Lottie Project Read online

  I thought I might be in dead trouble. Miss Beckworth was such a funny old-fashioned teacher. I didn’t know what she might do to punish you. Maybe she had a cane tucked up her skirt and she’d whip it out and whack me one.

  But all she did was crumple up my poem and say, ‘I don’t think this is quite Emily Dickinson standard, Charlotte. Now write me a proper poem please.’

  I decided she maybe wasn’t such a bad old stick after all – so I tried hard with my poem. I decided to be a bit different. I chose to write about a tube, because they’re underground trains, aren’t they, and it was all about the dark in the tunnels and how that weird voice that says ‘Mind the gap’ could be the voice of the Tunnel Monster.

  Jamie peered rudely over my shoulder. ‘You’re writing rubbish,’ he sneered.

  ‘Yours is the real rubbish,’ I snapped back, reading his pathetic twee twoddle about the Train going through the Rain, in the Midst of the Storm, the Train will keep you Warm . . . Yuck!

  But when Miss Beckworth walked round the class to see what we’d written so far she said he’d made a Good Attempt. And do you know what she said about my poem?

  ‘Try to stick to the subject, Charlotte.’

  That was it!

  ‘Told you you were writing rubbish,’ said Jamie.

  So I put down my pen and didn’t write another word. I had Angela and Lisa and all the other girls in hysterics in the cloakrooms after lunch doing my Miss Beckworth imitation. Even back in class I just had to put my front teeth over my bottom lip to have all the girls in giggles.

  ‘Settle down, please,’ said Miss Beckworth sharply. ‘Now, History. I thought this term we’d do the Victorians.’

  I ask you! Who wants to study the stuffy old Victorians? Well, guess. Jamie Teacher’s Pet Edwards.

  Miss Beckworth began telling us about the Victorians, starting off with Queen Victoria herself – that fat little waddly Queen with the pudding face who said, ‘We are not amused.’ Well, I wasn’t amused either, especially when Miss Beckworth started on about the Queen Vic pub down the road and Albert Park and how she lived in these old Victorian mansion flats, and did any of us live in a Victorian home by any chance?

  I slumped to one side with the boredom of all this just as Jamie stuck his hand up so violently I very nearly got two fingers impaled up my nostrils.

  ‘I live in a Victorian house, Miss Beckworth,’ he said, showing off like mad. ‘In Oxford Terrace.’

  I sat up straight. I knew he was a right little posh nob – but I had no idea he lived in one of those huge grand houses in Oxford Terrace, all steps and little lion statues and incy-wincy balconies as if the people who live there might come and do a Royal Family and wave down at you.

  Oxford Terrace is on our way home from the town. Sometimes when Jo and I are trailing back with our Sainsbury’s bags cutting grooves in our hands we make up stuff and we sometimes play we live in Oxford Terrace and we’re Lady Jo and Lady Charlie and we have champagne for breakfast and we go for a workout in a posh club every day and then we have a light lunch some-place snobby and then we shop until we drop, going flash flash flash with our credit cards, and then we eat out and go dancing in nightclubs and chat up film stars and rock stars and football players but we just tease them and then jump into our personal stretch limousine and whizz home to our five-storey half-million mini-palace in Oxford Terrace.

  ‘You live in Oxford Terrace???’ I said.

  Even Miss Beckworth seemed surprised. ‘Do you live in a flat there, James?’

  ‘No, we’ve got the whole house,’ said Jamie airily.

  ‘Well, perhaps you can help us understand what life was like in a big Victorian house, James.’ Miss Beckworth rummaged amongst a whole box of books about the Victorians. She pounced on something about Victorian houses and held up a picture of a Victorian parlour. ‘I don’t suppose your house looks much like this inside, though, James?’

  ‘Actually my mum and dad have this real thing about the Victorians and they’ve tried to make the house as authentic as possible, so we’ve got stuff like William Morris wallpaper and Arts and Crafts tiles – though we’ve got ordinary modern things like televisions and computers and stuff.’

  I felt I was sitting next to Little Lord Fauntleroy. He carried on in this sickening fashion for ages until eventually even Miss Beckworth got tired of it.

  ‘Thank you very much, James. If anyone wants to know more about Victorian houses then you’re obviously a mine of information. Now, we’ll be studying the Victorians all this term in class, but I want you all to work on your own special project at home too.’

  I groaned. I hate home projects. ‘You don’t sound ultra-enthusiastic, Charlotte,’ said Miss Beckworth.

  ‘Well. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know anything about the Victorians. Not like some people,’ I said, glaring at Jamie.

  ‘I’ll copy a whole lot of suggestions for topics on the board. See if you can get your famously defective eyes to focus on them,’ said Miss Beckworth briskly. ‘It might be worth your while. I intend to award a prize for the best project at the end of term.’

  So I copied out all her suggestions:

  I didn’t fancy any of them.

  ‘Can we do more than one topic, Miss Beckworth,’ said You-know-who. ‘Can we do them all if we want?’

  ‘Yes, if you like,’ said Miss Beckworth.

  He was quite sickening in his enthusiasm, grabbing all sorts of stuff from the book box, though he’s probably got his own private library in his Victorian mansion.

  ‘Here, it’s not fair, you’re bagging all the best books,’ I said, trying to snatch at a book on Victorian hospitals that looked as if it might be promisingly gory.

  ‘OK, OK. Here’s one specially for you,’ said Jamie – and he bungs me this book on Victorian domestic servants! ‘Know your place,’ he goes.

  I was about to bash him on his big head with the servant book but Miss Beckworth got narky and told us to settle down and start the research for our projects with the books we had in our hands. So I was stuck with the servant book.

  I flipped through it furiously – and then stopped. There was a photo of this girl about my age. She even looked a bit like me, skinny and pale. It was a black-and-white photo so it was hard to make out if her hair was red too. It was long, like mine, but scraped back tight behind her ears, with a little white cap crammed on top. She was surrounded by little kids, but they weren’t her brothers and sisters. She was a nursery maid. She had to look after them. She was their servant.

  I was a bit stunned. I didn’t know they used to have children as servants. I read a bit about these nursery maids and kitchen maids and housemaids. They had to work all day and into the evening as well for hardly any money. Girls as young as eleven and twelve. No school. No play. No fun. Just work work work.

  I decided I’d do a project on ‘Servants’. I was all set to write quite a bit about it actually. I decided I’d show that Jamie.

  But Jo was already at home when I got back from school and she had such terrible scary news I forgot all about my servant project.

  I didn’t remember until the next day when everyone was showing off their project books. Jamie had done ten whole pages about ‘School’ and he’d stuck in this old photo of kids in rows in a Victorian classroom and got his mum to do some lines of special copperplate handwriting.

  ‘I’ve finished my school topic already,’ he boasted.

  So I whipped out an old exercise book and scribbled out a page at playtime.

  ‘I’ve finished my school topic too,’ I said, sticking my tongue out at Jamie.

  SCHOOL

  My name is Lottie. I am eleven years old. I left school today.

  My teacher Miss Worthbeck, nearly cried when I told her I could not come back. She thinks the world of me. I am her most talented pupil. I am not being boastful, this is exactly what she said:

  ‘Dear Lottie, you are the best at English and writing and arithmetic, you know your geog