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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Acknowledgments
The Coleen Style Queen series
Fab Funky Flip-flops!
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
Ok, so holiday packing can be a struggle. Especially when you’ve got a mountain of clothes and shoes – not to mention an iPod, a camera and a hairdryer – to pack into a case roughly the size of a box of tissues. Oh, and did I mention that this particular suitcase is pink with gold sparkles?
“Mum!” I complained as Mum got my suitcase down from the loft and put it on my bed. “I can’t take this on holiday. I’ll get laughed off the beach!”
“You loved it when you were seven, and I’m sure you can love it again, Coleen,” said Mum.
I sighed and flipped the case open. Then I packed my favourite summer shoes: a pair of sparkly sandals covered in silver sequins. They fitted – with about three millimetres left over. “But I’ll never get everything in!” I wailed, looking at the other six pairs that I’d lined up on my bedroom floor.
“What do you need seven pairs of shoes for?” Dad asked, stopping at my room and staring at my packing. There was something bright orange draped over his arm. “We’re going for a beach holiday, Coleen – tomorrow, ideally, though at the rate you’re going you won’t be packed until Tuesday. Are you planning to paddle in a different pair of shoes every day?”
I rolled my eyes at him. Dads don’t get shoes. “What’s that?” I asked, eyeing the orange thing on Dad’s arm.
“Ta-da!” Dad announced, unfurling the most disgusting pair of orange swimming trunks I’d ever seen and flapping them at me. “What do you think?”
“The fish in the sea’ll think you’re a giant Wotsit, Dad,” I advised. “Think again.”
“At least you lot won’t lose me at the hotel pool,” Dad joked, folding up his shorts again.
“Believe me, Dad, we will,” I muttered as Dad went off to help Mum squeeze everything into their old black case on wheels. “As quickly as we can.”
My little sister, Em, wandered into my room and flopped down on the bed. As usual, she looked a total mess. Football strip (badly in need of a wash), football socks and a pair of trackie bottoms with holes in the knees, not to mention a gap in her front teeth where a tooth had just dropped out.
“And there was me, thinking seven-year-old girls wore pink all day long,” I sighed.
“Yuck,” said Em, as I knew she would. Needless to say, her suitcase had the emblem of her favourite footie team, Marshalswick Park, on it.
“Get out of here, Em,” I begged, trying to decide between three different T-shirts. “Haven’t you got packing to do?”
“All done,” Em smirked.
“What?” I shrieked, dropping my tees. “But you only started about five minutes ago!”
Em shrugged. “Cozzie, T-shirts, shorts, sandals, latest football mag, autograph book because footballers go to the Algarve and you never know, toothbrush,” she recited. “Didn’t take long.”
“What about knickers?” I demanded.
Em wrinkled her forehead. “Oh yeah,” she said, getting off my bed, “I’d better stick in a couple of pairs.”
Holidays in my family usually go like this. Mum goes on at Dad for weeks to book something. The holidays get closer. Dad doesn’t do anything until the last minute, and then he grabs the cheapest thing he sees, which nearly always has flights leaving at four o’clock in the morning. Mum’s left running around like a mad thing, getting Nan to take Rascal our dog and vacuuming behind the couch. Well, this time, Dad has totally outdone himself. He booked us a week in the Algarve this afternoon – and we are getting a taxi to the airport before sunrise tomorrow morning.
“Heaven knows what this place is going to be like,” Mum grumbled as we all grabbed a bite to eat before what was going to be the shortest night’s sleep in history.
“It’s the Algarve, Trish,” Dad said soothingly. “Sea, sand and plenty of sun. I tell you, I can spot the good ones a mile off. When have I ever been wrong?”
“Well,” Mum started, “how about that time we went to Croatia and the hotel hadn’t even been built? Or the trip to Brittany that turned out to be a trip to Britain, which I didn’t want to visit because I already lived there? Or—”
“Well, this one’s going to be different,” Dad interrupted hastily. “Trust me.”
Em and I shared a look. We’d believe that once we got there.
It felt like I’d only just shut my eyes when Mum was shaking me awake again. I whittled my shoes down to three pairs and jumped on my sparkly pink case to shut it. I squeezed another T-shirt, scarf and belt into my hand luggage and put on as many extra clothes as I could. Then I think I actually fell asleep in the taxi, because suddenly it was all lights and bustle and that ding-dong echo you get in airports. Now my eyelids were officially open, it was time to get excited.
Airports are brilliant places. They just smell of holidays. There’s so many different kinds of people to look at, making me wonder about all the different places they must be travelling to. Tall ones, skinny ones, rich ones, ones with tans that make them look like old leather handbags and ones so pale you just know they’ll burn to a crisp on their holiday beach within seconds. And if you ever need fashion inspiration, the mix of colours and styles in an airport is full of it!
As we waited around for our flight to be called, I browsed through the gorgeous duty-free clothes shops and dashed off a couple of postcards to my best mates, Mel and Lucy. I’d barely had a chance to tell them I was off for a whole week. It would be really weird not having them there to gossip with. Then I thought of Ben, Lucy’s big brother, as I posted the cards. I’d had a crush on him for half my life. He’d just had a dramatic and final break-up with his on-off girlfriend Jasmine, and I was hoping that a week in the Portuguese sun would give me the sort of tan that would make him notice me at long last…“Flight TP051 for Faro,” droned the tannoy after we’d been there about two hours. “Departing from gate twelve. Would passengers please make their way to…”
“So far so good, eh?” Dad said as we all filed on board and took our seats near the front of the plane.
Mum muttered something about chickens and eggs. Em clambered across to the window seat and pulled out her new football magazine.
“If you’re going to read that,” I pointed out, “how come you get the window seat?”
“No arguments, kids,” Dad said. “You can have the window on the way home, Coleen. This is our holiday now, and I plan to enjoy it.”
Kids! I scowled at Dad. Ignoring me, he took out his fitness magazine, and I could see him sucking in his stomach as he looked at the muscly bloke on the front cover.
“What do you think of my stomach, Trish?” he asked Mum, sounding a bit anxious.
“Squishy,” said Mum. Her nose was already deep in a pink, sparkly novel that was guaranteed to be all about kissing tall dark strangers. “But nice.”
“Just as well you like it, Mum,” I said, settling back into my seat as the plane started taxiing down the runway. I jabbed the cover of Dad’s mag. “Coz there’s no way it’s ever gonna look like that.”
We flew through a clear blue sky, with Em giving us Fascinating Factoids about Portugal and football practically the whole way. Apparently the whole country is mad for it. No wonder my little sister was excited that we were going there.
“And half the Marshalswick Park squad have holiday homes in the Algarve,” Em said happily, folding up her magazine as the plane started its descent into Faro airport. “That must mean it’s brilliant.”
As I’ve said before, Marshalswick Park are Em’s favourite team. They’d risen up the league like a rocket ever since they’d taken on this new manager, and now they were serious contenders for the top spot – as Em told us most weekends after watching their matches on the telly.
We got through baggage control and came out into the bright Portuguese sun. I whipped out my new sunnies and stuck them on my nose as our rep ushered us all on to a big, air-conditioned bus that stood outside the airport underneath these waving palm trees.
“See?” said Dad smugly as we all settled back into our comfy seats and watched the driver and his mates packing our luggage into the big locker underneath the bus. “I told you everything would be OK.”
The bus wound out of the airport. After about fifteen minutes, it pulled off the dual carriageway into the first resort: a buzzy-looking place with loads of bars and extremely tall hotels.
“Not us,” said Dad as the bus doors slammed shut and we drove on.
“Shame,” Mum sighed. “It looked like fun.”
We stopped off at three more places along the way. The bus was getting emptier and emptier, and still the rep hadn’t read out our names.
“Are we going to Spain?” Em complained after the fourth place came and went.
The bus put on its ticker and pulled off the main road again.
“Castelo do Sol,” I said, reading out the town’s name as we swung past a sign and a bunch of half-built hotels that had Mum looking tense. “What do you think that means?”
“Sol Campbell’s castle!” Em gasped.
Doesn’t that girl ever think of anything but football?!
The bus squeezed down an impossibly narrow lane that had me flinching back from the windows, thinking the mirrors were going to scrape the buildings on both sides. Then it pulled out again on to this long beachfront road. There were three massive hotels all stood next to each other, with pools and sea views across a gorgeous sandy beach. The road was fringed with palm trees, and these brilliant rock formations stood down by the shore like huge golden statues.
“It’s magic!” I breathed, staring at the beach in delight.
“I take back everything bad I’ve ever said about you, Kieran,” said Mum, staring up at the hotels. Their polished marble walls shone in the sun like glass, and their pools winked through the bus windows at us like pale blue sapphires.
The bus dropped three lots of totally ecstaticlooking holidaymakers outside the three hotels. There was only one family left as we swung away from the seafront.
Us.
“Hotel Paraíso,” said the rep, snapping her little notebook shut as the bus gave a very final-sounding wheeze and stopped at the side of the road. “That’ll be you lot, then. Save the best for last, eh?”
We stared at the place the bus had brought us. The water-stained red and white awning over the main entrance flapped at us in an embarrassed kind of way, and the words Hotel Paraíso flickered in blue neon letters across the front of the once-maybe-white-but-now-grey building.
“Paraíso means ‘paradise’,” offered the rep.
There was a beat of silence.
“KieRAN!” Mum yelled.
Two
“What do you want me to do, Trish?” Dad protested as the bus whooshed off down the road, leaving us outside the Hotel Paraíso with our luggage around our feet. “You heard what she said. There’s nowhere else!”
“You’re never booking us another holiday, Kieran,” Mum shouted. “I’ll give all the travel agents in Hartley your photo and order them not to serve you. And if I see you anywhere near the Internet, I’ll cut up your bankcard.”
“I like it,” said Em, staring up at the hotel. “It looks friendly.”
“Friendly if you’re a rat or a flea, maybe,” Mum yelled. “Honestly, Kieran…”
I looked at the hotel while Mum ranted on. I could see what Em meant. OK, so it wasn’t made of glass and marble, and there was no sea view. But the windows shone like someone had taken the trouble to clean them, even though the building itself looked like it hadn’t had a new coat of paint in years. The flickering blue letters spelling out the hotel’s name were naff – not to mention broken – but it was on the sunny side of the street, and it seemed quiet.
“…and I can’t believe a place like this even has a pool…”
“Mum doesn’t half go on,” Em said. She picked up her Marshalswick Park suitcase and pushed open the hotel door.
Mum stopped shouting. Even when she gets mad, she doesn’t like upsetting strangers – like the hotel manager we were about to meet. She and Dad stiffly followed me and Em inside.
Some soft guitar music was playing in the small, blue-tiled reception area. There was a dark-haired man with a thick black moustache standing at the reception desk, along with two other people: a kindlooking dark-haired woman and a lad about my age. I did a double-take at him. He had gorgeous soft-tanned skin, black hair that curled around his shoulders and these huge brown eyes with eyelashes like you see on really pretty cows. I had this awful feeling that I was staring, but I couldn’t help myself. He was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
“Welcome to Castelo do Sol,” said the manager, stepping forward and shaking Mum and Dad’s hands with both of his own. If he’d heard them rowing out on the pavement, he didn’t show it. “We hope that you will have a very nice stay with us. I am Antonio Santos. Please allow me to present my wife Ana, and my son João.”
The way Mr Santos said João made it sound like shwow. Wow’s dead on, I thought as I stared at the lad, who was now shaking hands with Mum and Dad.
“Hi,” João said as he reached me. He was taller than me, which wasn’t exactly surprising as I’m quite little, and his smile was white and gorgeous against his brown skin.
“Hi,” I squeaked back. I was so knocked out by how beautiful he was that I almost forgot to take the hand he was holding out to me. Then, when I remembered, I shook it so hard I practically took his arm off at the elbow. This awful blush started sweeping up my cheeks – I could feel it. Em noticed and giggled.
Mum was beginning to thaw out at our polite welcome. Mr Santos led us up the narrow tiled staircase to our rooms. I followed on. Then something made me turn my head back for another look at João. He was carrying our luggage a few steps behind us. As he grinned at me I fell up the next two slightly wonky steps and grazed my knee.
“Here, I will help you,” said João, pulling me to my feet.
“Are you OK, Coleen?” Em smirked.
“Fine,” I muttered, blushing even harder than before.
“…very quiet rooms at the back,” Mr Santos was saying to Mum, opening the bedroom door. “Please let us know if there are any problems. This is for your girls.” And he gave this lovely little bow, letting me and Em in and taking Mum and Dad to the next door along.
The room was whitewashed, with pale yellow blankets on the beds and slatted wooden shutters on the window. João put our suitcases on the waxed wooden floor. “Nice bag,” he grinned as he set the pink sparkly monster down. He spoke great English, with this adorable accent. “It’s yours?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at Em.
“As if!” Em said, looking offended. “It’s my sister Coleen’s.”
“Cheers, Em,” I muttered, snatching up my sparkly case as João left the room. “Now he thinks I’m a weird pink-suitcase freak as well as a clumsy, blushing idiot.”
“Chill out, Coleen,” Em said, rolling her eyes at me. She flipped her suitcase over, tipped out its pathetic contents and shoved everything into a drawer. “Unpacked,” she announced, slinging her case under her bed and flopping down with her football magazine.
I stared at the contents of the pink suitcase. For a minute I couldn’t work out what I was looking at.
“This isn’t mine,” I said at last, pulling out a floaty white dress and holding it up in confusion. “What…”
I upended the case over my bed. A whole bunch of stuff fell out that I’d never seen before. “I don’t believe it!” I wailed, rifling through everything. “Where are my sequinned sandals? Where’s my new swimsuit?” It was the cutest swimsuit you ever saw, blue with red and white spots and this little white frill around the legs that was totally nautical and now.
“Hey,” said Em, glancing up from her magazine. “What are the chances of two pink-suitcase freaks sharing the same plane today?”
“Mum!” I went running down the corridor to share my suitcase disaster. “I’ve got the wrong…”
Mum and Dad were standing in their room arguing. Mum was holding a threadbare towel that looked as if it had seen better days.
“…ever so polite and I know it’s clean and everything,” Mum was saying, “but you don’t expect holes in towels, do you? You need to get on to our rep and insist on changing hotels, Kieran.”
“You can’t change hotels now,” I said, stopping in their doorway as a wave of dismay flooded through me. “They’re ever so nice, Mum. What will they think?”
“I’m sorry, Coleen,” Mum said. “I know Mr Santos and his family have been very welcoming, but this is our holiday and I expect certain standards.” She held up the towel between her fingers. “I don’t mean to be unkind, but I wouldn’t dry our dishes with this.”
Dad looked harassed. “I think we should give it a go tonight, Trish,” he said. “We’re all tired and I need a shower. Let’s give it a chance, and if you’re still not happy in the morning, I’ll talk to the rep about moving. OK?”
Mum sat down on the bed with a sigh as Dad disappeared into the tiny little en-suite bathroom and shut the door.
“Mum,” I said, remembering about my suitcase fiasco. “I’ve got the wrong bag. There’s all this gear I’ve never seen before. What am I going to do?”
Mum sighed and shook her head. “Whatever next? I don’t know, Coleen,” she said. “Is there a name on the suitcase?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t put my name on mine either,” I confessed.
Mum did this hard-breathing thing through her nose, which is always a sign that she’s about to lose it. “Your dad can report it to the rep and she can try and track down your bag,” she said. “But in the meantime, you’ll just have to wear what you’re wearing right now.”
“Every day?” I said, aghast. I loved what I had on: hot pink cropped trousers, a little skirt over the top, a grey hoodie with pink piping around the edge, a white T-shirt over a yellow vest and white Converse trainers. And I did have that extra T-shirt and a few accessories in my hand luggage. But as anyone knows, even the best clothes get seriously dull after a couple of days. “Mum—”
“It’s either that or wear this other person’s clothes,” Mum snapped. “Now, I’ve got a headache, Coleen. Go and see what Em’s up to. When your dad’s finished in the shower, we’ll go and find something to eat, OK?”
I trailed back to our room, telling myself that the rep would find my bag before the end of the week. Trying really hard not to cry as I wondered if I’d ever see my favourite sandals again, I stared at the mystery person’s luggage on my bed. Then I started sorting it out. White dress, white shorts, green T-shirt with a hideous logo on the front. Grey leggings. Grey leggings, on a summer holiday? I packed it all away again and slammed the suitcase shut. There was no way I was wearing that lot.
Great. Stuck in one style for my entire holiday. What would João think when he saw me looking exactly the same every single day?
Me and Em both leaped out of our skins as we heard Dad yell: “OWWW!”
“What happened?” Em demanded, dashing down the corridor and charging into Mum and Dad’s room with me hot on her heels. “Did you find a dead mouse?”
Dad was standing in the middle of the room, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel that looked even more threadbare than the one Mum had been waving around. In his hand was something that looked suspiciously like a shower tap. There was shampoo still in his hair, sticking up in white bubbly clumps.
“It came off in my hand,” he said. “The shower went scalding hot and there was nothing I could do about it!”
Mum snatched the tap off Dad. “That’s the final straw, Kieran,” she said. “We have to take this up with Mr Santos and then move hotels. Before tonight, if possible. Em? Coleen? I hope you haven’t unpacked yet?”
“I haven’t got anything to unpack, have I?” I pointed out grumpily. I couldn’t believe how badly this holiday was turning out. Not only had I lost my suitcase, but we would leave the Hotel Paraíso forever and I’d never see João again. And even if we did see him, he wouldn’t speak to us because we’d walked out of his hotel. And I was stuck in one pair of trousers all week. Life just wasn’t fair.
Mum looked like a bull on the rampage. As Dad struggled to rub the rest of the shampoo out of his hair with the threadbare towel, me and Em followed Mum down the stairs.
“Mr Santos,” said Mum, banging the shower tap down on the reception desk. “We’ve got a serious problem with our shower.”
Mr Santos’s smile wavered at the edges. “I’m so very sorry, Senhora,” he said, looking flustered as he took the tap off Mum. He turned and rattled something off in very fast Portuguese at his wife, who dashed for the telephone.
Mum was shaking her head. “I’m very sorry too,” she said, “but we can’t stay here, Mr Santos. Broken taps, dreadful towels. This isn’t what we were expecting. I think it’s best if we leave.”
Mr Santos’s moustache quivered. He looked like he was about to cry. “Please, Senhora,” he said, “my cousin, he is a plumber. My wife is calling him now. We will fix your shower imediatamente. There will be new towels in your room tonight. And please, with our apologies, you must come for dinner at our restaurant tonight, free of charge.”
“Well…” Mum wavered. She’s always a sucker where food is concerned.
“My wife, she makes the best bacalhau in Castelo do Sol,” Mr Santos said, taking Mum’s hand. “You will taste it tonight.”
João appeared at Mr Santos’s side, looking nearly as worried as his dad. I so wanted to see his gorgeous white smile again.
“Let’s stay, Mum,” I begged. “Mr Santos is doing his best to help us.”
“I don’t know, Coleen…” Mum began.
“What’s bacalhau?” Em asked.
“Codfish,” said Mr Santos.
“Like cod and chips?” Em said, brightening. Cod and chips was her favourite.
“More like your fish pie, maybe,” Mr Santos explained.
Em beamed. Fish pie was her next favourite.
“You will fix the shower for us this afternoon?” Mum checked.
“Claro que sim,” Mr Santos nodded, shaking her hand vigorously. “For sure. And the towels too. Tonight, eight o’clock, you will eat for free in our restaurant. You will not regret it, Senhora.”
“Right,” said Mum, making a decision with the deepest sigh you ever heard. “We’ll stay tonight. But if things don’t improve, Mr Santos, we are leaving in the morning.”
I almost cheered and hugged her on the spot. We were staying! Well – for now at least…
Three
Once Dad had got the soap out of his hair in mine and Em’s shower, we all got ready for the beach. “What am I going to wear for swimming?” I asked Mum as we left our keys with a very relieved Mr Santos and headed down the dusty street towards the sea. I’d taken off my hoodie, my overskirt and my white T-shirt, and with my yellow vest and pink cropped trousers I almost felt like I was in a new outfit.