Lottie Project Read Online Free PDF

disturbing item on the financial page of his newspaper. It says Elete Electrical have folded.’
    Jo shut her eyes and said nothing.
    ‘Josephine? Are you still there? Is it true? Is it a nationwide collapse? You are being kept on until they find a new buyer, aren’t you? And if the worst comes to the worst, they will give you a substantial redundancy payment, won’t they?’
    Jo sniffed again but still couldn’t speak.
    ‘Do say something, dear,’ said Grandma. ‘We’re very worried about you. We’ve always said you’re in a very precarious position. How on earth are you going to keep up the payments on your flat if you lose your job? You and Charlotte can barely manage as it is. We do worry about you so.’
    Jo opened her eyes. She stood up straight. She gave one last giant sniff and then spoke.
    ‘Honestly, Mum, you do get into a silly state. There’s no need to worry. We’re fine. I feel I was ready for a change from Elete anyway. Of course I’ve known for a long time that things have been precarious with the firm – which is why I applied for my new job. I have this brilliant managerial position, and a much larger salary too – so Charlie and I are very comfortably off at the moment. I really must go now, Mum, I badly need to get a hankie, my goodness, this is a terrible cold, I think I’d better have an early night with honey and hot lemon, well, goodbye, thanks for phoning.’
    She said this without pausing, absolutely gabbling the last bit and then slamming the phone down quick. Then she took the receiver off again, so that Grandma couldn’t call back.
    ‘What?’ Jo said to me, wiping her cheeks with the cuff of her shirt.
    ‘You know what! You told her one socking great lie,’ I said admiringly.
    ‘Well, I couldn’t stand her going on and on like that.’
    ‘But she’ll find out that it’s not true,’ I said.
    ‘I’m going to
make
it come true,’ said Jo. ‘You’ll see.’
    All the tight feeling in my tummy untwisted. It was OK. Of course Jo would get another job, easy-peasy, simple-pimple.
    She was up early the next morning, hair washed, all made up, blouse fresh on, skirt carefully pressed. When I woke up she was walking up and down the bedroom, practising.
    ‘Good morning. My name’s Jo Enright. I’ve been the manageress of a large shop for the last year but now I feel it’s time for a change. Are there any new job opportunities in your company?’ she asked our bedroom wardrobe, shaking the sleeve of her dressing gown.
    ‘Good morning. I am Mr Wardrobe. Yes, Ms Enright, you can come and manage my clothes for me and I’ll pay you a million pounds a week,’ I said from under the covers.

    ‘Charlie! You didn’t half give me a fright!’ said Jo, finding my tummy through the duvet and tickling it.
    ‘Don’t make me laugh! I need to go to the loo. I’ll wet the bed, I’m warning you,’ I giggled, rolling around.
    ‘Well, get up and go, you lazy thing,’ said Jo, trying to tip me out. ‘Come on, you’ll be late for school. And I thought this new teacher of yours is dead strict?’
    ‘You’re telling me! Lisa and Angela and me didn’t feel like playing boring old rounders yesterday so we hid in the girls’ toilets. We’ve done that heaps of times and no-one ever thought a thing about it before, but Miss Beckworth came looking for us, right into the toilets, and when we all hid in a cubicle she peered underneath the door and said, “Will the girl with six feet please come out of this toilet immediately.” We thought we were really in for it, but she said she’d hated games at school too and as she’d already picked the two rounders teams we didn’t have to play just this one time and we thought
great
– but do you know what we had to do instead? Run round and round the playground without stopping for the entire lesson. We were absolutely
knackered
. And every time we ran past her and begged for mercy she said brightly, “Aren’t you lucky to be taking part