My Mum Tracy Beaker Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Have you Read them All

  Check Out Jacqueline Wilson’s Brilliant Website

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  ‘I look very like my mum (apart from my glasses) – little, with black eyes and mad curly hair – but Mum’s loud and funny and isn’t scared of anything. I’m much quieter and I worry about things.’

  Jess and Tracy Beaker are the perfect team. Jess thinks Tracy is the best mum ever (even when Tracy shouts at her teachers). Tracy is fun and daring, but she also works hard to give Jess the family home she desperately wanted when growing up in the Dumping Ground. Their flat might be a bit mouldy but it’s their happy home.

  But when Sean Godfrey – Tracy’s rich new boyfriend – comes onto the scene, Jess is worried things are going to change. What if Sean wants to turn Jess’s brilliant mum into a new person altogether? Sean’s superstar mansion and fancy cars might have been Tracy’s childhood dream, but maybe the Beakers’ perfect home was right in front of them all along …

  For Nick Sharratt

  Best illustrator ever – and best friend too

  HAVE YOU HEARD of my mum Tracy Beaker? You’ll know her if you live in Marlborough Tower. The whole of the Duke Estate knows my mum. Everyone knows her – in the shops and down the market, in the library and the fried-chicken place and the chippy and at my school.

  When we first moved I called our block Marble Tower by mistake. That made Mum crack up laughing.

  ‘You make it sound like a palace!’ she said, and blew a raspberry. ‘I wish!’

  The towers aren’t made of shiny white marble, they’re just ordinary brick, and near the ground they’re covered with graffiti tags and very rude words. Everyone says the Duke Estate is a rubbish place. Our tower is often ankle-deep in real rubbish, and the boys keep setting fire to the waste bins, which doesn’t help. But it’s our first proper home together, just the two of us. Before that we lived with Cam, but lots of big girls live there too so it got a bit squashed. Cam’s a foster mum. She looks after them all. She looked after us as well, but Mum wanted us to have a proper home, just her and me.

  Marlborough Tower is a dump outside but we’ve made our flat really lovely. Mum painted the living-room walls red so it looks really cosy, and got a purple sofa with red cushions. Mum sits at one end, I sit at the other. Sometimes I put my feet on Mum’s lap and she tickles them.

  We’ve got a television and a bookcase, because we both love reading, and on the wall we’ve got a picture of a mother cuddling her daughter. We found it at a boot fair for only a couple of pounds and we both loved it straight away. It’s by an eighteenth-century French painter – a woman, which makes it even more special. The mother and daughter look a bit like us, with our curly dark hair.

  We have all sorts of great boot-fair and junk-shop finds. We have mother-and-baby china dogs going for a walk along the windowsills, and a little cluster of china ladies with balloons chatting together on the side table. Sometimes we pretend they have a sing-song and warble ‘Feed the Birds’ from Mary Poppins. There’s a pretend parrot in a cage, three plaster ducks flying up the wall, and little bluebirds kissing beak-to-beak on top of the bookcase.

  The kitchen is yellow, so it feels sunny even if it’s pouring outside. We have Toby jugs all along the windowsill, grinning at us. We got them cheap because most are cracked and a couple have lost their handles. We keep spoons in one, forks in another and knives in a third. During the summer I pick daisies and dandelions to put in our lady Toby jug, and in the winter there are plastic daffodils. On top of the kitchen cupboard we have a circle of tiny teddy bears having a picnic around a huge jar of honey, and a very fat potbellied teddy clings to the fridge handle.

  Our bathroom is green. I used to spend ages kneeling beside the bath playing mermaids with my old Barbie dolls. I wrapped silver foil around their legs to look like fish tails. I have my own bedroom, though it’s not much bigger than a cupboard. It’s blue like the sky, and crammed with all my old toys and cuddly teddies. Mum is brilliant at winning them down the amusement arcade. Cam says I’m spoiled. I know I am, and it’s lovely.

  I don’t always sleep in my bedroom though. If I’m worried about something I go into Mum’s bed. I take Woofer with me. He’s my favourite cuddly toy. He’s a bit droopy now and doesn’t look much like a dog any more, but I still think he’s special. We’re not allowed real dogs on the Duke Estate, worst luck.

  When Mum first got fostered by Cam, she painted her bedroom walls black so it looked like a bat cave. Mum’s always been a bit weird. I’m so glad that her room now is a deep rose colour. She often has rose candles burning so it smells like roses too. Her bed’s bigger than mine, and she has a pretty white bedcover made of broderie anglaise – that’s material with little holes in the shape of flowers. When I curl up with Mum, I run my finger along the pattern.

  So, you see, our flat really is like a little palace, though it’s a bit damp. Mum’s been down the council heaps of times about it, but they never do anything. She has to keep repainting the walls herself to hide the dark patches. The windows always get covered in condensation too. Mum made me Puddle Monitor, so I have to whip round every morning and wipe all the sills with a j-cloth. They go black and gungy if you don’t. I have to mop every paw of the china dogs too, which takes a while. But we’re on the fourteenth floor, so there are fantastic views. We pretend we’re seagulls flying high in the sky. We spread our arms and make that funny squawking noise.

  We once saw Tyrone way down below us. He didn’t look big and scary at all, he looked very small and silly.

  ‘OK, little seagull, let’s poop on him!’ Mum said to me.

  We didn’t really, it was just pretend, but it was fun. We like it at Marlborough Tower. Like I said, everyone knows us. Well, they know my mum, and so they know me too. I look very like my mum (apart from my glasses) – little, with black eyes and mad curly hair – but Mum’s loud and funny and isn’t scared of anything. I’m much quieter and I worry about things.

  ‘You’re a girl in a million,’ says Mum. ‘You’re my girl.’

  That’s what a lot of people call me. Tracy Beaker’s girl. They don’t always remember my name. I’m Jess. Jessica Bluebell Camilla Beaker. Jessica because Mum just liked the name. Bluebell because that was the name of Mum’s doll when she was very little. Camilla because that’s the name of my foster granny, Cam, and she’s lovely. And Beaker because that’s my mum’s name.

  I don’t see much of my dad, but he knows my mum too, obviously. People know my mum at all the other places she lived before I was born, and all the places she worked, and all the different homes she was in when she was a little girl. My mum was in care until Cam came along and fostered her. I think there was once an actual television programme about her. Yes, my mum used to be a little bit famous!

  My mum’s boyfriend actually is famous. Well, he is if you’re into football. He’s called Sean Godfrey – does that ring any bells? You know, he’s that big guy with the fancy hairdo and the six-pack and the flash clothes. He used to p