Lottie Project by Jacqueline Wilson Read Free Book Online

what’s-his-name? The one you keep going on about at school. The one you sit next to.’
    ‘Jamie Edwards! You have to be joking. I can’t
stick
him. Sitting next to him is driving me absolutely crazy.’
    I couldn’t believe Jo could be so crackers. I truly detested that Jamie. He was just the most annoying person in the whole world to have to sit next to. He waved his hand in the air so often to answer Miss Beckworth’s questions that I was in a permanent breeze. And every time he got the answer right – which was nearly flipping always – he gave this smug satisfied little nod, as if to say, see, what a super intelligent smartie-boots I am.
    I hated the way when Miss Beckworth set us some work he’d start straight away, his posh fountain pen bobbing up and down as he wrote, while the rest of us were still scratching our heads and ruling margins and looking at our watches to see how long it was till playtime.

    I hated the way his work came back from Miss Beckworth, tick tick tick at every paragraph, and
Well done, Jamie!
written at the bottom. I got lots of crosses and
You could try much harder, Charlotte
, and
Tut tut, this is very shoddy work
, and
You can’t fool me by making your writing enormous and widely spaced. You can only have spent five minutes on this work at the most. This is not good enough!
    I didn’t want to be bothered with anything else but learning about the Victorians. I was starting to kind of enjoy writing my project. It was weird. I read stuff in books and then started writing and it was as if this other girl entirely was scribbling it all down. The servant girl. Lottie the nursery maid. She’d started to feel real, like I’d known her all my life. I knew her better than I even knew Lisa or Angela. I just picked up a pencil and all
her
thoughts came rushing out on the paper.
    I couldn’t stand the thought of Miss Beckworth speckling it with her red biro. It was private. At least we didn’t have to hand our projects in till they were finished, and we had weeks yet.
    Of course You-know-who had practically finished his project already. He didn’t want to keep
his
project private. He kept flashing it around at every opportunity. He even took it into the canteen with him at dinner time. Well, he did that once. I just happened to choke on a fishfinger and so needed an immediate drink of Coke and in my haste I happened to tip the can over and the merest little spitty bit of froth spattered Jamie’s precious folder. Only the outside. But he declared the posh marbled paper was all spoilt. The next day he carted his project to school, completely re-covered with repro-Victorian wrapping paper, all fat frilly girls in bonnets and soppy boys in sailor suits, yuck yuck. And inside there was page after page of Jamie’s neat blue handwriting with his own elaborate illustrations, carefully inked pictures of railway engines and mineshafts and factory looms, but he didn’t have any train drivers or miners or factory hands because he can’t draw people properly.
    ‘I’ll draw them in for you, Jamie,’ I offered.
    He turned down my generous offer. He didn’t trust me. I wonder why!
    He had lots of proper pictures too, cut out of real old illustrated Victorian papers, and samples of William Morris wallpaper, and photos of Victorian families standing up straight in their best clothes, and real Victorian coins carefully stuck in with Sellotape. Jamie’s file was bulging already. My notebook was small and slim and there were still only a few pages of writing.

    ‘You haven’t done much yet, Charlie,’ said Jamie, snatching it up and rifling through it.
    ‘Give it
back
,’ I said, trying to grab it.
    ‘Why have you done it in this funny pencil writing? What’s all this stuff? It’s like a diary. “Well, I do not think Charlotte is a suitable name for a servant.” What are you on about?’ said Jamie, holding it just out of my reach.
    ‘Don’t you
dare
read it!’ I said, and I gave him such