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middle. They could be in Southampton so that Dad could still do his new job. They could be in cottages with chimneys and little gardens.
    And Dad could go off to work and Mum could stay at home and read her books and they wouldn’t ever have to see each other if they didn’t want, they could even go out with other people, I wouldn’t mind, just so long as they came home at night and were always there.
    I said all this to Skinny once and she said that if she had a dad she’d want him to live in the same house as her and her mum and her brother and sister and for them all to be together all of the time. This would be her idea of heaven.
    I agree it would be mine if Dad could come back and he and Mum didn’t quarrel.
    There’s a boy at school called Timothy Dunbar who lives with his mum during the week and his dad at weekends. He reckons it’s brilliant as his dad spoils him rotten, giving him presents and taking him to places of interest, which he never did when he was at home. But it’s all right for Timothy Dunbar. His dad only lives just a few streets away and his mum hasn’t gone and got married again.
    Slimey came back tonight. Worse luck. I was hoping he might have fallen through a crack in the paving stones.

Wednesday
    Mouse droppings and jellied eyeballs. Or maybe it was frogspawn. Either way it was disgusting.
    Now that Mum has told me about the baby she seems to think it’s OK for her to keep on talking about it. She said to me at teatime, while Slime was upstairs with his elves, “What do you think we should call it? Think of some names!” I said, “There aren’t many names that go with Butter.” I said, “Barbara Butter, Brenda Butter, Belinda Butter,” very heavily sarcastic, but that was the wrong thing as Mum immediately thought it meant that I was interested. She said, “Would you like it to be a girl?” Very quickly, and just as sarcastic, I said, “Bertram Butter, Bruce Butter, Bernard Butter.” All Mum said was, “Bernard’s nice! I like Bernard.”
    Bernard Butter? She has to be joking!
    Slimey Roland brought me back a china figure from Newcastle. It is a Victorian lady with a crinoline and the crinoline is made of real lace.

    Mum says it is valuable and that I must be careful not to break it. It is quite nice, I suppose. I have put it on the top shelf near my bed.
    I would much rather have had a dog.
Thursday
    I have found something new to worry about. Suppose Mum dies while she is having this baby? People do die. In olden times they were always dying in childbirth. Even today it could still happen. I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about it. It would be all Slimey’s fault! Why couldn’t he keep out of our lives? Why couldn’t he leave Mum alone? We were perfectly happy without him!
Friday
    I asked Mum two things when I got in from school and to both of them she said no.
    First of all I asked her yet again if I could take sandwiches instead of having school dinner because today it was something quite unspeakable, I mean it looked as if it had been scraped up off the pavement. It is only a question of time before I get terminally poisoned. Mum said, “You can take sandwiches so longas you’re prepared for them to be vegetarian” which as far as I’m concerned is the same as saying no because I am not going to change my eating habits just to please Slime. What’s being veggie ever done for him? Made him look like a fungus. And anyway, it would mean he’d won and then he’d get all unbearable and triumphant.
    So we had a bit of a dispute about it, with me saying why couldn’t I have ham or chicken and Mum saying because it upsets Slime to see dead things in the fridge (and me thinking but not saying that it upsets me to see Slime in the house) and that if I choose to eat meat at school that’s up to me but we’re not going to have it at home, which means we shall all end up looking like fungus. Except by then I shall probably be dead of food poisoning so I suppose