Pea’s Book of Best Friends
Pea’s Book of Big Dreams
Pea’s Book of Birthdays
Pea’s Book of Holidays
The Secrets of Sam and Sam
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First published by Puffin Books, 2016
This ebook published 2016
Text copyright © Susie Day, 2016
Cover artwork copyright © Lisa Horton, 2016
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
A CIP catalogue record for the print edition is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–0–141–37534–2
All correspondence to:
Puffin Books
Penguin Random House Children’s
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL
For Nicky
Hi Mum,
Dad always says ‘I wish your mum could see you now’ when I put on my new uniform (just to check it all fits, which it obviously doesn’t because my shirt is Raffy’s old holey one that smells of cupboard and my jumper is Michael’s and massive).
But I know you can see me already. I know you’re watching over me, because of that time I said ‘PLEASE GIVE ME A SIGN’ outside the Co-Op and then a pigeon pooed on my Tiny Robot Unicorn Friends backpack.
I actually would’ve liked a different sort of sign, but I suppose Heaven has a lot of rules.
Anyway, in case you were planning some important sign-sending via poo, I go to Big School today, so that’s where you can find me.
I’m not nervous. Even though Mia’s going to that weirdo school where they wear stripy blazers and Yasmeen’s gone to Devon and I haven’t got any best friends any more. And Michael says that the Maths gets well hard. And Raffy says school sucks out your soul one day at a time till you are a Husk Of A Person, and I don’t much fancy that.
But Dad made me double-cheese sandwiches. (Dairylea and wiggly mozzarella on crusty white.)
I’ll probably actually make new friends in five minutes, because I am, like, fun and interesting and good at making stuff happen, and friends always like that.
I can fetch Michael if anyone tries to flush my head down the bog. (Raffy says that happens too.)
You know I’ll be all right. I’m Team Bright and we’re The Best.
Tell God I said hi.
Lots of love,
Amen,
Bye
(IN CASE ANYONE NOSY IS LISTENING, I didn’t borrow my pants or my bra off my brothers. Mum, I know you knew that already. Heaven doesn’t make you stupid, it just makes you far away and a bit quiet.)
The Bright family was quite large for one that was missing a piece.
They lived on Sorrel Street, Kensal Rise, above Dad’s café, in a flat that always smelled ever so slightly of sausage rolls.
In charge was Dad, Charlie: big bald head, bigger laugh, made the best cup of tea in all North London. (It said so on the sign in the window.)
Then there were the three Bright brothers:
Gabriel, who had wide-set eyes and was quiet and artistic and always listened, the way big brothers were supposed to, even though he was all grown up now, with a grown-up’s life: job, flat in Canary Wharf, shiny shoes.
Next Raffy, who had springy twist-out curls and the sort of stupid little beard you grew when you were seventeen, apparently, and who was not quiet, not at all – never on purpose, always sorry, but in a noisy, messy way that upset things.
Then Michael, who was fourteen and massive, all shoulders and thighs and a beepy alarm on his phone to tell him to do fifty chin-ups.
And last was Billie, who was eleven.
She didn’t mind being the only girl, because girls were brilliant. She did mind being the littlest. She’d been trying to catch Michael up for ages. Dad said it didn’t work like that; that Michael would keep getting a year older too, just as fast as she did – they all would – but Billie didn’t care. She still got to go to Big School now, like him. She wasn’t the baby any more. She was Billie Bright, who wore a tie to Kensal Rise Academy and did, like, French and Geometry and Well-Hard Sums.
Or she would be.
Assuming she actually got there.
‘I’m ready to go now,’ she announced, standing at the top of the stairs with her coat on and her Tiny Robot Unicorn Friends bag packed. ‘To school. My new school. For my first day. At my new school.’
Only Raffy was sprawled across the kitchenette counter, half asleep, and Michael was still in a towel from the shower, squeezing past him to spread crunchy peanut butter on toast.
‘Food first,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Protein window. Coach Jen says I have to replenish my muscles within thirty minutes of exercise.’
Raffy nodded without lifting his head from where it lay, his face half hidden under his hair.
‘Yeah, me too,’ he mumbled, reaching out to sneak a square of toast.
‘Oi! I just ran five k, bruv.’
‘And I just scanned maybe a thousand million crates of Moroccan tomatoes for my evil supermarket overlords. I have to replenish my, like, lost integrity.’
Raffy was working night shifts in a warehouse, and came home after 7 a.m., filled with revolutionary zeal and pocketfuls of rejected lettuce that he’d felt sorry for. (‘Look at him! He’s only a bit wilty!’)
Billie looked at the clock and sucked her bottom lip. ‘Gabriel wouldn’t let me be late,’ she said slowly.
Raffy groaned.
‘I’ll get dressed,’ said Michael, mournfully abandoning his toast and running to the bedroom he shared with Raffy.
(The boys were all angels, technically – Gabriel, Raphael, Michael – but Gabriel was the only one who seemed to be taking it seriously. Billie was meant to be an angel too: Ariel, which was an angel name, apparently; Mum had waggled a Children’s Illustrated Bible over her cot to prove it. But Dad had drawn the line at anything so Little-Mermaidy when he went to fill in the form, so Billie she was. It was a relief, to be honest. Not that she planned to turn out evil, exactly. But Raffy said that the responsibility wore you down just a bit.)
Michael reappeared in his uniform, shoelaces trailing. ‘Ready?’ he said, giving her a wink.
‘Ready,’ said Billie, winking back. (Hers meant putting a hand over one eye, otherwise it just came out as blinking. She’d get it soon. Dad said you learned loads of new stuff in Year 7.)
Raffy crawled to the sofa and lay on his face, still groaning. ‘Don’t come back a husk!’ he called as they ran down the stairs.
They tried just waving through the steamed-up window of the café as they went past, but Dad wasn’t having it.
‘Hey! Zahra! Would you look at this girl, uh? You’ll never guess who. You’ll never guess who this girl is!’
He leaped out from behind the counter, came onto the street, gripped Billie’s shoulders and steered her uniformed self inside towards Zahra, who worked in the hair salon next door and saw her roughly every day. Sometimes twice.
‘Nooo! That’s never Billie!’ said Zahra, slapping her hands to her cheeks.
‘Same!’
‘Nooo!’
‘My baby girl’s at Big School! And me only twenty-five, eh? Hahaha!’
‘Hahaha!’
The café was called The Splendide – no one knew why; it wasn’t really – and Raffy had named this version of their father Dad Splendide: the one with the biggest laugh and the biggest smile, trying just that little bit too hard. He wasn’t like that at home. Billie wondered if there was a Zahra Splendide, who went home from over-enthusiastically styling hair and became just Zahra, who got cross about unwashed plates before falling asleep on the sofa.
‘Dad?’ whispered Billie, looking up. ‘We’re going to miss the bus.’
‘Sorry, angel,’ said Dad, switching back to Dad Normale and bending down to look her in the eye. ‘You nervous? I could close up – take you in on your first day …’
He’d been saying this for a week, even though he’d never, ever closed up, not even when Michael broke his ankle and he spent all night by his hospital bed; up at 5.30 to start all the bread doughs, like clockwork. This morning the red-and-white checked plastic tablecloths were already dotted with empty cups and plates, and there was a queue at the counter. Breakfast was always the busiest time.
For a moment Billie wondered what would happen if she said yes. Yes please, Dad, I’d like you to take me in on my first day.
But she knew he would, and then she’d feel awful.
And anyway, she really wasn’t nervous. It was exciting, trying new things. Year 6 had got very boring towards the end, surrounded by all these miniature people who still cared about pencil cases and times tables, instead of important eleven-year-old things like exams and the Plight of the Bees. (Billie was quite vexed about the bees.) So she shook her head.
‘I’m not nervous, it’s exciting, and I will actually always be all right.’
‘Go smash it, bright girl,’ said Dad, kissing her forehead proudly.
And she dragged Michael out of the café before he could eat a third almond croissant.
Kensal Rise Academy didn’t look exciting, to be honest. Half the yard was fenced off with cones and hazard tape, and a building site with scaffolding and rumbling diggers took up a chunk of the playing field. But there was probably excitingness inside. Or round the back, past those bins. There had to be – Billie had been looking forward to Big School for ages.
‘Wait,’ said Michael, hesitating at the gates.
Billie rolled her eyes. ‘I keep telling you – I’m not a baby! I’m not nervous! If you managed being all new and Year Seven-ish, I definitely can.’
‘It’s different for girls,’ said Michael, brow furrowing thoughtfully.
‘Not this one. And how would you know anyway? Come on.’
‘Wait,’ said Michael again. This time he reached down and tugged on her stripy tie till the knot was fat and sloppy. ‘Trust me,’ he said, with a flash of a smile.
Then he disappeared into a crowd of Year 10 girls, a swingy-ponytailed one slipping her arm through his.
All their ties were fat and sloppy too.
Perfect. Billie beamed as she plunged into the crowd. She was going to be brilliant at this, for definite.
She went to the Lower Hall, where all the Year 7s were waiting to be lined up into classes, and counted the faces of the other black girls, brown girls, hijabi girls, girls she didn’t know where to put. Mum had always said people were people – but Billie thought it was easier to think so when all the people on TV looked like you. There were plenty of brown girls, though; more even than at her old school. Lots of all kinds.
But there was hardly anyone she knew from Larkhill Primary. And they were all clustered in groups of their old friends, instead of making themselves available for new ones who might actually be more funny and smart and interesting and would know the rules about ties, actually.
Classes 7A and 7B and 7C and 7D lined up, taking with them Aaliyah (who she’d known since Reception when she used to lick paint off the pot lids in the Art room), and Olivia T (who was the first girl to get a boyfriend, a proper kissing one, which made her briefly famous and special and best – till he dumped her and told everyone it was because she tasted like bacon Wheat Crunchies), and Olivia P (who once drank a spider in a can of Coke on a trip to Thorpe Park) – none of which seemed like good reasons to be new Year 7 best friends anyway.
Billie started to think it was quite selfish of Yasmeen and Mia to have gone to Devon or that weirdo place with the blazers, actually.
Then Billie Bright was called to line up in 7E.
The only faces she knew in the 7E line were Bryan, and Big Mohammad, and mean Acacia Morrell, who had fancy new box braids and her eyebrows all painted – while Billie had her big hair in a ponytail, smoothed down with a bit of oil from Zahra, and the eyebrows that came with her face.
Actually Billie thought she might be a bit nervous now, after all, actually.
She looked down the line anxiously, hunting, and then she saw her: a tiny dark-skinned girl in a jumper even more enormous than Billie’s, eyes huge, hair half in cornrows, quivering and standing all by herself.
Billie sent the tiny girl her biggest smile.
The tiny girl smiled back shyly.
Yes, Billie thought. You. You are perfect for best-friending.
She slid out of the line – but before she could get there, another arm slipped through hers, pinning her back. Another new girl: Chinese-looking, with thick black hair, pink glasses and a pointy chin.
‘You look just like my pet rabbit Remington,’ she said perkily, patting Billie’s hand. ‘She gets nervous too. It’s perfectly understandable, because it’s the first day and tensions are high. Not for me, though. I have a very confident personality and enjoy new challenges – it said so in my last school report. I’m not like a rabbit. I’m more the velociraptor type. Oh, let me just fix your tie – it looks all sloppy! There. Much better. I’m Ruby, by the way. We’re going to be best friends.’
Billie very much wanted to explain to this poor confused Ruby person that, no, they were not going to be best friends, because Billie was the one who made those sorts of decisions and she’d already chosen that tiny girl. Also her tie didn’t need fixing, actually. And she had a confident personality of her own – Zahra from the salon said so. (Well, Zahra said she was ‘a gobby little miss’, but that meant the same thing, probably.)
But she didn’t get to say any of those things. A bell rang, and all the Year 7 class teachers stood at the front of the hall, whispering over clipboards.
There was one young, pretty woman with cat’s-eye glasses and a sticky-out dress covered in parakeets, and Billie hoped and hoped for her – but instead 7E got a man teacher, Mr Miller.
Mr Miller did not look as if he understood the excitingness of Year 7. He had a scrubby little grey beard and a grey cardigan with patches on the elbows, and when he spoke, his voice was full of sighs.
‘All right, my new minions and underlings, I suppose I can’t put it off any longer. Follow me to your certain doom.’
Mr Miller’s classroom was upstairs in B Block.
Billie pushed her way in and chose a desk at the front, because that meant you always got asked to hand out the books, and could talk to people on your way round, and accidentally not finish your work but it wasn’t your fault because you were doing jobs.
‘Oh, well done! I always sit at the front,’ said Ruby, sitting in the empty chair beside her.
Then Ruby started putting all her own things out on the desk, as if it was her desk, and she was letting Billie sit there.
So rude.
Mr Miller walked around sighing, slapping down papers in front of them: school contract, homework diary, planner, online portal personal login – each one announced with another deep, weary sigh.
This was a dream, Billie decided. A bad dream, from which she would wake up, and then go to the proper exciting Big School where people understood how exciting it was supposed to be, instead of being weird and rude and sighing.
Mr Miller stood at the front of the class, yawning at a clipboard. ‘Right. Apparently, our esteemed head teacher reckons that if we’re going to be lumbered with each other’s company, we ought to get to know each other. I want you to tell your neighbour all about yourself. Three – it says here – interesting and surprising facts. And then you’re each going to stand up and introduce your neighbour to the rest of the class. So you’d better listen, hadn’t you? You’ve got five minutes.’
Mr Miller sank into a chair, put his grey shoes up on his desk and closed his eyes.
Billie felt better immediately. She had loads of interesting and surprising facts – and stupid Ruby would realize that, actually, Billie was going to decide if they were best friends, and all the other important decisions. (Yasmeen and Mia had understood this. It actually was completely mean of them, not being here.)
But Ruby started to talk first.
She had a lot more than three interesting and surprising facts:
Her English name was Ruby Stella Goode.
Her Chinese name was Rui Lien, though no one called her that except her mum’s family in Taiwan, where they went on holiday once a year.
She lived in Willesden with her mum and stepdad and her new baby sister.
The baby was called Topaz, which is a type of gemstone that’s kind of mud-coloured and not as expensive as rubies.
She used to live in Richmond and went to school in Richmond and had been going to go to a new school in Richmond, but then they had moved, which was very sad, but fortunately she had natural charm and would easily make new friends.
She’d chosen her pink glasses when she was nine and her mum wouldn’t buy her new ones until she needed a new prescription but they were unrepresentative of her general feelings about the colour pink or her personality in any way, which was actually very sophisticated and gothic.
Her favourite place in the world was Highgate Cemetery. You should probably imagine her wearing thick black eyeliner and long tragic clothes at all times instead of school uniform; she was a very deep, spiritual person with a vivid inner life. She had books about this. She could show you them later.
Billie wanted to say, Yes, I know all about Highgate Cemetery because my brother Gabriel did a whole art project about it, it’s under my bed, and actually I expect I know more about it than you do so I don’t need any books – but Mr Miller stirred from his desk, yawned again, and clapped his hands.
‘All right. Now I get to discover how incredibly fascinating a roomful of eleven-year-olds can be. When I call your name, stand up and introduce your new “friend”.’
One by one, 7E stood up.
Nishat, a girl with a long black plait, had two brothers, a goldfish called Ronaldo, and a deep-seated fear of bees.
Alfie could bend his fingers round the wrong way, and fit his whole fist in his mouth, and once saw Professor X from the X-Men films in real life, doing his shopping in Waitrose. (Professor X was buying lemonade and some sort of fish with its head still on.)
The tiny girl Billie had planned to be friends with was called Efe. She was from Nigeria, she lived with her mum and lots of aunties, and she would like to go home please.
Acacia stood up next. ‘Uh. This is Sam. She plays football, she once dyed her dog green, and she’s a liar.’
‘Oi!’
The girl called Sam shot out of her seat and put her face right up close to Acacia’s.
Acacia tilted her hip with a hiss. ‘She is, though, right? She says she’s got two mums and a brother who’s also called Sam.’
‘Well, I have!’
‘She does,’ agreed Nishat. ‘He’s over there.’
A small boy waved a hand apologetically.
‘We’re twins,’ said the girl. ‘Duh!’
‘Oh,’ said Mr Miller, scratching his ear as he looked at his clipboard. ‘Sam Paget-Skidelsky. Twice. I thought you were a clerical error.’
‘We get that a lot,’ said the boy sadly.
The twins didn’t look the same, exactly, but they were both freckly, with short floppy brown hair.
Mr Miller coughed and went back to his list. ‘Ruby. Tell us about your neighbour.’
Billie sat up straight, ready to explain that Actually, sir, she can’t because she didn’t shut up long enough to let me say anything – isn’t that rude, sir? – but instead Ruby turned to face the rest of the class with a smile, smoothing down her navy-blue skirt.
‘Class Seven E, allow me to introduce Billie,’ she said in a loud, clear voice. ‘Billie’s very shy and nervous today, so please be kind to her. Her older brother is Michael Bright, in Year Ten. You’ve probably seen him – he’s that big tall gorgeous one—’ She broke off to give a little giggle behind her hand. ‘Anyway, if you haven’t already heard of him, then you will because he’s famous, nearly: my stepdad works for NutriGenix – they do all the physio and nutrition for Haringey Rhinos, which is a rugby team – and he says that Michael Bright’s going to play for England one day. And …’ Ruby paused for a dramatic breath, then lowered her voice. ‘And Billie hasn’t got a mum because her mum is dead. I know, it’s so sad, aww.’
‘Aww,’ chorused 7E awkwardly.
Ruby sat down again, and gave Billie a velociraptor smile. All teeth.
The bus journey home was just as confusing as the rest of the day.
First, the twin Sams followed her all the way back to the flat, on bikes, weaving behind the bus, catching up and staring at her through the misted-up windows.
She had a lot of time to look out of the bus window because of the second thing, which was the swingy-ponytailed girl – who sat in Billie’s seat next to Michael all the way home, kissing his lips over and over again, and taking pictures of herself doing it on her phone.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, looking sheepish when they jumped off the bus, leaving the girl drawing steam hearts on the window inside. ‘That’s Natasha. She’s. Um. A friend.’
‘She was friendly,’ said Billie, watching curiously as the two Sams sped off up Sorrel Street, the girl one staring back over her shoulder. ‘Are you really going to play rugby for England one day? Like, really – like rugby on the telly and in the news?’
Michael looked shifty. ‘Um. Well, maybe. There’s England under-sixteen tryouts soon, and if I made the squad, I’d get more coaching, and then maybe … Who told you?’
Billie explained.
‘Oh yeah? Pete – I know him – he gives us massages and sports drinks and that. I might not be good enough, though. They might not want me. Probably not.’
Billie poked him crossly in his gigantic shoulder. ‘You’re Team Bright, stupid. Course you’ll be good enough.’
Michael dipped his head. ‘Maybe. Just … don’t tell anyone, yeah? Our secret?’
He meant Dad. Dad, who would make him training timetables and put motivational quotes in Michael’s lunch box. Dad, who would worry.
‘Our secret,’ she said, hooking thumbs with him to lock it up safe.
Michael smiled, wide and warm.
It was happening already: grown-upness. Annoying baby sisters couldn’t keep secrets. Proper old going-to-Big-School sisters could be trusted.
Then Michael slotted his key into the lock of their peely-paint blue front door, smushed her into the wall and raced up the stairs ahead of her to snag the good armchair, cackling triumphantly all the way.
Well. It wasn’t like she expected it to happen all at once.
She left him flipping through music channels and went up to her little attic bedroom at the very top of the flat: small, with a sloping ceiling, and all hers (apart from the Transformers wallpaper and all the boys’ old things in her cupboards and under her bed, from when it was Gabriel and Raffy’s).
Usually she’d put on a Disney soundtrack (The Lion King or Lilo & Stitch were her current favourites) and curl up on her bed to play Bubble Gems on her phone, using her stuffed Zanzibar Tiny Robot Unicorn Friend as a pillow. But she hesitated as she pulled off her tie and hung it up. Disney songs and stuffed unicorns might not be entirely grown up and Big-School-like. Ruby probably listened to posh violin music at her house. Or industrial goth shouting.
Then she remembered that Ruby was stupid and awful and also not here, so she put on ‘Circle of Life’ at volume eleven and sang along.
It was Raffy’s turn to cook tea that night so she knew it would be beans, or burned, or both, before the smoke alarm even went off.
‘It’s not my fault!’ he yelped, flapping around the kitchenette in pyjama bottoms as an ominous smog billowed out from under the grill.
‘Ah, what every customer loves to hear,’ called Dad, thumping up the stairs.
The Splendide closed at 6.30 p.m. on the dot Monday to Saturday, and Dad liked a mug of tea and a plate of food ready and waiting by 6.33 precisely – except once a week, when he knocked off early and he and Billie cooked it together.
‘Come on then, angel. How did it go?’ said Dad, carefully lowering himself into the sofa beside her with his mug of tea.
Their sofa was moss-green and elderly; the kind that drooped in the middle, so if more than one of you sat down, you ended up comfily rolled together. Dad said it was the sign of a happy home if even the furniture was well-loved. And it meant that no one ever got shouted at if they spilled fizzy Vimto all down the cushions. For example.
‘Yeah, Bills – you a husk yet?’ asked Raffy, rattling plates out of the cupboard.
‘Did anyone flush you?’ asked Michael.
‘Or lock you in a locker?’ asked Raffy.
‘Or zip you into a sports bag?’
‘Or tip you into a bin?’
Dad threw a hand up. ‘What? Where am I sending you kids?’
‘Oh, that’s nothing – they go easy on Year Sevens,’ said Michael helpfully.
Dad took a big anxious gulp of tea.
‘They’re just winding you up,’ said Billie, patting his arm comfortingly and shooting the boys a look.
It was best not to talk about bad things when Dad hadn’t had his tea. Or ever. So she decided to skip the part where everyone in 7E had wanted to know all about her dead mum – and it turned out that ‘cancer’ and ‘when I was five’ weren’t interesting enough answers – and how she’d actually eaten her double-cheese sandwiches by herself, in the spidery toilets by C Block.