Have a Little Faith Read online

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 2013 Candy Harper

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Candy Harper to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN: 978-0-85707-823-0

  EBook ISBN: 978-0-85707-824-7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  www.simonandschuster.com.au

  For Susan.

  Thank you for all the laughs we have had and the ones we’ve got to come.

  Contents

  September

  October

  November

  December

  That’s it. I am never going to school again.

  I was woken up this morning by Dad doing some brutal curtain opening and entirely unnecessary breathing and existing. He said, ‘Wake up, sweetheart. First day back at school!’

  Urgh. He only calls me ‘sweetheart’ when he wants me to do some hideous job like laying the table or kissing Granny. Then he started his New Term Lecture.

  ‘Let’s put last term behind us. I want you to really do your best for me, Faith. That’s all I’m going to say. That and be good.’ He tried to look stern. ‘Be really good because you wouldn’t like the uniform at military school.’

  Please. My elderly relatives (AKA: Mum and Dad) have made such a fuss about me treating Year Ten as a ‘fresh start’ that you would think that my school career so far had consisted of maiming and mentally scarring teachers on a daily basis.

  Whereas, we all know it was just that one time.

  Despite all this nonsense, I was actually looking forward to going to school this morning. I even made the effort to straighten my hair and open my eyes and get out of bed (not in that order because the last time I tried that there was some sheet scorching and Dad warned me that the fire station are getting fed up of him ringing them ‘every five minutes’).

  So, there I was, arriving in my tutor room on the dot of 9.07 (ish), quite prepared to do my best at ignoring Mrs Hatfield dribbling on, so Megs and I could have a good chat about important things like finding some actual male-type boys to spend time with this term, when our head of year, Miss Ramsbottom, appeared and glared at me. Miss Ramsbottom is about nine-foot tall with shiny black hair and very pale skin. She looks like a supermodel who died and was brought back to life by vampires. Her eyes are always rimmed in eyeliner and it is quite hard to ignore her glaring at you, so once I’d finished explaining to Megs how to apply blusher to create the illusion of cheekbones, I was forced to give Miss Ramsbottom my attention. Miss Ramsbottom does not like me and she was clearly enjoying herself while she told us some truly tragic news.

  Megs and I are being split up!

  It is outrageous. Megs has been my best friend ever since Year Seven; I don’t think I could cope without her to carry out all the most special duties of friendship like feeding me sweeties when my hands are busy texting and checking my hair looks good from the back. But Miss Ramsbottom doesn’t care about any of that. She is moving me to a different tutor group with no thought to how I will live without my best friend. Now who will give me piggybacks when I’m tired or tell me when I’ve got one of those dangly bogies?

  What, you may ask, could we possibly have done to deserve such despicable treatment? I asked the same question, in a polite yet assertive fashion, ‘Why, Miss? Why? Oh why? Oh why?’

  The evil Miss Ramsbottom did some wittering and blithering and nonsense-talking about some ‘incidents’ last term. When are they going to let that go? A few hilarious limericks posted on the school website, one teacher with a radical new haircut (which was an improvement anyway) and a minor explosion. You’d think they’d be pleased that we’re so lively and innovative, but no, they have torn me away from my best mate. I am devastated.

  In the afternoon we had an assembly with our ancient headmistress Miss Peters. Miss Pee is one of those older ladies who pretend to be nice by wearing pastel colours and taking an interest in the Special Needs group’s poems about autumn, but behind closed doors I reckon she would tear off her own mother’s head if it improved the exam grades of the school. The woman is pure steel.

  At the start of assembly Miss Pee silenced us all with her death-laser stare and patted her helmet-like grey perm to make sure that no hair had dared struggle its way out of eight layers of hairspray, then she started banging on about how our rubbish school provides opportunities for us to blossom. How can I blossom without Megs? They shouldn’t be allowed to inflict such torture on me. To make them pay I have decided I will not be returning to school.

  Now all that’s left to do is to tell Mum and Dad.

  Might just eat a HobNob (or six) to keep my sugar levels up during my announcement.

  They don’t seem that keen.

  In fact, Dad threatened to cut off my allowance and several of my limbs if I don’t go to school tomorrow. I thought that my hippy-pants mum might be supportive of me educating myself, but she was on Dad’s side.

  I said, ‘I thought you believed that life is an education and that the landscape around us is nature’s great university. Don’t you think that a child should be educated in a home environment?’

  Mum sniffed. ‘I do, but only if the child isn’t likely to burn the home environment down if she’s left alone in it.’ Which is a very unfair reference to a little accident I had when I tried to create a romantic atmosphere for my parents’ anniversary by lighting a few candles.

  I started losing my cool at that point and Mum said perhaps I should try some meditation to calm down (I’d rather have my arms chopped off) then Sam, my little brother from hell, said, ‘Dad, perhaps you should think about it. If Faith can’t cope at Westfield High, maybe you should send her to one of those special schools where they have people to help you to go to the toilet.’ Then he started whining that his arm was broken, which is nonsense because I didn’t hear it crack when I was twisting it.

  I’ve been sent to my room.

  This is all that Ramsbottom woman’s fault. Why does she hate me so much? Obviously I hate her right back, but she started it. Actually, on my very first day in Year Seven when I saw Miss Ramsbottom I thought she looked kind of cool with her nice haircut and her super-high heels, but that afternoon she made me look like an idiot and I have never forgiven her. It happened in one of her ridiculous assemblies where she thinks what she is saying about not walking on the grass or remembering to curtsey when we see her is so important that we must use every fibre of our being to listen and therefore not breathe, blink, discuss last night’s TV, or any other vital thing.

  In the morning we’d had PE; the teacher, Miss Williams (AKA: Killer Bill), had enjoyed torturing us so much that we finished late, which meant we barely had time to get changed before we were whizzed off to assembly. I was already busting for the loo, but I didn’t dare wander off because I wasn’t sure if I
could find the assembly by myself. So I filed into the hall and sat on a bench with my legs crossed while Ramsbottom launched into a list of thirty-seven things we must always remember to do, followed by a list of seventy-two things we must never do. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold on. I couldn’t just slip out either because I didn’t know where the loos were. (You’d think that they’d point that sort of thing out on a school tour, wouldn’t you? Much more helpful than where the library is, who needs to know that?) I tried to be sensible and mature about my predicament – which didn’t come easily – by discreetly sidling up to my new form tutor, Mrs Hatfield, and asking if I could go to the loo. But Miss Ramsbottom is so insecure in herself that she couldn’t compete with even a tiny bit of whispering in the corner. She stopped in the middle of what she was saying about fire alarms and stared at me, which meant everyone in the hall turned around and stared at me too. Then she said, ‘I’ll wait for you to finish because obviously the safety of the entire year is not as important as your full bladder.’

  By this point, I was actually having to wiggle a little bit to stop myself from peeing, so it was pretty obvious that I did need the loo, and everybody laughed. Fortunately, my form tutor wasn’t a total witch so she pulled me out of the hall and pointed me in the direction of the toilets. But for a long time my nickname was Full Bladder Faith.

  No wonder I hate Miss Ramsbottom. I just don’t know why she would hate such a delightful person as myself.

  It’s awful being away from Megs. I’m sure Miss Ramsbottom looked particularly smug today because she knows I’m suffering. She obviously thinks that she is superior to us just because she is tall and has manicured nails and really expensive shoes. (What use are they to her? She must be at least thirty, she’ll be dead soon, she should give them to someone who still has time to enjoy them.)

  But, even though she has thrown us into different tutor groups to keep us apart, Ramsbottom seems to have forgotten that Megs and I are both geniuses. (Actually she did once call us geniuses, but she put the word ‘evil’ in front so I don’t think she meant it as a compliment.) Anyway, because we are both so smart I still get to see Megs in top-set English, Maths and Science, which I suppose is better than nothing.

  The one good thing about my new tutor group is that my friend from primary school, Lily, is in it. I love Lily, I really do, but she is a bit what the teachers call ‘special’ and everyone else calls utterly bonkers. I like hanging out with Lily, but she’s not Megs.

  I thought Lily was odd, but then I spent some time with the rest of my new class. They really are weird. Mostly, it seems that 10SW like hanging around talking about what the teachers are wearing and what answers they got for last night’s Geography homework.

  Like I said, weird.

  When I got home I rang Megs.

  ‘Megs, do you realise that we have spent a mere two hundred and seven minutes chatting today?’ I said.

  ‘I’m not surprised. It’s all part of a pattern. You never bring me flowers any more. You don’t notice when I get my hair cut. Sometimes I wonder if you ever really loved me. I try to reach out to you, but it’s like you’re on another planet.’

  ‘I am. I am on planet 10SW. Do you know that for charity week they want to do a knit-a-thon?’

  ‘I hate Miss Ramsbottom.’

  ‘It makes me happy to think that the universe must hate her too. After all she is called Ramsbottom.’

  ‘You’re right. It is quite helpful when people are named in a way that tells you what they’re like. They should do the same thing with boys.’

  ‘Megs, it would get very confusing if all boys were called Thicky McSmelly.’

  I was almost in tears at the breakfast table this morning. I said, ‘Please try to understand, Mum: being without Megs is making me very sad. I also think that it may be affecting my academic performance.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I’ve got French this morning and I really can’t do French without Megs.’

  Sam interrupted with a mouth full of Chocolate Crispies. ‘You’re always saying how brilliant you are at French.’

  ‘I am. But the only person who understands the French I speak is Megs. Madame Badeau speaks the old-fashioned kind where you’re not allowed to use any English words.’

  Mum just tutted and told me that I needed to ‘think globally’ and that I should be a friend to the world, not just to Megs. I asked her when was the last time the world lent me its lip-gloss? But she wasn’t listening, so I moped my way to school.

  When I got there Megs started nagging me about signing up for choir. ‘The list’s up on the notice board. You’ve got to join with me,’ she said, in what she thinks is a sugary voice, but sounds more like when you sick-up Ribena and it burns your throat.

  I said, ‘I don’t want to join your yickety choir. It’s not cool, or fun or an acceptable use of my time. I don’t like Mr Millet, and his music room smells like pee. Actually, I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it is, in fact, Mr Millet’s own pee that is stinking the room out. I think when he goes to the loo he waves his thingy about like a conductor’s baton and the pee gets all over his shoes. Besides, I lost all interest in music in Year Three when they tried to get me to play a recorder and I realised that Gavin Hitchins had already half filled it with dribble.’

  ‘There’s going to be a joint Christmas concert with Radcliffe boys’ school, so lots of them will be coming here to rehearse with us once a week.’

  I was unable to reply because I was sprinting for the notice board and I find I can’t mix exercise and speech.

  When I’d made sure that my name was definitely on the list in big black letters I said to Megs, ‘I can’t believe the Radcliffe boys are coming here. Usually the St Mildred’s girls hog them for themselves.’

  St Mildred’s is the girls’ school on the other side of town. The girls there think they’re better than us just because they’re all filthy rich and super good-looking. In the last couple of years St Mildred’s have managed to wangle doing a musical, a sponsored walk and a science fair with the Radcliffe boys. It’s about time those harpies let us have a chance. I can hardly wait to get my first look at the boys. I hope they are all really fit and not just a bunch of boy-band wannabes.

  I don’t know why I ever disliked school. Of course, there is that business of the early mornings, the crushing of my soul and the mindless waste of the best years of my life, but you have to hand it to them. Rounding up a herd of boys and arranging them around a piano for my enjoyment is quite a nice way to say, ‘Sorry about all that’. Isn’t it?

  This morning I convinced Lily that what we needed to brighten our bleak morning were a couple of comedy moustaches. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the emergency ones that I normally take to school (I reckon Sam’s been in my bag again) so I had to improvise with an eyeliner. I had a bit of a walrussy one and Lily had a little toothbrush one. We looked pretty dashing, if I say so myself, and even though 10SW are a bit boring, they seemed quite perked up by the change. Lily’s tiny friend, Angharad, laughed so hard that she blew a snot bubble.

  My new tutor, Mrs Webber, came in and did the register without saying a word. Then she read out some exciting notices about Xylophone Club and the Country Dancing team. Everyone was nudging each other waiting for Mrs W to notice our new look.

  I put my hand up and said, ‘I was wondering if we would be having one of those special chats from the nurse this term. You know, where we get to talk about our developing bodies and that. I’ve got some questions about unwanted facial hair.’

  There was an explosion of sniggering.

  Mrs Webber said, ‘When the nurse does come in, perhaps I’ll ask her if there’s a particularly painful injection available to cure interminable teenage cheekiness.’

  Then she got on with handing out academic target sheets for us to fill in. Smooth.

  As we were going out the door she said, ‘Faith.’ I thought I was for it, but she just said, ‘I’d
always imagined you as more of a handlebar moustache type of girl.’

  And that was it. It’s nice to see that at least one person managed to slip through that ban on teachers with a sense of humour.

  Unlike Miss Ramsbottom, who lectured me and Lily without so much as a hint of a smile. Then we had to scrub our upper lips. Which, as I said to Lily, was fairly pointless because we just ended up with red tashes instead of black ones.

  When I told Megs about it in Maths she said, ‘It’s good that you’re having fun with Lily.’ But she didn’t really sound that enthusiastic.

  At lunchtime I went to meet Megs. Lily and shorty-pants Angharad came too. When Lily first made friends with Angharad, some nasty girls started calling them ‘the Welsh one and the weird one’. It took Lily a whole term to notice and when she did she asked me why people thought she was Welsh. Angharad is definitely the brains of that duo.

  Since I’ve been in my new tutor group, I’ve discovered that Angharad is as sweet as she is small. She looks about nine, but she can’t help that, so I try to only mention it once or twice a day.

  The corner of the cafeteria where Megs and I hung out last year has been taken over by the Year Eleven Tarty Party. They all wear too much orange makeup, and pluck their eyebrows till they disappear and then draw them back on too high up, so they look really surprised. I wanted to have it out with them, but Megs said it wasn’t worth it and Angharad started shaking at the thought of a confrontation.

  I scowled at the Tarty Party from across the room and said, ‘I don’t know why they bother to keep coming to school anyway; they’re not learning anything. It’s as much as they can do to point at things and name them.’

  Just then one of the tarts spotted me looking at her and she jabbed a finger at me and called out, ‘Ginger!’

  ‘See,’ I said, ‘just like toddlers.’

  Then the queen tart threw a plastic fork at Angharad and shouted, ‘Sheep-lover!’