Free Jacky Daydream by Jacqueline Wilson Page B

paint, but it was a very small tin and it ran out before he could cover the last drawer. He’d propped a mirror on top of the chest and I’d laid out my brush-and-comb set and my china ballet dancer and my little cherry-red vase from my dressing table at home. They didn’t make the chest look much prettier.
    ‘Dad’s going to finish painting the chest when he can find some more silver paint,’ I said. ‘And he’s going to put up bookshelves and we’re going to get a new duvet – midnight-blue with silver stars – and I’m going to have those luminous stars stuck on the ceiling
and
one of those glitter balls like you get at dances – and fairy lights!’

    I always try hard to describe the bedrooms of all my girls. I feel so lucky that I can choose whatever style of bedroom I like now. It’s got a very big wardrobe along one wall, and when you open the doors, a little light goes on. I’ve got a pink velvet Victorian chaise longue by the window. There are specially built bookshelves, a Venetian glass dressing table and big mirrors, and a special shrine of pretty Madonnas and angels and a heart-shaped gold sacred relic with a secret message inside. My fashion mannequin Crystal stands in the corner wearing a beaded black evening frock. She has matching black velvet ribbons in her long fair hair. There’s a picture of a doll my daughter Emma drew when she was twelve on the wall. There are more dolls sitting smiling in odd corners and two droopy knitted animals, one a dog and one an elephant. They are
very
like Dimble and Ellarina in
Candyfloss
.

 
    13
    Latchmere Infants
    IT’S ALWAYS A bit of an ordeal starting at a new school, especially in the middle of the term. Everyone else has had a chance to make friends. You’re the new girl, the odd one out, the one with the weird clothes, the one who doesn’t know the way to the toilets, the one who doesn’t know where to sit at dinner time.
    I had to stay for school dinners at Latchmere because it was too far away to walk home at lunch time. Biddy didn’t want me to go to the nearest school at Kingsnympton, the neighbouring council estate. She got it into her head that the Kingston school
furthest
from our flats was the best one and somehow or other wangled me a place there.
    It was a problem getting me to school. We didn’t have a car. It would be another ten years before we could afford one. The tandem had fallen to bits. Both my parents now had bikes. Harry cycled twelve miles up to London on his. Biddy attempted the couple of miles to my school with me perched precariously on the back. To my shame I couldn’t ride a bike myself. Harry had tried to show me but I didn’t seem to have any idea how to steer and kept falling off with a clunk so he got irritated and gave up on me.
    I was quite a small child but I was really too big to squat on the back of a bike, so after a few weeks Biddy trusted me to walk to school and back by myself.
    ‘You must look both ways every time you cross a road, do you hear me?’ said Biddy.
    ‘Yes, Mummy.’
    ‘There’s a traffic lady at the Park Road crossroads – she’ll show you across.’
    ‘Yes, Mummy.’
    ‘You do know the way by now, don’t you, Jac?’
    ‘Yes, Mummy.’
    ‘And you won’t ever talk to any strange men?’
    ‘Yes, Mummy.’
    ‘
What?
’
    ‘I mean, no, Mummy.’
    ‘And absolutely
no daydreaming
!’
    ‘Yes, Mummy. No, Mummy,’ I said. No daydreaming! It was as if she was telling me to stop breathing.
    It wasn’t that unusual to let young children walk to school by themselves in those days. Children in the country would think nothing of walking three or four miles. I liked my half-hour’s walk through the quiet suburban streets. I’d make up stories inside my head or talk to imaginary friends. If people started looking at me strangely, I’d realize I was muttering to myself. I soon perfected a mask expression while inside I was up to all sorts. I already knew I wanted to be a writer.