Читать книгу: «Ratburger»

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1
Prawn-Cocktail-Crisp Breath

The hamster was dead.

On his back.

Legs in the air.

Dead.

With tears running down her cheeks, Zoe opened the cage. Her hands were shaking and her heart was breaking. As she laid Gingernut’s little furry body down on the worn carpet, she thought she would never smile again.

“Sheila!” called Zoe, as loudly as she could. Despite her father’s repeated pleas, Zoe refused to call her stepmother ‘Mum’. She never had, and she vowed to herself that she never would. No one could replace Zoe’s mum – not that her stepmother ever even tried.

“Shut ya face. I’m watchin’ TV and stuffin’ meself!” came the woman’s gruff voice from the lounge.

“It’s Gingernut!” called Zoe. “He’s not well!”

This was an understatement.

Zoe had once seen a hospital drama on the telly where a nurse tried to revive a dying old man, so she desperately attempted to give her hamster mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by blowing very gently into his open mouth. That didn’t work. Neither did connecting the rodent’s little heart to an AA battery with a paper clip. It was just too late.

The hamster was cold to the touch, and he was stiff.

“Sheila! Please help …!” shouted the little girl.

At first Zoe’s tears came silently, before she let out a gigantic cry. Finally she heard her stepmother trudge reluctantly down the hall of the little flat, which was situated high up on the 37^th floor of a leaning tower block. The woman made huge effort noises whenever she had to do anything. She was so lazy she would order Zoe to pick her nose for her, though of course Zoe always said ‘no’. Sheila could even let out a groan while changing channels with the TV remote.

“Eurgh, eurgh, eurgh, eurgh …” huffed Sheila as she thundered down the hall. Zoe’s stepmother was quite short, but she made up for it by being as wide as she was tall.

She was, in a word, spherical.

Soon Zoe could sense the woman standing in the doorway, blocking out the light from the hall like a lunar eclipse. What’s more, Zoe could smell the sickly sweet aroma of prawn cocktail crisps. Her stepmother loved them. In fact, she boasted that from when she was a toddler she had refused to eat anything else, and spat any other food back in her mum’s face. Zoe thought the crisps stank, and not even of prawns. Of course the woman’s breath absolutely reeked of them too.

Even now, as she stood in the doorway, Zoe’s stepmother was holding a packet of the noxious snack with one hand and feeding her face with the other while she surveyed the scene. As always, she was wearing a long grubby white T-shirt, black leggings and furry pink slippers. The bits of skin that were exposed were covered in tattoos. Her arms bore the names of her ex-husbands, all since crossed out:

“Oh dear,” the woman spat, her mouth full of crisps. “Oh dear, oh dear, how very very sad. It’s ’eartbreakin’. The poor little fing has snuffed it!” She leaned over her little stepdaughter and peered down at the dead hamster. She sprayed the carpet with half-chewed pieces of crisp as she spoke.

“Dear oh dear oh dear and all dat stuff,” she added, in a tone that did not sound even remotely sad.

Just then a large piece of half-chewed crisp sprayed from Sheila’s mouth on to the poor thing’s little fluffy face. It was a mixture of crisps and spit[1]. Zoe wiped it away gently, as a tear dropped from her eye on to his cold pink nose.

“’Ere, I got a great idea!” said Zoe’s stepmother. “I’ll just finish dese crisps and ya can shove the little fing in de bag. I won’t touch it meself. I don’t wanna catch summink.”

Sheila lifted the bag above her mouth and poured the last of the prawn cocktail crisp crumbles down her greedy throat. The woman then offered her stepdaughter the empty bag. “Dere ya go. Bung it in ’ere, quick. Before it stinks de whole flat out.”

Zoe almost gasped at the unfairness of what the woman had just said. It was her fat stepmother’s prawn-cocktail-crisp breath that stank the place out! Her breath could strip paint. It could shear the feathers off a bird and make it bald. If the wind changed direction, you would get a nasty waft of her breath in a town ten miles away.

“I am not burying my poor Gingernut in a crisp packet,” snapped Zoe. “I don’t know why I called for you in the first place. Please just go!”

“For goodness’ sake, girl!” shouted the woman. “I was only trying to ’elp. Ungrateful little wretch!”

“Well, you’re not helping!” shouted Zoe, without turning round. “Just go away! Please!”

Sheila thundered out of the room and slammed the door so hard that plaster fell from the ceiling.

Zoe listened as the woman she refused to call ‘Mum’ trudged back to the kitchen, no doubt to rip open another family-sized bag of prawn cocktail crisps to fill her face with. The little girl was left alone in her tiny bedroom, cradling her dead hamster.

But how had he died? Zoe knew that Gingernut was very young, even in hamster years.

Could this be a hamster murder? she wondered.

But what kind of person would want to murder a defenceless little hamster?

Well, before this story is over, you will know. And you will also know that there are people capable of doing much, much worse. The most evil man in the world is lurking somewhere in this very book. Read on, if you dare …

2
A Very Special Little Girl

Before we meet this deeply wicked individual, we need to go back to the beginning.

Zoe’s real mum died when she was a baby, but Zoe had still had a very happy life. Dad and Zoe had always been a little team, and he showered her with love. While Zoe was at school, Dad went out to work at the local ice-cream factory. He had adored ice cream ever since he was a boy and loved working in the factory, even though his job involved long hours, not much money and very hard work.

What kept Zoe’s dad going was making brand new ice-cream flavours. At the end of every shift at the factory he would rush home excitedly, laden with samples of some weird and wonderful new flavour for Zoe to be the first to try. Then he would report back what she liked to the boss. These were Zoe’s favourites:

Sherbert Bang

Bubblicious Bubblegum

Triple Choco-Nut-Fudge Swirl

Candyfloss Supreme

Caramel & Custard

Mango Surprise

Cola Cube & Jelly

Peanut Butter & Banana Foam

Pineapple & Liquorice

Whizz Fizz Spacedust Explosion

Her least favourite was Snail & Broccoli. Not even Zoe’s dad could make snail and broccoli ice cream taste good.

Not all of the flavours made it to the shops (especially not Snail & Broccoli) but Zoe tried them all! Sometimes she ate so much ice cream she thought she would explode. Best of all, she would often be the only child in the world to try them, and that made Zoe feel like a very special little girl indeed.

There was one problem.

Being an only child, Zoe had no one at home to play with, apart from her dad, who worked long hours at the factory. So by the time she reached the age of nine, like many kids, she wanted a pet with all her heart and soul. It didn’t have to be a hamster, she just needed something, anything, to love. Something that she hoped would love her back. However, living on the 37^th floor of a leaning tower block, it had to be something small.

So, on Zoe’s tenth birthday, as a surprise, Dad left work early and met his daughter at the school gates. He carried her on his shoulders – she had always loved that ever since she was a baby – and took her to the local pet shop. There, he bought her a hamster.

Zoe picked out the fluffiest, cutest baby one, and named him Gingernut.

Gingernut lived in a cage in the little girl’s bedroom. Zoe didn’t mind that Gingernut would go round and round on his wheel at night keeping her awake. She didn’t mind that he nipped her finger a couple of times when she fed him biscuits as a special treat. She even didn’t mind that his cage smelled of hamster wee.

In short, Zoe loved Gingernut. And Gingernut loved Zoe.

Zoe didn’t have many friends at school. What’s more, the other kids bullied her for being short and ginger and having to wear braces on her teeth. Just one of those things would have been enough for her to have a hard time. She had hit the jackpot with all three.

Gingernut was small and ginger too, though of course he didn’t wear braces. That smallness and gingerness was probably, deep down, why Zoe chose him out of the dozens of little balls of fluff snuggled up together behind the glass at the pet shop. She must have sensed a kindred spirit.

Over the weeks and months that followed, Zoe taught Gingernut some mind-boggling tricks. For a sunflower seed, he would stand on his back legs and do a little dance. For a walnut, Gingernut would do a back-flip. And for a lump of sugar, he would spin around on his back.

Zoe’s dream was to make her little pet world famous as the very first breakdancing hamster! She planned to put on a little show at Christmas for all the other children on the estate. She even made a poster to advertise it.

Then one day, Dad came home from work with some very sad news, which would tear their happy little life apart …

3
Nuffink

“I lost my job,” said Dad.

“No!” said Zoe.

“They are shutting down the factory – moving the whole operation to China.”

“But you will find another job, won’t you?”

“I will try,” said Dad. “But it won’t be easy. There’ll be loads of us all looking for the same ones.”

And as it turned out, it wasn’t easy. It was, in fact, impossible. With so many people losing their jobs all at once, Dad was forced to claim benefit money from the government. It was a pittance, barely enough to live on. With nothing to do all day, Dad became more and more down. To begin with he went to the Job Centre every day. But there were never any jobs within a hundred miles and eventually he started going to the pub instead – Zoe could tell because she was fairly sure that Job Centres didn’t stay open till late at night.

Zoe became more and more worried about her father. Sometimes she wondered if he had given up on life altogether. Losing first his wife, and then his job, seemed like just too much for him to bear.

Little did he know, things were about to get much much worse …

Dad met Zoe’s stepmother when he was at his saddest. He was lonely and she was on her own, her last husband having died in a mysterious prawn-cocktail-crisp-related incident. Sheila seemed to think that husband number ten’s benefit money would provide her with an easy life, with fags on tap and all the prawn cocktail crisps she could eat.

As Zoe’s real mum had died when Zoe was a baby, as much as she tried, and she tried and tried, Zoe could not remember her. There used to be photographs of Mum up all over the flat. Mum had a kind smile. Zoe would stare at the photographs, and try and smile just like her. They certainly looked alike. Especially when they were smiling.

However, one day when everyone was out, Zoe’s new stepmother took all the photographs down. Now they were conveniently ‘lost’. Probably burned. Dad didn’t like talking about Mum because it would just make him cry. However, she lived on in Zoe’s heart. The little girl knew that her real mum had loved her very much. She just knew it.

Zoe also knew her stepmother did not love her. Or even like her very much. In truth, Zoe was pretty sure her stepmother hated her. Sheila treated her at worst as an irritant, at best as if she were invisible. Zoe often overheard her stepmother saying she wanted her out of the house as soon as she was old enough.

“De little brat can stop spongin’ off me!” The woman never gave her a penny, not even on her birthday. That Christmas, Sheila had given Zoe a used tissue as a present, and then laughed in her face when the little girl unwrapped it. It was full of snot.

Soon after Zoe’s stepmother moved into the flat, she demanded that the hamster move out.

“It stinks!” she shrieked.

However, after a great deal of shouting and slamming of doors, Zoe was finally allowed to keep her little pet.

Sheila carried on despising Gingernut, though. She moaned and moaned that the little hamster chewed holes in the sofa, even though it was burning hot ash falling from her fags that had really created them! Over and over again she warned her stepdaughter she would “stamp on de nasty little beast if I ever catch it out of its cage”.

Sheila also mocked Zoe’s attempts to teach her hamster to breakdance.

“You’re wastin’ your time with dat nonsense. You and dat little beast will amount to nuffink. Ya ’ear me? Nuffink!”

Zoe heard, but chose not to listen. She knew she had a special way with animals, and Dad had always told her so.

In fact, Zoe dreamed of travelling the world with a huge menagerie of animal stars. One day, she would train animals to do extraordinary feats that she believed would delight the world. She even made a list of what these madcap acts could be:

A frog who is a superstar DJ

A rapping terrapin

Two gerbils who ballroom dance together

An elephant who sings opera

A donkey who does magic tricks

A tap-dancing centipede

A boy band comprised entirely of guinea pigs

A street-dance group of tortoises

A cat who does impressions (of famous cartoon cats)

A ballet-dancing pig

A worm hypnotist

A high-wire acrobatics act with cows

An ant who does ventriloquism

A daredevil mole who does incredible stunts like being shot out of a cannon

A karate display with jellyfish

A bungee-jumping hippopotamus

Zoe had it all planned out. With the money the animals earned, she and her father could both escape the leaning, crumbling tower block for ever. Zoe could buy Dad a much bigger flat, and she could retire to a huge country house and set up a sanctuary for unwanted pets. The animals could run around in the grounds all day, and sleep together in a giant bed at night. ‘No animal too big or too small, they will all be loved’ was to be written over the entrance gates.

Then on that fateful day, Zoe came home from school to find that Gingernut was dead. And with him, Zoe’s dreams of animal-training stardom died too.

So, reader, after that little journey back in time, we’re back at the start, and ready to get on with the story.

Don’t turn back to the beginning though, that would be really stupid and you would go round and round in circles reading the same few pages. No, move on to the next page, and I will continue with the story. Quickly. Stop reading this and move on. Now!

4
Dirty Business

“Flush it down de bog!” shouted Sheila.

Zoe was sitting on her bed listening through the wall to her dad and stepmother arguing.

“No!” replied Dad.

“Give it ’ere ya useless git! I’ll bung it in de bin!”

Zoe often sat on her bed in her too-small pyjamas, listening through the paper-thin wall to her father and stepmother arguing way past her bedtime. Tonight they were of course shouting and screaming about Gingernut, who had died that day.

As they lived in a flat on the 37^th floor of a dilapidated council block (which leaned heavily and should have been demolished decades ago), the family didn’t have a garden. There was an old adventure playground in the central concrete square shared by all the blocks in the estate. However, the local gang made it too dangerous to venture near.

“Wot you lookin’ at?” Tina Trotts would shout at anyone passing by. Tina was the local bully, and her gang of teenage hoodlums ruled the estate. She was only fourteen but she could make a grown man cry, and often did. Every day she would flob on Zoe’s head from the flats as the little girl walked to school. And every day Tina would laugh, as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

If the family had owned an allotment or even the smallest patch of grass anywhere on the estate they could call their own, Zoe would have dug a little grave with a spoon, lowered her little friend into the hole and made a headstone with a lolly stick.

Gingernut,

Much loved Hamster,

Expert breakdancer,

And sometime bodypopper.

Sadly missed by his owner and friend Zoe,

RIP [1]

But of course they didn’t have a garden. No one did. Instead, Zoe had wrapped her hamster carefully in a page from her History exercise book. When her dad finally returned home from the pub, Zoe gave him the precious little package.

My dad will know what to do with him, she thought.

But Zoe hadn’t reckoned on her horrible stepmother getting involved.

Unlike his new wife, Dad was tall and thin. If she was a bowling ball, he was the skittle, and of course bowling balls often knock over skittles.

So now Dad and Sheila were arguing in the kitchen about what to do with the little package Zoe had given to Dad. It was always awful hearing the two of them shouting at each other, but tonight was proving particularly unbearable.

“I suppose I could get the poor girl another hamster,” ventured Dad. “She was so good with it …”

Zoe’s face lit up for a moment.

“Are ya crazy?” sneered her stepmother. “Another ’amster! You are so useless, ya can’t even get a job to pay for one!”

“There are no jobs,” pleaded Dad.

“You’re just too lazy to get one. Ya useless git.”

“I could find a way, for Zoe. I love my girl so much. I could try to save up some of my benefit money—”

“Dat’s hardly enuff to keep me in prawn cocktail crisps, let alone feed a beast like dat.”

“We could feed it leftovers,” protested Dad.

“I am not havin’ another one of dose disgusting creatures in me flat!” said the woman.

“It’s not a disgusting creature. It’s a hamster!”

“’Amsters are no better dan rats,” Sheila continued. “Worse! I work all day on me ’ands and knees keepin’ dis flat spick and span.”

She does no such thing, thought Zoe. The flat is an absolute tip!

“And den the nasty little fing comes along and does its dirty business everywhere!” continued Sheila. “And while I am on the subject, your aim in de bog could be better!”

“Sorry.”

“Wot do ya do? Put a sprinkler on de end of it?”

“Keep your voice down, woman!”

The little girl was once again finding out the hard way that secretly listening to your parents talk could be a very dangerous game. You always ended up hearing things you wished you never had. Besides, Gingernut didn’t do his dirty business everywhere. Zoe always made sure she picked up any rogue droppings from his secret runs around her room with some loo paper and flushed them safely down the toilet.

“I’ll take the cage down the pawn shop then,” said Dad. “I might get a few quid for it.”

“I will take it down de pawn shop,” said his wife aggressively. “You’ll just spend the money down de pub.”

“But—”

“Now put de nasty little fing in de bin.”

“I promised Zoe I would give him a proper burial in the park. She loved Gingernut. Taught him tricks and everything.”

“Dey were pathetic. PATHETIC! A breakdancin’ ’amster?! Absolute rubbish!”

“That’s not fair!”

“And you’re not going out again tonight. I don’t trust ya. You’ll be back down de pub.”

“It’s shut now.”

“Knowing you, you’ll just wait outside until it opens tomorrow morning … Now come on, give it ’ere!”

Zoe heard the pedal bin open with the stamp of her stepmother’s chubby foot and the faint sound of a thud.

With tears streaming down her face, Zoe lay down in bed, and covered herself with her duvet. She turned to her right side. In the half-light she stared at the cage as she did every night.

It was agonising to see it empty. The little girl closed her eyes but couldn’t sleep. Her heart was aching, her brain was spinning. She was sad, she was angry, she was sad, she was angry, she was sad. She turned on to her left side. Maybe it would be easier to sleep facing the grimy wall rather than staring at the empty cage. She closed her eyes again, but all she could think about was Gingernut.

Not that it was easy to think, what with the noise coming from the neighbouring flat. Zoe didn’t know who lived there – people in the tower block weren’t exactly close – but most evenings she heard shouting. It seemed like a man screaming at his daughter, who would often cry, and Zoe felt sorry for her, whoever she was. However bad Zoe thought her life was, this girl’s sounded worse.

But Zoe blocked out the shouting, and soon fell asleep, dreaming of Gingernut, breakdancing in heaven …