Free Lottie Project by Jacqueline Wilson Page B

of his business. But even I didn’t quite dare cheek Grandpa.
    Jo stammered a little as she told him that we were managing, and she’d sorted things out with the building society to give us a little leeway, and she didn’t just have the one job, she had three, and she was still looking for another supervisory position all the time. She said it all as if he was giving her a formal interview. Grandpa nodded, occasionally easing the collar of his shirt where it rubbed his neck. He never wears casual clothes, not even at weekends. I couldn’t remotely imagine him in something like a T-shirt. I can’t even picture him in his underwear. I don’t think Grandpa has an ordinary body at all, he’s just hard smooth plastic underneath like a Ken doll.

    Grandma wanted to know all about the other cleaning jobs. She raised her eyebrows and looked pained when Jo told her about the Oxford Terrace job, but she actually leant forward and looked interested when she heard about Robin, the little boy Jo picks up from school.
    ‘So what’s his father like?’ said Grandma, suddenly all ears. I could actually see them getting pink underneath her neat grey curls.
    I sighed and flopped back in my chair. This was so
typical
Grandma. She can’t even get it into her head that Jo
likes
being a single mum and isn’t remotely interested in meeting any men. Grandma used to keep trying to introduce Jo to all these creeps , and she nagged her to join a Singles club and she even once advertised Jo in a Lonely Hearts column. She did, I kid you not. She thinks if she can only get Jo married off then she won’t have to be ashamed of us any more.
    I waggled my eyebrows at Jo, expecting her to wink back. But she wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at anyone. She was staring at the shiny yellow pudding on her plate as if Robin’s father was reflected there.
    ‘He’s very nice,’ she said. Her tone was brisk – but she blushed.

    I stared at her. Grandma was staring too.
    ‘Very nice?’ said Grandma impatiently. ‘What
sort
of very nice? What job does he do? What does he look like? What’s happened to the boy’s mother?’
    ‘He’s very nice – what more can I say?’ said Jo. ‘He’s something in the Civil Service.’
    ‘Which grade?’ said Grandma.
    ‘As if I know!’
    ‘Is he good looking?’
    ‘I suppose so. In a kind of lean, lost sort of way,’ said Jo.
    ‘Mmm!’ said Grandma. ‘And is he a widower?’
    ‘No. His wife left him. She had custody of Robin at first, but he didn’t get on with the boyfriend, so now he’s back with his dad.’
    ‘And Dad doesn’t have a girlfriend?’
    ‘No. Well. He could have. But he hasn’t mentioned one,’ said Jo.
    ‘She’s just his cleaner,’ I said crossly. ‘She doesn’t have anything to do with him, do you, Jo?’
    ‘No. That’s right. Yes,’ said Jo, sounding muddled.
    I frowned at her. What was she on about? And why did she have that stupid little smile on her face? I suddenly got terribly anxious. What was going on?
    Jo hadn’t ever said anything about this man to me. Well. She’d said he was nice. Very nice. But that’s such a limp nothing sort of comment that I didn’t even notice it at the time.
    I didn’t have a clue what he was really like. I’d never met him. I had met Robin. It was easier for Jo to bring him round to our place after she’d met him from school.
    ‘It’s so I can be here for you too, Charlie. We can all have a snack together,’ said Jo. ‘Then I can take him home and do a spot of cleaning before his dad gets back.’
    I wasn’t at all keen on this idea, but I couldn’t really object much to Robin. He wasn’t like an ordinary boy of five at all. He was very little, with a long thick fringe and huge dark eyes in a white face. He gnawed nervously at his bottom lip all the time, and he trembled for the first few visits. He was like one of those small furry nocturnal creatures you see in the zoo, hunched at the bottom of their