Free Queenie by Jacqueline Wilson

interest, and was looking at the notes of his next patient.

I STARED AT my arm in horror. I looked as if I’d been bitten. My wrist was deep pink with little raised bumps that itched. I could feel them like the pimples on plaice skin. I pulled my cardigan sleeve down almost to my fingertips, desperate to hide them.
    Mum didn’t notice for a while – but then frowned at me. ‘Don’t mess around with your sleeve like that, Elsie. You’ll pull the wool all out of shape.’
    I let the sleeve go and quickly put my arm behind my back.
    ‘What are you looking like that for?’ said Mum.
    ‘I’m not looking like anything,’ I said, my heart thumping.
    ‘Yes you are. You look all furtive. Come here!’
    I backed away instead.
    Mum grabbed hold of me – by the wrist.
    ‘Ouch!’
    ‘What? That can’t have hurt you,’ she said. Then she took a proper look at my wrist. ‘Oh my God!’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I wailed, starting to cry.
    ‘What have you
done
to it?’ said Mum. ‘Have you been messing around trying to light the stove?’
    ‘No!’
    She peered at it more closely. ‘Have you fallen in stinging nettles?’
    ‘No, Mum. I haven’t done anything to it. It just . . . came.’
    ‘Come over to the light so I can see it properly.’ Mum pulled me across to the window. ‘You’ve been picking at it, haven’t you? Scratching it like mad, so it’s all inflamed?’
    ‘No, I haven’t touched it,’ I sobbed.
    Mum was silent for a moment. We both stared at my alien skin. Then we looked at each other. We were both shaking.
    ‘It’s that test, isn’t it?’ Mum whispered.
    I nodded. We’d both known it all along, but it was just too dreadful to admit.
    ‘
My
wrist’s all right,’ said Mum, rubbing her own smooth white skin. She peered at mine again. Then she took a step backwards. ‘But this looks like you’ve got it too!’
    ‘I haven’t! I’m not coughing. I feel perfectly OK,’ I said, though I was starting to feel awful.
    ‘How
can
your nanny have given it you?’ said Mum. ‘What was she
doing
, coughing all over you? Why couldn’t she keep her rotten germs to herself?’
    ‘It wasn’t Nan’s fault, Mum!’
    ‘She had that cough for ages. I found six different bottles of cough medicine in the bathroom cabinet. If she’d only got herself to the doctor sooner!’
    ‘You didn’t want
us
to go to the doctor’s, Mum.’
    ‘Oh shut up, will you, Elsie! Trust you to take your nan’s side even now when she’s given you a mortal illness!’
    ‘What does mortal mean?’ I asked fearfully.
    ‘Nothing. I didn’t mean it,’ said Mum, looking flustered.
    ‘Oh Mum, am I going to die?’
    ‘No, no, don’t be silly, of course not,’ said Mum, but I saw the fear in her eyes.
    I was terrified – but I suddenly felt weirdly, blackly
glamorous
. I wasn’t just odd Elsie Kettle who told stories and had no friends. I was the Child who was going to Die.
    I saw my funeral, the whole school attending, everyone dressed in black. Mum would have a black veil over her yellow hair and would cry into a white lace handkerchief, her mascara running. Poor Nan would be there in a wheelchair with a surgical mask over her face, insensible with grief. Miss Roberts would be crying too, telling everyone I’d been her brightest ever pupil. All my class would be weeping, even Marilyn and Susan. No,
especially
Marilyn and Susan. They’d kneel at my freshly dug grave and call down to my coffin, begging my forgiveness. Laura would throw white roses on top of me, telling me that I’d always be her best ever friend, and when she starred in a ballet on the stage she’d dedicate her dance to me.
    But then I realized I wouldn’t be there to see all this. Would I be an angel hovering in the air, flapping snowy-white wings? I’d like a white dress too – and if it got chilly in heaven, maybe we’d be kitted out in white angora cardigans?
    ‘Oh dear Lord, Elsie, what are we going to
do?
’ said Mum.
    ‘I don’t