Little Darlings Read online

  DOUBLEDAY

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Also available by Jacqueline Wilson

  1 Destiny

  2 Sunset

  3 Destiny

  4 Sunset

  5 Destiny

  6 Sunset

  7 Destiny

  8 Sunset

  9 Destiny

  10 Sunset

  11 Destiny

  12 Sunset

  13 Destiny

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409096399

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  LITTLE DARLINGS A DOUBLEDAY BOOK 978 0 385 61443 6

  Published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books A Random House Group company

  This edition published 2010

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Text copyright © Jacqueline Wilson, 2010 Illustrations copyright © Nick Sharratt, 2010

  The right of Jacqueline Wilson to be identified at the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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  THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.

  Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  For Lisa and Millie

  Also available by Jacqueline Wilson

  Published in Corgi Pups, for beginner readers:

  THE DINOSAUR’S PACKED LUNCH

  THE MONSTER STORY-TELLER

  Published in Young Corgi, for newly confident readers:

  LIZZIE ZIPMOUTH

  SLEEPOVERS

  Available from Doubleday/Corgi Yearling Books:

  BAD GIRLS

  THE BED AND BREAKFAST STAR

  BEST FRIENDS

  BURIED ALIVE!

  CANDYFLOSS

  THE CAT MUMMY

  CLEAN BREAK

  CLIFFHANGER

  COOKIE

  THE DARE GAME

  THE DIAMOND GIRLS

  DOUBLE ACT

  DOUBLE ACT (PLAY EDITION)

  GLUBBSLYME

  HETTY FEATHER

  THE ILLUSTRATED MUM

  JACKY DAYDREAM

  THE LOTTIE PROJECT

  MIDNIGHT

  THE MUM-MINDER

  MY SECRET DIARY

  MY SISTER JODIE

  SECRETS

  STARRING TRACY BEAKER

  THE STORY OF TRACY BEAKER

  THE SUITCASE KID

  VICKY ANGEL

  THE WORRY WEBSITE

  Collections:

  THE JACQUELINE WILSON COLLECTIONincludesTHE STORY OF TRACY BEAKERandTHE BED AND BREAKFAST STAR

  JACQUELINE WILSON’S DOUBLE-DECKER

  includes BAD GIRLS and DOUBLE ACT

  JACQUELINE WILSON’S SUPERSTARS

  includes THE SUIT CASE KID and THE LOTTIE PROJECT

  Available from Doubleday/Corgi Books, for older readers:

  DUSTBIN BABY

  GIRLS IN LOVE

  GIRLS UNDER PRESSURE

  GIRLS OUT LATE

  GIRLS IN TEARS

  KISS

  LOLA ROSE

  LOVE LESSONS

  Join the official Jacqueline Wilson fan club at

  www.jacquelinewilson.co.uk

  1

  DESTINY

  ‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you . . .’

  I wriggle up from under my old teddy-bear duvet and prop myself on my elbows.

  ‘Happy birthday, dear Destiny, happy birthday to you!’

  Mum takes hold of the duvet, trying to work the two big bears’ mouths like puppets, doing growly bear ‘happy birthdays’. She’s played this game with me ever since I can remember. I suppose I’m way too old for it now I’m eleven, but never mind, it’s only Mum and me.

  ‘Thank you, Pinky, thank you, Bluey,’ I say, giving each duvet bear a kiss.

  I know they’re not very exciting names, but I christened them when I was only two or three. ‘And thank you, Mum.’

  I put my arms round her and hug her close. She feels so skinny I’m scared of snapping her in half. She doesn’t diet, she just doesn’t find time to eat very much. Now we’ve moved to Bilefield she’s got three jobs: she has her cleaning job at the university early in the morning, then she does her home-helping all day, and then Friday and Saturday and Sunday nights she’s started working the evening shift at the Dog and Fox, only that’s our secret, because she has to leave me on my own when she’s down the pub.

  I don’t mind one little bit. She leaves me pizzas and oven chips, and any fool can heat them up, I can watch whatever telly I want or play all my secret games, and when I go to bed Mum’s always left me a little scribbled note. Sometimes it’s a Danny Kilman quiz – complete the last line of the chorus, silly stuff like that. Sometimes it’s a message: Night-night, my best girl. Sleep tight and hope the bugs don’t bite.

  We really did have bed bugs once, when we lived on the Latchford Estate. Mum let this friend of hers and her two kids from the balcony above live at our flat for a couple of weeks after the friend left her husband, and they must have brought them with them. They moved on, but their bugs stayed – awful little black wriggly things. Mum used to catch them with a bar of carbolic soap and she’d scrub and scrub the mattress, but they kept on wriggling. So eventually we gave up on the mattress altogether and hauled it in and out of the lift and lumbered it to the waste ground behind the dustbins where everyone dumps their rubbish.

  Mum went down to the Social and begged for a new mattress. It was, like, well, you live on the Latchford Estate so you’re the pits. We can’t help it if you’re dirty, we can’t go providing you with new mattresses every five minutes. So Mum said stuff them and we made do without a mattress for months, huddled up together on the sofa cushions with Mum’s duvet underneath us and my teddy duvet on top. I quite liked cuddling up together but it hurt Mum’s back.

  I think that was the main reason she took up with Steve. We went and lived in his posh house and he bought us all sorts of stuff. He didn’t just buy us both a mattress, he bought us brand-new beds. Their bed was a really fancy four-poster bed just like in a fairy story. My bed was just ordinary. Mum wanted to get me a pretty new pillowcase-and-duvet set. She had one all picked out with white lace and embroidered pink rosebuds. I’d have loved it, but I didn’t want to have to f
awn all over Steve, so I said I wanted to stick to my old teddy duvet. And I was glad I did. When Mum and Steve were in their fancy bed, I could curl up in mine with Pinky one side of me, Bluey the other, and we’d go into the woods and have picnics, just like that silly old song.

  I often don’t sleep very well, and while Steve was around I couldn’t climb in beside Mum, so I had a lot of picnics with Pinky and Bluey. Sometimes on really bad nights we’d scoot off on holiday together, flying off to different foreign lands, sightseeing and swimming and sunbathing. I don’t play all that silly kid stuff now, of course. Well, not often. And Steve’s history, and his fancy house and his four-poster bed.

  He started slapping Mum about and she put up with it for a bit, but then he started on me, and she wasn’t having that. So we did a runner, Mum and me, with two suitcases stuffed with our clothes and my duvet and Mum’s make-up and our little CD player and all Mum’s Danny Kilman albums and her big Danny scrapbook. We couldn’t literally run with those cases – we could barely drag them along.

  We ended up in a refuge where all the little kids kept crying and the big kids were fighting and one of the women tried to nick all our Danny stuff. Mum didn’t half clobber her when she caught her – my little mum against this huge hippo of a woman, a good twenty stone – but no one messes with Mum’s Danny Kilman collection. Then we got rehoused on another rubbish estate not much better than Latchford, but Mum said she’d learned her lesson, she wasn’t getting mixed up with any other bloke now, not even if he lived in Buckingham Palace.

  She tried to make our new flat into a proper home, painting all the walls different bright colours and making proper flowery-patterned curtains for our windows – though it was so damp the ceiling went black with mould no matter how many times she painted it and the curtains were wringing wet with condensation every morning.

  But then we got our lucky break! One of Mum’s special regulars, Harry Benson, a dear old gent she cleaned for on Thursday mornings, got pneumonia and went into hospital and died. Mum was sad because she’d loved old Harry. She’d nip out to the shops for him several times a week, buying his Sun and his Players and a pint of milk and a packet of his favourite Jammy Dodgers, and sometimes she’d put a bet on for him down the bookies. He must have been grateful because he left her all his savings in his will.

  He’d often told Mum he was going to do this as he didn’t have any proper family to remember. She was very touched, but she didn’t get too excited because Harry lived in a council flat like ours and all his ornaments looked like stuff left over from a jumble: an Alsatian dog with his ears broken off, little jugs with cracks saying A present from Margate, a faded picture of a lady with a green face, that kind of thing. But it turned out he had nearly twenty-five thousand pounds tucked away in the post office!

  Maybe some of his bets paid off big-time, maybe he’d just scrimped and saved all his life, I don’t know. Mum cried and cried when she found out. She took me to the crematorium with her. She knew they’d scattered his ashes in the rose garden so she went and crouched there, whispering to Harry that she was ever so grateful, and she made me say it too, though it felt a bit weird talking out loud to a lot of red and yellow roses. I kept looking worriedly at the petals in case they had little flakes of dead people on them.

  I hoped Mum would take us on a fantastic holiday, a real-life version of my night-time fantasies, but she made do with a day trip to Blackpool. (I did get to paddle in the sea, though it was freezing cold and my toes turned blue, and I had fish and chips and two ice creams and won a toy gorilla on the pier, so it was a great day out.) She used all the money as a big down payment on our very own house.

  It’s only a very little house, an ex-council maisonette on the Bilefield Estate. It’s meant to be the best of all the council estates – hardly any druggies, a lot of the flats privately owned, and Bilefield Primary is supposed to be a good school. Mum’s dead keen on me getting a good education. So we’ve made this brand-new start – but I can’t help thinking it’s a bit rubbish. I hate the school because I’m in Year Six and everyone’s got their own little set of mates and I’m the new girl stuck without anyone. Not that I’d want to be friends with any of that lot.

  Mum says we’re much better off now, but she can’t mean financially because the mortgage uses up all her money. She hasn’t ever got anything left over for treats. I can’t have new clothes or a computer or an iPod, or even my own mobile like nearly all the other kids in my class. Mum says it’s worth it to have our very own house. I’m not so sure, to be truthful. I particularly think this at times like Christmas. And birthdays. Like today.

  ‘Now you sit up nicely in the bed, Birthday Girl, and I’ll bring you your special birthday breakfast,’ Mum says, eyes shining.

  She’s still in her tattered pink silky dressing gown. I look at my alarm clock.

  ‘Mum, it’s half past seven! You’ll be ever so late for work!’

  Mum grins and taps me on the nose. ‘No, I won’t. I’ve got Michelle and Lana to cover for me at the uni, and Louella’s going to do my first old lady. Today’s special – it’s my best girl’s birthday. Hang on!’

  She dashes to the door and bends over a tray on the floor. I hear the flare of a match. Then she picks up the tray, chuckling to herself, and carries it carefully over to the bed.

  ‘Oh, Mum!’

  She’s spread a slice of bread with butter and golden syrup, one of my favourite treats, and stuck eleven pink candles all over it.

  ‘Blow them out then, Destiny, quick! Blow them out all in one go and then you’ll get a wish!’

  I blow hard and expertly, and get every candle. Then I close my eyes, wondering what to wish for. I wish I had a best friend? I wish Mum didn’t have to work so hard? I wish I had a proper dad?

  Then I pick out my candles, sucking the syrup off the holders, and eat my birthday bread. Mum goes to make coffee, and when she comes back with it she’s also got a tray of parcels: one medium size, one a bit smaller, one tiny, plus two envelopes, one large, one small, with my name on the front in Mum’s swirly back-sloping writing: Destiny.

  ‘Two birthday cards, Mum?’ I say.

  ‘Save the smaller one till last,’ says Mum.

  So I open the bigger card and it’s one Mum’s made herself. She’s cut all sorts of pictures out of magazines – dogs and cats and rabbits and ponies and sandy beaches and flowers and flash cars and great big boxes of chocolates and giant ice creams – and stuck them on a piece of paper to make a crazy picture.

  ‘It’s all your favourite things,’ Mum says.

  I turn over the picture. Mum has inked a message in fancy lettering, pink and purple: To my dearest darling dorter Destiny on her elevventh birthday. With lots and lots of love from Mum.

  I am ace at spelling but Mum isn’t. I wouldn’t point out her mistakes in a million years. I give her a great big hug.

  ‘I do love you, Mum,’ I say.

  ‘You don’t mind it not being a proper card?’

  ‘I like your cards much more,’ I say quickly.

  I’m not expecting proper presents either. Mum often tries to make me stuff, or she gets things from boot fairs and cleans them up – but I’m in for a surprise. The biggest parcel is a pair of black jeans, brand new from Primark, still with the ticket on, and there’s a new black T-shirt in the second parcel, really deep black and pristine under the arms, plainly never been worn or put in the wash. The only slightly weird present is the last one: a pair of little black net gloves.

  ‘Do you like them? I found them on a market stall. I got me a pair too. They’re a bit like the ones Danny wears in his early photos.’

  ‘Oh yeah. They’re cool, Mum. I love them,’ I say, trying them on and turning my hands into little spiders scuttling up and down the bed.

  ‘So, we’ll have to find somewhere for you to go when you’re all dressed up in your black jeans and T-shirt and your fancy gloves,’ says Mum. She’s fidgeting like she wants to jump up and down like a l
ittle kid. ‘Open the other envelope, Destiny, go on!’

  I open it up and find two train tickets – to London!

  ‘Oh, wow!’ I say.

  I’ve only ever been to London once. That was on a weekend with Steve. At first he was in a very good mood and he showed us Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives, and Trafalgar Square with the great big lions, and then we went to this huge great posh shop called Harrods and he bought Mum a dress, and Steve and Mum went out clubbing that evening – but the next morning Steve was in a very bad mood and didn’t want to do anything at all.

  ‘Where will we go, Mum?’ I say. ‘Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square?’

  ‘We’ve seen them already,’ says Mum.

  ‘Oh great, so we can go to that shop, Harrods? Not to buy stuff, just to have a look round. We could play we’re two rich Wags out on a shopping spree.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we could do that when we get there in the afternoon, but we’re going somewhere else in the evening. We’re going to a film premiere,’ says Mum.

  I stare at her. She sometimes makes stuff up, just like me.

  ‘No, we’re not!’ I say.

  ‘Yes, we are! Well, we’re not going to see the film itself – that’s for the stars, naturally – but we’ll be there looking at everyone arriving, standing on the red carpet. I’ve seen stuff like that on the telly. You can get really close up to the stars, even speak to them, and Destiny, guess who’s going to be there – oh, guess!’

  I look at Mum, shaking my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I say, and I truly haven’t a clue.

  I don’t know much about film stars. Mum’s the one who hangs about for ages in WHSmith reading all the celebrity mags, not me. I can’t quite get why she’s so worked up, biting her lips, her fists clenched.

  ‘Danny’s going to be there!’ she says.

  ‘Our Danny?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  ‘But he’s not a film star.’

  ‘I read about it in the fan club mag. It’s a film about a new band – it’s called Milky Star—’

  ‘Danny’s got a new band?’ I ask.