LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I mean, are you going to?” she said.

      To which I just made mumbling noises, since there are some things you can’t talk about to other people, and certainly not to Amanda Miles. The thing in my cupboard is one of them.

      Slimey Roland is the thing in my cupboard.

      I’d do anything to get rid of him. I wish he’d go and walk under a bus. I expect Mum would be sad for a bit, but she’d get over it. She can’t really love him. Nobody could. He’s a total and utter dweeb.

      I nearly had a heart attack when Mum said she was going to marry him. I mean, I really just couldn’t believe it. I thought she’d got better taste. I told her so and she slapped me and then burst into tears and said she was sorry but why did I have to be so selfish and unpleasant all the time?

      I’m not selfish and unpleasant. I don’t think I am. But it’s enough to make you, when your mum goes and marries a total dweeb. And I had to go to their rotten grotty old wedding, which wasn’t even a proper wedding, not the actual marrying part. Just Mum and Slime, and me and the Skinbag, who came to keep me company, and Aunt Jilly, who is Mum’s sister, and this man who was doing it. Marrying them, I mean.

      When he’d finished he said that now they could kiss each other and they did and I looked at Skin and pulled this being-sick face (at which I am rather good) and Skin told me afterwards that I was horrid to do such a thing at my mum’s wedding. It’s all right for her. I know she hasn’t got a dad, but who’d want Slimey?

      One of the worst things about him is his name … Roland Butter. Can you imagine? I thought at first it was just one of his stupid jokes (he’s always making stupid jokes, like: Where do pigs leave their cars? At porking meters. Ha ha ha, I don’t think). Mum, however, said no, he really was called Roland Butter. He’s an artist, sort of. He draws these yucky pictures of elves and teddy bears and stuff for little kids’ books and he has this headed paper with a drawing of a roll and butter on it. Mum thinks it’s brilliant but that’s because she’s besotted. If you ask me, it’s utterly pathetic and I am certainly not going to change my name to Butter, which is what Mum would like me to do. Cherry Butter! I ask you! How could you get anywhere with a name like that?

      Mum’s name is Pat, and guess what? He calls her Butterpat. It’s just so embarrassing.

      Dad used to call her Patty. She was Patty and he was Gregg, unless they were having one of their rows and then they didn’t call each other anything at all except names which I am not going to write in this diary in case it is ever published. It is true that Mum and Dad did have rows quite often, but what I can’t understand is why they couldn’t just kiss and make up like Skinny and I do?

      We had this really awful row once, me and Skin, about a book I’d lent her which she’d gone and lost by leaving it on a bus and then refused to buy a new one because she said I’d never paid her back the money she’d lent me ages ago when we’d gone swimming and I’d left my purse behind, which definitely and positively was not true. We had this absolutely mega row and swore never to speak to each other again, but life wasn’t the same without Skinny, and Skinny said it wasn’t the same without me, and so after a bit, like about a week, we made it up and we’ve been best friends ever since. Why couldn’t Mum and Dad do that?

      Dad’s living in Southampton now. It’s near the New Forest and is really nice, but it takes forever to get there. I can’t go out with him every weekend like I used to when he and Mum first split up and he was still living in London. Then, he’d come and pick me up and we’d do all sorts of things together – McDonald’s, museums, the waxworks. It was really fun. After he got this job and moved to Southampton it meant I could only properly see him in school holidays.

      I could have gone with him if I’d wanted. If I’d really wanted. I bet I could. I only stayed with Mum because I thought she’d be lonely. But then she went and met Slimey Roland at some stupid party and they went and got married and now she’s totally loopy about him and I’m the one that’s lonely, not Mum. So I could have gone with Dad.

      Except that Dad’s got a new wife called Rosemary, and he’s totally loopy about her, so maybe he wouldn’t want me either. Maybe nobody wants me. Mum says she does but how could she go and marry this creep if that was the case? He’s really slimy. Look at him!

      Ha! He’s not the only one that can draw. There’s nothing to it. That is exactly how he looks. Straggly hair and a beard and this long, droopy face like a damp dishcloth. And he’s all freckled and gingery with white skin like a mushroom. Ugh! Whatever does Mum see in him?

      She says that if I love her I’ll try and love Slimey, for her sake. I’ve tried. But how can you love someone who has freckles and makes these awful jokes all the time? Another thing he does, he shoves these cards under the bedroom door while I’m asleep. It’s really creepy. I find them lying there waiting for me when I wake up. They’re all covered in these soppy drawings which I think are supposed to be messages. I don’t bother to read them. I just chuck them straight into the waste-paper basket.

      I know why he’s doing it. He’s so transparent it’s pathetic. He’s trying to impress me. Well, some hopes! I just think he’s a total nerd.

      Mum’s best friend Carol that she was at school with and who is my godmother, but who has now gone to live in Austin, Texas, alas (though she has promised to send me a real American baseball bat for my Christmas present), told me that Mum and Dad had become very unhappy together on account of “developing in different directions”, which meant they didn’t really have anything in common any more – apart from me, that is, but it seems children don’t count.

      Carol said that it’s lovely for Mum to be with Slimey because they are both in the same business, with Slimey being an illustrator of children’s books and Mum being something called a copy editor, which means going through books that other people have written and making sure they’ve got their facts right and have put all the commas and fullstops in the right places and haven’t called their heroine Anne Smith on one page and Anne Jones on another.

      All I can say is that it may be lovely for Mum, but it isn’t very lovely for me. And if writing a diary means clearing Slimey Roland out of the cupboard then I am ALL FOR IT.

      Tuesday

      He made another of his awful jokes this morning. He said, “What’s a cannibal’s favourite game?” To humour him and keep Mum happy I said, “What is a cannibal’s favourite game?” though in fact I already knew the answer because it was a joke that was going round when I was in Year 5, for goodness’ sake. So he beams into his beard, all jolly ho ho, and says, “Swallow my leader!” and Mum groans and rolls her eyes, but in a way that means she thinks it’s really quite funny, and I just give this tight little smile and get on with my breakfast. It is extremely irritating when grown-ups behave in this infantile fashion. Doesn’t he realise he’s making a complete idiot of himself?

      I have decided to record occasionally what I eat for dinner, because this school’s canteen must I think be the secret weapon of someone who has a hate thing against children. Skinny asked Mr Sherwood the other day why he didn’t eat there. She said, “Is it because you don’t want to be poisoned?” Mr Sherwood said that at his age being poisoned was a distinct possibility. He said, “My digestive system is no longer geared to the hazards of a school canteen.”

      If that isn’t an admission, what is???

      I told Mum what Mr Sherwood said. I actually put it to her: “If you don’t want to lose me, then maybe I ought to take sandwiches?” All she said was, “Oh, Cherry, don’t be silly! What do you want sandwiches for? You’re spoilt for choice, you people! In my day it was wet mash and soggy greens and that was that, like it or lump it. Now it’s more like a five-star hotel.”

      I can only conclude that Mum has never been to a five-star hotel. I asked her to

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