Posh and Prejudice Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2009 by Grace Dent

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Poppy

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  For more of your favorite series, Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/littlebrown

  Poppy is a imprint of Little, Brown and Company.

  The Poppy name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: December 2009

  First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Hodder Children’s Books, a division of Hachette Children’s Books

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-05259-7

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  AUGUST

  TUESDAY 19TH AUGUST

  WEDNESDAY 20TH AUGUST

  THURSDAY 21ST AUGUST

  FRIDAY 22ND AUGUST

  MONDAY 25TH AUGUST

  TUESDAY 26TH AUGUST

  SEPTEMBER

  TUESDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER

  THURSDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER

  FRIDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER

  MONDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER

  TUESDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER

  THURSDAY 11TH SEPTEMBER

  FRIDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER

  SUNDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER

  MONDAY 15TH SEPTEMBER

  TUESDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER

  FRIDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER

  WEDNESDAY 24TH SEPTEMBER

  FRIDAY 26TH SEPTEMBER

  SATURDAY 27TH SEPTEMBER

  OCTOBER

  WEDNESDAY 1ST OCTOBER

  FRIDAY 3RD OCTOBER—SHIRAZ BAILEY WOOD’S BIRTHDAY!

  MONDAY 6TH OCTOBER

  WEDNESDAY 8TH OCTOBER

  FRIDAY 10TH OCTOBER

  MONDAY 13TH OCTOBER

  WEDNESDAY 15TH OCTOBER

  FRIDAY 17TH OCTOBER

  MONDAY 20TH OCTOBER

  WEDNESDAY 22ND OCTOBER

  FRIDAY 24TH OCTOBER

  NOVEMBER

  TUESDAY 4TH NOVEMBER

  WEDNESDAY 5TH NOVEMBER

  SATURDAY 8TH NOVEMBER

  WEDNESDAY 12TH NOVEMBER

  FRIDAY 14TH NOVEMBER

  WEDNESDAY 19TH NOVEMBER

  DECEMBER

  MONDAY 1ST DECEMBER

  WEDNESDAY 3RD DECEMBER

  MONDAY 15TH DECEMBER

  TUESDAY 16TH DECEMBER

  THURSDAY 18TH DECEMBER

  SUNDAY 21ST DECEMBER

  THURSDAY 25TH DECEMBER, CHRISTMAS DAY

  FRIDAY 26TH DECEMBER

  SATURDAY 27TH DECEMBER

  JANUARY

  THURSDAY 1ST JANUARY

  SATURDAY 3RD JANUARY

  THURSDAY 8TH JANUARY

  MONDAY 12TH JANUARY

  THURSDAY 15TH JANUARY

  WEDNESDAY 21ST JANUARY

  SUNDAY 25TH JANUARY

  FEBRUARY

  MONDAY 2ND FEBRUARY

  THURSDAY 5TH FEBRUARY

  FRIDAY 13TH FEBRUARY

  SATURDAY 14TH FEBRUARY

  SUNDAY 15TH FEBRUARY

  MONDAY 23RD FEBRUARY

  MARCH

  SUNDAY 1ST MARCH

  THURSDAY 5TH MARCH

  WEDNESDAY 11TH MARCH

  FRIDAY 13TH MARCH

  SUNDAY 15TH MARCH

  WEDNESDAY 18TH MARCH

  APRIL

  THURSDAY 9TH APRIL

  MAY

  MONDAY 4TH MAY

  THURSDAY 7TH MAY

  FRIDAY 8TH MAY

  SUNDAY 10TH MAY

  FRIDAY 15TH MAY

  FRIDAY 22ND MAY

  JUNE

  TUESDAY 9TH JUNE

  FRIDAY 12TH JUNE

  WEDNESDAY 17TH JUNE

  JULY

  FRIDAY 3RD JULY

  SATURDAY JULY 4TH

  MONDAY 6TH JULY

  GLOSSARY

  For Miss Ruby Chaisty

  This diary belongs to:

  Address: Shiraz Bailey Wood

  34, THUNDERSLEY ROAD,

  Goodmayes,

  Essex,

  IG5 2XS

  AUGUST

  TUESDAY 19TH AUGUST

  I am the master of my own destiny.

  Well, that’s what Ms. Bracket, my English teacher last year, always says.

  “Shiraz Bailey Wood,” she says. “The sky is the limit for a bright spark like you! You could be anything you want. Like an astronaut! Or a lion tamer! Or the Prime Minister! The only thing stopping you is yourself!”

  She used to jar my head sometimes she did. She was proper obsessed about us passing our GCSEs. Ms. Bracket isn’t bothered about all that “Superchav Academy” stuff. That’s what a lot of snobby newspaper reporters used to call my old school Mayflower Academy, you see. And I’ll say it again for the billionth time…

  WE WEREN’T ALL CHAVS, RIGHT!?

  (Jury’s out on Uma Brunton-Fletcher, though.)

  Ms. Bracket isn’t prejudiced and stigmatizing toward young people like most grown-ups are. Saying that, she doesn’t take any of our crap either. Like when I told her me and Carrie didn’t need no English GCSEs ’cos we were starting a world-famous singing duo called Half Rice/Half Chips.

  “Fair enough, Shiraz,” Ms. Bracket says. “But in the event that you don’t become the next Beyoncé Knowles you’ll need to get a job to feed and clothe yourself! SO DO YOUR HOMEWORK!”

  In the end even I had to admit that passing my GCSEs was a better plan if I didn’t want to end up flogging the homeless paper Street News outside Food Lion. If you’ve ever seen that YouTube clip of me and Carrie on ITV2’s Million Dollar Talent Show you’ll know why. Oh my days, that was well shameful.

  Ten pounds flaming ninety-two pence we spent on those matching red leg warmers and devil horns, then we only get one verse into “Maneater” by Nelly Furtado and this snotty-looking judge in trousers so tight you could see the outline of his trousersnake tells me I’m singing like someone strangling a donkey.

  Yeah, BARE JOKES, bruv. Jog on.

  Not like I cared though. I just laughed in his face. He was like thirty-three years old or something. A proper antique. It’s not my fault if he couldn’t appreciate me being an individual.

  Oh well, that’s break over. Better get back to work.

  2:15PM—I don’t regret nothing in my life. Nothing. I’m always moving forward, me. I’m keeping it real. It’s just sometimes, when I’m standing here behind this pan, frying an egg, and I’m proper sweaty and some bloke with a hairy bum cleavage is at the counter moaning on going, “Ugggh, you’ve made my yolk hard. I wanted it runny. I like my eggs runny!”… Well, it’s times like that when I remember Mayflower Academy. I think about what a laugh Year Eleven was with Carrie and Luther and Chantalle and Uma and Kezia.

  Y’know there was a bit last year when I even started planning to go to Sixth Form. And I ain’t exactly a Sixth Formery type of girl if you know what I mean.

  But I never thought I’d wind up here at Mr. Yolk on Goodmayes High Street making Set Breakfast C two hundred times a day for geezers with bigger baps than me.

  This was NOT in Shiraz Bailey Wood’s life plan.

  “EAT LIKE A PRINCE FOR £2!!” That’s the “mission statement” at Mr. Yolk. It’s written in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS across the front of my T-shirt. I know I look totally butterz in it, but my boyfriend, Wesley Barrington Bains II, says I look hot.

 
“Wifey,” Wesley says. “You could put on anything and you’d look buff, innit.”

  Wesley reckons I’ve got it proper cushy working at Mr. Yolk ’cos:

  1) It’s just down the road from my mother’s house, and

  2) I get free dinner every day and they do steak and kidney pot pies, and

  3) He can pop in and see me on the way to his plumbing NVQ and get his egg roll.

  Wesley don’t like his egg runny. Wesley likes his egg yolk quite hard and he likes the ketchup just on the egg white NOT the yolk, with a sprinkle of black pepper on the yolk. The first dozen times I made Wesley’s egg I got it wrong, but now I make Wesley’s egg just perfect he reckons. That’s my biggest achievement all August.

  I’m dreading picking up my GCSE results next week. I tried my best and everything. I knew that Jane Eyre book backward by May! I used to go to sleep at night and dream about Mr. Rochester on his horse, clip-clopping through Romford and scooping me up outside Time and Envy nightclub and taking me away from Essex.

  I tried my total best in that exam, honest.

  It wouldn’t be the first time my best wasn’t good enough.

  WEDNESDAY 20TH AUGUST

  Oh my gosh, today at Mr. Yolk was proper DULL. OK. I tell a lie, there was one exciting bit at about 3 o’clock when we totally ran out of one-quid coins and Mario (Mr. Yolk himself—Goodmayes’s biggest celebrity) let me get the bus to the bank in Ilford Mall and get some.

  So I take one of my detours round by Greggs the bakers and I spot Kezia Marshall and we both buy a gingerbread man in the shape of Bart Simpson. Then we sit on the wall outside Claire’s Accessories chatting about Kezia’s bump. Last year everyone thought Kezia was pregnant by Luther—then it turned out to be a false alarm. Then it didn’t. Kezia really was pregnant by Luther. Even my mum was shocked at that.

  Kezia’s bump is well big now. She looks like one of them Teletubbies with her red hair and orange hoodie and big belly. Like LaLa or Tinky Winky, me and Carrie couldn’t decide. Kezia kept pulling down the front of her trackie pants and making me feel the bump kicking. Kezia didn’t mind which passersby saw the bump and pretty much all the rest of her downstairs bits too. (Safe to say, red is Kezia’s natural hair color.) I didn’t feel like my gingerbread man much after that. I worry about Kezia a bit. Kezia says Luther ain’t calling her much no more like he used to. Kezia says all their mums and dads are trying to sort something out. Poor Kez.

  I asked about baby names and Kezia says she likes Usher for a boy or Latanoyatiqua for a girl. Then she’s going to double-barrel the surnames. Latanoyatiqua Marshall-Dinsdale! Oh my days—by the time the poor kid’s got that spelled in finger paints at school the day will be over.

  I went back to Mr. Yolk and Mario was all up in my face giving it. “Where you been? I give you ten minutes!” So I said I had menstrual pain in my womb and had been in Boots looking at the ladies intimate problem counter, then Mario pushed away his beans on toast and made a face like “Too much information” and got back on the phone to his bookie.

  See, even the exciting bits at work ain’t that exciting. Only fifty more years and I can retire.

  8PM—My mother—Mrs. Diane Wood—says work ain’t meant to be exciting. Mum reckons the important thing is that I’m bringing home some cash and earning my keep. This ALONE should be exciting enough for me, Mum reckons. Yeah, she is barking mad. I love my mother ’cos like you have to don’t you, but she is a proper mental sometimes when she says stuff like this.

  I said to her, “Mother, have you ever cleaned out a deep fat fryer and had your bum cheek pinched by an eighty-six-year-old customer with missing bottom teeth for £3.50 an hour?!! It AIN’T EXCITING, right?”

  “Oh, Shiraz. Give it a rest. Real life ain’t never exciting.” My mother sighed. She was half-staring at Emmerdale, where some vet had his arm up a cow’s bumhole. “REAL LIFE AIN’T NEVER EXCITING!” my mum said again. “That’s why I pay for this bleeding Sky+ satellite TV subscription!”

  I gave her £50 out of my wages toward my keep and she rolled it up and stuck it in her pocket. Then she rubbed Penny, our obese Staffy, and said, “Woohoo Pennywenny! More Russell Stover Chocolates for you and me. Ooh, we like those coffee truffle ones, don’t we?!”

  She’d better be joking.

  I went to my room and put cotton balls in my ears to drown out the noise and carried on with this book I’m reading called Pride and Prejudice by a bird called Jane Austen. Ms. Bracket said I would like it and I do. It’s proper old. It’s about this woman called Elizabeth who fancies this well-minted proper buff bloke called Darcy who is sexy but up himself. I can’t stand lads like that.

  10PM—Carrie just texted. Carrie’s going to schlep over tomorrow and do me some false nails. Carrie says she’s going to use some stronger glue this time. Carrie says she’s still a bit freaked out about the last time she did them. One of them fell off at work when I was making the tuna mayo and Mario had to give some old geezer the Heimlich maneuver when it got jammed in his windpipe. That was definitely exciting. Just, like, not in a good way.

  THURSDAY 21ST AUGUST

  This house is driving me MAD. You never get a minute of peace unless you actually get into your bed then pull the duvet over your head and shut your eyes and even then my gigantic little brother Murphy will be poking the duvet saying, “’Ere Shizza, the toaster’s got all black smoke coming out of it. Is it meant to do that?” Or my mother will be in my room going, “Ooh, lying down are we? All right for some! It’s your turn to pick up the dog turds in the back garden. I’ll get you the shovel!”

  34 Thundersley Road is always proper hectic. Especially when me and my mum and my dad and Murphy and my big sister Cava-Sue and her bloke Lewis and my bloke Wesley are all in at the same time. Nan comes round a lot too. And sometimes she brings her mate Clement from bingo.

  Dad says he’s thinking of installing a ticket system on the loo door like at the ShopRite deli counter so he stands a chance of taking a dump. We all laughed our heads off when he said that ’cept Mum who told him to stop being so filthy. My dad don’t say much but when he does he is bare jokes.

  There was a bit last year where our Cava-Sue got well rinsed out with Thundersley Road and was proper sick of sharing a bedroom with me and sick of our bunkbeds and sick of Mum bending her ear about her looking all emo and sick of Goodmayes altogether so she did a runner to London. But me and Mum really missed her so I got us all on the TV show Fast-Track Family Feud and got her back.

  Yeah, good idea, Shiz.

  I didn’t know two months later she’d move her flipping boyfriend in here too!

  “Lewis’s mother Vera is moving to Benidorm!” Cava-Sue says last February. “She’s setting up an English lesbian mock-Tudor theme pub called the Fistwell Inn and making my Lewis homeless! She says Lewis can fend for himself! Can you belieeeeeve it? He’s only nineteen! What’s he going to dooooo??!”

  No sooner had Cava-Sue begun hinting loudly that she was moving out again to be with Lewis than the floppy-haired emo git had moved his collection of thrift shop shirts, ties, and nose rings into our house.

  I was turfed out of the room me and Cava-Sue used to share. Then Mum dispatched Dad off to Home Depot to buy some plasterboard and Murphy’s room was halved in two with plasterboard and me and Murph both got half a room each. I still ain’t seen the funny side and I don’t care who knows it.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with your mush!” Cava-Sue said tonight when we were making food. “You always used to jar my bloody head in that bottom bunk about not having your own space!”

  This made me proper angry. “Yeah, fair play, Cava-Sue,” I said to her. “But now I’m living in a three-by-four square plasterboard space with no bleeding windows! There’s geezers in that Abu Ghraib terrorist compound who see more daylight than I do! I ain’t happy!”

  “Oh, you’re so bleeding dramatic! It’s not forever! Me and Lewis are going traveling soon, remember!” Cava-Sue sighed, poking a Linda McCartne
y vegetarian sausage with a spatula.

  “DRAMATIC!?” I shouted. “Maybe if your bed was separated from Murphy’s by a two-inch-thick piece of posh cardboard and you could hear him grunting his bleeding way through Nuts magazine you’d feel bleeding DRAMATIC too!”

  That well shut her up.

  10PM—My best friend Carrie just came round and did my and Cava-Sue’s nails. She did mine hot pink with acrylic tips and did Cava-Sue’s dark purple. Carrie says I look well pretty with mine all long and that I’m looking proper womanly nowadays. Carrie says no wonder Wesley Barrington Bains II talks about marrying me one day. Carrie says I’m proper lucky to have found true love and know someone will love me forever. I suppose I am.

  Carrie says she’s well bored hanging about the house with her mother, Maria, and she wishes she had a job too. I said I’d ask Mr. Yolk if he needed anyone to help fry eggs.

  “’Ere don’t be daft, Shiz,” Carrie said. “Once the GCSE results are out next week we’ll be going back to Sixth Form, right?!” Bless her. We are so NOT going to Sixth Form. She is proper delusional.

  All I remember about the English Writing to Argue, Explain, or Advise GCSE Paper is spending three hours trying to convince folk—over a load of different exercises—that the theme parks of Florida were a steaming good place to go on holiday.

  I mean, fair enough, I know I did better than Kezia Marshall ’cos when I looked over at Kezia fifteen minutes into Paper One, I swear she was coloring in a doodle she’d done of a stroller. But I don’t think I did brilliant. The whole thing was a proper stress-out and the faster I wrote the more I began to get proper mixed-up and think bleeding hell I don’t know if I’m putting apostrophes in the right place or using commas right or nothing. And all I seemed to keep saying was that dolphins were well good fun to swim with and by the time the bell went off I’d begun to think that I weren’t even spelling the word dolphin right and I could feel my throat and my eyes beginning to hurt like I wanted to cry. But I didn’t cry ’cos I never ever cry in front of no one at school and I weren’t bloody going to start then.