Lottie Project Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  The Lottie Project

  School

  School

  Home

  Home

  Work

  Work

  Food

  Food

  Toys and Books

  Toys and Books

  Family

  Family

  Courtship

  Courtship

  Sunday

  Sunday

  Law and Order

  Law and Order

  Sickness

  Sickness

  Seaside

  Seaside

  Christmas

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781407045122

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  For Rupa Patel

  (author of the Jacqueline Wilson Quiz Book)

  and special thanks to everyone at

  Burscough Primary School

  THE LOTTIE PROJECT

  A CORGI YEARLING BOOK 978 0 440 86853 8

  First published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  Doubleday edition published 1997

  First Corgi Yearling edition published 1998

  This Corgi Yearling edition published 2008

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Jacqueline Wilson, 2007

  Illustrations copyright © Nick Sharratt, 2007

  The right of Jacqueline Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  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 publishers.

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  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  When my daughter Emma was little she was passionately interested in the Victorians. She begged me to play Victorian imaginary games with her. She always wanted to be the Lady of the House. I was generally the servant girl. I had to curtsy to her and say ‘Yes, my lady,’ and do whatever she commanded. You can see why Emma loved this game!

  When she got older I read Victorian books aloud to her while she drew endless pictures of Victorian ladies with bustles and button boots. We wrote a series of letters to each other, pretending to be Victorian schoolgirls. Emma wrote a long family saga herself called The Treadwells. It was much better than anything that I could have written at age nine or ten.

  Because of Emma’s enthusiasm for the Victorian age, I’d imagined that most children would find it an interesting period in history. When I’d go into schools to give talks I’d often see pictures of Queen Victoria pinned up on the wall above a special display of Victorian objects, white nighties and long drawers and washboards and blue medicine bottles and jet jewellery.

  ‘Oh, you’re doing the Victorians this term, you lucky things!’ I’d exclaim.

  The children would nearly always wrinkle their noses at me in astonishment.

  ‘We hate the Victorians. They are sooo boring!’

  So I got it into my head to write about a girl who thinks doing her Victorian project is going to be intensely boring. The working title of my story was Doing the Victorians – yuck! I decided that my Charlie would invent a very similar girl to herself living in late Victorian times. This Lottie had to go out to work as a nursery maid – and as Charlie does her research you can compare and contrast their lives.

  Most children will read the story to find out more about Charlie and her mum, and see how Charlie copes when Mum gets a new boyfriend. Charlie even gets a kind of boyfriend herself. But it would be wonderful if just a few readers get interested in the Lottie sections and decide that maybe the Victorians aren’t so boring after all!

  SCHOOL

  I knew exactly who I was going to sit next to in class. Easy-peasy, simple-pimple. It was going to be Angela, with Lisa sitting at the nearest table to us. I’m never quite sure if I like Lisa or Angela best, so it’s only fair to take turns.

  Jo said what if Angela and Lisa want to sit together with you behind or in front or at the side. I just smiled at her. I don’t want to sound disgustingly boastful but I’m the one Angela and Lisa are desperate to sit next to. Lots of the girls want to be best friends with me, actually. I’m just best friends with Lisa and Angela, but anyone can be in our special Girls’ Gang. Any girl. No boys allowed. That goes without saying. Even though I just did.

  But guess what happened that first day of term. We got this new teacher. We knew we wouldn’t be getting Mrs Thomas because when we broke up in the summer her tummy could barely fit behind her desk. Her tummy could barely fit behind her smock. You could see her tummy button through the material, like a giant press fastener.

  When I was a very little kid I used to think that’s how babies were born. They grew inside the mother and then when they were ready the mum pressed her tummy button and out they popped. I told Jo how I’d got it all sussed out. Don’t laugh. I was very little. Jo laughed. ‘Dream on, Charlie,’ she said. ‘If only it were that easy.’

  That’s my name, Charlie. OK, my full name is Charlotte Alice Katherine Enright, but nobody ever calls me that. Jo and Lisa and Angela and all the kids at school call me Charlie. Some of the boys call me Cake or Carrot Cake or Cakehole, but they’re just morons, though they think they’re dead original. (Note the initials of my name. Got it?) But right since I was born, all the way through nursery and primary, no-one’s ever called me Charlotte. Until this new teacher.

  Miss Beckworth. She was new so I thought she’d be young. When you get a new young teacher they’re often ever so strict the first few weeks just to show you who’s boss, and then they relax and get all friendly. Then you can muck about and do whatever you want.

  I love mucking about, doing daft things and being a bit cheeky and making everyone laugh. Even the teachers. But the moment I set eyes on Miss Beckworth I knew none of us were going to be laughing. She might be new but she certainly wasn’t young. She had grey hair and grey eyes and a grey and white blouse and a grey skirt and laced-up shoes, with a laced-up expression on her face to match. When she spoke her teeth were quite big and stuck out a bit, but I put all thought of Bugs Bunny imitations right out of my head.

  There are some teachers – just a few – who have YOU’D BETTER NOT MESS WITH ME! tattooed right across their foreheads. She frowned at me with th