Best Friends

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As well as winning many awards for her books, including the Children’s Book of the Year, Jacqueline is a former Children’s Laureate, and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame. In This Girl, Deb gives a little speech about how she refused to have an abortion on moral grounds, even though this left her as a penniless teenage single mother. Astral Projection - Important to the plot of The Other Side, although it's left open to the reader as to whether it's real or just in the heroine's imagination. Annoying Younger Sibling: Many characters qualify with this, such as Vita and Maxie to Em in "Clean Break" and Kenny to Jayni in "Lola Rose". Sometimes the protagonists only see them as this because they are often made to look after them on their own. Ellen Jane's mother in Diamond, who insisted on having more and more babies until she got four sons (naming the first three Matthew, Mark and Luke and intending to call the fourth John). She died while giving birth to John, her sixth child.

Phoebe in The Primrose Railway Children makes up and draws a story about a nineteenth-century family, clearly based upon her own family. The main character Philomena is "breathtakingly beautiful," clever and a favourite with everybody. The protagonist of The Cat Mummy has a living father but is looked after by her parents during the day while he is at work. Billy "Biscuits" McVitie: The girls' schoolfriend, a tubby boy who loves food, both eating and cooking. Gemma and Alice form a temporary hatred for him when he "tells on them" to his mother about their plots on running away. When Alice is gone, Gemma and Biscuits become closer as friends and work together for a project on famous TV chef "Fat Larry", as well as Biscuits making Gemma her special birthday cake at her party. He is invited to Gemma's party. Lolly in The Dream Palace dearly loved her late father and fitted this trope when he was alive. In the present day, she's desperate to hang onto her memories of her relationship with him, and hangs around a now-disused hotel where he used to take her for tea. Subverted when Greg tries to help her re-live a day trip she took with her father, causing her to remember that he wasn't so perfect after all.Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane - The Power of the Shade and The Other Side, where it's left open to the reader whether May and Alison really have supernatural powers (although the latter book more strongly implies that Alison uses fantasies of astral projection as a coping mechanism.) Tina's mother in Falling Apart still hasn't recovered from her son's death seven years ago, and makes Tina feel very unloved because of it. It's drawn to attention several times that she never directly looks at Tina when speaking to her. When Tina unsuccessfully attempts suicide, her mother reacts harshly, to the point that it seems she wasn't even worried about her daughter dying and just angry that she'd try to kill herself. Old Maid: It is mentioned in Clover Moon that Mildred was considered this in her early thirties, and married Clover's father just to avoid the stigma. Sylvie in Kiss believes she's in love with her friend Carl and that they will get married when they grow up. As they become teenagers, Sylvie clings to her image of him, unable to understand that he's changing as a person and has fallen for a guy.

Jacqueline is also a great reader, and has amassed over 20,000 books, along with her famous collection of silver rings. In the first book of the Girls series, Ellie falls hard for Kevin, an older boy she has seen around town but never really met or spoken to. She later develops a relationship with Dan (a boy her own age) and has to accept that Kevin will never live up to her romantic fantasies as he is gay; however, Ellie and Kevin do form a genuine platonic friendship. Marigold mentions that her mother was abusive, and she spent most of her childhood in care homes. She expresses a fear that she is also one later on. Several other stories have very young protagonists who are left to look after younger siblings alone while the parents work long hours or (in The Bed and Breakfast Star) just sleep all day. In The Suitcase Kid, Andy's stepfather Bill is likened to a baboon, with his hairy body and squashed, monkey-like face; Andy even thinks he has a large, red posterior like a baboon.Aunt Susannah in Baby Love is much younger and trendier than Laura's own parents, but becomes especially important when she takes in Laura and Kathy so that Laura won't have to put Kathy up for adoption.