway Mum isn’t keen on Ashley because it’s unisex, i.e. it can be a boy or a girl, e.g. like Lesley or Charlie. Lauren said Billy is unisex and I said it wasn’t and she said it was because of Billie Piper even though it’s spelt wrong. And then I didn’t want to talk about names any more so we looked at her magazines which are all about celebrities who are kissing other celebrities or have stopped kissing other celebrities and
got fat, and make-up and diets. Lauren is on a diet again. She says she has to lose a stone before secondary school or no one will talk to her. I said I would talk to her but she said if I do then I will probably get my head flushed down the toilet. Everything seems to end up with my head getting flushed down the toilet. Lauren said that’s what puberty is all about. I haven’t done puberty yet because I am the second youngest in our year, but Kyle Perry has started because he has some hair down there, and so has Kelly Thomas because she wears a bra and she is only ten. Big Lauren wants to wear a bra. So does Stan. He is always trying on Mum’s when she’s getting dressed. I said he had to stop it because what if someone finds out and beats him up or beats me up? Mum said I was being dramatic again and it’s fine for him to experiment, but that wearing a bra isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and he is lucky to be a boy and not to have to put up with all that shenanigans. This is because the baby has made her be sick every morning and also she has to wee at least three times in the night, but Stan said he wouldn’t mind.

  Sometimes I wish he wasn’t my brother. Even though it was him who found the competition.

  It was on page ten underneath a picture of Vanessa Hudgens in a bikini. All you had to do was say where Paris was, was it in a) France b) Germany or c) America and you could win £10,000 or a bottle of pink nail varnish and I know it is in a) France because Big Lauren says Paris is the romantic capital of the world because they speak French not English, and she is getting married there or maybe in the registry office on Park Road. And then I had the idea which was that we could enter the competition and win our fortune. Lauren said she was always entering competitions to win stuff and all she had got so far was a Rainbow Magic fairies book, so we would probably only get the nail varnish if we were lucky. But Stan said if we entered all the competitions in all the magazines then we would win something for sure.