For Frankie, the boy with the beautiful smile.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

1 - Prawn-Cocktail-Crisp Breath

2 - A Very Special Little Girl

3 - Nuffink

4 - Dirty Business

5 - Droppings

6 - Rat-a-tat-tat

7 - Animal Smuggling

8 - Bread Sandwich

9 - One Shoe

10 - The Midget

11 - The Black Death

12 - Instant Suspension

13 - Burt’s Burgers

14 - A Bogie on the Ceiling

15 - Ten-Tonne Truck

16 - The Blackberry Bush

17 - “I Smell a Rat!”

18 - “Pulverisation”

19 - The Great Escape

20 - Tug of War

21 - Sizzling Bottom

22 - Free Spit

23 - The Pulverisation Machine!

24 - Childburger

25 - Roadkill

26 - The Executioner & Axe

27 - A Hole in the Fence

28 - Rat Poison

29 - Pink Furry Slippers

30 - Room-mates

31 - Rich and Famous Rat

32 - Actually Too Much Fudge

Epilogue

Previously by David Walliams:

Copyright

About the Publisher

Thank yous:

I would like to thank the following people, in order of importance:

Ann-Janine Murtagh, my boss at HarperCollins. I love you, I adore you. Thank you so much for believing in me, but most of all, thank you for being you.

Nick Lake, my editor. You know I think you are the absolute best in the business, but also thank you so much for helping me NOT ONLY grow as a writer, but also as a man.

Paul Stevens, my literary agent. I wouldn’t pay you 10% plus VAT for making a few phone calls if I didn’t feel completely blessed to be represented by you.

Tony Ross. You are the most talented illustrator in the price range we had available. Thank you.

James Stevens and Elorine Grant, the designers. Thanks.

Lily Morgan, the copy editor. Cheers.

Sam White, the publicity manager. Geraldine Stroud, the publicity director. Ta.

Meet the characters in this story:

he 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 37th 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 spit1. 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…

efore 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 37th 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…

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!

lush 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 37th 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,

RIP2

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…

oe trudged even more reluctantly than usual to school the next morning. Gingernut was dead, and with that her dreams had died too. As Zoe walked out of the estate, Tina flobbed on the little girl’s head as she always did. As she was wiping the flob out of her frizzy hair with a page ripped from one of her exercise books, Zoe saw Dad crouched over by the tiniest patch of grass.

He appeared to be digging with his hands.

He turned around quickly, as if in shock. “Oh, hello, my love…”

“What are you doing?” said Zoe. She leaned over him, to see what he was up to, and saw that the little package containing Gingernut was laid on the ground, next to a small mound of earth.

“Don’t tell your mum…”

“Stepmum!”

“Don’t tell your stepmum, but I fished the little fella out of the bin…”

“Oh, Dad!”

“Sheila’s still asleep, snoring away. I don’t think she heard anything. Gingernut meant so much to you and I just wanted to give him, you know, a proper burial.”

Zoe smiled for a moment, but somehow she found herself crying too.

“Oh, Dad, thank you so much…”

“No word of this to her though, or she’ll murder me.”

“Of course not.”

Zoe knelt down beside him, picked up the little package and lowered Gingernut into the small hole her father had dug.

“I even got one of these for a headstone. One of the old lolly sticks from the factory.”

Zoe took out her chewed biro from her pocket, and scribbled ‘Gingernut’ on the stick, though there wasn’t really room for the ‘t’, so it just read:

GINGERNU

Dad filled in the hole, and they stood back and looked at the little grave.

“Thanks, Dad. You are the best…”

Now Dad was crying.

“What’s the matter?” asked Zoe.

“I am not the best. I am so sorry, Zoe. But I will get another job one day. I know I will…”

“Dad, a job doesn’t matter. I just want you to be happy.”

“I don’t want you to see me like this…”

Dad started walking away. Zoe pulled on his arm, but he shook it out of her grasp, and walked off back to the tower block.

“Come and meet me at the school gates later, Dad. We can go to the park, and you can put me on your shoulders. I used to love that. It don’t cost a thing.”

“Sorry, I’ll be in the pub. Have a good day at school,” he shouted, without looking back. He was hiding his sadness from his daughter, like he always did.

Zoe could feel her stomach screaming in hunger. There had been no dinner last night as Sheila had spent all the benefit money on fags, and there was no food in the house. Zoe hadn’t eaten for a very long time. So she stopped off at Raj’s Newsagent.

All the kids from school went to his shop before or after school. As Zoe never received pocket money, she would only come in to the shop and gaze longingly at the sweets. Being exceptionally kind-hearted, Raj often took pity on the girl and gave her free ones. Only the out-of-date ones though, or those with a hint of mould, but she was still grateful. Sometimes she would be allowed a quick suck on a mint before Raj asked her to spit it out so he could put it back in the packet to sell it to another customer.

This morning Zoe was especially hungry, and was hoping Raj would help…

TING went the bell as the door opened.

“Aaah! Miss Zoe. My favourite customer.” Raj was a big jolly man, who always had a smile on his face, even if you told him his shop was on fire.

“Hello, Raj,” said Zoe sheepishly. “I don’t have any money again today I am afraid.”

“Not a penny?”

“Nothing. Sorry.”

“Oh dear. But you do look hungry. A quick nibble on one of these chocolate bars perhaps?”

He picked up a bar and unwrapped it for her.

“Just try and eat around the edge please. Then I can put it in the wrapper and back on sale. The next customer will never know!”

Zoe nibbled greedily on the chocolate bar, her front teeth munching off the edges like a little rodent.

“You look very sad, child,” said Raj. He was always good at spotting when things were wrong, and could be a lot more caring than some parents or teachers. “Have you been crying?”

Zoe looked up from her nibbling for a moment. Her eyes still stung with tears.

“No, I’m fine, Raj. Just hungry.”

“No, Miss Zoe, I can see something is wrong.” He leaned on the counter, and smiled supportively at her.

Zoe took a deep breath. “My hamster died.”

“Oh, Miss Zoe, I am so so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“You poor thing. A few years ago I had a pet tadpole and it died, so I know how you feel.”

Zoe looked surprised. “A pet tadpole?” She had never heard of anyone having one as a pet.

“Yes, I called him Poppadom. One night I left him swimming around in his little fish bowl, and when I woke up in the morning there was this naughty frog there. He must have eaten Poppadom!”

Zoe couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.

“Raj…”

“Yes…?” The newsagent wiped a tear from his eye with the sleeve of his cardigan. “Sorry, I always get quite emotional when I think about Poppadom.”

“Raj, tadpoles turn into frogs.”

“Don’t be so stupid, child!”

“They do. So that frog was Poppadom.”

“I know you are just making me feel better, but I know it’s not true.”

Zoe rolled her eyes.

“Now tell me about your hamster…”

“He is, I mean, was, so special. I trained him to breakdance.”

“Wow! What was his name?”

“Gingernut,” said Zoe sadly. “My dream was that one day he would be on the TV…”

Raj thought for a moment, and then looked Zoe straight in the eyes. “You must never give up on your dreams, young lady…”

“But Gingernut is dead…”

“But your dream doesn’t need to die. Dreams never die. If you can train a hamster to breakdance, Miss Zoe, just imagine what you could do…”

“I suppose…”

Raj looked at his watch. “But as much as I would like to, we can’t stand here chatting all day.”

“No?” Zoe loved Raj, even if he didn’t know a tadpole turned into a frog, and never wanted to leave his messy little shop.

“You better be off to school now, young lady. You don’t want to be late…”

“I suppose so,” mumbled Zoe. Sometimes she wondered why she didn’t just bunk off like so many of the others.

Raj beckoned with his big hands. “Now, Miss Zoe, give me the chocolate bar please, so I can put it back on sale…”

Zoe looked at her hands. It had gone. She was so hungry she had devoured every last morsel, save for one tiny square.

“I am so sorry, Raj. I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t!”

“I know, I know,” said the kindly man. “Just put it back in the wrapper. I can sell it as a special diet chocolate to someone fat like me!”

“Good idea!” said the little girl.

Zoe went over to the door, and turned around to face the newsagent.

“Thank you, by the way. Not just for the chocolate. But for the advice…”

“Both are free of charge for you any time, Miss Zoe. Now run along…”

Raj’s words went round and round in Zoe’s mind all day at school, but when she returned home to the flat she felt the same sense of absence. Gingernut was gone. For ever.

Days went by, then weeks, then months. She could never forget about Gingernut. He was such a special little hamster. And he brought her so much joy in a world of pain. From the moment he died, Zoe felt as if she was walking through a storm. Very slowly, as the days and weeks passed, the rain became a little lighter. Though the sun had still not shone.

Until one night, months later, when something completely unexpected happened.

Zoe was lying in bed after another insufferable day at school at the hands of the bullies, and the dreaded Tina Trotts in particular. There was shouting from next door as usual. Then, out of a brief moment of quiet in the night, came a tiny sound. It was so soft at first it was almost imperceptible. Then it became louder. And louder.

It sounded like nibbling.

Am I dreaming? thought Zoe. Am I having one of those strange dreams that I am lying in bed awake?

She opened her eyes. No, she wasn’t dreaming.

Something small was moving in her bedroom.

For a mad moment, Zoe wondered if it could be the ghost of Gingernut. Lately she’d found a couple of what seemed like droppings in her room. No, don’t be crazy, she told herself. Must be funny-shaped clumps of dust, that’s all.

At first all she could see was a tiny shadowy shape in the corner by the door. She tiptoed out of bed to have a closer look. It was little and dirty and a tad smelly. The dusty floorboards creaked a little under her weight.

The tiny thing turned around.

It was a rat.

hen you think of the word ‘rat’, what is the next thing to come into your head?

Rat... vermin?

Rat... sewer?

Rat... disease?

Rat... bite?

Rat... plague?

Rat... catcher?

Rat... a-tat-tat?

Rats are the most unloved living things on the planet.

However, what if I told you that what Zoe found in her room that night was a baby rat?

Yes, this was the cutest, sweetest, littlest baby rat you can imagine, and it was crouching in the corner of her room, nibbling on one of her dirty hole-ridden socks.

With a tiny pink twitching nose, furry ears and huge, deep, hopeful eyes, this was a rat that could win first prize in a vermin beauty pageant. This explained the mysterious droppings that Zoe had recently found in her room: it must have been this little mite.

Well, it certainly wasn’t me.

Zoe had always thought she would be terrified if she ever saw a rat. Her stepmother even kept rat poison in the kitchen, as there was always talk of an infestation in the crumbling block of flats.

However, this rat didn’t seem very terrifying. In fact, if anything, the rat appeared to be terrified of Zoe. When the floorboard creaked as she approached, it skirted the wall and hid under her bed.

“Don’t be scared, little one,” whispered Zoe. Slowly she put her hand under the bed to try and stroke the rat. It shivered in fear at first, its fur standing up on end.

“Shush, shush,” said Zoe, comfortingly.

Little by little, the rat made its way through the garden of dust and dirt under Zoe’s creaky little bed and approached her hand. It sniffed her fingers, before licking one, then another. Sheila was too idle to cook, and Zoe was so starving she had stolen a bag of her stepmother’s dreaded prawn cocktail crisps for her dinner. The rat must have been able to smell them on her fingers, and despite Zoe’s grave misgivings about the snack, which bore no relation to prawns or indeed cocktails, the rat didn’t seem to mind.

Zoe let out a little giggle. The nibbling tickled her. She lifted her hand to stroke the rat, and it ducked underneath and raced to the far corner of the room.

“Shush, shush, come on. I only want to give you a stroke,” implored Zoe.

The rat peeked at her with uncertainty, before tentatively, paw by paw, making its way over to her hand. She brushed its fur with her little finger as lightly as she could. The fur was a lot softer than she imagined. Not as soft as Gingernut’s, nothing was. But surprisingly soft nonetheless.

One by one, Zoe’s fingers lowered and soon she was stroking the top of the rat’s head. Zoe let her fingers trickle down its neck and back. The rat arched its back to meet her hand.

Most likely it had never been shown such tenderness before. Certainly not by a human. Not only was there enough rat poison in the world to kill every rat ten times over, but when people saw a rat, they would generally either scream or reach for a broom to whack it with.

Looking at this little tiddler now, though, it was hard for Zoe to understand why anyone would want to harm him.

Suddenly, the rat’s little ears shot up and Zoe quickly turned her head. Her parents’ bedroom door was opening, and she could hear her stepmother thundering along the hallway, huffing with each step. Hurriedly, Zoe snatched up the rat, cupped it in her hands, and jumped back into bed. Sheila would go crazy if she knew her stepdaughter was in bed cuddling a rodent. Zoe took the duvet between her teeth and hid under the covers. She waited and listened. The bathroom door creaked open and closed, and Zoe could hear the muffled sound of her stepmother thudding down on to the cracked toilet seat.

Zoe sighed and opened her hands. The baby rat was safe. For now. She let the little rodent scamper over her hands and on to her torn pyjama top.

“Kiss kiss kiss kiss.” She made a little kissing noise just like the one she used to do with Gingernut. And just like her hamster used to do, the rat approached her face.

Zoe planted a little kiss on its nose. She pushed a dent in the pillow next to her head, and gently laid the rat down into it. It fitted perfectly, and soon she could hear it snoring very quietly next to her.

If you have never heard a rat snoring before, this is what it sounds like:

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

“Now, how on earth am I going to keep you a secret?” Zoe whispered.

t isn’t easy to smuggle a rat into school.

The hardest animal to sneak into school is of course the blue whale. Just too big and wet.

Hippopotamuses are also hard to slip in unnoticed, as are giraffes. Too fat and tall respectively.

Lions are inadvisable. All that roaring gives them away.

Seals bark too much. As do walruses.

Skunks smell really bad – even worse than some teachers.

Kangaroos just don’t stop hopping.

Boobies3 sound too rude.

Elephants tend to break the chairs.

An ostrich will get you to school quickly, but is too big to hide in your school bag.

Polar bears blend into arctic wastes very well, but can be spotted instantly in a school dinner queue.

Smuggling a shark into school would lead to instant expulsion, especially if you had swimming lessons that day. They have a tendency to eat the children.

Orang-utans are also a no-no. They can be very disruptive in class.

Gorillas are even worse, especially in Maths. Gorillas are not good with numbers, and hate doing sums, although they are surprisingly good at French.

A herd of wildebeest is almost impossible to take into school without a teacher noticing.

Nits, on the other hand, are ludicrously easy. Some children smuggle thousands of nits into school every day.

A rat is still a difficult animal to smuggle into school. Somewhere between a blue whale and a nit on the ‘hard to smuggle into school’ scale.

The problem was that it was impossible for Zoe to leave the little thing at home. Gingernut’s old battered cage was long gone, as her stepmother had taken it to the pawnbrokers. The ghastly woman had swapped it for a few coins, which she promptly spent on a bumper-box of prawn cocktail crisps. Thirty-six bags that she had demolished before breakfast.

If Zoe had just left the rat running around the flat, she knew that Sheila would have poisoned it or stamped on it or both. Her stepmother made no secret of hating all rodents. And even if Zoe had hidden the rat in a bedroom drawer, or in a box under her bed, there was a very good chance Sheila would have found it. Zoe knew that her stepmother always rummaged through her possessions the moment she left for school. Sheila was looking for things she could sell or swap for a fag or two, or some more prawn cocktail crisps.

One day, all of Zoe’s toys had gone, another day it was her beloved books. It was just too risky to leave the rat alone in the flat with that woman.

Zoe considered putting the rat in her school bag, but because she was so poor she had to take her books to school in a beaten-up plastic carrier bag, held together with strips of sticky tape. It was too much of a risk that the little rodent might nibble its way out. So Zoe hid it in the breast pocket of her two-sizes-too-large blazer. Yes, she could feel it constantly wriggling around, but at least she knew it was safe.

As Zoe came out of the stairwell of the tower block and into the concreted communal area, she heard a shout from above her. “Zoe!”

She looked up.

Big mistake.

A huge flobbet of flob flobbed square on to her face. Zoe saw Tina Trotts standing at the railings several floors up.

“HA HAH HA!” Tina shouted down.

Zoe refused to cry. She just wiped her face with her sleeve and turned away, Tina’s laughter still echoing behind her. She probably would have cried, but then she felt the little rat move in her pocket, and she instantly felt better.

Now I’ve got a little pet again, she thought. It might just be a rat, but it’s only the beginning...

Perhaps Raj was right: her dream of training an animal to entertain the nation wasn’t dead after all.

The rat’s presence remained a comfort when Zoe arrived at school. This was Zoe’s first year at big school and she hadn’t made a single friend there yet. Most of the kids were poor, but Zoe was the poorest. It was embarrassing for her to have to go to school in unwashed clothes from charity shops. Clothes which were either far too big or far too small for her, and most of which had gaping holes in them. The rubber sole had all but fallen off her left shoe, and flapped against the ground every time she took a step.

FLIP FLAP FLIP FLAP FLIP FLAP went her shoes every time she walked anywhere.

FLIPITY FLAP FLIPITY FLAP FLIPITY FLAP if she ran.

In assembly, after an announcement about an end-of-term talent show, the pale headmaster Mr Grave stepped up to speak. He stood in the centre of the stage, unblinkingly staring at the hundreds of pupils gathered in the school hall. All the children were a little bit scared of him. With his staring eyes and pale skin, wild rumours abounded among the younger pupils that he was secretly a vampire.

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