Dancing the Charleston Read online

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  Jacqueline Wilson wrote her first novel when she was nine years old, and she has been writing ever since. She is now one of Britain’s bestselling and most beloved children’s authors. She has written over 100 books and is the creator of characters such as Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather. More than forty million copies of her books have been sold.

  As well as winning many awards for her books, including the Children’s Book of the Year, Jacqueline is a former Children’s Laureate, and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame.

  Jacqueline is also a great reader, and has amassed over 20,000 books, along with her famous collection of silver rings.

  Find out more about Jacqueline and her books at JacquelineWilson.co.uk

  To Ed and Jolyon of Pickering and Chatto

  I think you’ve been dreaming, girl.

  1

  Maggie was Queen of the playground on Monday, showing all the girls how to do this new dance, the Charleston. Her big sister went to Hailbury Town Hall on Saturday nights and came back with all the latest crazes.

  ‘You flap your arms around and kick up your legs and pull this silly face while you’re doing it,’ said Maggie, demonstrating.

  We all tried to copy her, while the boys jeered. I knew I was hopeless at dancing and probably looked like a demented hen as I flapped away, but I saw Peter Robinson watching me. He was smiling.

  When Maggie and I walked out of school arm in arm, he was watching again. We tapped and kicked our way down School Lane, and he whistled after us. We both tossed our heads and didn’t look round, though my cheeks were burning and I knew I’d gone candyfloss pink.

  ‘Peter Robinson’s sweet on you,’ said Maggie.

  ‘No, you’re the one he likes,’ I said, though I was secretly sure he was whistling at me.

  I didn’t know whether I liked him or not. Aunty would say he was a bit of a lout, with his home-cut hair and his frayed shirt and his clumsy boots, but then she’d say that about nearly all the boys at our school. She would also say it was nonsense to start liking boys at my age. I tended to agree with her – but Peter Robinson did have a nice smile.

  When Maggie and I turned the corner I glanced round quickly and gave him a little wave.

  ‘Mona!’ said Maggie as we went up Market Street. ‘You’re just encouraging him.’

  We walked like soldiers: a charge past Mr Samson the butcher’s shop because we hated seeing the rows of dead birds hanging above his door, their beaks dripping blood; a quick march past Mr Thomas the greengrocer and Mr Slade the ironmonger and Old Molly’s general stores because they didn’t interest us; then a sudden halt outside Mr Berner’s toyshop.

  He sold many other things too – tobacco and newspapers and all kinds of basic household goods that Old Molly forgot to stock nowadays – and on the shelves behind his counter he kept jars of sweets, though we rarely had a penny between us for two ounces of fruit drops or sherbet lemons or banana toffees.

  It was the toys in his window that always made us pause. It wasn’t a patch on his glorious Christmas selection, when he stocked dolls as big as real babies with their own cots, and prams you could push along, and a Noah’s Ark with a lift-off lid and pair after pair of wooden animals – elephants the size of our fists, all the way down to a couple of minute ladybirds with black dots on their glossy red backs.

  Still, today there was a toy yacht to sail across the village pond, a spinning top all the colours of the rainbow, a skipping rope with red handles, net bags of marbles, and two dolls in floral dresses, one with yellow hair, one with brown.

  Maggie and I spent a good five minutes discussing the merits of the dolls, and whether we preferred the blonde one or the dark one, though our chances of buying either were nil. Maggie didn’t have any proper dolls, just a very grubby bolster that she insisted was her baby, Mary-Ann. She had to fight to maintain maternal rights over Mary-Ann because she had younger sisters who wanted to share her.

  ‘You’re soft in the head, Maggie Higgins,’ said her mother. ‘A great girl of ten playing with dollies! If you fancy doing a bit of mothering, then lug your baby brother around and feed and change the little beast.’

  She didn’t actually say beast, she said an incredibly rude word that made my eyes pop. Aunty says Mrs Higgins is rough and common and she wishes I wouldn’t play with her Maggie all the time. I like Mrs Higgins. She shouts at all her children and calls them rude names, but she gives them lots of cuddles too, and she tosses the little ones in the air and makes them squeal in delight.

  As always, when we got to Maggie’s tumbledown cottage at the end of Rook Green, I stopped off to say hello to Mrs Higgins. She gave me a big kiss on the cheek as well as Maggie, and cut us generous slices of bread and dripping.

  We rarely had such a treat at home – we didn’t have roasts on Sundays to make the dripping from. Aunty said it wasn’t worth it just for the two of us. Besides, she said bread and dripping was common, just for cottage folk. We lived in a cottage too, but when I said this to Aunty she gave me a slap and told me off for cheeking her.

  She’d have liked a niece like Curly Locks, sitting on a cushion and sewing a fine seam, working alongside her but only speaking when spoken to. I’ve got coal-black hair that won’t hold a curl, no matter how often Aunty twists it up with rags. I can’t sit still for five minutes indoors – not unless I’ve got a book to read, and Aunty thinks reading stories a waste of time.

  I hate sewing, which exasperates Aunty no end. She’s a dressmaker and sews exquisitely. All kinds of grand ladies wore Aunty’s dresses, even Minor Royalty. I don’t know who Minor Royalty is, but she makes Aunty very proud: she whispers her name the way people murmur Jesus Christ in church.

  Nowadays Aunty sews garments for elderly folk because the fashions have changed. She disapproves of the short skirts that show off the young ladies’ ankles – sometimes even their knees. ‘Call themselves ladies!’ she says, sniffing.

  She’s running out of old ladies now – they keep getting ill and dying. She mostly sews for Lady Somerset, who doesn’t pay very much for her clothes because we live rent-free on her estate. Aunty and I don’t have roasts – we don’t have steak pies or chicken or chops either. I’m only sent to Mr Samson’s for half a pound of his cheapest mince, or a little bit of liver or, worst of all, tripe.

  If Lady Somerset is late paying her bill, Aunty makes me go and ask Mr Samson if he has any bones for our dog, when any fool knows we don’t have a dog, much as I’d love one. Aunty makes soup by boiling up the bones with a few onions and carrots and some pearl barley. It tastes quite good, but it makes the whole cottage smell, and Aunty worries that the reek will get into all the fine materials stored on shelves in her workroom. We have to have the windows wide open on soup days, even in winter.

  The Higgins family don’t have much money for food either, especially as there are so many of them, but they always have bacon because they keep a pig in their back garden, and fresh eggs from their chickens. They sometimes have pheasant and rabbit and trout too, as Mr Higgins and Maggie’s oldest