“A ghost,” Nat told Darius the next day at school. “We’ve got to stay in an old, damp, smelly falling-down house with a ghost. And ghosts don’t exist so it’ll probably be an axe murderer, hiding out.”
“A ghost would be the best pet,” said Darius, whose own pet collection consisted of a one-legged frog called Hoppy, a dead slug and a jar of flies. “I could train it to haunt Miss Hunny.”
Nat had just moved to the area and so had only been at her new school for the summer term, but Darius Bagley had quickly become her best friend. This was despite him being the naughtiest boy in the school/town/country/world. No one quite knew how this had happened, least of all Nat.
But Nat, being fiercely loyal, argued that Darius wasn’t so much naughty as just MISUNDERSTOOD. She was also one of the very few people to realise he was both super-bright and super-funny, though she did have to admit he was also super-embarrassing (but still not as bad as Dad).
The hot afternoon was dragging on and Nat shifted uncomfortably at her desk. “It’s just this woman Linda. She’s soft in the head. Dad says when she was a little girl she was scared by a lady with a scarf at Blackpool pleasure beach and since then she’s been very sensitive to reverberations.”
Nat frowned as she tried to get the story right. “I think it was a lady with a scarf. It might have been a donkey with a straw hat; I wasn’t really listening. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, point is she’s bonkers and there’s probably no ghost.”
Nat was being quite loud but their teacher, Miss Hunny, didn’t tell them off for chatting because everyone was chatting. It was nearly the end of term and it was too hot even with all the windows open, and Miss Hunny was flicking through the pages of Last-minute Budget Breaks Magazine. Rather than getting on with her marking, she was trying to work out how long she could afford to stay in a lovely beach house on a Greek island. On her wages it was about an hour and a half. She slammed the magazine shut sharply.
“I suppose we should get back to our book,” sighed Miss Hunny. The class groaned. “Oh don’t be like that,” she said. “It’s a classic.”
That made it worse.
Nat knew there were two sorts of classics: old classics and new classics. They were both terrible, especially when the sun was shining outside.
OLD CLASSICS are written by someone who is dead. Women in these books wear bonnets and faint. They are called Mistress Bindweed. Men are rich and rude and have a secret. They are called Captain Stain.
Popular words in old classics include: periwig, effervescent and rapscallion.
NEW CLASSICS are written by intense people about things that REALLY MATTER, OK? And no one faints.
Popular words in new classics include: innit, aggro, issues, empowered and minging.
No one in the class was keen to get back to Edna O’Dreary’s award-winning novel, My Life, Your Fault, so a cheer went up when Nat’s dreamy friend Penny Posnitch shouted out: “What are you doing in the holidays, Miss?”
It was the old ‘ask the teacher about themselves’ tactic. Now THAT’s a classic.
Miss Hunny was glad to take the bait. She’d had quite enough of Edna O’Dreary too.
“I was invited on a cruise with some friends,” she said, “where I could have watched palm trees and golden beaches slip by as I lazed around the ship’s pool.” Miss Hunny had a faraway look in her eyes. Then she frowned. “But I can only afford a return ticket on the Mersey Ferry.”
The class laughed and Miss Hunny muttered something rude under her breath.
Nat hadn’t been invited on holiday with any friends that summer, or even round to anyone’s house. She had a horrible suspicion part of the problem was the creature sitting next to her, picking his nose and eating the crispy bits.
“What are you doing this summer?” Nat asked Darius. “Mutating into a human?”
“I’m going to Norway with My Filthy Granny,” he said offhand. Nat was puzzled; she didn’t know he had a granny. In fact, she had a theory that Darius was created in a laboratory somewhere.
At home time she found Darius trudging along with her to the school gates. Dad was parked round the corner in his terrible old van, the Atomic Dustbin, because she’d forbidden him to bring it anywhere in sight of the school. Ever since it had exploded in the school car park.
“Give us a lift?” asked Darius. “Oswald can’t fetch me, he’s in a meeting.”
A meeting? thought Nat. Oswald?
Darius didn’t have any parents; Nat had never asked why, and Darius never wanted to talk about it. Oswald Bagley was Darius’s terrifying older brother, who was looking after him. The way wolves sometimes look after man-cubs lost in the forest. Only Oswald was hairier, with more teeth and fleas. He certainly wasn’t the kind of person to have a meeting. No one wanted to meet him, for a start.
They were just about to leave the school gates when Nat heard a sniggering sort of voice behind her.
“So, I hear you’re going to stay in our house in France over the summer?” said Mimsy with a showy-off flick of her hair. “You do know it’s a wreck right now, don’t you? Good luck to you and your TOTAL FAIL of a dad fixing that up … It’ll probably look even worse by the time he’s done with it.”
Then Mimsy walked off laughing with her friends and Nat heard the words she’d been dreading: “Don’t worry, I’ll be blogging all about it when I get there. I’ve got a lush new camera. Wait for the pictures.”
“Thanks for sticking up for me, chimpy,” Nat said to Darius as he rejoined her.
Darius was staring hard at Mimsy. “Do you fancy her or something?” said Nat crossly.
“Wait,” he said mysteriously. “Three … two … one …”
Just then Mimsy shrieked as a huge hole opened up at the bottom of her bulging schoolbag and all the contents spilled out on the floor. Everyone laughed as she scrabbled to pick them up.
For a second Nat thought maybe her suspicions had been right all along and Darius actually WAS the devil, but then she saw him folding up his little pocket knife.
And she remembered why they were friends.
Dad smiled when he saw Darius at the school gates, and the Dog leaped out of the van, scattering pans and boxes and all the other usual van rubbish out on to the pavement as he went. The Dog loved licking Darius as he was the stickiest and therefore the tastiest child he’d ever licked. Nat liked it when Darius got licked by the Dog; at least that got him clean.
Dad chatted about his Great French Holiday Idea all the way to Darius’s house. All Darius wanted to know about was the ghost. “Is it a strangling ghost, a restless spirit that throws things about, or a blood-sucking phantom?” he asked.
“Oh, a bit of all three I should expect,” said Dad cheerfully. “Which reminds me, did Nathalia tell you about the time she thought the kettle was haunted?”
“Shuddup, Dad,” hissed Nat.
Obviously he didn’t shuddup, and Nat had to endure the story all over again.
“… Turns out it was just a faulty plug!” laughed Dad, finishing his tale. “But she still won’t make a cup of tea after nine o’clock at night.”
“Thought you didn’t believe in ghosts?” said