Lottie Project (11 page)

‘You’re the one who’s in danger of getting carried away – in a body bag,’ I said, giving them both a simultaneous example of
my
sort of nudge. I have very very sharp elbows. ‘I hardly
ever
speak to Jamie
Edwards
– and when I do it’s just to have a ferocious argument with him.’

However, I needed to speak to Jamie in a dead-casual, almost-friendly way to find out exactly where he lived in Oxford Terrace. He knew what Jo looked like. We’d both been going to this school since we were practically babies. For years and years our mums had delivered us or collected us. I had noticed that Jamie’s mum was plump and beady-eyed like him, with lots of hair and jazzy jumpers and coloured tights and bright boots, none of them matching. He had probably noticed that Jo was much younger than the other mums, and dyed her hair to match mine and wore high heels to make her just a tiny bit taller.

It’s awfully hard to strike up a dead-casual, almost-friendly conversation with someone you can’t stick. We’re barely allowed to breathe in Miss Beckworth’s classes anyway, let alone converse. But at playtime I took ages putting away my books and let Lisa and Angela go off by themselves. Jamie always took his time too, not at all keen to go out into the playground. He’s not the outdoor type. He’s hopeless at football and he can’t even run properly, his arms and legs go every which way. He isn’t bullied by the other boys because he can be quite quick and cutting with what he says, but he’s not exactly number one popular person with his peers. (Not like
some
people I could mention if I wanted to be disgustingly boastful.)

He generally slopes off into a corner by himself and reads a book. I watched him take one out of his satchel. It was covered in the Victorian wrapping paper so you couldn’t see the title.

‘What’s that you’re reading then, Jamie?’ I asked.

He looked at me suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘I just want to know, for goodness’ sake,’ I said.

‘With you it’s usually for badness’ sake,’ said Jamie.

‘Let’s have a look, then,’ I said, reaching for it.

He hesitated, holding it away from me. ‘Are you going to hit me again if I don’t let you?’ he said.

‘That was different. That was
my
book. So what’s yours? Why have you got it all wrapped up like that? Hey, it’s a dirty book, that’s it, isn’t it! Shock, scandal, swotty old Jamie’s reading a rude book. And you didn’t want anyone to see you’re reading it. What is it, eh? Show me!’

‘Get off!’ said Jamie, trying to push me away, but he was still wary of me. I snatched his book easily and opened it.

‘“Esther Waters”,’ I read, flicking through the pages. ‘Oooh! What a swizzle. It’s just some boring boring boring old Victorian book. Typical you, Jamie Edwards. You’re just doing some extra swotting up for your project, aren’t you?’

‘The Victorians thought it was a rude book,’ said Jamie. ‘They were ever so shocked when it came out.’

‘Well, they were shocked by anything. They were
so
stupid they even covered up their piano legs! If a woman raised her skirt a few inches above her ankles the chaps practically fainted dead away,’ I said scornfully. ‘So what does this Esther Waters get up to, Jamie? Is she so dead brazen she flashes her kneecaps?’

‘Oh, ha ha,’ said Jamie, sighing.

I saw he had his bookmark more than halfway through.

‘Gosh, have you read all that? It looks
terribly
dull and difficult. You’re mad,’ I said.

‘It’s a good story actually,’ said Jamie. ‘It’s about this girl Esther—’

‘No!’

‘—and she’s a servant and—’

‘She’s a servant?’ I said, stopping messing about.

‘Yes, and she goes to this big place in the country and this footman chats her up and she doesn’t really want to go out with him but he forces her and she ends up having a baby and she doesn’t know what to do because she’s young and she’s not married and she’s lost her job . . . Why are you staring at me like that?’ said Jamie. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. It just doesn’t sound quite as boring as I thought. Maybe I’ll borrow it after you, OK?’

I mostly stuck to reading horror stories, the spookier and scarier the better, but I wanted to find out more about this Esther.

‘What happens to her? Does she keep her baby?
Does
she get a job? She doesn’t get married at the end, does she?’

‘I haven’t got that far yet. OK, you can borrow it after me. Or some of my other books if you want. I’ve got a whole lot of Victorian ones sorted out because of my project.’

‘Oh, Jamie, you would!’ I said. Then I suddenly realized this was my golden opportunity. ‘So, I might come round to your famous Victorian house sometime and see your books. What number Oxford Terrace, eh?’

‘Number sixty-two,’ said Jamie.

I felt my stomach squeeze. Number 62. Jo’s Rosen family lived at Number 58, next door but one to Jamie. What if he saw her going into their house? What if Jamie’s mum nipped along the road to have a cup of coffee with Mrs Rosen when Jo was dashing around with a duster? What if Jamie’s mum thought Jo looked dead handy with a hoover and offered her a job? I was proud that she was working so hard but I couldn’t
stand
the idea of her cleaning all Jamie’s junk.

‘Has your mum got her own cleaning lady?’ I blurted out before I could stop myself.

Jamie blinked at me, baffled. ‘What? Why? Are you scared you’ll get all dusty if you come round to my house?’ he said.

‘Does your mum do her own dusting?’ I persisted.

‘No. Mum’s hopeless at any sort of housework. We did have a cleaning lady once but then she got ill and—’

‘You’re not looking for another one, are you?’ I asked, horrified.

‘My dad does the housework now. The hoovering and that. Mum might do the bathroom, and I’m supposed to do some stuff, me and my brother, only we skive off mostly.
Why?
’

I shrugged elaborately. ‘I – I’ve got interested in the whole idea of housework and stuff because of my servant project,’ I said.

Angela and Lisa put their heads round the classroom door.

‘Come
on
, Charlie. Playtime’s nearly over. What are you doing?’ said Angela.

‘Of course, we don’t want to interrupt anything if you and Jamie are
busy
,’ said Lisa, giggling.

‘I’m
coming
,’ I said, charging over to them.

But then that idiotic Jamie put his great big foot in it. ‘So, you’re coming round to my house after school tonight, right?’ he said, in front of Lisa and Angela. Their mouths dropped open. Mine did too.

‘Wrong!’ I said, and rushed off.

Lisa and Angela rushed too.

‘We were just kidding you before. But you really have got a thing going with Jamie, haven’t you?’ said Angela.

‘You’re going round to his
house
!’ said Lisa. ‘Oh, I do wish Dave would ask me round to
his
house.’

‘I’m not
going
round to Jamie Edwards’s house,’ I insisted. ‘He was just going on about these boring
boring
boring Victorian books and he seemed to think I was mad enough to want to look at them, that’s all.’ My heart was thumping a bit as I said it. I knew I was kind of twisting the truth. But I had to stop Lisa and Angela getting the wrong idea once and for all.

So all that day I sent them notes under the quivering Beckworth nose as often as I dared, with silly caricatures of Jamie and rude little rhymes about him. Jamie saw his name and must have thought I was writing a note to him. He peered over my arm and read it. I’d just written a
very
rude bit about him. (Sorry: far too rude to be repeated where adults like Miss Beckworth might whip this book out of your hands at any minute!) Jamie read the very rude bit. He blinked. He didn’t look baffled this time. He looked upset.

Still, it was his own fault, wasn’t it? He shouldn’t have been nosy enough to read my private note. I passed it to Angela and she cracked up with silent laughter and then she passed it on to Lisa and she read it and snorted out loud and had to protest to Miss Beckworth that she had a horrible cold and couldn’t help it. Lisa and Angela and I all fell about helplessly when we came out of school.

I certainly didn’t go round to Jamie’s house after school. Lisa and I went round to Angela’s house first because her big brother had just got some dead flash roller blades for his birthday and we were hoping we’d get to her home from our school a good
half
-hour before he got back from
his
school, so we could all maybe have a sneaky go on his blades. But he’d got wise to Angela’s wily ways and installed a brand-new padlock on his bedroom cupboard. We found his old skateboard stacked in a corner but we weren’t really into skateboarding any more, and anyway, one of the wheels was all wobbly.

Angela’s mum was doing a day shift at the hospital so she couldn’t fix us anything exciting to eat so we all went round to Lisa’s instead. That was far more promising, because Lisa’s mum was being a hostess for a jewellery party that evening and so she was making all these fiddly little vol-au-vents and tarts. She let us sample them while she got busy icing a cake. Lisa wanted us to go straight up to her bedroom, but I hung around her mum for a bit, watching how she did the icing with this natty little squeezy bag.