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“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.”
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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.
Dishy Dave is what we call Mr Driver. That’s because he’s dead tall and good-looking, a bit like Brad Pitt. And he’s a good laugh. He calls us ‘guys’ and the boys ‘girls’. He kicks a football around with them sometimes and he plays the piano for us to dance to; he knows all sorts of tunes.
Practising our dance routines is one of our best skives. We go into the studio and turn all the lights off, apart from one or two spots, and pretend we’re dancers with Oasis. Or sometimes we go in the hall to dance and Mr Driver plays the piano. If the M&Ms haven’t got there first, that is. The M&Ms are our biggest enemies – Emma Hughes and Emily Berryman, yuk! – but I’ll tell you about them another time.
Mr Driver lives just down the road from school and he’s always in and out. The only time he’s too busy to talk to you is at home time, when he has to get on with the cleaning, but apart from that he never minds a good old chat.
So, on Monday, we went looking for him at break time. We found him cleaning some graffiti off the side of one of the mobile classrooms. We sidled up to him and then hung around waiting for the right moment.
“Uh-oh,” he said, “here comes trouble.” But he smiled and went on scrubbing. “This wasn’t your handiwork, I suppose?”
“Nooo!” we said. “Certainly not!” And we all looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths, as my grandma says.
After a bit I said, “Dave…” He doesn’t mind us calling him Dave.
“Have you got a girlfriend?”
He stopped scrubbing and started to grin. “No. But I think I’m a bit old for you, don’t you?”
I went bright red. The others started to laugh as if it was so funny.
“She didn’t mean that,” said Fliss. “We were just interested. Have you really not got a girlfriend?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Would you like one?” said Lyndz.
“Nope,” he said. “Too much trouble.”
“No, seriously,” said Kenny.
Mr Driver sort of narrowed his eyes at us. “Why are you asking?”
“We could find you one, if you like,” I said.
“What’s the catch?”
We all said, “There is no catch.”
“In that case I’d like Pamela Anderson.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Fliss. “We don’t know Pamela Anderson.”
“Sorry, not interested, then,” he said. “I’m saving myself for Pamela.”
And he went back to scrubbing Wiggie woz here off the back of the mobile. Then the whistle went for the end of break. We shrugged and sort of drifted off.
“Do you think he was serious?” said Felicity.
“Oh, get a life,” I said.
“Course he wasn’t serious,” said Lyndz.
“Where’s he ever going to meet Pamela Anderson?” said Kenny.
“Even so,” I said, not feeling very hopeful, “I doubt if he’s going to settle for Brown Owl.”
I wasn’t being horrible about Brown Owl. She’s very nice. She’s quite pretty, with dark eyes and shoulder-length brown hair, and she looks really smart in her uniform. But Pamela Anderson she is not. She works in Barclays Bank and sometimes when I go in with my mum she’s behind the counter and she smiles at us. She wears glasses at work and they really suit her but she doesn’t wear them all the time. She’s got a nice smile and a good sense of humour. Or she had. But she looks like a real wet weekend these days. It wasn’t only Lyndsey who felt sorry for her, we all did.
But feeling sorry wasn’t enough. We needed action, and action was our speciality! We decided to call it Operation Blind Date, or OBD for short. That was Felicity’s idea! She even wanted us to write to Cilla Black to get Dave and Brown Owl on the show, but fortunately that was one of Fliss’s bright ideas we decided against.
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Hang on a minute. Was that the phone? Quick, let’s go and listen at the top of the stairs. Careful, my door squeaks. If my mum hears us, I’m in real doom.
“Hello… No, Felicity, you can’t talk to Francesca… no, I’m sorry, she can’t call you back… because Francesca is grounded… I haven’t decided how long for. Possibly for ever…
“Yes, I’ll tell her you rang…”
Uh-oh. If my mum’s calling me Francesca, it must be serious. I wish I knew what Brown Owl’s been saying. Do you suppose she’s told them about Kenny and Rosie and the shopping-trolley incident? Or even worse, she might have told them about the letter. Which letter? The letter we sent Dishy Dave from Brown Owl, of course. That was definitely not my idea. I knew from the beginning that was a mistake.
But the problem was, we needed to get Dave and Brown Owl together and it wasn’t going to be easy. As far as we knew they’d never even set eyes on each other. But we had to start somewhere, so we decided to start with Dave.
Every time he saw us around school he kept on asking us if there was any word from Pamela yet, and telling us he was keeping Saturday free, and other silly things. So we decided we’d tell him about this person we knew, this grown-up friend of ours called Madeline, who really wanted to meet him.
We didn’t tell him she was our Brown Owl. As Kenny said, someone who wants to go out with Pamela Anderson might not be interested if he knows she runs the Brownies.
“So, what’s this friend like?” he asked.
“Nice,” we all said in chorus.
He rolled his eyes. “What does she do?”
“She works in a bank,” said Felicity. That seemed OK.
“How old is she?”
“About your age,” said Kenny, quick as a flash. Dave didn’t look convinced.
“She’s got her own car,” I said. He seemed impressed by that.
Then he asked us what she looked like. OK, so perhaps we exaggerated a bit, but like my grandma says, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
We got stuck when he asked us what music she was into. We hadn’t a clue.
“Blur, Oasis, I think,” said Felicity. Even I knew that was a mistake.
“That’s kids’ stuff,” said Dave, pulling a face.
“No, she’s got it wrong,” said Kenny. “I think she likes… classical music.”
He pulled an even worse face.
“It could be country and western,” I said. His face lit up.
“That’s right. It was country and western,” said Kenny. “I remember now.”
“At least she’s got good taste in music,” said Dave. We all nodded enthusiastically.
By now Dave was looking seriously interested, but the whistle had gone for lessons. We headed back to the classroom.
Felicity said, “I didn’t know Brown Owl liked country and western.”
Honestly, what is she like? She can be so dozy sometimes.
But we knew Dave was interested because after that he stopped mentioning Pamela Anderson every time he saw us and started asking how Madeline was. Felicity was so convinced we’d got it sorted that she started doing little drawings of what kind of bridesmaid’s dresses we would all wear.
“Look, don’t bank on it,” I said. “We still haven’t talked to Brown Owl.”
That night it was Brownies. Our Brownie pack meets in the church hall on a Thursday night. It’s not a very big pack but there are four sixes. Me and Kenny and Fliss are all sixers. Lyndz is my seconder and Rosie has joined Kenny’s six. At the moment we’re all working on our Brownie Highway. It’s the last of our Brownie journeys. Some of us are nearly old enough to leave Brownies. We’re writing a play and making puppets with Snowy Owl. We’re supposed to be doing a puppet show for our mums and dads, but it’s taken us weeks just to make the puppets.
We were all sitting round a table and Brown Owl came over to see how we were getting on. She sat down with us, so I grabbed the opportunity. I pretended to be dead laid back.
“Brown Owl, what kind of music d’you like?”
“All sorts,” she said.
“But what’s your favourite?”
She shrugged. “Jazz… opera…”
“Opera?” I said.
“Don’t you like Oasis?” said Lyndz.
“I’ve never heard them,” said Brown Owl. Lyndsey’s jaw dropped.
“What about country and western?” said Kenny, desperately.
“Yes, it’s OK. I like all sorts.”
We let out a sigh of relief.
“Brown Owl, how old are you?” Felicity asked.
“Felicity!” said Snowy Owl, shocked.
“Never you mind,” said Brown Owl, smiling. “It’s not polite to ask a lady her age.”
Fliss said, “Sorry.”
