what on my back?” asked Chloe, trying to look over her shoulder. She reached round and tore a piece of paper from her blazer. She peered at it.
Written on the piece of paper, in thick black letters, was a single word.
LOSER!
Chloe felt her stomach twist with humiliation. Rosamund must have sellotaped it to her when she left school. Rosamund was the head girl of the cool gang. She was always bullying Chloe, picking on her for eating too many sweets, or for being poorer than the other girls at school, or for being the girl neither team ever wanted on their side in hockey matches. As Chloe had left school today Rosamund patted her on the back several times, saying “Merry Christmas”, while all the other girls laughed. Now Chloe knew why. Mr Stink rose creakily from his bench and took the paper from Chloe’s hands.
“I can’t believe I’ve been going round with that on my back all afternoon,” said Chloe. Embarrassed to feel tears welling up, she looked away, blinking into the sunlight.
“What is it, child?” asked Mr Stink, kindly.
Chloe sniffed. “Well,” she said, “it’s true, isn’t it? I really am a loser.”
Mr Stink bent down to look at her. “No,” he said, authoritatively. “You’re not a loser. The real loser is the person who stuck it to you in the first place.”
Chloe tried to believe him, but couldn’t quite. For as long as she could remember she had felt like a loser. Maybe Rosamund and all those other girls in her gang were right.
“There’s only one place for this,” said Mr Stink. He screwed up the piece of paper and, like a professional cricketer, expertly bowled it into the bin. Chloe clocked this and her imagination instantly started whirring; had he once been captain of the England cricket team?
Mr Stink brushed his hands together. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” he said.
“Thanks,” murmured Chloe.
“Not at all,” said Mr Stink. “You mustn’t let bullies get you down.”
“I’ll try,” said Chloe. “Nice to meet you Mr…um…” she began. Everyone called him Mr Stink, but she didn’t know if he knew that. It felt rude to say it to his face.
“Stink,” he said. “They call me Mr Stink.”
“Oh. Nice to meet you, Mr Stink. I’m Chloe.”
“Hello, Chloe,” said Mr Stink.
“You know, Mr Stink,” said Chloe, “I still might go the shops. Do you need anything? Like a bar of soap or something?”
“Thank you, my dear,” he replied. “But I have no use for soap. You see, I had a bath only last year. But I would love some sausages. I do adore a nice meaty sausage…”
“Mother?” said Annabelle.
Mother finished chewing her food completely, then swallowed it, before finally replying.
“Yes, my darling child?”
“Chloe just took one of her sausages off her plate and hid it in her napkin.”
It was Saturday evening, and the Crumb family sat at the dining room table, missing Strictly Come Dancing and The X-Factor as they ate their dinner. Mother had banned watching television and eating at the same time. She had decided that it was ‘awfully common’. Instead the family had to sit in icy silence and eat their dinner staring at the walls. Or sometimes Mother would choose a subject for discussion, normally what she would do if she ran the country. That was her absolute favourite. Mother had given up running a beauty salon to stand for Parliament, and had no doubt in her mind that one day she would be Prime Minister.
Mother had named the white Persian family cat Elizabeth, after the Queen. She was obsessed with Being Posh. There was a downstairs loo that was kept locked for ‘very important guests’, as if a member of the royal family was going to swing by for a waz. There was a china tea set in the cupboard that was ‘for best’, and had never once been used. Mother even sprayed air freshener in the garden. Mother would never go out, and not even answer the door, unless immaculately groomed, with her beloved pearls around her neck and her hair made stiff with enough hairspray to create its own hole in the ozone layer. She was so used to turning up her nose at everybody and everything, it was in danger of staying that way. Here’s a picture of her.
My word, she looks posh, doesn’t she?
Unsurprisingly Father, or Dad as he preferred to be called when Mother wasn’t around, opted for a quiet life and usually didn’t speak unless spoken to. He was a big powerful man, but his wife made him feel small inside. Dad was only forty, but he was already going bald and starting to stoop. He worked long hours at a car factory on the edge of the town.
“Did you hide a sausage in your napkin, Chloe?” demanded Mother.
“You are always trying to get me into trouble!” snapped Chloe.
This was true. Annabelle was two years younger than Chloe, and one of those children adults think are perfect, but other children don’t like because they are snotty little goody-goodies. Annabelle loved getting Chloe into trouble. She would lie on her bed in her bright pink room upstairs and roll around crying, shouting “CHLOE, GET OFF ME! YOU ARE HURTING ME!” even though Chloe was quietly writing away in her room next door. You could say that Annabelle was evil. She was certainly evil to her older sister.
“Oh, sorry Mother, it just slipped into my lap,” said Chloe guiltily. Her plan had been to smuggle the sausage out for Mr Stink. She had been thinking about him all evening, imagining him shivering out there in the cold dark December night as they sat in the warm, eating away.
“Well then Chloe, unroll it from your napkin and put it back on your plate,” ordered Mother. “I am so ashamed that we are even eating sausages for dinner. I gave your father strict instructions to dispatch himself to the supermarket and purchase four wild sea-bass fillets. And he comes home with a packet of sausages. If anyone called around and saw us eating food like this it would be hideously embarrassing. They’d think we were savages!”
“I am sorry, my darling wife,” protested Dad. “They were all out of wild sea-bass fillets.” He gave Chloe the tiniest wink as he said this, confirming her suspicion that he had deliberately disobeyed Mother’s orders. Chloe smiled at him discreetly. She and her dad both loved sausages and lots of other food that Mother didn’t approve of, like burgers, fish-fingers, fizzy drinks, and especially Mr Whippy ice-cream (’the devil’s spume’, Mother called it). “I have never eaten anything from a van,” she would say. “I’d rather die.”
“Right now, all hands on deck as we clear up,” said Mother when they had finished eating. “Annabelle, my precious angel, you clear
