Holly giggles. “D’you know what I call you? The girl that laughed at the Queen!”
Mum and me apologised for that. And I wasn’t laughing at the Queen, I was laughing at Mum pretending to be the Queen.
“My husband and I…” The words come shooting out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“You’re doing it again!” Holly glares at me, accusingly. “You are such a rude person!”
I say that I’m sorry. I don’t quite see what’s rude about it, just standing here in the bedroom, but I’m sure Mum would say I shouldn’t have done it.
Holly slams Winnie-the-Pooh on to the shelf and dives back into the box. By the time she gets started on the last one I’ve managed to rescue thirty-five books, including Little Women, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, I Capture the Castle, Just William and all of Jane Austen, cos she was Mum’s favourite. Holly objects to David Copperfield on the grounds that he’s the wrong size and looks untidy.
“He’s too short and fat!”
For one wicked moment I’m almost tempted to say, “So are you!” But that would be really rude. And she isn’t exactly fat, just plumped up like a pillow cos of Auntie Ellen letting her eat junk food all the time. I suppose, actually, she’s quite pretty. She has this little round face with freckles, and her hair’s bright red and curly. She gets her hair from Auntie Ellen. And the freckles. Uncle Mark is fair, like me and Mum. I’d rather be fair than ginger, but it would be nice, I think, to be curly instead of dead straight and limp. I toss back my ponytail and wrench David Copperfield away from her.
“He’s staying!”
I put him on the shelf with the others. Holly, with an air of triumph, says that now I’ve only got room for one more. “You could have had two if you got rid of that fat one.”
I say yes, well, I don’t want two. I want David Copperfield.
“There’s not many left anyway,” says Holly. She burrows back into the box. “War and Peace…yuck! Poetry. Double yuck! Diary of a Nobody. Yuck yuck triple yuck! Pil—”
“Excuse me,” I say, “I want that one.”
“Which one?”
“Diary of a Nobody.”
“What for?” She looks at it, suspiciously, like it might be something dirty.
“It’s funny.”
“Doesn’t look funny.”
“Well,” I say, “it is.”
“Why? What’s it about?”
I tell her that it’s about a man called Mr Pooter and his wife Carrie. “They’ve just moved into a new house and Mr Pooter’s keeping a diary, all about the things that are happening to them.”
“Funny things.”
“Yes, and Mr Pooter keeps making these really bad jokes, like when he discovers his cuffs are frayed he says, I’m ’fraid, my love, my cuffs are rather frayed. And Carrie calls him a spooney old thing.”
“You think that’s funny?” says Holly.
I have to admit it doesn’t sound very funny. It did when Mum read it out, doing all the different voices. I try to think of a bit that doesn’t need voices.
“One time he’s doing some decorating and he’s got this red paint left over, so he paints the bath? Then later on when he’s lying there in the water the paint all comes off and he thinks he’s burst an artery!”
Holly doesn’t say anything; she just looks at me, like you are seriously weird. I know people think I’m weird. There was that girl at school, Alice Marshall, that I found crying in the girls’ toilets one day, and when I asked her what the matter was she said nobody liked her and she didn’t have any friends, so I said I’d be friends with her and she said what would be the point of that? “You’re just weird!”
I suppose I must be, if everyone thinks I am. I never used to mind, once upon a time; I was happy just being me. Now I’m not so sure. I begin to have this feeling that it might be easier if I could somehow learn to be a bit more like other people. I really would like to be! But I don’t seem to know how to do it.
I hold out my hand for the book. “Please,” I say. “I have to keep that one.”
Holly shrugs. “That’s it then. The rest’ll have to go. I’ll tell Michael.”
It’s Michael who’s going to take the boxes up to the loft. Into exile. Holly opens the door, then stops as something strikes her. “Is that why he’s called Mr Pooter?” she says.
Mr Pooter twitches an ear at the sound of his name. I say yes, Mum called him that because he has a long beard, like Mr Pooter in the book. Well, long for a cat; cats don’t usually have beards. But Mr Pooter is special. He has this lovely fringe of white fur all round his face.
“He’s odd-looking,” says Holly. “And he shouldn’t be on your bed! It’s not healthy, having cats in the bedroom. As for that—” She points an accusing finger at Mr Pooter’s litter box, tucked away in the corner. “That’s just disgusting!”
I tell her, indignantly, that it’s clean as can be. “I empty it all the time!”
“Cats ought to go in the garden,” says Holly.
“He can’t, he’s too old, and you haven’t got a cat flap. Anyway, it’s scary for him, a new place. He might get lost, or run over.”
Holly doesn’t actually say that she’d be glad if he did, but the truth is, nobody in this house likes cats. She grumbles that she doesn’t know what’s going to happen when her nan comes to stay.
“You’ll have to sleep in my room, and I’m not sleeping with cat poo! Not sleeping with a cat in the room, either. He’ll have to go outside then.”
I say in that case I’ll go outside with him. “We’ll both sleep in the kitchen.”
“Then we’ll have cat poo in the kitchen! That’s even more disgusting. We’ll all get poisoned!”
Stevie’s never got poisoned. I wish I could have stayed and lived with Stevie! I’m sure it’s what Mum would have wanted. But maybe Stevie wouldn’t have liked it. In spite of being so good to Mum, she really only loves her cats.
Holly flounces off and I hear her thudding off down the stairs. I don’t have the heart to begin cramming all the books back into their boxes. I throw myself on to the bed and rub my face in Mr Pooter’s fur.
“It’s all right,” I whisper. “I won’t let them put you out.”
Mr Pooter gives a chirrup and stretches out an arm. He crimps a paw, then yawns and tucks his arm back again. I sit, cross-legged, beside him. What goes on in a cat’s mind? Does Mr Pooter ever wonder where Mum has gone? Does he miss her? I’m sure he must, he was with her such a long time. Ever since he was a tiny kitten. But while he has me to look after him, he is safe. And he will always have me. That is a promise.
I’m still holding Diary of a Nobody. Mum and me were in the middle of reading it again; the bookmark’s still in it. We’d got about halfway through. We were always reading Diary of a Nobody. I can’t remember how old I was when Mum introduced me to it. I think I must have been about eight. Too young to properly enjoy it. Now I know it almost word for word. Mum did too. We both had our favourite bits that we waited for. One bit Mum specially loved was where Carrie and Mr Pooter send out for a bottle of Jackson Frères champagne whenever they feel like celebrating. It always got Mum giggling, so I used to giggle too, though I was never absolutely certain what I was giggling at. But whenever Mum and me wanted a treat, like at Christmas, for instance, or on Mum’s