The Rotters' Club Read Free

had re-covered it with a remnant of the anaglypta his father had used to wallpaper the living room two years ago. On the front of his English book he had drawn a big cartoon foot, like the one at the end of the Monty Python signature tune.
    ‘That’s me done for the night.’ He stood over his sister, who was sprawled across both halves of the settee. ‘Gimme that.’
    It always annoyed him when Lois got to read Sounds before he did. He seemed to think this gave her privileged access to top-secret information. But in truth she cared nothing for the news pages over which he was ready to pore so avidly. Most of the headlines she didn’t even understand. ‘Beefheart here in May.’ ‘New Heep album due.’ ‘Another split in Fanny.’
    ‘What’s a Freak?’ she asked, handing him the magazine.
    Benjamin laughed tartly and pointed at their nine-year-old brother, whose face was aglow with amused contempt as he perused the Daily Mail. ‘You’re looking at one.’
    ‘I know that. But a Freak with a capital “F”. I mean, it’s obviously some sort of technical term.’
    Benjamin did not reply; and he somehow managed to leave Lois with the impression that he knew the answer well enough, but had chosen to withhold it, for reasons of his own. People always tended to regard him as knowledgeable, well-informed, even though the evidence was plainly to the contrary. There must have been some air about him, some indefinable sense of confidence, which it was easy to mistake for youthful wisdom.
    ‘Mother,’ said Paul, when she came in with his fizzy drink, ‘why do we take this newspaper?’
    Sheila glared at him, obscurely resentful. She had told him many times before to call her ‘Mum’, not ‘Mother’.
    ‘No reason,’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t we?’
    ‘Because it’s full,’ said Paul, flicking through the pages, ‘of platitudinous codswallop.’
    Ben and Lois giggled helplessly. ‘I thought “platitudinous” was an animal they had in Australia,’ she said.
    ‘The lesser-spotted platitudinous,’ said Benjamin, honking and squawking in imitation of this mythical beast.
    ‘Take this leading article, for instance,’ Paul continued, undeterred. ‘“That precise pageantry which Britain manages so well keeps its hold on our hearts. There’s nothing like a Royal Wedding for lifting our spirits.”’
    ‘What about it?’ said Sheila, stirring sugar into her tea. ‘I don’t agree with everything I read in there.’
    ‘“As Princess Anne and Mark Phillips walked out of the Abbey, their faces broke into that slow, spreading smile of people who are really happy.” Pass the sick bag, please! “The Prayer Book may be three hundred years old, but its promises are as clear as yesterday’s sunlight.” Pukerocious! “‘To have and to hold, for better for worse –’”’
    ‘That’s quite enough from you, Mr Know-All.’ The quiver in Sheila’s voice was enough to expose, just for a second, the sudden panic her youngest son was learning to inspire in her. ‘Drink that up and put your pyjamas on.’
    More squabbling ensued, with Benjamin making his own shrill interventions, but Lois did not listen to any of it. These were not the voices with which she longed to surround herself. She left them to it and withdrew to her bedroom, where she was able to re-enter her world of romantic daydreams, a kingdom of infinite colour and possibility. As for Benjamin’s copy of Sounds, she had found what she was looking for there, and had no further use for it. She would not even need to sneak down later and take another look, for the box number was easy to remember (it was 247, the same as the Radio One waveband), and the message she had seized upon was one of perfect, magical simplicity. Perhaps that was how she knew that it was meant for her, and her alone.
    ‘Hairy Guy seeks Chick. Birmingham area.’

2
    Meanwhile, Lois’s father Colin was sitting in a pub called The Bull’s Head in King’s Norton. His boss,