The Bed and Breakfast Star Read Online Free PDF

rude words were still on the wall though.
    We’d worked up quite an appetite by the time we’d trudged up the stairs to put on our jumpers and then down all over again with Mum and Mack and Hank. It was a long long walk into the town to find the McDonald’s too. Pippa started to lag behind and Mum kept twisting her ankle in her high heels. I started to get a bit tired too, and my toes rubbed up against the edge of my trainers because they’re getting too small for me. Mum moaned about being stuck in a dump of a hotel at the back of beyond and said she couldn’t walk another step. Mack stopped at a phone box and said he’d call a cab then, and Mum said he was crazy and it was no wonder we’d all ended up in bed and breakfast.
    It was starting to sound like a very big row. I was getting scared that we’d maybe end up with no tea at all. But then we got to a bus stop and a bus came along and we all climbed on and we were in the town in no time. At McDonald’s.
    Mack had his Big Mac. Mum had chicken nuggets. I chose a cheeseburger and Pippa did too because she always copies me. Hank nibbled his own French fries and experienced his very first strawberry milkshake.
    It was great. We didn’t have a big row. We didn’t even have a little one. We sat in the warm, feeling full, and Mack pulled Pippa on to his lap and Mum put her arm round me, and Hank nodded off in his buggy still clutching a handful of chips.

    We looked like an ordinary happy family having a meal out. But we didn’t go back to an ordinary happy family house. We had to go back to the Bed-and-Breakfast hotel.
    The people in 607 were still arguing. The people in 609 still had their television blaring. The people in 508 were still into heavy-metal music. And it was even more of a squash in room 608.
    We all went to bed because there wasn’t much else to do. Mum and Mack in the double bed. Pippa and Hank either end of one single bed. Me in the other. Baby Pillow the comfiest of the lot in the duck cot.
    Hank wasn’t the only one who wet in the night. Pippa did too, so she had to creep in with me. She went back to sleep straightaway, but I didn’t. I wriggled around uncomfortably, Pippa’s hair tickling my nose and her elbow digging into my chest. I stared up into the dark while Mack snored and Hank snuffled and I wished I could rise out of my crowded bed, right through the roof and up into the starry sky.

We’ve always had different breakfasts. Mum’s never really bothered. She just likes a cup of coffee and a ciggie. She says she can’t fancy food early in the morning. She cooks for Mack though. He likes great greasy bacon sandwiches and a cup of strong tea with four sugars. I’d like four sugars in my tea but Mum won’t let me. It’s not fair. She does sometimes let me have a sugar sandwich for my breakfast though, if she’s in a very good mood. I say she needs to eat a sugar sandwich to sweeten herself up.
    Pippa likes sugar sandwiches too, because she always copies me. Hank has a runny boiled egg that certainly runs all over him. His face is bright yellow by the time he’s finished his breakfast, and he always insists on clutching his buttered toast soldiers until he’s squeezed them into a soggy pulp. Sometimes I can see why Mum can’t face food herself. Mopping up my baby brother would put anyone off their breakfast.

    Mum certainly didn’t look like she wanted any breakfast our first morning at the Royal. She’d obviously tossed and turned a lot in the night because her hair was all sticking up at the back. Her eyes looked red and sore. I’d heard her crying in the night.
    ‘How about you taking the kids down to breakfast, Mack?’ she said pleadingly. ‘I don’t think I could face it today. I’m feeling ever so queasy.’
    ‘Aw, come on, hen. I can’t cope with all three of them on my own. I’m not Mary Piddly Poppins.’
    ‘You don’t have to cope with me,’ I said indignantly.
    ‘I sometimes wish to God I didn’t,’ Mack