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I’d come to fetch is lying on the table, though.
Miss Tate’s Class: List of Open Day Prizes
. And then a heap of dreary, crudbucket honours.
    Best Spelling
    Best Essay
    Best Reading
    Best How-to Book
    Best Number Work
    No prizes for Joe in there. And then an idea struck. I snatched the scissors from the secretary’s desk, and snipped off the bottom line – Whoops! Sorry, Beth! No prize this year! – and at the top, very carefully, I printed out:
    Best Home-made Model
    Then I went strolling back. Miss Tate was busy fighting a tragic avalanche of window display, and barely glanced at it.
    ‘Just stick it up where everyone can see it.’
    I prised a pin out of the pig dribblepainting I hated most, and watched with satisfaction as it peeled off the wall and fell in the bin.
    ‘There!’ I said, using the pin. ‘I now declare this class’s List of Prizes officially on display.’
    A second avalanche fell on Miss Tate. And what with her sticky tape rolling away under the desks, and all the fuss about what sort of glue she ought to use to stick the photo of Ben’s mother’s stuffed owl, Patricia, on to the nature display, nobody even noticed my own little, secretive, one-person crime wave.

9
Mad Model Movers PLC
    My mum put up a fight.
    ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, the firm I work for is called Hightechnicon Systems, not Huge Wobbly Models Removals Inc.’
    ‘Joe’s models aren’t wobbly,’ I told her. ‘He’s an expert.’
    ‘Chester, it costs a fortune just to keep that van idle on the tarmac. Think how much it would cost to send it on your little errand.’
    ‘It won’t take long.’
    ‘Loading and unloading.’
    ‘I’ll arrange all that.’
    Moodily, she poked at her pasta. I was winning.
    ‘Do this one thing for me,’ I said. ‘And I won’t moan about any school I’m in – ever again.’
    Dad’s eyes lit up.
    ‘Close the deal right this minute!’ he ordered Mum. ‘Close the deal instantly, or it’s divorce.’
    Mum closed the deal. She made a couple of phone calls, and that was that. The van showed up outside Mrs Gardener’s house early the next day.
    ‘We’ve come for all Joe’s models,’ I told the cleaning lady. ‘For the Open Day display.’
    Eye lighting-up time is getting earlier and earlier around this neighbourhood.
    ‘What?
All
of them?’
    ‘All of them,’ I said firmly.
    ‘Even the wall-sized cooked tagliatelle spider’s web?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And the disposable plastic coffee cup spaceman. And the fully spinnable tin bottle top Wheel of Fortune. And the personally collected driftwood crocodile.’
    The cleaning lady trembled.
    ‘So I’d be able to get in and vacuum under the bed? And wipe down the windowsill? And wash the walls?’
    ‘The room will be all yours. As empty as a summer desert drain till four o’clock. Just lead the way.’
    She stopped tremulously halfway up the stairs.

    ‘Will you be taking the dried bread lampshade?’
    ‘Yes, we’ll be taking that too.’
    She clutched her light-bulb duster tightly in her emotion.
    ‘Just along here!’
    I wouldn’t want to pass much time in Little Joey’s bedroom. I wouldn’t mind picking my way under the toilet roll holder flying rocket. Or through the papier-mâché Valley of the Kings. But I’d just hate sleeping directly underneath that filled plastic water bottle mastodon. Or waking up to put my feet by accident on to that jelly-filled freezer bag octopus.
    ‘Is that the lot?’ the driver asked, when I’d filled up the van.
    Joe’s parents’ cleaning lady wiped what I could only take to be a tear of joy out of her eye.
    ‘You promise me they won’t be backtill four o’clock?’
    ‘No chance,’ the driver said, putting the van in gear. ‘You might think this is Mad Model Movers PLC, but actually I have a regular day job.’
    (It’s my belief that, in the rarefied Hightechnicon world, sarcasm passes for humour.)
    Joe’s parents’ cleaning lady raised her mop in warm salute as