My Mum Tracy Beaker Read online

  Hand in hand we went down the corridor and out through the doors. Mr Smith, the school caretaker, was sweeping up rubbish. He saw Mum’s fierce face and the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  ‘Oh dear, have you been a naughty girl, Jess Beaker?’ he said, shaking his head and clucking, pretending to be shocked. He was just teasing. He’s a gentle, smiley man who’s friends with everyone.

  I gave him a wobbly smile. Mum ignored him. She clung onto my hand and we walked quickly down the street, not speaking. I kept glancing up at her anxiously. She saw, and tried to give me a smile, but hers was wobbly too.

  We were almost running now. My forehead throbbed and my knees stung, but we were both desperate to get home. Then, when we thought we’d made it, we couldn’t use either lift. One broke yesterday and the engineers were still struggling to fix it. The other had been working OK that morning, but now someone had deliberately jammed it between floors. So we had to walk up the stairs. Fourteen flights.

  It took us a long, long, long time. Especially as we came across Mrs Alfassi sitting on the third-floor steps, gasping. She’s always been big, but now she’s even bigger because she’s going to have a baby. She can’t speak much English yet, and we don’t know her language, but it didn’t matter. Mum heaved her up as carefully as she could, and we took an arm each and helped her up the stairs to the sixth floor.

  Then we found old Mrs Reynolds from the ninth floor struggling up the steps with a bulging Lidl carrier in either hand. We carried them for her, and she gave me a mini Bounty bar from her big handbag. I don’t actually like coconut but it would have been rude to refuse.

  And when we reached the eleventh floor, there was our friend Fadwa trying to carry her little boy and his scooter, so Mum took him and I took his scooter – and had a little go on it as we walked along to their flat on the thirteenth. I had to bend right down because it’s a very small scooter, but it was good fun, even though it made my knees start bleeding again.

  ‘It’s like we’re going up the Faraway Tree,’ I said, dabbing at them quickly. ‘We might meet Moon-Face or Silky the fairy next.’

  Mum smiled properly then, and I hoped she’d calmed down – but when we reached our flat she took me to the bathroom and looked at my big bump and my bloody knees, and screwed up her face as if she was going to burst into tears too, even though Mum never cries.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum! They don’t really hurt that much now. I don’t mind,’ I said, putting my arms round her.

  ‘You poor little kid,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Maybe we should take you to A and E to check you haven’t got concussion or blood poisoning.’

  ‘I’m fine, Mum. Really,’ I insisted.

  ‘Well, I suppose it would be a bit daft to trail all the way downstairs and get the bus to the hospital and wait five hours, and then come back and climb all the way up here all over again,’ said Mum. ‘I’d better be Nurse Beaker then.’

  She sat me on the toilet while she bathed my bumpy head with cold water, and then carefully mopped my knees with soap and hot water to get all the dirt out.

  ‘I’d better wash my mouth out with soap while I’m at it,’ she said. ‘I went a bit over the top with your Miss Oliver, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ I said. ‘You were awful! Mum, people don’t really wash their mouths out with soap, do they?’ My tongue curled up in my mouth at the very thought. ‘Doesn’t it taste disgusting?’

  ‘That’s the point. My teacher did it to me once when I was really cheeky. It tasted awful, but I didn’t let on to Mrs Vomit Bagley. It frothed all over my lips, so I licked them and said, “Yummy, yummy, yummy,” like it was a big treat. It didn’t half annoy her.’

  ‘Didn’t Mike go and tell the teacher off?’ Mike worked at the children’s home where Mum lived. He was the care worker she liked best.

  ‘I didn’t tell him. He’d have gone nuts if he’d heard what I said to Mrs Vomit Bagley,’ said Mum. ‘But don’t you worry, Jess – you can say even worse things to Miss Oliver, and I’ll still come and stick up for you. I just want to be the best mum ever for you.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, hugging her. Mum’s own mum, my Granny Carly, wasn’t around much when she was young. She’s not around much now. Last year she even forgot my birthday. Cam’s like my real granny. She never, ever forgets. ‘You are the best mum ever.’ I keep having to tell Mum this, but I don’t mind, because it’s the truth.

  She pulled a face. ‘Sorry I embarrassed you, yelling at Miss Oliver. I was just so mad about that big bruiser. Wait till I get hold of him. Tyler, isn’t it?’

  ‘Tyrone.’

  ‘He doesn’t live in Marlborough, does he?’

  ‘No, he lives in Devonshire, but you can’t have a go at him, Mum. He’s got two big brothers, and his mum’s much bigger than you and ever so tough,’ I warned her.

  ‘I’m not scared of them,’ she said.

  ‘I’m scared of them. They’d really beat you up. Then what would I do?’

  ‘I’d beat them up worse,’ said Mum, her chin jutting.

  ‘Oh, Mum.’

  ‘And I’ll beat up Miss Oliver too if she doesn’t look after you when you’re at school,’ said Mum, but I hoped she was just teasing now.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘I wish you wouldn’t always have a go at my teachers, Mum. I quite like Miss Oliver.’

  ‘She looks like a mean old bat to me,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t exactly make a fuss of you, does she? Weren’t you moaning that she never puts any of your paintings up on the wall?’

  ‘She put my painting up today, when you were having a go at her. She stuck it right up on the wall for everyone to see!’

  ‘Oh no! I wish I’d seen it! What was it of?’

  ‘You and me,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Jess!’ Mum looked really upset. ‘If I hadn’t been in such a royal strop, then you’d have shown me. Why do I always have to lose my flipping temper, eh?’

  ‘Perhaps you can’t help it, Mum. You’ve got Anger Issues,’ I said.

  She gave me a look, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. But then she burst out laughing. ‘OK. Well, I’m going to have to deal with them, aren’t I? I promise I won’t lose my temper like that again, OK?’

  I stared at her. ‘Yeah, right,’ I said. Mum can’t help losing her temper. She’s famous for it.

  But the next day she enrolled for kick-boxing lessons at Sean Godfrey’s gym.

  ‘It’ll give me an outlet for my Anger Issues,’ she said.

  And that’s how Sean Godfrey became her boyfriend.

  MY MUM’S BEEN going out with Sean Godfrey for the last three months. I keep telling myself that it’s not that big a deal. Mum’s had lots of boyfriends. One at a time, of course.

  ‘I’d never two-time anyone,’ she says. ‘I don’t play games like that.’

  She brings them home to meet me before it gets serious. It’s like I’m her mum, and have to give my approval! I haven’t actually liked any of them much. To be honest, I mostly can’t work out what she sees in them.

  It’s easy enough to work out what they see in Mum. She’s great fun – she always makes people laugh. She’s not exactly pretty, and she wears dead casual clothes – mostly jeans and T-shirts, but with red glitter high-tops so she looks very sparkly. They’re her lucky boots. When one pair wears out she buys another.

  Mum’s favourite film is The Wizard of Oz. Have you seen it? They often show it on television at Christmas. It’s the one about Dorothy and her little dog, Toto. It’s filmed in black and white at first, and then there’s a hurricane and they get blown away to Munchkinland, and it’s so colourful there it makes you blink. Mum’s great at singing the Munchkin song, and she does a brilliant Wicked Witch of the West cackle. Dorothy wears sparkly red shoes and – spoiler! – at the very end she clicks her heels together and says, ‘There’s no place like home,’ and then she is home.

  When Mum is bored with her date, she clicks her own red boots together. She always gets bored with h
er boyfriends. She’s very picky. She likes them to look smart and make an effort, and they have to have good manners and be respectful – though she can’t stick it if they let her boss them around and try to please her too much. Don’t ask me why. You’d think she’d like someone kind and gentle.

  ‘You don’t understand, Jess,’ she says. ‘You need a man with a bit of oomph.’

  Mum’s boyfriends often have far too much oomph. They try to boss her around, and then there are big rows and she breaks it off. Yet right at the beginning she always thinks they’re The One – she’s mad about them, and secretly hopes that they’ll be like a dad to me (even though I’ve already got a dad), and that we’ll be able to leave Marlborough Tower and get a lovely house and all live happily ever after like in a fairy tale. But Mum can’t find the right handsome prince. Her relationships never last longer than three months. Miss Oliver would say she had Relationship Issues.

  Mum had already broken it off with my dad when she found out she was going to have me.

  ‘Was I a mistake then, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘The best mistake I’ve ever made,’ said Mum, giving me a hug. ‘The bestest ever.’

  She means that too. She doesn’t want to get back with my dad, but she tried to stay in contact because of me. But then he started messing us about – promising he’d come and take me out on Sundays and then not turning up. Mum can’t bear people who break promises. So she put a stop to that, and I haven’t seen him for ages.

  I don’t really mind. I suppose I love my dad because he is my dad, but if he wasn’t, I don’t think I’d like him much at all. He’s called Si Martin, and he’s very good-looking with curly dark hair (not much chance of me having long, fair Alice-in-Wonderland hair with my parents, worst luck). He’s a DJ at a nightclub. He used to be the DJ at Storm, the club in town, and Mum went there with friends from work. That’s how they met. She thought he was The One. When she told me this, she raised her eyebrows and shook her head at herself. That’s because heaps of other girls thought he was The One too. So when Mum found out that he was two-timing her, she broke it off.

  I suppose he should be my One too, seeing as he’s my dad. I don’t think he was ever that thrilled to see me, if I’m absolutely honest. He was never nasty – he never told me off, even when I turned the wrong knob on his music system and accidentally mucked it up. It’s just that he didn’t know what to do with me.

  If it was sunny he’d take me to the zoo, but if it was rainy we’d have to go back to his flat, and then we were stuck. He’d sit on his sofa cracking his knuckles and giving me nervous little glances. I’d sit on his swivel chair and whirl myself round and round, and wish I could whirl myself right through his window and whizz back home.

  I’d try hard to think of things to tell him. I’d rehearse it in my head, but when I actually said it out loud, it sounded so lame I started stammering. Dad would nod and ask questions, but I could tell he wasn’t really interested.

  He ended up downloading all these tunes and asking me what I thought of them. It wasn’t really my sort of music at all, but I tried to work out which ones he liked best – usually the ones when he closed his eyes and shook his head in time to the beat.

  ‘This is great, Dad,’ I’d say.

  ‘You’ve got good taste, little girl,’ he’d reply, pleased.

  Mum said I should have told him straight that I wasn’t into that kind of music. She has no problem telling anyone what she doesn’t like. But I wanted Dad to like me.

  ‘Still, at least you can tell me anything, Jess,’ Mum says.

  I don’t like Sean Godfrey – but I can’t tell Mum that because she’s nuts about him. She thinks he’s The One now.

  It’s not just because he’s a celebrity. Mum knew him long before he was famous, when he was just a kid.

  ‘Though he’s changed so much I didn’t even recognize him. He knew me straight away though,’ said Mum.

  ‘You mean he was at the children’s home with you?’ I asked, interested.

  ‘No, he wasn’t one of the Dumping Ground lot. I knew him when Cam first started fostering me. He was my mate for a bit. We used to hang out in this old empty house, me and these two boys.’

  ‘Did Cam let you?’

  ‘She didn’t know, did she?’ said Mum. ‘I was a bit of a handful then. Don’t you dare get up to any of the things I did, Jess!’

  ‘But that’s not fair!’

  ‘Life isn’t fair,’ said Mum. ‘Anyway, these two boys – one was this weird little guy, Alexander, who was a total geek, ever so brainy, and he was bullied at his school. And then there was this big fat ugly kid, Football.’

  ‘Miss Oliver says we must never call anyone fat or ugly,’ I said.

  ‘But he was. And really tough. He was a bully.’

  ‘Like Tyrone?’

  ‘Yep. Probably worse.’

  ‘Did he bully you and this Alexander?’

  ‘I’d like to see anyone bully me!’ said Mum. ‘He was mean to Alexander sometimes, but I’d stick up for him. I wonder what’s happened to Alexander now. He probably lives in Silicon Valley, King of the Computer Nerds. Still, I know what’s happened to old Football.’

  ‘The bully?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s so different now. It’s his gym. He’s Sean Godfrey. Football was just his nickname when he was young. I never knew his real name.’

  ‘Is he still f-a-t and u-g-l-y?’ I asked, spelling out the words.

  ‘He’s still big, but he’s not fat any more. He’s very toned because he works out. And actually he’s not really ugly either. He used to look like a skinhead, but now his hair is carefully styled. He’s even got his eyebrows styled! He thinks he’s a real Jack the Lad now. If you didn’t know him, I suppose you’d think he was pretty fit.’

  ‘But you don’t think that, do you, Mum?’

  ‘Well, he looks OK, but he’s still a silly kid inside. You should have heard him going on about his football career! He’s got these trophies and an old football strip on display in his office. Talk about a show-off!’

  ‘What were you doing in his office?’

  ‘He invited me in for a natter after I’d had my kick-boxing lesson. To catch up on old times. It was just an excuse to let me know that he’s a great big success now,’ said Mum. She gave a little sniff. ‘Fancy, old Football. I couldn’t help being impressed – he’s turned his whole life round. He’s really made something of himself.’

  ‘So have you, Mum!’ I said.

  ‘No I haven’t,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’d better change out of these clothes and have a bath.’

  She let the taps run for a long time. She was in the bath even longer. I think she was upset at the thought that she hasn’t made anything of herself, career-wise. She’s had lots of careers. I think she’s been good at them all, but other people don’t always agree.

  For a while, when they were short of care workers, she did a stint at the Dumping Ground. Cam told me that she was very good with the children but got a bit too involved. I think it’s great that she really cared about them – though she didn’t always stick to the rules. She still doesn’t. That’s what makes her fun.

  Anyway, after that she went to college because she hadn’t worked hard at school and needed to get some A levels. She wanted to do media studies at university. She funded herself by getting an evening job in a wine bar, but it turned out she was better at working at the wine bar, and in the end she gave up on college, and eventually managed the wine bar herself. She was good at it too. It was called something silly like the Grape Harvest, but no one called it that. Everyone called it Tracy’s Bar.

  But then she met my dad and started me. She had to give up running the bar for a while, and then didn’t go back because she couldn’t take me along too. She could have got a childminder, but she wouldn’t.

  ‘I’m going to mind my own child, thanks very much,’ she said.

  So she did any old job as long as I could be strapped into my baby harness, or t
oddle along beside her, or ride my kiddie scooter, and come with her. First she got a cleaning job, but I was a menace when I learned to crawl – I kept unscrewing the tops of all the lethal cleaning fluids, which terrified Mum.

  Then she delivered meals for old people, and they all made a fuss of me, but one old lady tried to pick me up and dropped me, so Mum decided it was time she tried something else. She’d done a bit of gardening at the Dumping Ground so she got a job as a gardener, and we both loved that. I played Jungles in the long grass, and picked the dandelions and daisies, while Mum mowed and dug and planted, but everyone wanted such neat, boring gardens, and Mum can’t seem to manage neat and boring so they stopped employing her.

  Her best job of all was being a dog walker. Every morning we took out three chihuahuas and a Yorkie, all owned by a mad artist lady. The chihuahuas were called Eeny, Meeny and Miny, and the Yorkie was Moe. They looked the sweetest, silliest dogs ever, but the chihuahuas were spoiled and yappy, and Moe could be very grumpy.

  We gave Buster the pug a lunchtime walk, and he was a total sweetheart and trotted to heel very happily. In the early afternoon we walked Rover and Rosie, two beautiful Labradors. They were gentle and loving, but you had to watch them because they’d eat anything, and drooled whenever we passed a full litter bin.

  In the late afternoon we walked Nelson and Juliet. Nelson was a lovely Staffie who was blind in one eye, and Juliet was a highly strung French bulldog who’d cost a fortune. You had to watch them too, because they liked each other enormously but they weren’t allowed to mate.

  One way and another we did an awful lot of walking. I sometimes found it quite hard to keep up because I was still only little, so Mum bought me a red scooter. It was wonderful, but Moe didn’t like it, and one day, when I went too near him on my scooter, he bit me on the ankle. It probably looked quite funny – me being bitten by a small hairy dog that looked like a floor mop – but it didn’t feel funny at all. He bit right through to the bone, and I had to go to hospital for a tetanus injection.