Diary of a Lottery Winner's Daughter (2 page)

Sunday August 22nd

Just got back from picking up the caravan.

Uncle Ron is really nice. He gave me a big hug and said he thought I’d grown loads since he last saw me. This is a huge lie of course, because I’m still as small as ever. I know because I measured myself yesterday on the bedroom door and I’m the same height that I was last month and the five before that. Sometimes I panic that I’m never going to grow any more and I’ll be four foot five forever. But it was nice of Uncle Ron to pretend. He’s Dad’s brother and I wish he’d never married Auntie Sheila. I wish he’d married someone really kind and happy like my mum.

I stuck by Dad the whole time because I didn’t want to be left alone with Auntie Sheila and Pom Pom. Spencer says Pom Pom is the spawn of the devil. She’s a sort of poodle but really small. Her fur is white but it’s so tightly curled you can see her skin through it so she looks pink. She’s the meanest dog on the planet.

Once, when we were there, Auntie Sheila had put on this big tea with cakes and biscuits and stuff. ‘Showing off,’ Mum called it. I was about to tuck into a lovely piece of cake when Pom Pom lunged at me from beneath the table and grabbed the cake out of my hand. All Auntie Sheila saw was Pom Pom scoffing a whole piece of cake at my feet and getting butter icing all over her stupid white rug. She had a right go at me for feeding unhealthy rubbish to her precious Pom Pom. Never mind that she was happy for us to eat it.

Spencer nearly choked to death trying not to laugh. Auntie Sheila sent us out into the garden and told us we couldn’t go on the lawn. When we got outside we laughed until I was nearly sick and Spencer had to take his glasses off to wipe the tears away. We went and sat on a bench at the end of the garden and Spencer said I was lucky the horrid beast hadn’t taken my hand off - although if it had, we could have made Auntie Sheila have it destroyed. He said ‘Destroyed’ in his Darth Vader voice which started me laughing all over again until I realised that I hadn’t got to have any cake. It was okay though, because Spencer had stuffed the big pocket on the front of his hoodie with loads of yummy things, so we sat at the end of the garden scoffing them until it was time to go home.

Spencer is definitely the best big brother in the world, even though he smells a bit sometimes and his voice keeps going up and down at the moment. I try not to laugh when it happens, because he never laughs at me for being small. And besides, Chelsea teases him about it enough for two people.

So I had to hang around while Dad and Uncle Ron talked about really boring caravan things and hitched it up to our car.

I was sitting in the caravan, trying to imagine what it would be like if it was ours and I could move into it and not have to put up with sharing a room with Chelsea, when Auntie Sheila and Pom Pom climbed in. She’d brought me a glass of orange juice. Pom Pom started sniffing my feet, which is hardly surprising since my trainers used to belong to Spencer so there was probably a lot there for him to sniff.

Auntie Sheila isn’t very good at talking to children. She puts on a funny voice, sort of cheerful sounding but really fake. She’d probably be better at it if she had some kids of her own but she and Uncle Ron never had any. I couldn’t stop staring at her lips. She had so much red lipstick on and it had sort of run into the lines around her lips which were probably there because she smokes so much. I was staring so hard, it began to look really funny and I had to pinch the back of my hand to stop myself from giggling.

So after she’d said,’ Charlotte, how lovely to see you,’ there wasn’t much else to say. She likes to drag out the ‘ar’ in Charlotte, so it’s Chaaaarrrrlotte. Mum says it’s because, according to Auntie Sheila, I’m the only one of us kids who has a proper name. Dad insisted his first-born was named after his football team, Chelsea, and Spencer was named after the striker that scored the most goals that year. Mum said when it came to me she put her foot down and said she was going to pick my name. I think Dad had run out of football ideas anyway.

Personally, I think Charlotte Johnson is far too long a name for such a short person. Mum put Amy in the middle to compensate and I’d much rather be called Amy because it’s so small and suits me better. But then I’d be called Amy Johnson and she was a very famous aviator who went missing when her plane ended up in the Thames during the War. I know because I looked her up after Grumps kept making flying jokes every time he saw me.

Auntie Sheila was looking me up and down and I could see that she was disappointed with what she saw. Her hopes that I might fit into her idea of what a girl should look like were dashed by my lack of girlie clothes. She probably thinks I have to wear my brother’s cast-offs because we’re poor or something; but the truth is I choose to wear them. I had on one of his old rugby shirts and some khaki commando-style trousers which I have to roll up at the bottom on account of my size. And his trainers, of course. Auntie Sheila was not impressed. She sniffed a bit and then left.

I opened the window a crack in case it was me she was sniffing, although I’m sure it was just her way of showing her disapproval. That’s when I heard Uncle Ron telling Dad that Auntie Sheila wants to get rid of the caravan because he likes to go and watch the football and drink beer in there.

Uncle Ron said there was a couple round yesterday looking at it, but he managed to put them off by telling them there was a slight problem with death-watch beetle in the roof but nothing that a good fumigation wouldn’t sort out, which might get rid of the flea problem at the same time. He said he’d never seen anyone move so fast in such a confined space and they’d gone before Auntie Sheila had even come out from the house.

Uncle Ron told her that the couple had taken one look at the caravan and said it was too small. It’s a five-berth so Auntie Sheila was suspicious. He doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to stop her from selling it. That means this could be our last holiday in the caravan. In other words, this could be the last year we get to go on holiday.

It only took forty-five minutes to get to the campsite. Dad gets nervous pulling the caravan so we never go further than Weston-super-Mare.

I think Mum is beginning to wish that she had left Chelsea in Bristol. I know I am. She’s making everyone’s life hell. She’s in a massive sulk and when she does say anything it’s in a really grumpy voice. Spencer and I are trying to involve her because we’re hoping she’ll snap out of it soon, but if it goes on much longer we might have to go off without her.

Not that there’s much to do round here.

Last year we stayed on a campsite that had an indoor swimming pool and a bar and a games room and evening entertainment. This year we had to take what we could get at such short notice so this campsite is pretty basic. It’s got toilets and shower blocks, a laundry room and a shop. That’s it. But you can walk into Weston-super-Mare from here so I suppose that’s a plus. At least we’re not stuck out in the countryside with nothing to do.

We walked along the sea-front and went down onto the beach for a bit but it was too cold to really enjoy it. I was dead offended when Dad asked me if I wanted a ride on the donkeys. How old does he think I am? I did sort of wish I could go on them, though. It’s a family tradition, having a ride on the donkeys. And now we’re all too old and it made me kind of sad.

We found an amusement arcade and Dad gave us some money for the machines and he and Mum went to sit out at the café next door. Spencer spent most of his on the big shooting games and the bike racing machines. I like going on the Penny Falls and I could spend hours just slotting my money in. Chelsea stood about looking bored and wouldn’t have a go on anything.

When we got back to the caravan Chelsea nabbed the top bunk. There’s a curtain that we can pull across. Mum and Dad sleep on the sofa which they make into a bed at night. There’s another seat that makes into a bed for Spencer. Dad says he’ll put the awning up tomorrow so we’ll have more room.

Monday August 23rd

Dad was up really early, wrestling with the awning. It’s up now so we had breakfast in there. We decided to go to Wookey Hole today, but when Mum went to get Chelsea out of bed she claimed she was dying from period pains and couldn’t go anywhere. In the end, Mum decided she’d be okay on her own for the day and we went without her. I think everyone was a bit relieved really. At least we don’t have to put up with her long face all day. So I didn’t tell anyone she was lying because I know she had her period two weeks ago. Ihaven’t started mine yet but I do know that no one has one every two weeks.

Spencer and I had a real laugh at Wookey. We all went down into the caves and Spencer and I hung around at the back laughing at the tour guide because he looked like a troll and we thought he’d probably been born and raised in the caves. After that we all played crazy golf and then Mum and Dad settled down in the café and Spencer and I went to the amusements. We were way too old for most of them but we had a laugh at the magic mirrors. I especially liked the one that made me look really tall with legs up to my armpits. Then we looked at all these old penny arcade machines they had in there. Those Victorians had some funny ideas of what’s amusing. At least three of them showed executions -hangings, heads being chopped off and even an electric chair. I thought they were creepy and horrid. Spencer couldn’t get enough of them though, so I left him to it and told him I’d meet him in the shop. Then, just as I was leaving, I saw a dusty old machine hidden away in the corner of the room. In the glass case was the top half of a gypsy woman behind a crystal ball. It was a really bad, unconvincing model made of papier måché which had sort of disintegrated because it was so old and it made the gypsy woman look like she had a hideous skin condition, but something about the way the machine was all alone in the dark corner drew me to it.

Let Gypsy Ginny tell your Fortune. She’s Never Wrong.

I thought about going to get Spencer so we could have a laugh together, but I was worried that he’d just dismiss it as complete rubbish and I wanted my fortune told. I had my twenty pence piece out and was about to put it in the machine when I noticed that it said,
Please insert One Penny.

Wow, that’s cheap, I was thinking as I scrabbled about for a penny in the bottom of my pocket. I was about to slot the tiny coin into the big slot when I stopped and realised it must mean an old penny. I was about to give up and go away but then I thought that a two pence piece is nearly the same size as an old penny. What was the worst that could happen? I’d put my two pence piece in and it would do nothing? It wasn’t exactly going to break the bank. But then, when I’d dropped it in, I panicked that I was going to jam the machine and get into trouble. I looked around and sure enough there was an attendant lurking at the other side of the hall. I slid into a shadow and tried to look invisible until he’d gone.

Just then, the flaky old woman inside the cabinet sprang to life and with one jerky movement, like some sort of zombie, she flung her hands up to the crystal ball. My heart did a double backflip; I hadn’t expected the thing to actually move! Then the machine spat out a card from a slot at the bottom. I’d just grabbed it when the attendant came up.

‘You can’t use that one,’ he said, stepping between me and the machine. ‘It doesn’t work. It’s going for restoration.’

I slipped the card with my fortune on it into my pocket and sidled away.