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Rose Impey
Cover
Title Page
The Sleepover Club at Frankie’s
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Goodbye
The Sleepover Club at Lyndsey’s
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Goodbye
The Sleepover Club at Felicity’s
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Goodbye
Have you been invited to all these Sleepovers?
Sleepover Kit List
Copyright
About the Publisher
Well, come in, if you’re coming in. And sit down. This time we’re in deep trouble. This time we could be in doom for ever. And this time it was not my idea. Uh-oh! There’s the phone.
“Frankie! It’s for you.”
“Coming, Mum.”
You’d better come down and listen in. I’ve got a feeling this could be bad news.
“Hello?”
“Frankie, is that you?”
“No, it’s Betty Boop.”
“Look, be serious for once. Has Brown Owl been round to your house?”
“No! Why?”
“She’s been here already, so you’d better look out.”
“What happened? Go on, tell me the worst.”
“I can’t, my mum’s coming. I’ve been grounded and that includes the phone.”
“Oh, help, Kenny! I think she’s at the door now. What should I do?”
“Hide. Run away. Emigrate. But disappear!”
Come on. 5–4–3–2–1, let’s get gone! Upstairs, quick!
Right, close that door. On second thoughts, lock it, we don’t want to be disturbed. This is seriously serious. What do you think she’ll tell them? Oh, p-lease, not everything! I mean, we haven’t done anything terrible. It’s not as if we meant to wreck the supermarket. We were just trying to be helpful, which is what she’s always telling us Brownies are supposed to be.
I blame Rosie. None of this would have happened if we hadn’t let her join the Sleepover Club. That was the start of it all. Oh, flipping Ada, as my grandma says, pull up a pew. I suppose I’d better tell you exactly what happened.
To begin with there were just the four of us.
There was me, Francesca Thomas. But you can call me Frankie.
And there was Laura McKenzie. We call her Kenny. She’s my best friend. That doesn’t mean we never fall out – we argue at least once a day – but we always make it up.
And Fliss. Her real name’s Felicity Sidebotham, but please don’t bother with the jokes, she’s heard them all before. And, as everybody knows, Fliss doesn’t have much of a sense of humour.
And Lyndsey Collins. Now she does. Lyndz is a great laugh.
So that’s how it used to be.
Now there’s Rosie as well, which, in case you can’t count, makes five.
Rosie’s only recently moved round here; she doesn’t know many people yet, so we thought we’d be friendly. OK, we were curious as well. She’d moved into that big house at the end of Welby Drive, the one with the massive garden with an orchard, so we were expecting someone really posh. But Rosie is not posh. Up to now we haven’t been inside, but we’re working on it.
It was Lyndsey who suggested we let Rosie sit with us in class and hang around with us at dinner, which was cool with us, but then, the next thing, she said, “I think we should let Rosie join the Sleepover Club.”
I said, “What for?” as if I needed to ask.
“Well, I feel sorry for her; she’s got no friends.” Lyndz is the sort of person that would rescue a fly if it fell in a puddle.
“That’s not our problem,” said Fliss. “Anyway it would make five and five’s an odd number and odd numbers never work.” Fliss likes everything to be tidy. She even lifts hairs off your cardigan while she’s talking to you.
But for once I agreed with her. “We don’t really know her, do we? She might be a drip. She might be a scaredy cat. She might be really boring.”
“She’s not,” said Lyndz. “She passed the test, didn’t she?”
I suppose she did. We wouldn’t even have let her hang around with us at school otherwise. We do these naughty things: you know, like screwing up paper pellets and stuffing them down the back of the art cupboard to feed Muriel, our pretend pet monster. Sometimes we tie one of us to a tree behind the mobile classroom, then knock on the door and run away. If you want to be in the gang you have to do a dare and get sent to Mrs Poole’s office. We dared Rosie to take a bite out of a biscuit in the teachers’ tin on the staff-room table and then put it back. She ate half the biscuit, so we had to let her join. But there’s something about her I’m still not sure about.
“Well, I don’t care who joins,” said Kenny, “as long as we have a laugh.”
“But she doesn’t laugh, that’s the trouble,” I said. “She’s a bit of a sad case, really.”
“That’s because her dad’s left,” said Lyndz.
“So’s mine,” said Fliss.
“Yes, but you’ve got another one,” Kenny pointed out.
“Andy is not my dad,” Fliss insisted.
We argued for ages until Fliss said, “Let’s stop bickering and have a vote and settle it once and for all.” She can be so bossy sometimes. “Those in favour.”
Lyndz and Kenny put up their hands.
“Those against.”
Me and Fliss put up ours.
“Oh, well, that really settles it,” I said. “Now what do we do?”
Well, we didn’t do anything, until the following week when we were all at Brownies. We were sitting on the wall outside, waiting for Kenny’s dad to pick us up. We were talking about our next sleepover, which was at my house the following weekend. Just then Rosie came over, because she’s started Brownies too.
“I’ve got these really cute Forever Friends jimjams,” Fliss was telling us. “You’ll see them at the sleepover on Saturday.”
“What’s that?” asked Rosie.
Suddenly everyone went quiet. Kenny started to whistle, which she always does when she’s nervous. I looked at my feet, which are pretty fascinating. No, really, they are, because they’re the biggest feet you’ve ever seen. I take size sixes already. Of course I’m tall for my age and, as my mum says, if I didn’t have big feet I’d be for ever falling over. Fliss sucked her cheeks in, which is a silly habit and makes her look like a gerbil. Then, out of the blue, we all heard Lyndz say, “Oh, it’s our Sleepover Club. It’s at Frankie’s house on Friday. Do you want to come?”
After Rosie had gone, Fliss turned on her and said, “Why did you say that?”
But she needn’t have asked. We all said together, “Because she felt sorry for her!”
So that was it. Thanks to big-hearted Lyndsey, with a mouth to match, we now had five in the Sleepover Club.
Of course that was only part of it. The other person I blame is Fliss. If she wasn’t so potty about weddings, we definitely wouldn’t be in this mess now. And I wouldn’t be sitting here, hiding in my bedroom from Brown Owl.
Fliss is so potty about weddings that she even marries her toys. Whenever you go round to her house, there’s a rabbit in a wedding dress or a teddy wearing a veil or a Barbie getting married to a My Little Pony. She reads a bit out of the Bible, plays a tune on the keyboard and then she says, “And now you may kiss the bride.” Then they get to sit together on a shelf in their wedding clothes living happily ever after.
That’s how she came up with her bright idea. “Why don’t we have a wedding at our next sleepover?” she said, dead excited.
“A wedding?” I said.
“Yeah. I could be the bride, and you could be the groom.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’ve got a boy’s name.”
“So’s Kenny.”
“You’re the tallest. Kenny can be bridesmaid. You’ll have to wear a dress, though,” she told Kenny, “you can’t wear your soccer strip.”
I said, “Dream on!”
Kenny grinned and sat there shaking her head. Kenny lives and dies in her football top. She’s devoted to Leicester City football team and just about everything she wears has got The Fox’s logo on it. Me and Kenny have been friends since playschool and I have never seen her in a frilly frock.
“Anyway,” I said, “you can forget it. I’m not marrying anybody.”
“I’ll marry you,” Lyndz said.
“Brillo,” said Fliss and gave Lyndz a hug.
So we worked it all out: Kenny would be best man and I’d be the vicar. I’d borrow a white cotton nightie of my mum’s and Fliss’s Bible and an old pair of Dad’s glasses. All my toys and Pepsi, our dog, would be the guests and we’d do it out in the garden. All we were short of was a bridesmaid, so, at the time, it seemed quite lucky that Rosie joined the Sleepover Club when she did.
Lyndz has an excellent set of dressing-up clothes that used to be her mum’s. She brought Fliss an old wedding dress and a net curtain for a veil; she found a soldier’s outfit for herself to wear, and painted on a moustache. There was a pink fairy dress that Rosie wore, and Kenny wore her soccer strip with a jacket over the top.
We all had to hum the “Here comes the bride” tune and then Lyndz and Fliss walked down my garden path through the arch where the roses used to grow, before Pepsi dug them up. Arm in arm.
I started off, “We are gathered here,” and then I rambled on till everyone started to look bored. I didn’t say the bit about “And now you may kiss the bride” because Lyndz had made me promise to leave it out. But we did the bit where they exchange rings. And then we took lots of photos. Pepsi got too excited and kept running off with the other guests in her mouth, so in the end we had to lock her in the house.
At last we got to the best bit: the food. We had veggie hot dogs, popcorn, crisp-and-banana sandwiches, marshmallows, lemon jelly, and chocolate fudge cake. Sometimes, when we’ve finished, we get a big salad bowl and mix all the leftovers together, hot dogs, crisps, jelly, the lot, and stir it up until it looks like a dog’s dinner. We call it Nappy’s Brains. We call it that because there’s a boy called Nathan, who lives next door to me, who we call Nappyhead, because he’s really stupid. But don’t let me get started on that subject or I’ll never finish this story.
Usually we dare someone to eat it. I looked round and chose Kenny.
“I dare you,” I said to her.
“I double dare you,” she said to me.
“I triple dare you,” I said to her.
“Oh, that’s not fair,” said Lyndz. “It’s always Kenny has to do it.”
“All right, I dare Rosie,” I said.
Everyone went quiet because they thought it was mean to dare Rosie when she was still new. But I don’t see what difference that makes. Anyway she picked up the spoon and ate two heaped spoonfuls. We all collapsed on the floor gagging and pretending to be sick, but she just rolled her eyes and looked at us as if we were really weird. So that was another test she’d passed.
After that it was time to go to bed. I’ve got quite a big bedroom with a bed and a set of bunks in it. And we’ve got a camp bed. So, when the sleepover’s at mine, all four of us can fit in.
You see, I’m an only child, which is a very sore point in my house. I’ve just about given up trying to persuade my parents to have another baby, but I still don’t like it. They don’t seem to realise what a disadvantage it is to grow up an only child. So I think the least they can do is make it up to me by letting me have my friends round to stay whenever I want, which they usually do. So that’s pretty coo-el.
But there wasn’t a bed for Rosie, so Kenny and I had to share my bed. This seemed like a great idea until she got the giggles and the fidgets, which always happens with Kenny. She also has the most freezing feet in the world!
Because Rosie is new, she doesn’t have a sleepover kit like the rest of us, so Felicity showed her what she needed to get. We all have a bag and in it is:
1. Sleeping bag
2. Pillow
3. Pyjamas or a nightdress, but
they’re draughty and fly up and
show your bottom when you do
gymnastics
4. Slippers
5. Toothbrush, toothpaste, soap etc
6. Towel
7. Teddy
8. A creepy story
9. Food for a midnight feast:
chocolate, crisps, sweeties,
biscuits and any other yummy
foods you can bring.
10. A torch
11. Hairbrush
12. Hair things like a bobble or hairband, if you need them
13. Clean knickers and socks. And a smelly bag for old ones!
14. Sleepover diary
For the wedding:
15. Wedding clothes
16. Camera
17. Confetti
We all keep a diary. Sometimes we read each other bits out of them, but they are absolutely private, on pain of death! We would never look in each other’s without permission. We write all our secret secrets in them. If you haven’t got any secrets, you can make them up. At least, that’s what I do.
I wrote in mine: When I grow up I don’t want to be a pop star any more. I want to drive a taxi.
I went in a taxi for the first time last week when we went to London. It was class.
Kenny was writing loads in hers, all about what she’d learned about how babies are made. She read it out to us. Kenny’s going to be a doctor, like her dad, when she grows up. She says you have to be really tough to be a doctor. She loves anything with blood in it. And she knows all about babies and things. She wrote: I’m not going to have a baby, though. And I’m not getting married. I shall be far too busy saving lives.
Felicity started to giggle. “I am,” she said. “I’m going to marry Ryan Scott and have lots of children and run a playgroup.”
Ryan Scott is a boy in our class. Kenny made a being-sick noise.
I said, “He’s the saddest thing on earth.”
“Boys smell,” said Lyndz, wrinkling her nose. And Lyndz has four brothers, so she should know.
“How do you like boys?” I asked Rosie.
“In a sandwich,” she said, “with tomato ketchup and chips on the side.”
“Yeah! good one,” I said.
Suddenly thinking about chips made us all feel hungry. It wasn’t midnight yet, but we decided to have our midnight feast. I sneaked downstairs to get a big bowl and we put everything in it. There was fizzy rock, Black Jacks, Fruit Salads, chewy dinosaurs, jelly babies, a Snickers bar, and a bag of cheese and onion crisps. We passed it round and started talking about Brownies.
“It’s no fun any more,” said Kenny.
It’s true. It used to be supercool, but it’s boring these days.
“Brown Owl’s always in a razz.”
“She used to be really nice,” said Lyndz.
“It’s because she’s fallen out with her boyfriend,” said Fliss. “Auntie Jill told me.” Fliss’s Auntie Jill is Snowy Owl, that’s how she knows so much. “She told my mum Brown Owl might give up running Brownies because she just doesn’t feel interested in anything any more.”
“That’s a shame,” said Lyndsey. “I feel—”
“Really sorry for her!” we all chimed in.
“Well, I do! It’s horrid when somebody gets dumped.”
“You should see my mum,” said Rosie. “Since my dad left, she looks much happier.”
But you could tell by the way she said it that Rosie wasn’t happy. We knew she was missing her dad, but we didn’t know what to say to cheer her up.
It was half past twelve and there was nothing left to eat. We were lying in the dark with our torches on, starting to get dozy. We were trying hard to stay awake. After all, the whole idea of sleepover is not to go to sleep.
Lyndz is always the first to drop off. We could hear her sucking her thumb. Then Fliss started sniffing, which she always does, so Kenny and I played pass the sniff. We do it at school in silent reading, it drives Mrs Weaver mad. Then Rosie joined in, which made me and Kenny giggle. Suddenly Kenny sat up in bed. She’d had this idea.
“Why don’t we find her a new boyfriend?” she said.
“Who?” said Rosie.
“Brown Owl, of course.”
“How would we do that?” I said. I meant, where would you look? There isn’t exactly a shop to go to.
“Well, there must be someone out there,” said Kenny.
“Mmm,” Rosie agreed.
I was just dropping off, which is the time when I get most of my brilliant ideas. “What about Dishy Dave?” I said, yawning.
“Who’s Dishy Dave?” said Rosie.
But I was too tired to explain. “Tell you … in the… morn… ing,” I said, and fell asleep.
We usually wake up in the opposite order to the way we go to sleep. Lyndz is always awake first and once she’s awake, everyone’s awake. She’s the noisiest person alive. She was sleeping on the camp bed and every time she moved, it squeaked. And when she leant over to reach for her sleepover bag, the camp bed collapsed at one end and catapulted her out on the floor.
So she woke us all up squealing and giggling. The next thing, she’d got the hiccups. When Lyndz gets hiccups, she really gets hiccups. She could get in the Guinness Book of Records for hiccups.
We’ve tried all sorts of ways of curing her of them: a cold key down her back, giving her a fright, standing on her head – No, not us standing on her head! – wet flannels, pinching her nose, making her sing “God Save the Queen” backwards. But best of all is pressing down hard with your thumbs on the palm of her hand, while she holds her breath.
But the minute you wake up in the morning is not a time when your brain is working well. So it took a bit longer than usual, and the longer the hiccups went on, the pinker Lyndz’s face got and the more she hiccuped. In the end I managed it with my magic thumbs, but some people are never grateful.
“That really hurt,” she complained, rubbing her hand.
“Oh, tell me about it,” I said. I thought my thumbs would never recover. Then I tripped over the camp bed, which folded under me, so I ended up on the floor too.
Lyndz made the mistake of laughing. OK, I thought, payback time! And I picked up Stanley, who is my toughest bear.
Teddy fights are one of our favourite things. Sometimes we use pillows, but the best fights are with squishy-poos. A squishy-poo is a sleeping bag filled with clothes and things, which you whack each other with while balancing on a bed. That’s one of our International Gladiator events. But you need plenty of room for that.
When it’s a teddy fight, Stanley always wins because he’s stuffed really hard and he’s quite big. You can see the other bears tremble when they see him coming. Stanley is unbeatable.
I could see Rosie watching us again, thinking definitely weird. But she’ll get used to us in time. Then my dad came in, so we had to stop.
“When you’ve quite finished the demolition job, it’s time for breakfast,” he said.
While we were getting ready, Rosie said, “Now tell me who Dishy Dave is.”
“You know, he’s the new caretaker at school,” said Fliss, butting in before I could speak. “Dave’s great.”
He is great. He used to drive a mobile library van before he came to our school. He’s quite young and we all like him because he doesn’t tell us off. He’s really nice to the infants. Sometimes, if they offer him a cup of tea, he sits down in the home corner with a crown on his head and pretends to be Prince Charles. He’s a good laugh.
“Isn’t he married?”
“I don’t think so,” said Fliss. “Why?”
“He could go out with Brown Owl,” Rosie suggested.
“What a brilliant idea!” said Fliss “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Probably because I thought of it first,” I said.
“It was my idea,” Kenny muttered.
“Rosie thought of it, actually,” said Fliss.
“How would you know?” I said. “You were asleep, actually!”
Things could have got difficult. Me and Fliss often get into arguments about who thought of something first, but then my mum called us for breakfast so that was that.
But whoever’s idea it was, it spelled t-r-o-u-b-l-e. And we’d have been better off if nobody had thought of it. But you know Fliss, once she gets hold of an idea she won’t let go, especially if it’s got anything to do with weddings.
“Just think,” she said, “they might fall in love and get married. I bet Brown Owl would be so grateful, she’d even let us be her bridesmaids.”
“I doubt it,” I said.
Kenny rolled her eyes. She doesn’t mind dressing up for a laugh, but she wouldn’t want to be a bridesmaid. Personally, I wouldn’t mind, if I could choose what I wore. I’m really into silver. I’ve got a pair of silver shoes and occasionally, at weekends, I’m allowed to wear silver nail varnish. The others sometimes call me Spaceman. But I couldn’t see Brown Owl wanting bridesmaids dressed in silver.
I said, “Knowing Brown Owl, she’d probably make us wear our Brownie uniforms.”
“But we’d still get to go to her wedding,” said Fliss.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Lyndz. “It’d be nice for both of them.”
“Come on, let’s make a plan,” said Felicity.
“I think we’d better find out if he’s already got a girlfriend first,” I said.
“How will we do that?” said Rosie.
“We’ll ask him,” said Kenny.
“When?”
“On Monday,” I said. “The sooner the better.”
We all go to the same school. It’s called Cuddington County Primary and it’s a great school. Our teacher’s called Mrs Weaver and she’s great too, so’s the Head, Mrs Poole. She never shouts, she just looks disappointed with you, if you get sent to her. It’s not so bad, as long as you keep looking at your feet.
There’s only one thing wrong with our school and that’s Mrs Pickett; she’s one of the dinner ladies. Mrs Pickernose, we call her. She does nothing but tell people off. She is bad news. But apart from her, we all like our school.