Page 77 of Love or Your Money Back

I went a little red in the face. ‘You mustn’t answer the questions until you’re holding the iPad. The iPad has special software. It records everything.’

‘So these questions are just to kick things off?’ Callum confirmed, picking up the iPad. ‘And after that, I can do proper story telling?’

Miss Hussain gave Callum a warm smile. ‘You’ll be able to talk about Angel Rain soon, Callum. I’ll set myself up in the corner and let you two get on with things.’

‘Alright,’ said Callum. ‘Are you sitting comfortably, Mr Lamb? Then I will begin.’

Callum Duffy interview transcript:

Tuesday 25th September, 11.03 am

First of all, thank you for choosing me for your study, Mr Lamb. I think it’s brilliant you’re speaking to boys about girls. And I will try and answer your questions as best I can.

I reckon I’m a good choice for your study because I am an improved child and good at sharing my feelings. I used to be quite badly behaved, to be honest. I chucked chairs around the classroom and drew blue felt tip on my stomach and stood on chairs with my shirt up going, ‘WAAAAAH!’

But since I met Angel Rain, I’m good most of the time and don’t bang my desk when I’m angry or make phone calls in class. And I can’t remember the last time I shouted BULLARD! behind Mrs Bullard’s back.

So I hardly ever get sent to the Calm Corner, anymore. Which is this room, by the way. You might not have noticed the sign, because the year ones drew rainbows all over the words, so you can’t read them anymore.

This room is supposed to be a chill-out zone with fibre optics for kids like Danny. But it’s never really calm because it is also our school library and medical bay, and also the drama studio.

The last time I was here, year fives were practising their Viking play and using the fibre optics as swords.

And Mr Rafferty was doing his marking in the corner.

He ate a whole chocolate orange in one go, Mr Lamb.

Which is a lot more than one portion. And he should have been with his class, really.

But I don’t blame him for hiding from the year threes. They are a bit of a nightmare.

Anyway, you wanted to know about my family.

My family are quite unusual, Mr Lamb. I don’t live with a mum and dad, like most kids. I live in my grandparent’s pub with my mum and nana and granddad and grown-up cousin.

When I tell people that I live in a pub, they think my house isn’t nice. Because pubs can be rough places. But our pub isn’t rough. It’s in the countryside and has a restaurant and a really big garden and gets listed in real ale guides.

I like living with my grandparents, because Nana makes a brilliant ten-item breakfast with potato waffles, Cumberland sausage, Lincolnshire sausage, black pudding, white pudding and a fried slice.

And Granddad knows everything. Like how much it costs to put the dishwasher on overnight and what time of day the Co-op puts special offer stickers on the crumpets.

My mum is really pretty, like all mums. She looks just like Barbie.

My cousin John Boy lives with us too sometimes, in a caravan in the garden.

He was in the army and used to drive a tank.

But then he ran over his officer’s foot, so they took his tank license away and sent him to Afghanistan with a gun instead.

Then John Boy stood on a landmine and lost his leg. So now he works in our pub.

So that’s my family. Well, the ones I see a lot anyway. What’s the next question?

Do-you-have-friends-who-are-girls?

Of course I have friends who are girls, Mr Lamb. My mum is a girl. And my nana. And then there’s Angel Rain, of course, who I’m here to talk about.

No offence, but you should cross out questions if I’ve already answered something. Because otherwise, it doesn’t sound like you’re listening.

Angel Rain is the best girl in the whole world, Mr Lamb. She’s the reason I like books now. And maybe I’ll even pass exams and be a vet when I’m older. And you’ll hear all about her soon, because Miss Hussain says you want to hear a story about us being friends.

None of the rest of these questions make sense to me, Mr Lamb. I don’t know what toxic manulinity means. Or gender. Transgender is boys wanting to dress up as girls, which I am okay with. But I don’t know what gender means on its own.

Miss Hussain said you wanted a story about me and Angel Rain being friends. So why don’t I just tell you that? I think it’ll be loads easier than these questions.

I’ll start at the beginning. Which is when our class got tadpoles and Mrs Bullard poisoned them in the art sink

Now I know what you’re thinking, Mr Lamb.

What have tadpoles got to do with me and a girl being friends?

Which I know is what you’re here to talk about.

But sometimes, you have to learn things you don’t want, so you can learn things you do want.

That’s what Granddad says. So bear with me.

Everything will make sense soon. But I need to start at the beginning.

A few terms ago, our class got tadpoles.

We should have gone on a class trip to the big pond at the top of the village and fished for frogspawn ourselves. But Mrs Bullard said she couldn’t handle me and Dexter and twenty-eight other kids by the water. So she sent Miss Hussain to the pond with a pair of tights on a pole and a carrier bag.

Miss Hussain is a teaching assistant, Mr Lamb. Not a teacher. Which is well unfair, because Miss Hussain is loads nicer than Mrs Bullard and she works harder, but she doesn’t get paid as much. And you can tell Mrs Bullard I said that.

Miss Hussain is an indoor person, so she was not happy about fishing out the frogspawn. She’s well into her Louis Vuitton hijabs and sparkly fingernails and all of that. But she got the frogspawn for us because she is nice and loves children.

We should have put the frogspawn in a proper tank. But when we got the tank out of the art cupboard, it had a big crack down the side. So Mrs Bullard filled up the art sink with water and put the frogspawn in there.

After a few days, the frogspawn turned into tadpoles.

And I felt so bad for those tadpoles, Mr Lamb.

Because it was not a nice living environment in that sink.

Especially when Dexter washed his paintbrush in the water.

I am quite an emotional person and it upset me, to see those tadpoles in bad conditions.

I like animals a lot. If there was a test at school for looking after animals, I would get a gold star. And that’s not me showing off. It’s just the truth.

Our cat, Sambuca, loves me because I’m the only one who understands him. Everyone else shouts at Sambuca when he has mental fits and scratches people. But I try to build him up, you know? Even though sometimes he can be quite violent.

I asked Mrs Bullard about getting a new tank for the tadpoles, but she said no.

Because the school didn’t have enough money.

And even though the PTA were doing a Great British Bake Off fundraiser in a few weeks, there were other things the school needed first. Like four new carpet tiles to replace the ones Dexter ruined with his homemade slime.

Mrs Bullard is the wicked witch of this story, Mr Lamb. She has evil blue eyes and a skeleton face and claw hands. And grey hair that looks like Lego. She could also be a troll, because of her breath. And I don’t know how she ended up as a teacher, because she hates children.

When I told Nana about the tadpoles, she said, ‘Well, Callum. There are two types of people in the world. The ones who let bad things happen. And the ones who do something about it. Which one are you?’

I am definitely a person who does things, Mr Lamb, because I can’t sit still. So the next day, I made a poster about sad tadpoles using lots of black and brown felt-tip, and I went on and on at Mrs Bullard about animal cruelty.

I said if the school could afford a Nespresso coffee machine for the staff room, then they could afford a fish tank.

Mrs Bullard said no one ever used the Nespresso machine because the capsules cost too much. And she didn’t think you could be cruel to fish, because they didn’t feel pain. Which upset me.

‘What if I buy a fish tank with my pocket money?’ I asked.

Mrs Bullard said that fish tanks were very expensive.

‘Well, I’ll borrow a fish tank, then,’ I said. ‘I bet my nana has a spare one. She has everything.’

Which is true.

Last term, I needed a policeman’s helmet for the school play.

And Nana had a real one, which she’d stolen from a policeman on a CND march in the 1980s.

Only the police helmet was massive, so we had to use a toy one instead.

And Nana had one of those too. And last Halloween, Nana dug out three real cauldrons from our garden shed.

Mrs Bullard said it would need to be a very high-quality fish tank. Because she wasn’t ruining any more carpet tiles with cracks and leaks.

I said that would be fine, because Nana only ever buys good quality. It’s granddad who buys cheap.

When I got home from school that day, Nana was chucking barrels into the beer cellar. My nana is a glamorous gran with blonde hair and glittery dresses, but she is also very big and strong and can lift beer barrels and drunk people.

Nana says she is mostly muscle with a little bit of fat around the edges and a mighty bosom. But to be honest, she is a bit overweight. And she really shouldn’t drink so much Guinness or eat so many chocolate mini rolls, because she is diabetic.

Anyway.

I asked Nana if she had a fish tank I could borrow. And she said, ‘What size do you want, Callum? Small, medium or large?’

I said, large, please. But when we looked in the loft, all Nana’s fish tanks were gone.

Nana was really angry, because Granddad had done another clear-out without asking her. So she went downstairs, and Granddad said yes, he had gotten rid of the tanks. And also Nana’s leather jackets from the 1970s.

Nana got even angrier about that. She said, ‘I was saving those jackets for Callum.’

But Granddad was right. Pointy collars are not well-liked by kids my age.

While Nana and Granddad were arguing, I had a thought.

Mr Holland, our caretaker, keeps tropical fish in his caretaker shed. That is top secret, Mr Lamb. Because Mr Holland’s aquarium heater uses loads of school electricity, so you can’t tell Mr Blowers, the headmaster.

Mr Holland loves his fish. He says they keep him company, because the teachers only talk about government things and don’t share their biscuits. So I thought, maybe Mr Holland had a spare fish tank. It was worth a try.

The next day, I got to school really early and found Mr Holland in his caretaker shed.

I told him all about the tadpoles and how they were having a hard time.

Mr Holland said I was a good boy for caring about animals, and he’d never liked Mrs Bullard much because she borrowed his tape measure once and never gave it back.

‘It’s your lucky day, Callum,’ said Mr Holland. ‘My bully fish died a few weeks ago. So I have a tank going spare.’

‘What’s a bully fish?’ I asked.

Mr Holland said a bully fish picked on other fish and needed to be put in a different tank.

And any fish could become a bully fish if it felt stressed, and there was a lesson there for human beings.

Then Mr Holland pulled out this massive tank, wiped it with his caretaker cloth and said, ‘Will this do you?’

‘It’s brilliant,’ I said. ‘The tadpoles will love it. Thank you so much.’

Along with the tank, Mr Holland gave me some fish food and some special stuff to make tap water nice. So Mr Holland is the first hero of this story, because without him, innocent tadpoles would have died.

It was a bit of a struggle getting the tank back to class because it was quite heavy.

Mr Holland said sorry for not helping me, but he’d hurt his back on the skate ramp playing with his grandson. So I put the tank on my bike saddle and carried it that way.

Mrs Bullard was not happy when I wheeled my bike into class. She said my bike tyres were muddy, even though they weren’t. And that the tank was too big and looked like a home for tropical fish. But Miss Hussain said, ‘You never mentioned size, Mrs Bullard. I think Callum has done very well.’

Mrs Bullard couldn’t say anything to that, because it was true.

It was quite difficult filling up the tank with water while the tadpoles were swimming in the sink. But I managed it. And then Mrs Bullard shouted at me again for using her tea strainer to fish the tadpoles out. But as I told her at the time, I was always going to wash it when I’d finished.

I learned something that day, Mr Lamb.

Water is heavy.

Once the tank was full, I could hardly move it. So the tank was stuck, sort of half in and out of the sink.

I didn’t think the tadpoles would be happy like that because they couldn’t see very much. And also, Mrs Bullard wouldn’t be happy, because she couldn’t fill her travel kettle in that sink. So I asked Miss Hussain for help.

Miss Hussain gave me a nice smile and said she’d missed her spin class yesterday so she could do with a workout.

The two of us moved the tank together, one, two, three, heave, like that.

Poor Miss Hussain got water all over her new Jigsaw pantsuit and broke one of her pink nails.

But she said it was worth it because looking after God’s creatures was important, even if it wasn’t part of Mrs Bullard’s lesson plan.

Together, we got the tank onto the draining board, and then Miss Hussain said we’d better leave it there. Because we didn’t want to lose any more water.

It was a good feeling, to see the tadpoles in a nice, clean tank. They looked much happier. You could see it on their little faces.

I gave the tadpoles a nice pinch of fish food to start them off in their new home. But Mr Holland said it was best not to overfeed them, so I only gave them one cheesy Wotsit at snack time to share.

I am enjoying telling you this story, Mr Lamb. But I’ve got to go now, because it’s nearly lunchtime. And you have to get to lunch quick on Tuesdays or all the toffee yoghurts are gone.