Mum moved over to the kitchen counter and started doing her daily exercise routine. This involved wearing her gym outfit and bending, twisting and squatting while making mine and Amber’s breakfasts. Using bags of sugar as weights and punching the air with them. To any onlooker walking past our house at that very moment and glancing through the kitchen window, it would’ve looked like a mad woman in leggings squatting down and back up again for no real reason. Like some crazy game of hide-and-seek with strangers, all while waving groceries about.
‘One … two … three … OK, Spike, go for it … four … five … six.’
‘Just be careful, I don’t want to see you hurt – again,’ Dad said quietly.
I knew what he was referring to, of course: my disappointment over Fish Face giving Merit Radio to his son, Mutant Martin.
But this competition was not that. It was a proper competition run by a proper (and amazing) DJ, where the best person would win. Me.
My phone started buzzing in my pocket and I took it out. Messages from Artie and Holly.
The Howie’s announcement had reached them too. My uncontrollable excitement was only brought back down to earth at school. The morning passed uneventfully, with lots of ‘Did you hear Kool FM this morning? You have to enter!’
But then at lunchtime the radio dream bubble burst. Guess who popped it?
‘Hellloooooooo, pupils of St Brenda’s, this is Merit Radio and your fun-lovin’ – that’s lovin’ with no “g” as you kids like to say – host! Yes, it’s Mr Harris here, but you can call me Mr Harris or Headmaster or sir …’
‘Or His Excellency,’ I said loudly. It got a big laugh. I wasn’t smiling for long, though.
‘Some extremely exciting news to share with you all,’ continued Mr Harris. ‘Now, some of you may not be aware that Kool FM (the FM of course stands for FREQUENCY MODULATION. There’s your fun fact for today!) have launched a disc jockey competition and I’m sure you would all like to wish good luck to …’
Wow. He was going to wish me luck? Fair play. Even with that thick, fishy-scaly skin of his, he knew I was the one to win this. He had learned something from what happened between us, after all.
‘Good luck to … ME! Yes, that’s right, I will be entering Radio Star. No doubt you are cheering my decision in the dining hall right now …’
Cut to silence; total, gobsmacked silence. People looking at each other, frowning and confused. People looking round at me, all thinking the same as me. Is he seriously entering? Thinking he could do well? Win it, even? I just shrugged my shoulders and carried on eating my soggy jacket potato. Even the dinner ladies went quiet and laid down their serving spoons to look at each other. And then it got worse.
‘Yes, and also good luck to my son, Martin, who will be joining me in our entry, along with the brand-new member of our team … Katherine Hamilton.’
I dropped the glass of water I was holding. It smashed on to the dining-room floor.
‘Katherine will be doing a fascinating feature called Lost Property Corner. All the latest things left just lying around, so it could be your shoe, gym bag or underpants that Katherine will tell us about, and hopefully we can have some wonderful reunions live on the show.’
‘Reunions live on the show?’ Was he mad? Who did he think would hear Katherine Hamilton describe their stinking PE kit and still want to go and claim it live on Merit Radio? Not me, that’s for sure. Mainly because my mum had gone to great efforts to sew my name into just about every possible item. In an ideal world, she’d have my name sewn into the back of my neck.
Katherine Hamilton.
Just hearing her name again had caused the blood to rush to my face and I could feel my cheeks turning hot and red. This was the girl I had once dreamed of marrying. Then she went and ruined our future life together by helping Fish Face to find me – by betraying me as Radio Boy. She grassed me up.
Yet even though she threw me to the lions (well, to the fishes), she still had this strange power over me. And I had planned to forgive her one day.
But maybe never now!
Everyone at school knew she was going out with … MARTIN HARRIS. My arch-enemy and nemesis. But now she was joining Merit Radio and entering Radio Star, against me! This was open-heart surgery. With no anaesthetic.
Was I in some weird computer game where players had to find new ways of making my life hell? Forget the Sims, this was the Slums.
This was the girl who had called my very own show telling me I was ‘the best’. Now she was all aboard the Martin Harris Love Train with his headmaster dad in the driving seat, wearing a train-driver’s hat. The three of them against me.
I started to feel sick at the thought of having to hear them together on the radio.
Suddenly all that came into my head was that song Grandad had crooned earlier, which, judging by his voice, sounded like it was called ‘What Becomes of the Broken-farted?’.
The warning signs were there from the moment Grandad Ray joined our merry band of radio outlaws.
Dad had warned me too, and I’d ignored him. ‘Be careful, son, you are doing a kind thing, but remember: Grandad is very selfish. That’s why Nan threw him out.’
I just thought he was being mean – but he was right.
For his second appearance on the show, Grandad Ray carried his own chair into my shed studio. The old picnic chair I’d sorted for him obviously wasn’t good enough. So he rocked up with Dad’s office chair. My dad doesn’t actually have an office, it’s just a desk and swivel chair in the gap under the stairs. Grandad had hauled the chair all the way into the shed studio, and I soon realised it wasn’t for comfort. It was because it was a big chair and higher than any of ours. He now had a sort of royal radio throne, to look down on us from.
It got worse. For the next show I walked into the shed to turn everything on before Artie and Holly arrived, and found Grandad was already in there. Sitting in MY chair, behind MY microphone.
‘Just thought we could switch things up a bit tonight,’ he said. ‘I can do a bit more on air – you know, might freshen things up.’
I stood there, shocked, unable to speak. It was my show. He wasn’t just taking part, he was taking over.
Holly came in and within seconds had assessed the situation and, more importantly, what she could do about it. ‘Sorry, Mr Hughes Senior, but that’s Spike’s chair. I’m going to have to ask you to move, as the microphone is carefully calibrated to his voice and if you speak into it, your voice won’t sound as big and strong as it normally does.’
Genius, Holly – appeal to his vanity and ego. She then doubled that up with this:
‘Also that’s where the spiders’ nest is.’
‘ARRGGGGHHH!’ screamed Grandad Ray as he leaped up and scuttled back to his chair. After the show, I asked Holly how she knew he was scared of spiders.
‘You forget, I’m in the Army Cadets. We are trained to notice everything and read