haven’t even started packing them. I scramble guiltily off the bed.
“’s OK,” says Michael. “I’ll do it.” Mr Pooter watches, carefully, as he starts collecting books. Michael looks at him. “Is he some kind of special breed?” he says.
I say no, he’s just a common domestic short hair. That’s what Stevie said.
“He looks like he’s some kind of breed.” Michael pats Mr Pooter on the head as if he’s a dog. Mr Pooter lets him. He is such a good cat. “Pretty,” says Michael. “Like sort of…dappled.”
My heart swells with pride. Me and Mum always thought Mr Pooter was pretty.
“Like someone’s spilt a can of orange paint over him.”
“Or marmalade,” I say.
“Yeah. Maybe he’s a marmalade cat!”
Michael’s busy, now, packing books. I’m handing them to him, one by one, and he’s putting them in the boxes. He’s not just stuffing them in all anyhow, like Holly would have done. He’s stacking them neatly, in piles. Big ones at the bottom, small ones on top.
“This is a lot of books,” he says. “I guess Auntie Sue was really into reading.”
I tell him that Mum loved her books more than anything. “She always said books are what she’d rescue if the house ever caught fire. After Mr Pooter, of course. But once he was safe, she’d go back for her books.”
I can see that Michael thinks it’s strange, anyone rescuing books, but he’s too polite to say so. He’s like Uncle Mark, he’s really trying to be kind. He picks up a box and carries it to the door. It’s obviously heavier than he’d thought.
“Don’t reckon she’d have managed to rescue very many,” he says.
Regretfully I say that I haven’t, either. “There’s not room.”
“Maybe Dad could put up another shelf, only—” He stops. I know why he’s stopped. It’s because Auntie Ellen didn’t want a shelf put up in the first place. This is where Holly’s nan sleeps, and it’s a tiny little room like a cupboard. It’s why I wasn’t allowed to bring Mum’s bookcase. “Far too big,” said Auntie Ellen. “Wouldn’t fit in.” It would if the wardrobe was taken out. I wouldn’t care about not having a wardrobe. But Holly’s nan probably expects it.
In this cheering-up kind of voice Michael says, “It’s not like they’re being got rid of. They’re only up in the loft.” He adds that he can always go up there and get a book down for me if there’s one I specially want.
He is trying so hard. He really wants me to be happy. It ought to make things easier. Why does it make them worse?
“There’s no problem,” says Michael. “I’m up and down there all the time. Just let me know. OK?”
I seal up the chinks in my ice house wall.
“I will,” says Ice Lolly, in her icicle tones. “Thank you.”
Michael gives me this strange look. “By the way,” he says, “next week—” Next week is when I’m starting back at school. The same school Michael goes to. “I just heard, you’re going to be in my class.”
I can’t think what to say to this. I wonder if Michael wants me in his class, or whether I’ll be an embarrassment. The girl who laughed at the Queen. Really weird.
Ice Lolly takes over. “That will be nice,” she says.
Michael says, “Yeah…”
I feel almost sorry for him.
Today is Uncle Mark’s birthday and we’ve all come into town, to the PizzaExpress. Where me and Mum lived, you could just walk up the road. Here, you have to drive. Auntie Ellen says it’s healthier, being in the country, but it’s not really country. Just lots of roads with fields on either side, only not the sort of fields you can walk in. Mostly they are full of cows and sheep and growing stuff. Corn, or something. I don’t know much about it. Auntie Ellen says it’s the ignorance of the town child. Uncle Mark says that I will get used to it. He says, “We’ll always take you wherever you want to go.” But I don’t want to be taken! I want to go by myself. It’s very worrying that I can’t just walk to the library. What am I going to do about books? Maybe this new school will have some.
We’ve been shown to a table. I am sitting between Holly and Michael. Holly is studying the menu.
“Dad,” she says, in wheedling tones, “can I have a starter and a main course and a pudding? Cos it’s your birthday, Dad! And it’s the big one, isn’t it?” She cosies up to Uncle Mark. “It’s the big one, Dad, isn’t it?”
“It sure is,” says Uncle Mark.
“Forty,” says Holly. And then she goes, “Is that older or younger than Auntie Sue?”
Auntie Ellen says “Holly!” and frowns at her, but she can’t ever take a hint. She has to keep on. “It’s older, isn’t it, Dad? Auntie Sue was your little sister.” She turns to me. “Don’t you ever wish you had a sister?”
Michael gives her a thump. “Better off without, if you ask me,” he says.
Holly screws up her face and sticks out her tongue. “Not if it means you’re an only child. Only children get spoilt.”
Did Mum spoil me? Auntie Ellen always says it was “unnatural”, the way I was brought up, but it didn’t feel unnatural to me. And I don’t think I was spoilt. I know Mum never yelled at me or told me off, but that was because we used to talk about things. Like if I did anything she didn’t like she’d make me sit down so we could discuss it. I don’t call that being spoilt. Holly’s more spoilt than I was. She only has to say she wants something and Auntie Ellen immediately buys it for her. She has twenty pairs of shoes in her wardrobe. She showed them to me. I only have two, and one of those is trainers.
Uncle Mark has decided he is going to order a bottle of wine, seeing as it’s his birthday. Before I can stop myself I cry, “Jackson Frères!”
Everyone looks at me, including the waiter. They seem puzzled. They have obviously never read Diary of a Nobody. I say, “Jackson Frères…a bottle of Jackson Frères!”
Uncle Mark shakes his head, like don’t ask me. “We’ll just have the house white,” he says.
“What’s with all this Jackson Frères?” says Michael.
Suddenly, I don’t want to talk about it. I wish I hadn’t said it. It was our private joke, between me and Mum.
“Frère’s French,” says Holly. “Like Frère Jacques.” She opens her mouth to start singing, but Uncle Michael cuts across her.
“What do you kids want? Coke?”
If Mum ever had wine, then I was always allowed a glass, too. But I know if I say so Auntie Ellen will only suck in her breath and that will be another black mark against Mum.
“Three Cokes,” says Uncle Mark. Then he smiles at me and says, “So, Laurel! All set up for tomorrow?”
Tomorrow is the day I’m starting at this new school. Bennington High. It has a black uniform. Auntie Ellen has dyed my old green skirt, but she had to take me into Asda to buy a black blazer and a black sweater. The only nice thing is the badge, which is red.
“Feeling OK about it?” says Uncle Mark.
I don’t say anything; I just nod.
“She’ll be all right,” says Auntie Ellen. “She has Michael to look