Ratburger

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…

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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