Five o’clock, Thursday, somewhere near the beginning of April.

Today I got into trouble at school. Again. Another visit to Smelly Nelly’s office – and a note for Dad, which I’ll get to later.

Smelly Nelly is our principal. Her real name is Mrs Nelligan, and her breath always stinks of garlic, so you can see where the name comes from. She has a daughter called Chloe in my class – remember the one with the Penguin bar? – and she’s a garlic freak too. Nobody can stand being around her, especially on Mondays. They must spend the weekend eating garlic. No danger of vampires in Nelligans’ house, that’s for sure.

Anyway, all I did today was pass on a note. I didn’t even write the stupid thing. It just landed on my desk, and when I looked around to see who’d thrown it, Catherine Eggleston put a horrible smarmy smile on her face and pointed to Terry McNamara, who was on the other side of me.

Catherine Eggleston doesn’t like me, and boy, is the feeling mutual. But I didn’t want to leave the note on my desk, and Terry sometimes lets me look into his copy at maths time, so I decided to pass it on.

Of course I had to read it first – well, I was doing them a favour, they owed me – so I held it under the desk and opened it, feeling Catherine’s eyes boring into me from behind.

Boy, was it a big disappointment. All it said was:

‘Don’t believe all you hear. Trudy has a vivid imagenation.’

I had no idea what it meant – except that Catherine Eggleston couldn’t spell imagination – so I folded it again and reached across to Terry, and I was just handing it to him when Santa turned around from the blackboard and caught me.

Santa is our teacher. His name is Mr Santorio, even though he’s Irish, but his grandfather or someone came from Italy. Santa doesn’t look in the least like an Italian man, who as far as I know are all dark and good looking, and probably tall.

Santa is the complete opposite – small with wavy red hair that grows in his ears as well as on his head, and his eyes are blue, not chocolate brown, and they’re a bit crossed as well, so you’re never quite sure if he’s looking at you.

But the fact that he roared out ‘Elizabeth Jackson’ gave me a pretty good idea who he was looking at. That’s my name, Elizabeth Jackson, although most people call me Liz. Anyway, Santa made me bring up the note, and my heart sank, because I knew I was off to Smelly’s office again.

The last time I was there was only about ten days before, after the dead beetle in Trudy Higgins’s cheese sandwich. She nearly ate it too, before she spotted its legs, or something, sticking out. You should have heard the scream she let out – I’d say half the school heard it. And then of course her best buddy, Catherine Eggleston, came running over and screeched her head off too. Talk about drama queens.

I still don’t know how they guessed it was me, though. I mean, I hadn’t made a big deal out of Trudy laughing at my banana sandwich the day before, just told her to belt up. How was I supposed to know that bananas go black in sandwiches? Mam had always made my lunch – I was just learning what you could and couldn’t put into a sandwich: