Lottie Project by Jacqueline Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

way. Miss Pease says she’s got a job for you.’
    ‘Really?’ I tried to feel pleased, but Miss Pease is such a pain. She’s the sort of old lady who pats you on the head like a puppydog and relentlessly asks you how old you are, as if you might have aged five years since the last time you told her a week ago. Still, work is work.
    Only this work was worse than most. You’ll never guess what she wanted me to do.
Read
to her.
    I don’t really like reading aloud at the best of times. I don’t like hearing my voice go all silly and showing-off. And that’s when I can pick and choose my own book. Miss Pease wanted me to read her library book, one of those large big-print books that make your arms ache when you hold them up. My arms ached, my back ached, my head ached, my throat ached, my entire body was in ache overdrive after I read to Miss Pease for a whole hour.
    It was this terrible stupid story about some dippy woman who kept being pursued in the desert by this total nutcase in a striped nightie. Well, that’s what he was wearing on the book jacket. Instead of telling him to get lost sharpish the heroine simpered and swooned into the sand. I kid you not. And Miss Pease obviously adored this utter rubbish. She sat back literally licking her chops. Mind you, that might have been because of all the Cadbury’s Milk Tray she was eating. She got through a good half of the box.

    ‘Of course I’d offer you one, Charlie dear, but you can’t really read with your mouth full, can you?’ she said.
    ‘I can try,’ I said hopefully.
    She thought I was joking. And
I
thought she was joking when she handed over my wages for the reading session.
    ‘Here you are, dear,’ she said, fumbling in her purse. She handed me a ten-pence piece.
    I stared at it. Had she mistaken it for a pound coin? Even so, what a totally mingy rate of pay!
    ‘Pop it in your money box, dear,’ said Miss Pease. ‘And come back and read to me tomorrow.’
    Not flipping likely! I was dead depressed, and annoyed when Jo just laughed and found it funny. But she was in a good mood because she’d got herself
another
job, cleaning this big posh house three days a week from ten to twelve.
    ‘
Three
jobs!’ she said, and she sent out for pizza with three extra toppings to celebrate.
    ‘You’ll exhaust yourself,’ I said. ‘What with getting up at five and doing the supermarket and then looking after the silly little sprog in the afternoons.’
    ‘I’ll be OK. And this new job’s a doddle. The house is big, but they keep it very tidy. She’s ever so worried about the idea of employing another woman to do her dirty work. I bet she runs round with the vacuum before I get there.’
    ‘Where is it?’ I asked, my mouth drooling cheese fronds.
    ‘Oxford Terrace,’ said Jo.
    I stared at her, so shocked that my half of the pizza slipped out of my fingers onto the floor. I didn’t care. I wasn’t hungry any more.

FOOD
    OH, HOW I long for Mother’s cooking. One of her meaty stews, bubbling with barley beans and carrots. Or rabbit pie. Mother has such a light touch when it comes to making pastry. Her fruit lattice pies are famous all over the village. And her suet puddings. If I could only have a plateful of Mother’s jam suet pudding and custard! Or even a big doorstep slice of bread and dripping . . .

    I have to slice up the bread so thin here I slice my fingers too, and Louisa won’t eat her crusts even then. The baby likes
his
bread pounded into mush with warm milk. Mother would never dream of pampering us so. We always ate what we were given and chewed it cheerily. Well, mostly. But Louisa always plays around with her food and cries and complains something chronic, and Victor is extremely pernickety for a boy, fuss fuss fussing if he swallows a little lump in his custard. Sometimes it’s all I can do not to grab their plates and eat it up for them because I’m so hungry. I have to manage on nursery food too, no meat at all during the