reading

BAD GIRLS

THE BED AND BREAKFAST STAR

BEST FRIENDS

BIG DAY OUT

BURIED ALIVE!

CANDYFLOSS

THE CAT MUMMY

CLEAN BREAK

CLIFFHANGER

THE DARE GAME

DIAMOND

THE DIAMOND GIRLS

DOUBLE ACT

DOUBLE ACT (PLAY EDITION)

EMERALD STAR

GLUBBSLYME

HETTY FEATHER

THE ILLUSTRATED MUM

JACKY DAYDREAM

LILY ALONE

LITTLE DARLINGS

THE LONGEST WHALE SONG

THE LOTTIE PROJECT

MIDNIGHT

THE MUM-MINDER

MY SECRET DIARY

MY SISTER JODIE

OPAL PLUMSTEAD

PAWS AND WHISKERS

QUEENIE

SAPPHIRE BATTERSEA

SECRETS

STARRING TRACY BEAKER

THE STORY OF TRACY BEAKER

THE SUITCASE KID

VICKY ANGEL

THE WORRY WEBSITE

THE WORST THING ABOUT

MY SISTER

Collections:

JACQUELINE WILSON’S FUNNY GIRLS

includes THE STORY OF TRACY BEAKER and

THE BED AND BREAKFAST STAR

JACQUELINE WILSON’S DOUBLE-DECKER

includes BAD GIRLS and DOUBLE ACT

JACQUELINE WILSON’S SUPERSTARS

includes THE SUITCASE KID and THE LOTTIE PROJECT

JACQUELINE WILSON’S BISCUIT BARREL

includes CLIFFHANGER and BURIED ALIVE!

Available from Doubleday/Corgi Books, for older readers:

DUSTBIN BABY

GIRLS IN LOVE

GIRLS UNDER PRESSURE

GIRLS OUT LATE

GIRLS IN TEARS

KISS

LOLA ROSE

LOVE LESSONS

About the Author

Jacqueline Wilson is one of Britain’s bestselling authors, with more than 35 million books sold in the UK alone. She has been honoured with many prizes for her work, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Children’s Book of the Year.

Jacqueline is a former Children’s Laureate, a professor of children’s literature, and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame for services to children’s literacy.

About the Book

Opal Plumstead is fiercely intelligent: a proud scholarship girl, with plans to go to university. Yet her dreams are shattered when her father is sent to prison, and fourteen-year-old Opal must abandon school and start work at the Fairy Glen sweet factory.

Opal struggles to get along with the other workers, who think her snobby and stuck up. But Opal idolizes Mrs Roberts, the factory’s beautiful, dignified owner, who introduces her to the legendary Emmeline Pankhurst and her fellow suffragettes. And when Opal meets Morgan – Mrs Roberts’ handsome son, and the heir to Fairy Glen – she believes she has found her soulmate.

But the First World War is looming on the horizon, and will change Opal’s life for ever.

The brilliant new story from the nation’s best-loved storyteller, starring her most outspoken, fiery and unforgettable heroine yet.

Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Penguin Random House Company

The right of Jacqueline Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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We were wandering through the graveyard, trying to find some privacy. Olivia had bought a pennyworth of Fairy Glen toffee chews and we were desperate to eat them. We had to be careful, though. Last week Miss Mountbank had caught us sucking sherbet on our way home from school. She’d pounced on us from a great height, her unfortunate nose more like a hawk’s beak than ever, and had smacked us both on the back so violently that we choked. I spilled sherbet all down my school tunic. It was even worse for Olivia. She snorted in surprise and inhaled half her packet. She coughed uncontrollably, her eyes streaming, slime dripping out of both nostrils.

‘How dare you eat in school uniform, you uncouth little guttersnipes!’ Mounty shrieked.

She gave us detention the next day, shutting us in the classroom and making us write I am disgustingly greedy and a disgrace to the whole school in our best copperplate handwriting. She made Olivia write it out two hundred times. She gave me an extra fifty lines – ‘Because you of all girls should know better, Opal Plumstead.’

I was top of the class. I couldn’t seem to help it. It meant that some teachers liked me and made me their pet, while other teachers like Mounty seemed to resent me bitterly. I tried hard to make the other girls like me, but most of them despised me. They considered it shameful to be such a swot – though what else did they expect from a scholarship girl? I had been dreadfully lonely, but now I had Olivia and she was my best friend.

Olivia Brand came to St Margaret’s last term and didn’t quite fit into any of the little gangs of girls. She wasn’t pretty enough to be popular – she was quite plump so that the pleats on her tunic were stretched out of place. She had a very prominent forehead. She looked as if someone were permanently pulling hard on her long frizzy plait. She wasn’t from a desperately wealthy family. Her father was a buyer at Beade and Chambers, the big department store in town. This meant that Olivia was shunned by the lawyers’ and doctors’ daughters. She was very young for her age, liking to play little-girl games. When she was particularly happy, she would break into a lumbering skip. She was scornfully ignored by the sophisticated girls, who already had proper figures and pashes on boys.

For the first few days of term Olivia had blundered around by herself. She didn’t make any overtures of friendship to me and I was too proud to. It was actually Mounty who brought us together. She paired us up in housecraft and had us sharing a worktop while we made rock cakes. We measured and mixed together, and I grinned sympathetically when Olivia couldn’t resist having a sly nibble at our raisin allowance. We ended up with very bland rock cakes with scarcely any flavouring – but we’d become firm friends.

Now we went round arm in arm and wrote little notes to each other in class and walked home together every day. Olivia was given a weekly allowance. It was supposed to be for books and stationery and ribbons and stockings, but she spent most of it on sweets. She was a generous girl and shared them scrupulously with me, though I didn’t get an allowance of any kind and couldn’t reciprocate.

‘Never mind – you’re my best friend,’ said Olivia. ‘Of course we go even-stevens.’

She shook the bag of Fairy Glen toffees as if it were a tambourine until we skirted the church and threaded our way between the gravestones. I liked reading the quaint inscriptions and admired the stone angels, but Olivia seemed suddenly disconcerted.

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ she repeated. She was peering around warily, staring at a broken sepulchre.

I made an elaborate show of putting my finger to my lips. Olivia clamped her hand over her mouth to stop herself spluttering. We waited.

A bird sang in the tree, repeating the same three trills again and again. Leaves rustled slightly in the breeze. There was a very distant rumble of traffic. Nothing else.

‘Oh, there it is again. Quick, Opal, let’s run. I don’t like it,’ Olivia cried.

Then she saw my face. ‘It was you!’ she said, and thumped me with her satchel.

That shut me up effectively. I mimed buttoning my mouth and hitched myself up on a tomb, swinging my legs.

‘All right, I’ve stopped now. Come on,’ I said, patting the space beside me.

‘Well, they can’t do anything, can they? Not if they’re dead.’ I looked again at the broken sepulchre, the stone lid crumbling away. ‘Though perhaps I wouldn’t sit on that one. They might just reach out a very bony hand and grab our toffee chews.’

‘Stop it! I’m warning you, Opal Plumstead. I’ll eat them all myself. Look!’ Olivia sat down on the sandy pathway, undid a banana chew, and stuffed it into her mouth. She crammed in a raspberry chew as well, to emphasize her point.

‘How do I know that the dead people haven’t wriggled about a bit under the grass. The plots are so overgrown, you can’t work out exactly where the graves are.’ Olivia unwrapped another banana chew. They were my favourites. Sometimes there were only a couple in a whole bag.

‘Pax!’ I cried quickly, jumping off the tomb. I sat down beside her, not caring if I made my own tunic dirty, though I knew Mother would be angry.

Olivia ignored me, slowly unwrapping the banana chew, the tip of her tongue sticking out in anticipation. I edged closer to her, putting my hands up like paws and making beseeching panting noises.

‘All right, you wicked greedy beast,’ said Olivia, and she posted the banana chew into my mouth.

‘Thank you!’ I said, chewing vigorously, my whole mouth filled with the wonderful sweet banana flavour.

‘You’re such a tease. If you weren’t my best friend, you’d be my worst enemy,’ said Olivia. ‘Just don’t go on about g-h-o-s-t-s any more.’

‘I don’t believe in them, not really,’ I said. ‘I think when you’re dead, that’s it. You just moulder away in your coffin.’ I pulled a silly corpse face, and Olivia shoved me again.

‘What about angels?’ she said, looking up at the stone figures around us, all standing on their white tiptoes, wings spread, as if about to fly away. ‘I believe in angels. They’re in Heaven.’

‘I’m not sure I believe any of that any more,’ I said. ‘I think it’s all just a trick to make us meek and good. Never mind if your life is awful now, if you have to toil away twelve hours a day in a factory and live on bread and dripping, you will be rewarded when you die and go to Heaven. Only what if Heaven doesn’t exist?’

‘Shush! You are dreadful. God could smite you down right this instant,’ said Olivia. She looked up fearfully, as if she seriously thought a giant hand were about to punch its way through the clouds and pulverize me.

‘Oh, yes please!’ I delved into the paper bag and found a strawberry chew this time. ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about Heaven, Olivia. If it does exist, you’ll fly straight there, flippity-flap, because you’re so good.’

‘You will too,’ said Olivia. ‘You’re ever so good. You always come top at school.’

‘Yes, but that’s just because I can do the lessons. That’s nothing to do with being a good person. I’m not at all good at home. My mother says I’m a very bad girl.’

‘It’s not really what I do, it’s what I say. I don’t think the same way as Mother and Cassie,’ I said. ‘I’m always saying the wrong thing and vexing Mother. She fusses so over the slightest little thing – and yet she lets Cassie get away with murder. When I point this out, she says I’m just jealous of Cassie and I’ve got an unfortunate nature.’

Olivia sucked at her toffee chew. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you were a bit jealous of Cassie,’ she said. ‘I mean, I would be if she were my sister.’

I had invited Olivia to tea after we’d vowed eternal friendship. She had clearly been expecting my sister Cassie to be another version of me, only slightly older – pinched and pale and plain, with mouse-coloured hair and little oval glasses. She was taken aback by Cassie, in all her irritating abundance: her long thick wavy fair hair, her big brown doe eyes, her round rosy cheeks, her extraordinary curves, her flamboyant gestures, her peals of laughter. Olivia sat opposite her at the tea table totally struck dumb; she could scarcely eat. She gazed at Cassie as if she were a turn at the music hall. I tried not to mind. I was used to Cassie having this effect on everyone. I found I did mind all the same. Rather a lot.

It hurt that even my very best friend was in awe of Cassie. She looked so dazzling that no one else seemed to notice how infuriating she was – the way she acted all the time, widening her eyes, licking her lips, winding a curl round and round her little finger. I saw her practising in the looking glass, peering at herself this way and that, her hand at her waist to emphasize the curves above and below.

No one else saw her first thing in the morning, scratching herself and yawning, sniffing at yesterday’s stockings to see if they really needed washing, sticking her finger in the jam jar when Mother wasn’t looking. No one else objected to the way she talked. She drivelled on and on about herself, debating what sort of shampoo she should use on her wretchedly abundant hair. She congratulated herself on having naturally pearly skin. She told us all about the fine gentlemen who winked at her admiringly on her way to and from Madame Alouette’s. Mother encouraged her. She still brushed Cassie’s hair for her, a hundred strokes every night, and made her little oatmeal messes to apply to her famous pearly skin. Mother tutted disapprovingly at the tales of winking gentlemen – but she seemed proud of their attention too.

‘You’ve got the looks that will turn every man’s head, Cassie,’ she said, preening as if they were her looks too. ‘But don’t you go wasting yourself on the first Tom, Dick or Harry who comes along. You can aim much higher than any local lad. You just bide your time, my dear. No winking back, no giggling, no saucy remarks. You can’t go getting a reputation now, or no one will want you, stunner or not. You need to act like a little lady at all times.’

I was lying. I found Cassie incredibly irritating, and I didn’t want to be like her, so lazy and vacant, never wanting to read a book or look at a painting. I certainly didn’t envy her working at Madame Alouette’s milliner’s shop, stitching away at flimsy silks and satins and having to bob and curtsy to fancy ladies. I didn’t want to be her in the slightest – but in my secret heart of hearts I had to admit I wanted to look like her. I didn’t want the attention of all the silly young men. I didn’t even want Mother fussing over me. But I did wish that Father would look at me with such helpless admiration in his eyes. He’d always seemed dazzled by Cassie too. But poor Father was so sad and self-absorbed now, he didn’t look at any of us when he was at home. He kept his head bent and his eyes lowered and he hardly ever spoke.

‘Cassie will make a lovely angel,’ said Olivia. ‘I can just see her in a long white dress with a halo above her gorgeous hair.’

‘Cassie’s no angel,’ I said sourly, but the image was in my head too. I rummaged in my school bag and found a notebook. I started sketching, showing Cassie with a devout expression, eyes wide, lips pursed, a halo attached to her hair like a little gold sunhat. I exaggerated her hair, letting it tumble all the way down to her bare feet, and I drew several young men prostrated before her, kissing her toes.

Olivia peered at my page and spluttered with laughter. ‘Oh, Opal, you’re such a hoot. That’s exactly Cassie. You’re so good at art.’

I loved to draw and paint, but art was my worst subject at school. I was used to getting ten out of ten in all my other lessons, but Miss Reed awarded me seven at best, and often gave me a disgraceful nought out of ten. She hated the way I drew.

‘You’ve got the skills but you don’t apply yourself seriously. Art isn’t a joke, Opal Plumstead,’ she said. She had some problem with her teeth and always unintentionally spat a little saliva at you if you stood face to face with her.

I did take art seriously, but I hated drawing the boring vases and boxes and leaf sprays she arranged as still-life compositions. I tried to sketch each object accurately, but my pencil had a will of its own. I executed the vase perfectly, but drew an exotic genie leaping out of it in a puff of smoke. I attempted the box and mastered its perspective, but then drew ropes of beads and gold coins spilling from its carefully shaded depths. I managed the leaf spray, noting every line on each separate leaf, then drew a miniature Jack climbing up the beanstalk I’d grown for him.

‘I will not have you drawing this nonsense!’ Miss Reed spluttered, and failed me each time. In fact, she sent me directly to Miss Laurel, the headmistress, when I drew the genie, because I’d pictured him in a loincloth and she felt this was obscene.

Miss Laurel lectured me at length, though the corners of her mouth had twitched when she saw my offensive drawing. ‘You’re a bright girl, Opal, and you generally work hard. Why do you have to be deliberately subordinate in your art lessons?’ she asked.

I pondered. It was easy enough to do the work properly in all my other lessons. It was as if I set a little machine clicking away in my head. It solved the mathematical problem of the men digging holes in a field; it parsed the passage of English; it could trace the rivers and lakes in Africa without wavering. But somehow I couldn’t draw mechanically. My mind took over and wanted its own way. I considered trying to say this to Miss Laurel but knew she wouldn’t consider this an adequate explanation.

She shook her head at me. ‘Then stop plaguing poor Miss Reed,’ she said. ‘And you’re simply short-changing yourself, you silly girl. You need to get perfect marks in every subject if you want to matriculate. You seem like an ambitious girl. This is your chance to better yourself. You don’t have to end up as a shop girl or a servant. If you really worked hard, you could even be a teacher at St Margaret’s one day.’

A teacher like Miss Reed, Miss Mountbank, Miss Laurel herself! I didn’t want to be a teacher, though everyone seemed to assume that this would be my ideal career, because I was good at lessons and had the knack of passing exams.

She took another toffee chew and threw one to me. ‘Mm, chocolate! I think I’ll have my own sweet emporium. Imagine being able to munch and crunch all day long. No, I’ll marry a man with a sweet shop, and then I won’t have to stand on my feet and serve people. I’ll just lounge on the sofa with a huge box of chocs and be the lady of the house. And I’ll have two children, a boy and a girl, and we’ll keep several servants to do all the work and it will be so jolly.’

‘You’ll be jolly fat, lying around all day stuffing yourself with sweeties,’ I said, pulling her plait.

‘What?’ I did think her fat, but I knew I couldn’t say so. ‘Of course not, you loopy girl. You’re just . . . comfortable.’

‘Mother says I’m getting very tubby,’ said Olivia. ‘She’s bought me this awful corset for Sundays. It’s unbelievably uncomfortable. I can barely talk when I’ve got it on. It flattens my tum a bit, but I bulge out above and below it in a totally disgusting way. I couldn’t even move after I’d tucked into my roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Does your mother make you wear a corset for best, Opal?’

‘I’ve got nothing to push up or push down,’ I said, peering at my flat chest and sighing. ‘My mother keeps on berating me as if I’m being wilfully defiant in not growing bosoms, just because Cassie had a figure when she was fourteen.’

‘Yes, but it’s not one of those really fierce ones. It hasn’t got proper bones.’ I’d secretly tried it on, but it just looked ridiculous on me and I hated the cloying smell of Cassie on it, of powder and musk.

‘Mother says I should be mindful of my figure now. She’s stopped letting me have second helps of anything. She’s so mean.’

‘Why do mothers have to be so difficult?’ said Olivia. ‘I shall be so lovely to my children. I shall let them eat their favourite meals every single day, always with second helps, and I’ll buy my little girl an entire family of dolls and my boy will have a toy fort with a battalion of little lead soldiers. I will play with them all day long while the cook makes our meals in the kitchen and the maid does all the housework.’

‘I hope you will let your servants have their favourite meals and give them second helps too,’ I said.

I had been to tea with Olivia and observed her family’s single servant, a skinny little mite with untidy hair tumbling out of her cap and dark circles like bruises under her eyes. I’d talked to her, asking her name and age and when she had left school as she served us lopsided sandwiches and little scones like stones. She had blinked nervously and mumbled her replies.

‘I’m Jane, miss, and I’m thirteen years old, and I only went to school when I was small, miss, because I had to help Ma at home with the little ones.’

I was shocked to discover that Jane was younger than us. I wanted to find out more about her, but Olivia’s mother was frowning at both of us. Poor Jane’s hands started to tremble. She very nearly dropped a plate of bread and butter and poured half the tea onto the tablecloth. She murmured a desperate apology and fled the room.

‘Oh dear,’ said Olivia’s mother. ‘We’ve unsettled her.’ She raised her eyebrows and said to me in a tone of gentle reproof, ‘We don’t usually ask personal questions of servants, Opal – at least, not when they’re performing their duties.’

I felt my cheeks burn. I was terrified that Jane might be punished, all because of me. It seemed such a heartless rule. It was as if they weren’t acknowledging that Jane was a girl, just like Olivia and me – and yet the whole family made a huge fuss of their two smelly spaniels, chatting to them in baby talk, rolling them over on their backs and petting them in a hugely embarrassing way.

Olivia had put her arm round me when we were ushered off to play cribbage in the parlour.

‘Don’t take too much notice of Mother – she can be very stuffy,’ she whispered. ‘And she’s really very kind to Jane. She’s training her carefully and she hardly ever gets cross when she makes mistakes.’

I wondered what it would feel like to be Jane. I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher – but I certainly didn’t want to be a servant, either.

‘You have them. They’re your sweets, after all,’ I said, though I hoped she wouldn’t take me seriously.

‘No, no, fair dos,’ said Olivia. She gave me one – banana flavour! – and popped a strawberry chew in her own mouth. Then she bit hard into the remaining toffee.

‘Careful! Mind your front teeth. You won’t get that husband of yours if you’ve got a great gap in your mouth,’ I said. ‘Here, let me.’

I had a go at severing the sticky toffee and was more successful than Olivia. We both chewed happily.

‘No I don’t. I don’t think it would be congenial at all, having to flap around after a man. I’m not very keen on men, anyway,’ I said airily, trying to sound sophisticated.

‘I don’t believe in falling in love,’ I told her. ‘I don’t believe in love itself. I think it’s just a comfort story for adults. Children get to believe in fairies and Father Christmas – adults believe there’s one true person out there. Your eyes meet, and that’s it, you’re in love.’

‘But it’s true. Of course you fall in love!’ said Olivia. ‘Look at Romeo and Juliet. See, even your boring old Shakespeare believed in true love.’

We were studying Shakespeare at school, but in the silly bowdlerized version considered suitable for young ladies. I’d taken a proper volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies out of the library and had learned many passages by heart because I thought they were so beautiful. I’d chanted them at Olivia when I wanted to annoy her.

‘Shakespeare was writing poetically. Romeo and Juliet is beautiful because of the words. It’s ridiculous as a plot. It takes place over a matter of days – in which they’re supposed to fall in love so passionately that they risk everything and then die for each other,’ I said scornfully.

‘Because the young men desire the young women,’ I said grandly, though I couldn’t stop myself blushing.

I had very little clear idea what sweethearts did when that desire was consummated. Neither did Olivia. I knew that because we’d whispered and giggled over the conundrum many times. We both got the giggles now, choking over the last of our toffee chews.

‘But there’s more to love than that,’ Olivia gasped at last. ‘Haven’t you ever felt all swoony over someone?’

He was our music teacher, and he was tall and dark. He told us stories about all the tormented composers and played us extracts from their work on his Edison phonograph. I did like Mr Andrews very much.

‘Certainly not! Think how that moustache would tickle,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Mr Andrews has got a wife – I’ve seen her – and he seems very fond of her.’

‘There! Husbands and wives love each other, silly,’ said Olivia, twisting each toffee paper round her little finger, turning them into tiny glasses.

‘They’re fond at first – that’s the passion. But it wears off. Think of our parents, Olivia – your mother and father and mine.’

Olivia sighed, looking depressed. ‘Well, I’ll love my babies, even if I don’t always love my husband,’ she said. ‘Let’s drink to that.’ She gave me a toffee-wrapper glass and we touched them together and pretended to drink. Then Olivia consulted her pocket watch. ‘Cripes, look at the time! We’re going to be in trouble.’

We stood up and ran helter-skelter out of the graveyard, all the way to our respective homes.

I LIVED IN a house called Primrose Villa. It was a pretty name, but our home was small and stark, one of ninety-eight built in bright red brick in an ugly terrace. We didn’t have any primroses in our garden – just a dusty privet hedge, a square of grass, and some puny rose bushes at the front. We had no garden at all at the back, just a bleak yard with a washing line and an outdoor WC. The word ‘villa’ implies a large, spacious house, but ours was the opposite. It had a meagre front parlour, a living room and kitchen downstairs, and two bedrooms and a box room upstairs.

Mother and Father had the bedroom at the front, Cassie had the room at the back, and I had the box room. It wasn’t much bigger than a cupboard, but I didn’t mind. It was my room, where I kept all my books and could nail my own choice of pictures on the walls. Mother favoured sentimental reproductions of children with fat cheeks and soulful expressions cuddling bug-eyed rabbits. I had reproductions of proper art in my room – soulful Madonnas in glorious cobalt blue cradling pale little Infants.

When I was nine or ten, I went through a fervently religious phase and decided I wanted to be a nun. I used to unhook the dark curtain from the parlour and parade around in my ‘nun’s habit’, chanting psalms and doing my best to look holy. I had grown out of that phase now and tended to think religion a myth – though I still prayed when I felt despairing.

I longed for a proper desk in my room but it was too cramped. My bed and washstand and wardrobe nudged each other uncomfortably as it was. When I painted or did my homework, I had to sit bolt upright on my bed and balance a tray on my lap to make a flat surface. Once absorbed in my work I often relaxed, with disastrous consequences. The tray tilted and my water jar or inkpot spilled. Mother was furious. She couldn’t get the ink stains out, no matter how many times she laundered the sheets.

‘Well, you’ll just have to sleep in black sheets, you careless little missy. We can’t afford to get you any new ones,’ she hissed at me.

I didn’t care. I’d have liked a black coverlet too, and maybe black wallpaper and a black painted ceiling. I liked the décor of deep mourning. Now that I was in my teens I’d developed a taste for Gothic literature and devoured Dracula and Frankenstein.

I sat down now, balancing the tray across my knees as best I could. I concentrated hard for an hour, doing two pages of algebra and an English comprehension. Then, for a second hour, I painted. I used sepia tones for extra effect, painting the graveyard. I drew the stone angels flying away from their plinths while skinny corpses crept out of their graves and gambolled in the grass.

I heard Mother calling for me intermittently but ignored her as long as possible.

‘Opal!’ she cried, bursting into my room. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘I don’t think I want any supper today,’ I said, truthfully enough, because the surfeit of toffee chews had made me feel a little queasy.

‘Oh, that’s so typical of you, only thinking of yourself. What about the rest of us? What sort of a daughter are you?’

‘Poor Cassie’s fingers are sore from stitching. She’s done an honest day’s work at Madame Alouette’s.’

Cassie was an ‘improver’ at an expensive hat shop in town. It said it specialized in the Finest Parisian Millinery in curly writing on the shop sign – but none of the staff had ever set foot in Paris. Mother always pronounced Madame Alouette’s name with proud emphasis, her tongue waggling, but Cassie told me that Madame only bothered to speak with a French accent in front of clients. Behind the scenes she was plain Alice Higgins from Walthamstow, though she was still as sharp as her own scissors if any of the staff gave her any cheek.

She was rarely sharp with Cassie, who was her favourite apprentice. She sometimes let her model new hats to show them off to clients.

When I stamped reluctantly downstairs to the kitchen, Cassie was wearing silk flowers in her hair. They were deep purple with embroidered crimson centres and dark green leaves. They looked quite wonderful twined through her long red-gold hair.

‘What do you think you are – a bridesmaid?’ I said, pushing past her to the sink.

‘Our Cassie will be a bride, not a bridesmaid,’ said Mother. ‘You look a picture, dear. Did Madame Alouette give you them?’

‘They were left-over trimmings from some old dame’s titfer,’ said Cassie carelessly. ‘Do you think they suit me, Opal?’

We both knew perfectly well that the flowers would look ridiculous stuck in my limp mousy locks.

‘Oh yes, I’ll twine them all round my specs. Then I’ll look a picture too,’ I said grimly, starting to peel the potatoes.

‘Now now, no need to take that tone. Your sister’s only trying to be kind,’ said Mother. ‘And watch those potatoes – you’re peeling half the goodness away. Don’t they teach you anything useful at that fancy school of yours? They fill your head with all sorts of silly ideas – they’d be far better training you up to be a decent little housewife.’

‘Well, you’re certainly going to find it hard to catch a man with that sour look on your face,’ said Mother. ‘Don’t you go filling your mind with daft daydreams, Opal. You don’t want to end up like your father, do you?’

As if on cue, we heard Father’s key in the lock of the front door. We listened to him shuffle into the hall, pause to hang his hat and coat on the hook, and then trail his way into the kitchen.

He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, his face sickly pale. His economy paper collar had somehow come unbuttoned at the back and stuck out at a rakish angle. His old business suit was a size too big for him now, and drooped unbecomingly. He stood unfastening his boots, blinking in the gaslight.

Mother didn’t greet him at all. She just tapped the large fat envelope on the corner of the kitchen dresser.

‘Your post, Ernest,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Your chick’s come home to roost again.’

I hated the way she said it. And I hated the way Father picked up the heavy envelope, held it to his chest for a moment, and then walked slowly out of the kitchen. We heard him trudge upstairs to the bedroom.

‘Don’t stay up there half the night brooding,’ Mother called. ‘Your supper will be on the table in half an hour.’

I glared at them. ‘Why do you have to be so hateful to him?’ I said fiercely.

‘Now then, don’t take that tone with me,’ said Mother. ‘Can’t you show a little respect?’

‘That’s precisely my point. You’re failing to show Father any respect whatsoever,’ I said.

‘I’ll thank you to mind your own business,’ said Mother. ‘You think you know it all, Miss Clever-clogs, don’t you?’

I felt I did know it all. I knew Father was a very clever man, much cleverer than me. He’d won a scholarship when he was a boy, taken his Higher Oxford exams and gone to the university. That was when he met Mother. Her parents owned a little stationer’s supplying all the young gentleman scholars. She was only sixteen and I suppose she looked very fetching. It’s difficult to imagine this, because now Mother is frankly stout, so tightly corseted she creaks when she moves, and her bright hair has faded to pepper and salt, scragged back into a tight bun that exposes the lines on her forehead. Even so, I can see that when she was a girl she might have had her fair share of Cassie’s charm.

There was a courtship and then a hasty marriage, disapproved of by both sets of parents. Cassie and I had never met any of our grandparents. Father didn’t get to finish his degree. He had to go and teach in an elementary school, which he hated. He had been a silent, scholarly child. He couldn’t understand these rough rowdy pupils. He couldn’t control them at all. It made him so ill that he had to stop work altogether for a while.

He started writing when he was lying in bed at home – first tortured confessional pieces, and then fiction, though this was frequently autobiographical. He also wrote children’s stories for Cassie and me. They were melancholy moral tales about little children who misbehave once and consequently suffer terrible disasters and death. Cassie didn’t like these tales and put her hands over her ears and chanted la-la-la so she couldn’t hear. I couldn’t get enough of them, and begged Father to tell me the tale of the boy who ran into the road and got trampled to death by horses, or the story of the little girl who went paddling in a stream and fell into deep water and drowned.

‘Stop telling the children such morbid nonsense!’ Mother said, whenever she overheard.

Perhaps she’d thought the world of Father once, when he was a varsity man and seemed to have prospects. She was full of resentment now. It seemed so unfair, because he was always the sweetest man with the mildest manner, even when she shouted at him. He tried very hard to sell his stories, but without any success so far.

He took a position as a clerk in a shipping office in London. He bent over his desk nine hours a day, entering information in a big ledger, to try to clear our debts. He wrote his stories in the evening after supper. He had a large callous on the middle finger of his right hand from all his penmanship, and developed a permanent headache, so that he often held a cold wet cloth to his temples.

I hated to see him so afflicted. At times I couldn’t help wishing that he was an ordinary father, a bouncy red-cheeked shop man like Olivia’s, who always had a chirpy quip and walked with such a spring in his step that his boots tapped out a tune on the pavement. Then I felt guilty and tried even harder to be a sympathetic daughter, though at times I wanted to seize him by the shoulders and give him a serious shaking.

When supper was ready (sweetbreads and onions and mashed potatoes, an unattractive meal that made me shudder), I said I’d fetch Father.

‘That’s right, ginger him up, Opal. And take that look off your face. I dare say you’d prefer a prime cut of steak, but beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘But why do we have to have sweetbreads, Ma?’ said Cassie, for once winking in sympathy with me. ‘They’re cow’s innards, all slimy and disgusting! You chew and chew, and you still can’t swallow them.’

‘You girls should be grateful I stand sweet-talking the butcher so he’ll save me the cheaper cuts,’ said Mother indignantly. ‘He’s promised me a sheep’s head for the weekend.’

He was sitting on the side of his bed, his rejected manuscript on his knee. He had a dazed expression on his face.

‘Please don’t take on so, Father. All the publishers are fools. I think you’re a brilliant writer,’ I said earnestly.

‘Is that from the publishers?’ I asked. Father didn’t usually even get a letter, just a rejection slip.

He nodded. He started to speak, but his voice came out as a croak, and he had to begin again. ‘From Major and Smithfield,’ he whispered. He held the letter close, as if checking it. ‘They like it, Opal! They truly like it!’

‘Only for a few trifling corrections. They suggest a different twist to the plot, and a more dynamic opening chapter. Yes, I understand – I can do that easily.’

‘If I re-submit my manuscript, then they say they will reconsider it. It’s very cautiously put, but that’s what they mean! Oh, Opal, they truly like my novel.’

‘I’m so happy for you, Father!’ I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly.

‘Wait till your mother hears!’ said Father. He stood up, clasping my hand. ‘Let’s go and tell her.’

We clattered down the stairs, both of us wanting to be first in the kitchen, jokily pushing and shoving each other as if we were little children.

But Father gently elbowed me out of the way and reached the kitchen before me. ‘It’s astonishing news, Louisa!’ he said. He hardly ever called Mother by her full name – she was always ‘Lou’, or ‘my dear’.

‘What what what indeed!’ Father took the stewing saucepan out of her hand, placed it back on top of the range – and then picked her right up! He was a slight man and Mother was stout, but he seized her as if she were a sack of feathers and whirled her about the kitchen.

‘Put me down, you fool!’ Mother screamed. Her cheeks were bright pink, and half her hair came tumbling down so that she looked almost girlish again.

Cassie screamed too and clapped her hands at the extraordinary sight. ‘What is it? What’s happened to Father?’ she cried.

‘I have to make a few minor alterations, but then, yes, truly! Your hopeless old Ernest has done it at last!’ said Father, and he kissed her on the tip of her nose.

‘They don’t specify a sum. I’m not sure what the going rate is,’ said Father.

‘Yes, but I’m hardly Mr Dickens,’ said Father. ‘Perhaps I’ll get . . . twenty-five guineas . . . Maybe fifty if they’re really enthusiastic! And then there will be royalties if the book sells well.’

‘Of course it will sell well!’ said Mother, astonishing us all. ‘Oh, Ernest, I’m so proud of you.’

Father set her down tenderly and gave her a proper kiss on the lips. He had tears in his eyes. Cassie and I exchanged glances, open-mouthed.

‘We need to celebrate in style,’ Father said, setting Mother aside at last. ‘I’ll go out and buy a bottle of wine. I’ll be back in two ticks.’

Father really did buy a whole bottle of champagne – and a great parcel of cooked fish and fried potatoes.

‘We’re not celebrating with cows’ doo-dahs,’ said Father, setting out the golden food upon four plates.

Father popped the cork of the champagne and poured the sparkly liquid into four crystal glasses. They were a wedding present, never yet used. It said they were sherry glasses on the presentation box – as if we cared.

We all drank to his success and devoured our splendid meal, while the sweetbreads stayed in their pan. None of us were used to drinking alcohol, so we started laughing uproariously at the silliest things, and planning in detail the life we would lead once Father became truly rich and famous.

‘But it will, my dear, I know it will,’ said Mother, reaching out and squeezing his hand. ‘You’ll be able to give up your position at the shipping office and live like a gentleman. You’ll simply go to work each day in your study.’

‘He will, once we move. Oh, to think we’ve a chance to better ourselves at last! We’ll rent a much bigger house – maybe one of those grand new villas overlooking the park,’ said Mother dreamily.

‘But that’s just this first novel to be published. You’ve written many more, haven’t you? Maybe they’ll publish them too. I’ll say this for you, Ernest, you’ve persevered all these years with little encouragement. God bless you, my dear,’ said Mother, sounding choked.

‘God bless you too, dearest Lou. And Cass and Opal. I don’t think we’ll be moving out of Primrose Villa just yet, but we can certainly indulge in a few little luxuries at last. Once I get that cheque you shall all have a trip to the dressmaker’s to order yourselves fine new outfits.’

‘Oh yes, Father, and new boots too, and gloves – and maybe one of my own hats!’ said Cassie.

‘Can I have a new paintbox instead of a dress?’ I begged. ‘One with thirty-four paints in the palette, like the one I saw in Gamages last Christmas?’

FATHER SET TO work that very night, correcting and amending his manuscript. Mother tiptoed up the staircase every so often to see how the work was progressing. She refreshed his genius with cups of tea. She even prepared a cold flannel in case his forehead was burning. They were still toiling in their different ways long after Cassie and I went to bed.

I was too happy to go to sleep, and Cassie felt the same. After half an hour or so, she crept out of her room and into my cupboard.

‘There isn’t enough room for me, let alone the two of us,’ I said, but I put my arms around her as she squeezed under the sheets.

We hadn’t cuddled up like this since we were little girls and it felt very cosy, though Cassie’s abundant hair tickled my nose and her great curvy body was squashing me.

‘I always knew he would,’ I said, which was a total lie. I’d always hoped he would, but it had never seemed remotely likely.

‘You can’t seriously want a boring old paintbox instead of a new outfit,’ said Cassie. ‘Look, I’m sure Father will let you have both. So what colour and style of dress will you choose?’

This was a lie too. I was acutely aware of fashion. On rare train trips to London I stared at the young ladies trit-trotting elegantly about in their little heeled shoes, in their spotted silks, their lace-trimmed stripes. I marvelled at the colours of their costumes: subtle sage, soft violet, dusky blue. I was confined to my harsh schoolgirl navy. But it was the shape of modern costumes that unnerved me. They were soft and clinging, emphasizing the bust and clutching the small waists. I didn’t see how I was ever going to acquire the right shape, whereas Cassie in her plain white nightgown showed it off effortlessly.

‘Don’t you want to look pretty, Opie?’ said Cassie. She said it softly, but there was a tinge of smugness in her tone. She knew that all the fine dresses in the world would never make me pretty. Part of me wanted to kick her right out of bed – but it was so comfortable, the two of us curled up together.

‘I don’t want to look pretty, I want to look artistic,’ I said. This gave me an idea. ‘Perhaps I shall go to Liberty in Regent Street. I’ve seen their advertisements in the newspaper. They have long flowing dresses in beautiful fabrics.’

‘Honestly! I don’t know how you can bear still being at school – and St Margaret’s is such a frightful school too, all lumpy girls and old-maid teachers. I wouldn’t have gone there for all the tea in China.’

Cassie couldn’t have gone there because she’d never have passed the scholarship examination, and Father wasn’t rich enough to pay – well, until now.

‘You don’t want Father to pay for you to go back to school?’ I said. ‘Or you could go to a special girls’ college and learn to cook and arrange flowers and how to dress.’

‘What nonsense! I don’t want to cook, I can make flowers and I know very well how I want to dress.’

ALSO AVAILABLE BY JACQUELINE WILSON

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