My Mum Tracy Beaker Read online

  Hand in hand we went down the corridor and out through the doors. Mr Smith, the school caretaker, was sweeping up rubbish. He saw Mum’s fierce face and the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  ‘Oh dear, have you been a naughty girl, Jess Beaker?’ he said, shaking his head and clucking, pretending to be shocked. He was just teasing. He’s a gentle, smiley man who’s friends with everyone.

  I gave him a wobbly smile. Mum ignored him. She clung onto my hand and we walked quickly down the street, not speaking. I kept glancing up at her anxiously. She saw, and tried to give me a smile, but hers was wobbly too.

  We were almost running now. My forehead throbbed and my knees stung, but we were both desperate to get home. Then, when we thought we’d made it, we couldn’t use either lift. One broke yesterday and the engineers were still struggling to fix it. The other had been working OK that morning, but now someone had deliberately jammed it between floors. So we had to walk up the stairs. Fourteen flights.

  It took us a long, long, long time. Especially as we came across Mrs Alfassi sitting on the third-floor steps, gasping. She’s always been big, but now she’s even bigger because she’s going to have a baby. She can’t speak much English yet, and we don’t know her language, but it didn’t matter. Mum heaved her up as carefully as she could, and we took an arm each and helped her up the stairs to the sixth floor.

  Then we found old Mrs Reynolds from the ninth floor struggling up the steps with a bulging Lidl carrier in either hand. We carried them for her, and she gave me a mini Bounty bar from her big handbag. I don’t actually like coconut but it would have been rude to refuse.

  And when we reached the eleventh floor, there was our friend Fadwa trying to carry her little boy and his scooter, so Mum took him and I took his scooter – and had a little go on it as we walked along to their flat on the thirteenth. I had to bend right down because it’s a very small scooter, but it was good fun, even though it made my knees start bleeding again.

  ‘It’s like we’re going up the Faraway Tree,’ I said, dabbing at them quickly. ‘We might meet Moon-Face or Silky the fairy next.’

  Mum smiled properly then, and I hoped she’d calmed down – but when we reached our flat she took me to the bathroom and looked at my big bump and my bloody knees, and screwed up her face as if she was going to burst into tears too, even though Mum never cries.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum! They don’t really hurt that much now. I don’t mind,’ I said, putting my arms round her.

  ‘You poor little kid,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Maybe we should take you to A and E to check you haven’t got concussion or blood poisoning.’

  ‘I’m fine, Mum. Really,’ I insisted.

  ‘Well, I suppose it would be a bit daft to trail all the way downstairs and get the bus to the hospital and wait five hours, and then come back and climb all the way up here all over again,’ said Mum. ‘I’d better be Nurse Beaker then.’

  She sat me on the toilet while she bathed my bumpy head with cold water, and then carefully mopped my knees with soap and hot water to get all the dirt out.

  ‘I’d better wash my mouth out with soap while I’m at it,’ she said. ‘I went a bit over the top with your Miss Oliver, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ I said. ‘You were awful! Mum, people don’t really wash their mouths out with soap, do they?’ My tongue curled up in my mouth at the very thought. ‘Doesn’t it taste disgusting?’

  ‘That’s the point. My teacher did it to me once when I was really cheeky. It tasted awful, but I didn’t let on to Mrs Vomit Bagley. It frothed all over my lips, so I licked them and said, “Yummy, yummy, yummy,” like it was a big treat. It didn’t half annoy her.’

  ‘Didn’t Mike go and tell the teacher off?’ Mike worked at the children’s home where Mum lived. He was the care worker she liked best.

  ‘I didn’t tell him. He’d have gone nuts if he’d heard what I said to Mrs Vomit Bagley,’ said Mum. ‘But don’t you worry, Jess – you can say even worse things to Miss Oliver, and I’ll still come and stick up for you. I just want to be the best mum ever for you.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, hugging her. Mum’s own mum, my Granny Carly, wasn’t around much when she was young. She’s not around much now. Last year she even forgot my birthday. Cam’s like my real granny. She never, ever forgets. ‘You are the best mum ever.’ I keep having to tell Mum this, but I don’t mind, because it’s the truth.

  She pulled a face. ‘Sorry I embarrassed you, yelling at Miss Oliver. I was just so mad about that big bruiser. Wait till I get hold of him. Tyler, isn’t it?’

  ‘Tyrone.’

  ‘He doesn’t live in Marlborough, does he?’

  ‘No, he lives in Devonshire, but you can’t have a go at him, Mum. He’s got two big brothers, and his mum’s much bigger than you and ever so tough,’ I warned her.

  ‘I’m not scared of them,’ she said.

  ‘I’m scared of them. They’d really beat you up. Then what would I do?’

  ‘I’d beat them up worse,’ said Mum, her chin jutting.

  ‘Oh, Mum.’

  ‘And I’ll beat up Miss Oliver too if she doesn’t look after you when you’re at school,’ said Mum, but I hoped she was just teasing now.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘I wish you wouldn’t always have a go at my teachers, Mum. I quite like Miss Oliver.’

  ‘She looks like a mean old bat to me,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t exactly make a fuss of you, does she? Weren’t you moaning that she never puts any of your paintings up on the wall?’

  ‘She put my painting up today, when you were having a go at her. She stuck it right up on the wall for everyone to see!’

  ‘Oh no! I wish I’d seen it! What was it of?’

  ‘You and me,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Jess!’ Mum looked really upset. ‘If I hadn’t been in such a royal strop, then you’d have shown me. Why do I always have to lose my flipping temper, eh?’

  ‘Perhaps you can’t help it, Mum. You’ve got Anger Issues,’ I said.

  She gave me a look, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. But then she burst out laughing. ‘OK. Well, I’m going to have to deal with them, aren’t I? I promise I won’t lose my temper like that again, OK?’

  I stared at her. ‘Yeah, right,’ I said. Mum can’t help losing her temper. She’s famous for it.

  But the next day she enrolled for kick-boxing lessons at Sean Godfrey’s gym.

  ‘It’ll give me an outlet for my Anger Issues,’ she said.

  And that’s how Sean Godfrey became her boyfriend.

  MY MUM’S BEEN going out with Sean Godfrey for the last three months. I keep telling myself that it’s not that big a deal. Mum’s had lots of boyfriends. One at a time, of course.

  ‘I’d never two-time anyone,’ she says. ‘I don’t play games like that.’

  She brings them home to meet me before it gets serious. It’s like I’m her mum, and have to give my approval! I haven’t actually liked any of them much. To be honest, I mostly can’t work out what she sees in them.

  It’s easy enough to work out what they see in Mum. She’s great fun – she always makes people laugh. She’s not exactly pretty, and she wears dead casual clothes – mostly jeans and T-shirts, but with red glitter high-tops so she looks very sparkly. They’re her lucky boots. When one pair wears out she buys another.

  Mum’s favourite film is The Wizard of Oz. Have you seen it? They often show it on television at Christmas. It’s the one about Dorothy and her little dog, Toto. It’s filmed in black and white at first, and then there’s a hurricane and they get blown away to Munchkinland, and it’s so colourful there it makes you blink. Mum’s great at singing the Munchkin song, and she does a brilliant Wicked Witch of the West cackle. Dorothy wears sparkly red shoes and – spoiler! – at the very end she clicks her heels together and says, ‘There’s no place like home,’ and then she is home.

  When Mum is bored with her date, she clicks her own red boots together. She always gets bored with h