My Sister Jodie Read online

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  swelling over the waistband. Her protruding navel was clearly visible through her T-shirt. I couldn’t look at it because it made me feel queasy. Tiffany wore tiny denim skirts that showed her knickers when she bent over. She had a blue butterfly tattoo on her big white thigh.

  When they came to work the day before term started, Mum made them a pot of tea and everyone seemed friendly at first, but when Mum started telling them exactly how she wanted her kitchen cleaned in the future, Mrs Colgate took offence.

  ‘Are you insinuating it was dirty when you came here?’ she said.

  ‘I’m not insinuating anything, I’m stating a plain fact. It was downright filthy. I’ve scrubbed it up to standard now, and I want you to keep it spotless. I prepare my food here. This is a health and safety issue,’ said Mum.

  Mrs Colgate blew a very rude raspberry. ‘The kitchen’s your territory, Mrs Wells. You blooming well keep it scrubbed. Tiff and I have got the whole school to get round. I’ve been cleaning here for the last ten years and no one’s found fault yet. Just who do you think you are?’ she said, folding her arms belligerently.

  ‘I’m the catering manager,’ Mum said in her poshest voice. She stuck her chin in the air. ‘And that means I’m senior to a cleaner, so stick that in your gob, you dirty mare,’ she added, in quite a different tone.

  Mum would have been outraged if Jodie or I had said that. It was a moment of triumph for Mum, but it meant that Mrs Colgate and Tiffany were our deadly enemies now.

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  They caught Jodie and me trying to slip up the stairs to the attics.

  ‘Where do you think you girls are going? Those stairs are out of bounds,’ said Mrs Colgate.

  ‘They’re not out of bounds to us. We live here,’

  said Jodie.

  ‘This isn’t part of your flat, missy. You’ve no right to be here. Now scoot back to where you belong,’

  said Mrs Colgate.

  ‘You can’t make us,’ said Jodie.

  ‘Give me any more of that lip and I’ll report you to Mr Wilberforce,’ Mrs Colgate threatened.

  ‘See if we care. He’s our friend,’ said Jodie – but she backed down all the same.

  We weren’t quite so sure he was our friend now.

  We were used to seeing him in his gardening clothes – his old checked shirts and baggy corduroy trousers and funny floppy sunhat – but now term had started he wore striped shirts and a blazer and grey flannels, striding around in a lordly fashion in highly polished shoes. Some of the teachers didn’t even call him Mr Wilberforce. They called him

  ‘Headmaster’ in deferential tones, as if it meant Your Majesty. Mr Wilberforce still nodded kindly when he saw us and he always gave Jodie a special wink – but we didn’t want to try our luck.

  Miss French was different too, nowhere near as jolly, dashing around with a clipboard, her reading glasses stuck in her hair like an Alice band. She didn’t have so much time for Jodie now. There were a whole troop of children eager to take Old Shep for a walk. Miss French chose Jodie if she got there first, but she often wasn’t quick enough and some other child had run off with him. Old Shep lapped 281

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  up the attention, barking joyously at everyone, especially if they fed him treats.

  ‘He’s a silly old mutt,’ said Jodie. ‘I’d got him so well trained. He was even starting to do tricks for me, turning round and lying down, playing Dead Doggie, but now he’s got distracted. He’ll go off with anyone if they give him crisps or biscuits. It’s mad to feed him rubbish like that. He’ll blow up like a balloon. I keep telling Frenchie, but she won’t listen.’

  Jodie still spent time with Jed whenever she could, though lots of the older girls vied for his attention too.

  ‘They are so pathetic, that Anna and Sophia and Rebecca,’ said Jodie fiercely. ‘They just hang around Jed, getting in the way, batting their eyelashes at him, going giggle giggle giggle. Oh, Jed, they chorus, over and over. Anna calls him

  “The Jedi’’. Honestly. She doesn’t seem to get it that he’s not the slightest bit interested in her.’

  I listened anxiously. Jodie didn’t seem to get it that Jed wasn’t the slightest bit interested in her either. The only girl I’d seen him staring at was horrible Tiffany Colgate.

  Jodie wasn’t interested in any of the boys in her new class, as Mrs Wilberforce had hoped.

  ‘They’re awful!’ she said, after that first day of school. ‘Childish, ugly, nerdy, snotty, pathetic and stupid too. Thick thick thick.’

  ‘Harley’s in your class. He’s not any of those things,’ I said.

  ‘Childish, ugly, nerdy, snotty, pathetic,’ said Jodie, counting on her fingers. ‘But he’s not thick, I’ll grant you that. The other boys really are 282

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  though, truly. That’s why they’re still here. They’re supposed to be getting special tuition to pass this Common Entrance thingy so they can go to a really posh school, but some of them can barely read and write. They’ve got all these weird fancy names for their so-called conditions, but they’re basically thick.’

  ‘What about the girls?’

  ‘They’re idiots too,’ said Jodie. ‘They’re hopeless.

  It’s awful that they’re all so much younger than me.

  They think they’re dead sophisticated but they’re incredibly babyish. And their voices! They’re just so fwightfully silly, squeal squeal squeal squeal. God, it’s totally doing my head in and I’ve only had their company for one day. I’m not going to survive a week!’

  She threw herself on the bed in mock despair. We were both in school uniform now – grey skirts and white blouses. Jodie had done her best to customize hers, shortening her skirt and rolling up her shirt sleeves, with her grey and red striped tie casually knotted on her chest. She couldn’t do anything about her school shoes though, terrible conker-brown flat lace-ups. Jodie waved her thin legs in the air, making her shoes do comical Charlie Chaplin sideways steps.

  ‘This is all such rubbish,’ she said, sighing. ‘I wish we’d never come here. I’d give anything to be seeing all my mates again. Marie and Siobhan and Shanice.’

  She’d conveniently forgotten that they’d all broken friends with her. I flopped down on the bed beside her, peering at her anxiously.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, Pearly. We’ve still got each 283

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  other, eh,’ said Jodie. ‘Who needs any of these posh-nob creeps?’

  I kept quiet.

  ‘All right, Harley’s not too bad. He can be fun at times, when he’s not showing off. And the little kids are quite sweet, especially funny old Dan. But all these others are enough to drive you insane.’ She gently pulled one of my plaits. ‘Was it awful for you too, Pearly?’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said into her pillow.

  ‘So your little lot are as bad as mine?’

  ‘Mmm,’ I repeated.

  I was lying. I didn’t dare tell Jodie but I’d had such a wonderful day. I’d been so scared when I had to go to the Year Seven classroom after breakfast. I was sure they’d all hate me. I just didn’t have the knack of making friends. I wouldn’t be able to think of a thing to say. Maybe it would be better to keep quiet. Everyone always sniggered or groaned when I answered a question in class at my old school.

  They called me the Snottyswot, the Nerdybrain, the Poncy Teacher’s Pet. I was used to being pinched or pushed in class and in the corridors, though when Jodie was still in the Juniors, no one dared touch me in the playground because she’d knock them flying.

  I got to the classroom early, hoping to grab a seat right in the front, the safest place. Harley was lounging by the door, looming way above everyone else. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him at