Fruit and Nutcase (17 page)

I’m glad Cat’s pleased with it, though, ‘cos I’ve worked really hard.
Really
hard. I mean, I’ve been sat here doing this tape every night, almost, when I could have been watching telly or wall painting or even reading a book. (Ha ha! That’ll be the day.) But anything rather than just talk talk talk all the time. It wears you out, talking does.

I wish I could just do everything in pictures!

*
Note from Cat’s mum: Not at all! I’m quite enjoying it.

One day when I had been at Nan’s for a fortnight, Grandy came home from work and said, “Guess what? There’s a chum of yours staying just across the way.”

I couldn’t think what he was talking about. I don’t have any chums. Not since my friend Janis got moved. I really miss Janis. We used to have ever such fun together.

Grandy said, “Someone who goes to your school,” and my stomach fell plop! right down into my shoes.

“If it’s Tracey Bigg,” I said, “I hate her. She’s my worst enemy.”

Nan tutted and said, “Hate is a very extravagant word, my girl.”

I said, “She deserves it. She’s evil.”

Nan opened her mouth to start on at me but Grandy got in first. He said, “Well, it’s not Tracey Bigg, it’s a boy called Oliver Pratt.”

I said, “
Oliver?”

“Now I suppose you’ll tell us he’s evil,” said Nan.

“Oliver’s all right,” I said. “He’s just a bit of a wimp.”

“Well, he says you’re his friend,” said Grandy. “He’s staying with his nan, same as you are, while his mum’s at work.”

It turned out that Oliver’s nan lived in Soper Street, just up the road from Nan and Grandy. She’d been moved out to Arthur’s Mill same time they had. But just ‘cos our nans happened to live on the same horrible estate didn’t make us friends!

“I said he could drop by,” said Grandy. “Tomorrow morning, after breakfast. That all right?”

It didn’t really matter whether it was or not. When grown ups go and arrange things for you, you’re expected to just meekly do what they say and not make any sort of fuss. ‘Cos if you
do
make a fuss, then heavens! You should hear them carry on.

So that’s how I got lumbered with Oliver. Only actually, as it happened, it wasn’t so bad.

I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I mean, for one thing, Oliver reminded me of school, which is something I’d rather
not
have to think about during holiday time. For another, he’s not exactly the brightest. Janis might have been in a wheelchair, but she was really smart. We had fun together! But poor old Oliver, he’s—well! Not always quite with it.

So I woke up next morning thinking “Oh,
drear
” and gazing glumly into my cornflakes expecting the worst, and it just goes to show that sometimes things can turn out better than expected.

We spent that first day making up rhymes about Tracey Bigg. I told Oliver my one … and then he said that he’d got one, too. One that he’d made up all by himself.

I said, “That’s great, Oliver! That’s really ace.”

You have to encourage him. It wouldn’t have been kind to point out that a) his rhyme was an insult to pigs and b) not strictly speaking true, since Tracey Bigg is just BIG rather than fat.

Although I hate, loathe and utterly detest her, I think you should be honest about these things.

Here are some of the other rhymes we made up.

Actually, I sang a word that is ruder than “jolly” but I am thinking of Cat’s mum and remembering that she doesn’t like bad language and so I am trying to be polite.
^*

Here is another one that Oliver made up.

This is another one.

He’s got this thing about animals. He wanted to do one about her being a hippopotamus but he couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with it.

This is one that I did.

She does pick her nose and eat it. I’ve seen her doing it. She’s disgusting!

Someone once told me that if you keep picking your nose, your head will cave in.

Ha! That would be something.

Next day I went round to Oliver’s place. Well, Oliver’s nan’s. He’d got something he wanted to show me. It was this bit of garden his nan had given him. Just this little patch right at the end. He’d had it since he was eight years old, and it was all full of flowers, just like my bedroom wall except that these were
real –
and it was Oliver who’d planted them!