Dear Diary, I’m a biscuit kid.

My mum smokes and constantly cooks roast dinners with poor quality meat. She has a series of temporary boyfriends that I’m not introduced to, but I see leaving some mornings as I get ready for school. Sometimes at school people call me ‘Biscuit’ for short. I have two sisters and one brother. We live in a house that the council gave us. It has blue carpet with gold diamonds on it. The carpet is the same everywhere, even in the bathroom. Our house smells of ash, roasts and biscuits. In my lunchbox is one jam sandwich, one packet of crisps and two rich teas. I heard my maths teacher say to my English teacher that for some people they should be called ‘poor teas’. Then they laughed. I like to have my hair in a pony tail, or in clips. Last week we all went to the boot sale and I got some Minnie Mouse clips for 25p. I washed them off in the sink when we got home and they were as good as new. My brother is older than me (I’m 11) and is often in trouble at school. Teachers pull him out of lesson because he talks too much and makes jokes, so he learns very little. He gets in arguments with mum a lot and steals her cigarettes. He is never at home and I ask mum ‘where is Daniel?’ and she says ‘I don’t care’. He calls her names and she calls him a little worthless shit. Mum likes to put on a big bad front but I always hear her crying at night when she thinks we are all asleep. Sometimes I wonder whether I will always be a biscuit kid. My two sisters are younger than me and don’t know that they are biscuit kids yet. I hope I can grow up to be smart and a doctor so I can have a lot of money and buy nice biscuits and my own house where my mum and brother and sisters can all live. I will look after all of them and if they get sick it will be okay, because I will be the best doctor in England.