Diamond 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

  About the Author

  Also by Jacqueline Wilson

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Diamond wasn’t always a star. Born to penniless parents who longed for a strong, healthy son, she was a dainty, delicate daughter – and a bitter disappointment.

  Discovering she has an extraordinary gift for acrobatics, Diamond uses her talent to earn a few pennies, but brings shame on her family. Then a mysterious, cruel-eyed stranger spots her performing, and makes a deal with her father. Diamond is sold for five guineas, and is taken to become an acrobat at Tanglefield’s Travelling Circus.

  The crowds adore Diamond, but life behind the velvet curtains is far from glamorous. Her wicked master forces Diamond to attempt ever more daring and dangerous tricks, until she is terrified to step into the ring. But there are true friends to be found at the circus, too: the gentle Mister Marvel; the kindly Madame Adeline; and the glorious Emerald Star, Tanglefield’s brand-new ringmaster, and Diamond’s heroine.

  When life at the circus becomes too dangerous to bear any longer, what will the future hold for Diamond? And will her beloved Emerald be a part of it?

  In memory of Joan Beswick, who was like a second mother to me

  MY NAME IS Diamond. I used to be called Ellen-Jane Potts, but my dear friend Hetty says it doesn’t matter a jot if you change your name. She has changed her name three times. She calls herself Emerald Star for all the shows – and now she has fashioned herself an emerald-green riding jacket and has shiny swashbuckling boots to stride about in. Oh, she looks such a picture! No wonder she has ‘Star’ for a name: she is the true star of the show. She is the cleverest girl in all the world.

  She is smiling now as I say this, going as red as her hair. She is writing down my story for me. I am a fool when it comes to printing and spelling because I have never been to school. Hetty has laboured hard teaching me, but without any real success. I can only write about a c-a-t sitting on a m-a-t, and so my life-story would be very limited without Hetty’s help.

  There was a cat that lived in Willoughby Buildings, along with us and all the other families – a big black creature of the night called Mouser. I don’t know about mice, but he certainly dined well on rats, of which there were plenty. Mouser was the only creature in Willoughby who went to sleep with a full stomach. Sometimes we were so hungry we almost considered dining on rats ourselves.

  But that was in the bad old days. Shall I get started on them? No, Hetty says I should simply tell it straight. She forgets that I am a bendy girl, so I can walk bent over like a crab and turn a back flic-flac on command! But I shall try to do my best to please her, because she is my dearest friend in all the world – and she is holding the pen.

  I was born in 1883, the fifth child of my mother, Lizzie Potts, and my father, Samuel. I was the second girl, and I’m afraid I was a bitter disappointment to my parents. I have a feeling my mother had been brought up to be a bad girl. Whenever we complained about our own lot, she would not speak of her childhood but shook her head at us and said, ‘You don’t know you’re born.’ This always struck me as a little odd, because of course I knew I’d been born, and my mother – and doubtless several of my siblings – had been a witness to the fact. Not my pa though. He always made himself scarce at such times.

  He stayed out all night while Ma was labouring, and sometimes the next night as well. He’d be down at the King’s Arms, celebrating the new baby – or drowning his sorrows, whichever way you want to look at it. Not that he needed an excuse to go to those establishments, or any other public house, for that matter. He was famous for his love of the drink – which is strange considering he was a patterer by profession and specialized in selling religious tracts and homilies against the demon drink.

  You don’t know what a patterer is, Hetty? There! You don’t know everything, for all your wonderful education. A patterer is like a pedlar, but he doesn’t sell toys and gimcracks, he sells cards and pamphlets and papers. He wanders from village to village, setting up in the middle of the street on market days and crying out his wares. I reckon you’d be good at that job, Hetty, seeing as you can come out with all the spiel and sweet-talk whenever you fancy.

  My pa specialized in little gelatine cards with gilt edges – ever so pretty, decorated with bluebirds and rosebuds and little angels. He bought them penny plain, and Ma coloured in the drawings: blue for the birds, red for the roses, pink for the cheeks and gold for the hair – dab dab dab, and there was another one done. It’s easy enough. Mary-Martha and I learned to do thirty an hour or thereabouts – you could say we were dab hands at it!

  As a single man, Pa had travelled up and down England calling out his wares. ‘Take the Lord Jesus into your heart and lead your life accordingly,’ he’d bellow. ‘Don’t forget the Sabbath. Bow your head in worship’ – though Pa himself spent Sunday lying in his lodging house till dinner time before crawling out of bed with a sore head, because even in those days, before all the troubles, he haunted all the alehouses and gin palaces his tracts warned against.

  One Sunday he met up with my mother. She’d been staying overnight in the same lodging house and I don’t doubt she had a sore head too. I always thought of Ma as old because she had such a careworn face and her tiny body was all skin and bone, but Pa said she was a beautiful, fresh young girl when he met her, with cheeks as rosy as the cherubs on his tracts, and long fair hair curling to her waist.

  Perhaps Pa would never have had the nerve to approach her if she’d been dressed up in all her finery, because he was a plain man with a great red nose like Punch, and he was a good fifteen years older than Ma to boot. But she was sitting hunched in a corner in her nightgown and shawl, weeping bitterly because some young man had treated her badly.

  Pa took pity on her, and it wasn’t long before she’d buried that fine head of hair in his shoulder. He patted her back with awkward tenderness. ‘There now, my girl. Old Sam will look after you and see you’re all right,’ he said, or something to that effect – and he was as good as his word at first.

  They made an odd couple, but Pa said they were as happy as two little lambs frisking in the meadow. That was his pet name for Ma. ‘Where’s my little lamb?’ he called when he came back from his pattering travels, and Ma would go flying into his arms.

  They rented their own little home: just two rooms in a big converted house, but Ma kept them spotlessly clean and stuck Pa’s tracts on one wall like a mosaic picture, making it look ever so pretty. She read the tracts each day too, pointing along with one finger and muttering aloud because she struggled with her reading like me.

  ‘Repent and praise the Lord,’ she said – and she did just that. Every Sunday she went along to the church at the end of the road and stood self-consciously at the back, not sure where to go or what to do, worried that the good churchgoers would point at her and the vicar cast her out – but instead they welcomed her eagerly. They gave her a hymn book, and as she had a good ear and a light, tuneful voice, she could soon praise the Lord for all she was worth.

  She begged Pa to go with her to church, but he always shook his head.

  ‘It’s not for me,