The Tutti-frutti Collection. Jean Ure

      Ha! He’s not the only one that can draw. There’s nothing to it. That is exactly how he looks. Straggly hair and a beard and this long, droopy face like a damp dishcloth. And he’s all freckled and gingery with white skin like a mushroom. Ugh! Whatever does Mum see in him?

      She says that if I love her I’ll try and love Slimey, for her sake. I’ve tried. But how can you love someone who has freckles and makes these awful jokes all the time? Another thing he does, he shoves these cards under the bedroom door while I’m asleep. It’s really creepy. I find them lying there waiting for me when I wake up. They’re all covered in these soppy drawings which I think are supposed to be messages. I don’t bother to read them. I just chuck them straight into the waste-paper basket.

      I know why he’s doing it. He’s so transparent it’s pathetic. He’s trying to impress me. Well, some hopes! I just think he’s a total nerd.

      Mum’s best friend Carol that she was at school with and who is my godmother, but who has now gone to live in Austin, Texas, alas (though she has promised to send me a real American baseball bat for my Christmas present), told me that Mum and Dad had become very unhappy together on account of “developing in different directions”, which meant they didn’t really have anything in common any more – apart from me, that is, but it seems children don’t count.

      Carol said that it’s lovely for Mum to be with Slimey because they are both in the same business, with Slimey being an illustrator of children’s books and Mum being something called a copy editor, which means going through books that other people have written and making sure they’ve got their facts right and have put all the commas and fullstops in the right places and haven’t called their heroine Anne Smith on one page and Anne Jones on another.

      All I can say is that it may be lovely for Mum, but it isn’t very lovely for me. And if writing a diary means clearing Slimey Roland out of the cupboard then I am ALL FOR IT.

      Tuesday

      He made another of his awful jokes this morning. He said, “What’s a cannibal’s favourite game?” To humour him and keep Mum happy I said, “What is a cannibal’s favourite game?” though in fact I already knew the answer because it was a joke that was going round when I was in Year 5, for goodness’ sake. So he beams into his beard, all jolly ho ho, and says, “Swallow my leader!” and Mum groans and rolls her eyes, but in a way that means she thinks it’s really quite funny, and I just give this tight little smile and get on with my breakfast. It is extremely irritating when grown-ups behave in this infantile fashion. Doesn’t he realise he’s making a complete idiot of himself?

      I have decided to record occasionally what I eat for dinner, because this school’s canteen must I think be the secret weapon of someone who has a hate thing against children. Skinny asked Mr Sherwood the other day why he didn’t eat there. She said, “Is it because you don’t want to be poisoned?” Mr Sherwood said that at his age being poisoned was a distinct possibility. He said, “My digestive system is no longer geared to the hazards of a school canteen.”

      If that isn’t an admission, what is???

      I told Mum what Mr Sherwood said. I actually put it to her: “If you don’t want to lose me, then maybe I ought to take sandwiches?” All she said was, “Oh, Cherry, don’t be silly! What do you want sandwiches for? You’re spoilt for choice, you people! In my day it was wet mash and soggy greens and that was that, like it or lump it. Now it’s more like a five-star hotel.”

      I can only conclude that Mum has never been to a five-star hotel. I asked her to name one and she said, “Oh, the Ritz! The Savoy!” I bet the Ritz and the Savoy don’t dish up plates of disgusting white worms in congealed blood and call it spaghetti. That’s what I had today, white worms in blood. Utterly foul.

      Wednesday

      Brown worms today. Brown worms in something-I-won’t-put-a-name-to as it makes me feel sick. And anyway, I don’t know how to spell it. Yeeeeeurgh!!!!!

      Thursday

      There are times when I hate Mum for the way she treats me. Skinny Melon couldn’t walk home with me after school today because, guess what? Her mum was taking her to buy a bra! Skinny Melon who is as thin as a piece of thread! Not a bump to be seen. Not even the beginnings of a bump. I am practically a double-D cup compared to her. I mean, she doesn’t even get on the chart! But her mum is so nice. It’s like she went out and bought her brother a razor for his birthday even though he hadn’t got anything to shave, hardly. So the Melon hasn’t got anything to put in a bra, but still her mum takes her seriously.

      She even takes the Blob seriously, for heaven’s sake! The Blob is Skin’s sister and rather immature, as one tends to be at only eight years old. She is still at the stage of asking these dippy questions such as “Where do babies come from?” Skinny’s mum never fobs her off with yucky stories about storks or gooseberry bushes but treats her like a real person and tells her the truth. That’s how grown-ups ought to behave. It is very patronising and hurtful when they laugh at you behind your back, which is what Mum and Slimey do. I’m not saying they do it all the time but it is what they did tonight.

      When I got back from school, Slimey was up in his studio (the back bedroom, which ought by rights to have been mine) and I took the opportunity to suggest to Mum in strictest confidence that maybe it was time I, too, started to wear a bra. I said, “If the Melon does and I don’t, I shall get the most terrific inferiority complex … It could stunt the whole of my future sexlife.” Mum said, “Oh, my goodness, we can’t have that! But really why you all want to grow up so quickly I can’t imagine.”

      I said, “Why? Isn’t it any fun being grown-up?” and she said, “Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.” So, as I said to her, where’s the difference? She needn’t think it’s all fun being a child, because I can assure her it most definitely is not. Not when the parents go and split up and the child is just left like an old bit of baggage. “Who is going to take it? You or me?” And then they both go and get married again and probably wish there wasn’t any child because really it is such a nuisance, always being so selfish and unpleasant. “Why did we ever have it in the first place?”

      If Mum thinks that’s fun, she must have a very strange sense of humour, that’s all I can say.

      Anyway, she agreed we could go in on Saturday maybe and buy me a bra, so that was all right. In fact I felt quite warm towards her and thought that in spite of divorcing Dad and marrying the Slime she was every bit as nice a Mum as Skinny’s. I thought of what Carol had said about her and Dad growing apart and I thought that perhaps it was just one of those things that happened and that it wasn’t really her fault. I even half made up my mind that in future I would try to be nicer to her and forgive her for what she’d done.

      And THEN she had to go and blow it all. She went and betrayed me with him.

      What happened, I’d gone upstairs to wash and she was in the back bedroom with Slimey and she’d left the door a bit open. I wasn’t eavesdropping, but even if I had been, so what? I think one has a right to know what people are saying about one behind one’s back. What I heard Mum say was, “Hasn’t got anything there!” and then go off into these idiotic peals of laughter. I hate her for that. I shall never trust her again. I bet old Slimey thought it was really funny.

      And anyway, I’ve got more than Skinny has!

      Friday

      There is a girl at school called Avril Roper whose dog has just had puppies. She said if anyone wants one they can have one free because the puppies were a mistake and her mum is only interested in them going to people who will love them, not in making money. I tore home like the wind and burst into the kitchen and yelled, “Mum, Mum, can we have a puppy? They’re going free! And they’re small ones, Mum!”