Lottie Project (17 page)

‘Oh, you rotten pig, why did you go and do that?’ they groaned. ‘What’s up with you, Cakehole? Just because you’ve had a tiff with your little girly gang there’s no need to take it out on us.’

I responded with a very rude gesture. Miss Beckworth was on playground duty. I hoped she hadn’t seen. I made off sharpish in the opposite direction, dodging behind the Portakabins.

Jamie Edwards was sitting on the steps, head deep in a book. He looked startled when he saw me – but he smiled nervously.

‘You still reading about that Esther?’ I said.

‘I finished that book ages ago. I read ever so quickly,’ said Jamie, unable to resist a little boast.

‘So what you reading now then, eh?’ I peered at the densely printed pages. ‘It looks even worse. Ever so hard.’

‘Ever so Hardy,’ said Jamie, chuckling, showing me the spine.

‘
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy – oh, I get you, ha ha, very droll. It sounds awful! Is it French with that funny name?’

‘No. It’s English, about this girl Tess and she goes to work on a farm and this man has his wicked way with her,’ said Jamie, eyes gleaming.

‘Oh, another one of
those
. You are awful, Jamie.’

‘And it’s ever so sad, because Tess has a baby and then she falls in love again but it all goes wrong and I know it’s not going to have a happy ending.’

‘Oh, hang about! I’ve seen it on the telly, I think. There’s a bit about Stonehenge at the end – I watched it with Jo and we both wept buckets.’

‘Is Jo your sister?’

‘No, my mum.’

‘And you’re allowed to call her by her first name?’

‘I can call her whatever I like,’ I said.

I felt like inventing some new and incredibly nasty names for her because I was still so annoyed with her. I kept thinking about her with this creep Mark. I didn’t know what he looked like, so I imagined him like Robin but big. A
total
wimp. So why why why did Jo want to bound round to his house in her bunny jumper and twitch her nose at him?

‘Are you planning to go round to Lisa’s or Angela’s on Friday night?’ Jo said that evening.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve got a bit fed up with them recently,’ I said gloomily, chucking my school copy of
Victorian Life
on the floor. None of Miss Beckworth’s books went into the sort of detail I wanted. ‘I might just go round to Jamie’s house because he keeps telling me he’s got all these Victorian books he’ll lend me.’

‘Oh, round to Jamie’s house, eh?’ said Jo.

‘So?’ I said fiercely. ‘It’s just to borrow a book.’

‘OK, OK. But if you stay for tea or anything, can his mum or dad run you home? I can’t come and fetch you because . . . I’m babysitting for Robin.’

I stared at her. So Mark was going out?

‘Who’s this Mark going out with?’ I asked.

Jo shrugged uneasily. ‘I don’t know. Look, he just asked if I could – could come round and babysit, so I said OK, but I won’t be back late, and I can always say no if it’s not all right with you, Charlie.’

‘It’s fine with me,’ I said. It obviously wasn’t fine with Jo. I felt a bit sorry for her. But I was also thrilled for me. The wimp had got himself some
girl-friend
so he couldn’t be interested in Jo. He just wanted her to look after little Robin.

Or so I thought
.

I was so stupid! I didn’t twig at all. Not that first Friday, or even the Friday after. I was so pleased and relieved I was extra nice to Jo.

We had a wonderful Sunday, having a really long lie in and then a dozy hour or two snuggled up in bed playing Magic Lands and then, when we eventually got up, I made us special little fairy cakes. We ate them hot out of the oven for breakfast and then later when they’d cooled down I iced them pink and then changed to white in my little icing bag and piped funny messages over them –
HELLO
and
I LIKE YOU
and
FUNNY FACE
– like those little love heart sweets.

I took them to school the next morning. There was a lot of silly teasing about Cakehole making cakes – but everyone seemed dead impressed when they saw them. Everyone wanted one, but they were only for a select few. I gave Lisa an
I LIKE YOU
and told her what to do with it. She giggled and blushed and protested and wouldn’t give it to Dave Wood outright – but he saw her leave it on his desk, so the message got through.

I gave Angela another
I LIKE YOU
and she pretend-fed it to the grinning faces on her T-shirt and then gobbled it up herself.

I gave more cakes to the girls I’d liked best in our old gang, and then Lisa and Angela and I had another two each. There was just one left by the time we went back into school.

‘Did you make those little cakes yourself, Charlie?’ Jamie asked.

‘Yup.’

‘They looked ever so nice. Really tasty,’ said Jamie wistfully.

I looked at him. And then I sighed and reached in the tin and gave him the last one. It didn’t say
HELLO
. It didn’t say
FUNNY FACE
. It said
I LIKE YOU
.

COURTSHIP

IT WAS BITTERLY
cold in the park today. Louisa cried because she could not feel her feet inside her boots and baby Freddie’s nose kept running in a most unattractive way. Victor ran ahead with his hoop to get warm, so I stuck Louisa into the pram beside Freddie and ran too. We raced all the way home, careering round the corner and practically running over the butcher’s boy. He did not seem to mind.

‘Whoops-a-blooming-buttercup!’ he said. ‘Mind what you’re doing with that perambulator, Miss. It’s a dangerous weapon!’

No-one has ever called
me
Miss before. I must admit I liked it, though I stuck my nose in the air and called the butcher’s boy a saucepot.

Trust Victor to hang back at that precise moment. ‘What were you saying to that errand boy, Charlotte?’ he enquired.

‘It’s none of your business, Master Victor,’ I said haughtily.

‘Is he going to be your gentleman caller?’ Victor asked.

‘Certainly not!’ I said, and I took Victor’s hoop and bowled it so hard he had to run like the wind to stop it going into the road and under a carriage.

That settled
his
hash. He well knows that his mamma does not allow the servants to have gentleman callers. I had to protect Eliza when she was canoodling in the kitchen with her current sweetheart, the draper’s assistant, who had come to deliver the Mistress’s new shawl and gloves. In finest cashmere. If only I had a warm woolly shawl and mittens! I have chilblains that throb and itch like the devil.

Anyway, I was down in the kitchen fetching the children’s hot milk and biscuits when I heard the Mistress clip-clopping down the stairs in her neat kid boots.

‘Quick, Eliza, the Mistress is coming!’ I hissed, and then I bounded
up
the stairs and waylaid the Mistress by telling her a very long story about Miss Louisa-not-drinking-her-milk-even-though-it’s-so-good-for-her, and by the time I’d done and the Mistress had made her way down to the kitchen Eliza had had time to bundle any
number
of gentlemen callers out of the back door.