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 Darius. Nat looked for something heavy to brain Dad with.
The van groaned to a halt as they pulled up in front of Darius’s little house. The garden, as usual, was full of rubbish.
“This garden looks like the inside of your head,” Nat said to Dad.
Parked next to the house was a large black van with pictures of corpses playing musical instruments all over it. In big bloody red letters someone had painted the words:
My Filthy Granny
“Has the circus come to your house?” asked Dad.
Darius was very quiet. He didn’t seem to want to get out.
Dad thought for a minute and said: “You going to invite us in for a cup of tea then?”
Nat thought he’d gone mad. What was Dad thinking? No one went for a cup of tea at Oswald Bagley’s house. An evening of mayhem and animal sacrifices, maybe, but not PG Tips. But Dad was already walking down the path, arm round Darius. Nat followed warily.
Inside the small, dark sitting room it looked like a meeting of the Zombie Council of Great Britain. Five scrawny young men, all dressed in black with white faces, blood-red lips and green-tinged eyes, lolled around drinking out of cans. Oswald grunted when he saw his younger brother and nodded at Dad and Nat. He didn’t speak.
One of the creatures grabbed Darius playfully, though it was a bit rough for Nat’s liking. “Here’s our other little roadie. Where you been – school?” There was something sneery and unpleasant in his voice. Darius was smiling but Nat knew it wasn’t a real smile.
Nat saw a poster lying on the floor. It read:
On tour – My Filthy Granny. Heavier than heavy metal, blacker than black metal, thrashier than thrash metal, speedier than speed metal, deader than death metal.
There were a bunch of dates in towns whose names Nat didn’t recognise, but guessed were in Norway. So this is what Darius meant.
“A band, are you?” said Dad. The Grannies stopped throwing Darius about and turned bloodshot eyes towards him. “I used to play all the time …” Dad burbled on. “Course, I was a bit thinner in those days.”
Nat began to get that familiar nasty creeping sensation down the back of her neck and in her stomach – the sign that her dad was about to be horribly embarrassing.
“I’ve got something in the van you’ll like,” he said, jumping up and running out the front door. The Grannies turned their pale faces to Nat. She tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t get her eaten. She started with Darius. “You never said your brother was in a band.”
“He’s not,” said the drummer, who used to be called Simon but apparently was now known as Dirty McNasty. “Oswald’s our security.” Oswald cracked his knuckles. Nat thought that he was probably there to stop the audience leaving.
“Oswald AND little Darius,” said Mr McNasty. “You’re coming wiv us too, ain’t ya?” he said. “We all have a lot of – love – for little Darius.” He cuffed Darius round the head lovingly enough to make his eyes wobble.
“Don’t go asking for no autographs,” said the singer, Derek Vomit, to Nat, unnecessarily. “You don’t get no autographs, unless you get a tattoo of us. Shows you’re a real fan. We’re giving Darius one when we get to Oslo.”
“Listen to this,” said Dad, coming back in, holding a tiny, pink ukulele. It looked like a guitar that hadn’t grown up yet. Nat felt sick. “I wrote this song ages ago. It was very popular down the student union bar. I was quite the rocker.”
Nat wanted to hide under a cushion but it was unpleasant enough sitting ON a Bagley cushion; you would not want to be under one.
“Feel free to join in on the chorus, lads,” said Dad, plunking tunelessly away. He LOVED meeting fellow musicians. “You’ll probably want to use it at one of your gigs.”
Nat knew there was only one thing worse than Dad playing the ukulele. It was Dad singing. Dad started singing.
“I am a rocker,” he started, surprisingly loudly. And unsurprisingly flat. “I am a shocker. You be the door and I’ll be the knocker …”
