How I Killed Margaret Thatcher by Anthony Cartwright Page B

stopped the milk.
    Milk’s really good for you.
    Exactly.
    She must really hate us, I think. You can see if you watch her on telly or even if you hear her voice coming out of the radio that we make her angry. At least, someone makes her angry. Even when she said that Saint Francis stuff, it was like she was telling everyone off. Things are getting out of hand. She wants to stop people going to work, let all the factories close. That’s what my grandad says. I want to know why. I don’t know what we’ve done to upset her, but we’ve done something. If we know why she’s angry maybe we can stop her.
    Why did she do that, then? Why’s she so angry?
    That’s just what she’s like. It’s what some people am like, Sean.
    So why would people vote for her, then?
    Just– I suppose they might think they’ll get something out of it themselves.
    My mum holds a shirt of my dad’s up to the kitchen window to check it’s not creased.
    What like?
    I dunno, Sean. That’s enough of that, now. You haven’t got to worry about it. I’m sorry I mentioned it.
    Like money or a new house?
    Well, yeah, I suppose so. My mum blows out her cheeks and looks at the steam rising from the damp shirt. Yeah, that’s it exactly, really. Anyway, enough now. Carry on playing with yer little men. Why don’t you wanna see if Ronnie wants to come to our house for a change? You only ever play with him when we’re up at Nan and Grandad’s.
    It’s funny that I have never thought to ask him. It’s as if he only exists on Crow Street.
    I don’t want Ronnie to come here. I don’t like Elm Drive. I don’t like the way my room looks out on the trees and nothing else. At my nan and grandad’s you can see for miles and there are all sorts of things going on: the factories and allotments and the little cars far away on the motorway and the trains creeping alongside the factory buildings and by the canal as they go into Dudley Port station. I don’t like these orange bricks that our house is made with that are all the same; I like the purply-reddy ones on Crow Street where you find things growing or crawling in between them. Ronnie even pulled a brick out of their house once and hid a pound note behind it to stop his sisters finding it. When he collected it there were woodlice living under it like it was a tent. I don’t like how quiet it is on our road or that it’s a dead end. On Crow Street it’s all noise: you can hear everything, like the Robertsons shouting and playing next door, Jennie Lee the budgie, or Barbara Castle, as the new budgie is called, and the birds outside singing, metal clanging from the works, doors slamming, the radio playing, the men calling to each other on the allotments or on their way home from work. Even the car sounds there are different because on our street the sound is of cars that people have turned the key in and started up, cars they bought from a proper garage, but on Crow Street pretty much all the cars belong to Harry Robertson and he tries to fix them up and sell them. There are always cars attached to each other with spark plugs; me and Little Ronnie sit in them sometimes while his dad tries to get them going; or there are cars that Harry is taking apart or trying to put back together. If a car is beyond repair then Charlie Clancey comes along and takes it for the scrapyard. There’s always someone to talk to at my nan and grandad’s. My nan says it makes her head go round.
    In our house I’m on my own. I hear my nan sometimes say that it would be nice if I had a brother or sister to play with. It would, it’s true. She’s been dropping hints lately, saying things like, Well, there’s ten years between yow and Johnny to my mum, doh give up on the idea. I know my mum and dad have tried to grow one loads of times, but they haven’t managed to yet. You have to try and grow a baby inside the