The Suitcase Kid (13 page)

I'll maybe have to try to make something for Crystal too. She's my second favourite sister and she gets fed up quite a bit of the time because she's not big enough to do lots of things for the baby. I found her all curled up and crying in the Japanese bag the other day. I let her play with Radish for a special treat and it cheered her up a lot.

Zen gets fed up too but catch me letting Radish anywhere near him!

I like helping look after Zoë so much that I never really want to pack my things on Fridays when I'm at Dad's. But then when I get to Mum's I can pal around with Graham and Paula's given me some of her old make-up though Mum says I'm nowhere near old enough to use it yet. I look super with it on though, really grown-up. Katie smeared a whole lot of
make-up on too, but she just looked silly, like a little kid with face paints. Poor old Katie.

I went to see the Family Counselling lady the other day because she wanted to know how Radish and I were getting on.

‘We're OK,' I said.

‘You still go to your mum's house one week and your dad's house the next?' she said.

‘I've got a House A and a House B
and
a House C now,' I said. ‘I go to Mum's House A one week and Dad's House B the next week and I go to Mr and Mrs Peters' House C nearly every day and Radish gets to play in her own Mulberry Cottage when she's there, though she still lives in my pocket most of the time.'

‘It must take a lot of organizing,' said the lady, smiling.

‘Oh it does. But I've got it under control now,' I said, smiling back at her. ‘It's as easy as A B C. Really.'

THE END

 

Jacqueline Wilson is an extremely well-known and hugely popular author who served as Children's Laureate from 2005-7. She has been awarded a number of prestigious awards, including the British Children's Book of the Year and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award (for
The Illustrated Mum
), the Smarties Prize and the Children's Book Award (for
Double Act
, for which she was also highly commended for the Carnegie Medal). In 2002 Jacqueline was given an OBE for services to literacy in schools and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame. She has sold over thirty-five million books and was the author most borrowed from British libraries in the last decade.

NICK SHARRATT knew from an early age that he wanted to use his drawing skills as his career, so he went to Manchester Polytechnic to do an Art Foundation course. He followed this up with a BA (Hons) in Graphic Design at St Martin's School of Art in London from 1981-1984.

Since graduating, Nick has been working full-time as an illustrator for children's books, publishers and a wide range of magazines. His brilliant illustrations have brought to life many books, most notably the titles by Jacqueline Wilson.

Nick also writes books as well as illustrating them.