Diary of a Lottery Winner's Daughter (3 page)

Tuesday 24th August

Today was a bit boring. Dad and Spencer went fishing and Chelsea, now miraculously free of any period pains, went off with a girl called Zoé she met on the site. Zoé is the daughter of the site managers and they live in a bungalow near the entrance. They didn’t invite me to join them so Mum and I had a quiet day reading. I tried to text Lauren but when I pressed the send button it said I didn’t have enough credit, so I settled down with
The Secret Garden
instead. I skipped the beginning bit where Mary’s mum dies because it always makes me cry.

In the afternoon I made a start on my diary homework and because nothing much happened today I wrote a load of facts about Weston-super-Mare that I got off some leaflets Dad had picked up at reception. I’ll cut some of the pictures out and stick them in when we get home. It makes me laugh to think I’m writing a fake diary as well as my real one.

Wednesday 25th August

Today seemed like it was going to be even worse because it rained really hard all day and nobody could be bothered to do anything. We were all beginning to get on top of each other and, when Mum got a board game out, Chelsea instantly disappeared to see Zoé.

The rest of us played the board game and then cards until lunchtime. I thought it was great fun and wanted to carry on after lunch, but Dad retreated behind his newspaper and Mum got out her word-search book. Spencer grabbed his Gameboy and flopped down on the bottom bunk because his bed had been made back into a seat. I was about to complain and tell him it was my bed but decided I couldn’t be bothered, so I climbed onto the top bunk. It was covered in Chelsea’s random junk; magazines, make-up and chewing gum littered the sleeping bag. I started to push everything down the end so I could get comfy with my book. A tube of lip gloss fell off and Spencer caught it.

‘No thanks,’ he said, passing it back up.’I’m trying to give it up.’

‘How about a copy of
Hello
magazine?’ I offered. ‘Or a piece of chewing gum, or . . .’I sniggered,’ how about a photo of Josh?’

‘Let’s see,’ Spencer said and I handed him the photo I’d found under Chelsea’s pillow.

Spencer and I like to have a laugh at what a typical teenager Chelsea is. I’m not officially a teenager until my next birthday when I’ll be thirteen. I’m secretly terrified that I’ll wake up one morning and start behaving like Chelsea. This would mean I’d start arguing with everyone, sulking, going off in a huff and texting my friends all day. Not to mention the time I’d spend thinking about my clothes and what all the boys in my year at school think of me. Spencer says that it’s a myth that
all
teenagers behave that way and that he doesn’t think I’ll be like that. God, I hope he’s right.

Spencer said I go too far the other way and, whereas Chelsea only ever thinks about herself, I spend way too much time thinking about everyone else and worrying about them and that I really need to lighten up. I’m sure he’s right because Grumps said something similar to me a while ago. He said I had an old head on young shoulders.

Spencer handed back the photo and I replaced it under Chelsea’s pillow so she wouldn’t know we’d seen it.

‘What gorgeous specimen of manhood do you keep under your pillow?’said Spencer, groping about under there.

‘What’s this?’ he said, holding up the card from the arcade machine. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I got undressed and ended up under there. I made a swipe for it but I wasn’t quick enough so I had to explain about the creepy machine I’d found at Wookey Hole the other day.

Spencer looked at the yellowing card and read,’
Gypsy Ginny says: Your wishes might come true so be careful what you wish for.’

We were both silent for a minute while we thought about what this meant.

‘I wish it had said I grant you three wishes, or something,’ I said to Spencer. ‘That’s just pointless. What does it even mean?’

‘I think it’s some kind of Chinese proverb,’ said Spencer, who always seems to know everything. ‘It means you might think you know what you want but what you want isn’t necessarily what’s good for you. You know, like King Midas who wished that everything he touched would turn to gold. And then he couldn’t eat anything because his food turned to gold and when he hugged his wife she turned to gold as well. It was a real bummer.’

I listened to the rain beating down on the caravan roof and said,’ Well, that’s just stupid. I know exactly what I want. For starters, I wish we could afford a better holiday, somewhere hot and sunny, and I wish I had a bedroom of my own and I wish you weren’t the cleverest boy in school so that you didn’t keep getting beaten up.’ I added the last bit because I didn’t want all my wishes to be for myself.

Spencer looked offended. ‘I don’t keep getting beaten up,’ he said.

‘Okay then, picked on,’ I amended, to make him feel better.

Thursday 26th August

This morning Chelsea announced that she was going out for the day with Zoé. They were going to the cinema and she’d see us later, she said. I was really put out that she didn’t invite me to go along.

I’ve found out that Zoé is only thirteen so she’s nearer to my age than Chelsea’s. Chelsea is always going on about how I’m too young to hang out with her. It’s really not fair. It’s only because Zoé looks sixteen because she’s so tall and wears so much make-up. Mind you, even ifI wasn’t so small and didn’t look about ten, Chelsea probably still wouldn’t want to hang around with me, just because I’m her sister.

At least it had stopped raining so, after breakfast, the rest of us went into Weston-super-Mare. It was a bit depressing. The pier was closed because it had burnt down and was still being re-built.

After lunch we were mooching around the shops when I spotted Zoé. I followed her into Dorothy Perkins expecting to see Chelsea as well but Chelsea definitely wasn’t with her. In the end I went up to Zoé and asked her where Chelsea was.

‘How should I know?’ she said.

‘But I thought you two were going to the cinema together,’ I told her. That flummoxed her. I could almost see her brain working. Should she deny all knowledge of knowing where Chelsea was or should she go along with the pretence?

In the end she said, in a bored sort of voice,’ We went to the cinema but we couldn’t agree on what to watch so Chelsea went in on her own.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I said,’ Chelsea loves going to the cinema on her own.’

Zoé looked so relieved, I had real trouble not laughing.

‘There you go then,’ she said and wandered off. I watched her go, wondering what the hell Chelsea was playing at. She would never go to the cinema on her own. Chelsea never does anything on her own if she can help it. She likes an audience too much. She’s always surrounded by friends.

Then it occurred to me that she doesn’t seem to have one special friend. Not like I’ve got Lauren. I think she’d like Sophie to be her special friend but Sophie’s got Amber and the truth is Sophie is way out of her league, not that it stops Chelsea trying to get in with that crowd. She only got invited to Sophie’s party because Josh asked her . . . then it hit me. Of course! It was today that Sophie was having her hot-tub party. Chelsea must have gone to it. She could easily have caught a train back to Bristol.

Mum and Dad are going to go mental when they find out. But then they’ll only find out if I tell them. So I’ll just have to keep quiet and hope that Chelsea doesn’t get carried away by the party and gets back before they notice.

It was a close one. About six o’clock I could see Mum getting twitchy. She kept looking at the clock. Dad wanted to eat out but Mum said we couldn’t go out in case Chelsea came back and couldn’t get into the caravan.

‘Did she say what time she was going to be back?’ asked Dad, looking at everyone. I shrugged.

‘I’ll find out,’ said Mum, picking up her phone and starting to text. Chelsea only communicates by text on her phone;she never talks to anyone on it. I really hoped she had it switched on. Dad gets grumpy when he’s hungry and I could see he wasn’t about to have his evening ruined by Chelsea. A minute later Mum’s phone bleeped.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Chelsea’s gone bowling with her friend and she’ll see us back here. She says can we leave the key in one of the shoes in the awning.’

Dad wasn’t too happy about that, he’s very security conscious, but he agreed in the end because he wanted his dinner.

There was a heart-stopping moment when we went past the site managers’ bungalow and Zoé came out carrying a bin bag. Luckily she turned her back to put it in the bin and nobody else was taking any notice anyway.

When we got back after eating fish and chips on the sea-front, Chelsea was in bed pretending to be asleep. But there’s something wrong because I can hear her snuffling and she doesn’t have a cold. I wonder what happened to make her so upset. I’ll find out tomorrow.