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“I should think so too,” said Snowy Owl.
Why are grown-ups so funny about their age? I don’t get it. But at least it had made Brown Owl smile. Then Rosie went too far.
“Brown Owl, have you got a boyfriend?”
Brown Owl’s face went all serious and stern-looking and she got up and walked off. “You just concentrate on your puppets,” she told us, “instead of my love-life.”
“What did you have to go and say that for?” I hissed at Rosie.
“How else are we going to find out?” she hissed back.
Snowy Owl looked at us suspiciously.
“We were only wondering,” I said, trying to look innocent. “She just doesn’t seem very happy.”
Snowy looked over to make sure Brown Owl couldn’t hear her.
“She hasn’t got a boyfriend,” she whispered. “And it’s time she had. No one’s worth getting yourself that miserable over. I’ve told her that, but she’s not ready to hear it yet. So don’t you lot go upsetting her any more, d’you hear?”
We all nodded and looked at one another, but we didn’t say anything else to Snowy Owl. We just got on with painting our puppet heads. You can’t tell with grown-ups who you can trust and who you can’t. But at least one thing was clear, Brown Owl needed our help, even if she didn’t know it yet.
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We thought we’d at least got Dave on our side. So it was a bit of a surprise that on Friday, when we mentioned it, he burst out laughing.
“Are you still on about that?” he said. “Don’t you think that joke’s wearing a bit thin?”
“But it’s not a joke,” said Kenny.
“We’re deadly serious,” I said.
“Deadly?” said Dave. “That sounds pretty serious. Come on, guys, you’re in my way.” And then we had to move because he wanted to start polishing the hall floor.
Fliss had one last go. “What would we have to do to convince you?” she asked him.
“Get me a photo.” A photo, I thought, where are we going to get that? “Or, better still, get her to send me a letter,” he said, smiling.
A photo was bad enough, but a letter was completely out of the question. Or I thought it was, until on the way home from school, Lyndz had one of her crackpot ideas.
“We could write one,” she said.
“We’d never get away with it,” I said. “He’d know it was our writing.”
I’m the only one who can do joined-up handwriting that doesn’t look like a bowl of spaghetti. But nobody would believe it belonged to a grown-up who works in a bank.
“We don’t need to write it,” said Kenny. “We can print it on the computer. And it’s dead easy to fake a signature. I copy my dad’s all the time.”
“Oh, really?” I said, raising one eyebrow. I’m the only one who can do that trick, too.
Kenny grinned. “Just the odd cheque when my pocket money runs out.”
“Honestly?” said Felicity, who’d believe anything you told her.
“She’s joking,” I said, tapping the side of my head. “Derrr!”
“It’s just a game,” said Kenny. “I’ve got this really ancient prescription pad my dad gave me. I sign them Doctor McKenzie. It looks dead cool.”
“But what would we put in the letter?” I said. I still didn’t like the idea.
“You are a handsome hunk. I lurv you,” said Lyndz, rolling her eyes and then collapsing in a fit of giggles.
“We were born to be together.” Kenny clutched her heart and puckered her lips.
After that the pair of them just went a bit haywire. Kenny started doing a terrible French accent and Lyndz kept fluttering her eyelashes.
“All right, calm down, you dodos,” I said, but none of us could stop laughing. People were staring at us across the street. It was really wicked.
But I remember thinking of what my grandma says, when things get out of hand: “You mark my words, this’ll all end in tears.”
It was right in the middle of all this that we found out a bit more about Rosie’s family. We often walk past her house on our way home from school and hope she’ll invite us in, but so far no such luck. I know some people’s parents are dead strict and don’t like other kids in their house. Thank goodness mine aren’t like that – but neither was her mum. She often said, “Rosie, don’t keep your friends on the step. Ask them in.” But she wouldn’t and we couldn’t work out why.
We knew her dad didn’t live with them, she’d told us that, but then lots of people in our class haven’t got a dad at home.
Fliss hasn’t. She’s got Andy, her mum’s boyfriend, but he’s not her dad. Her proper dad lives in the next street with his girlfriend Maria and the new baby, Posie. Fliss and her brother go round every Friday to her dad’s for tea, but they don’t live with him.
Also, Rosie had told us about her brother Adam. We hadn’t seen him yet because he goes to a special school. We knew he used a wheelchair; we’d seen it in the back of her mum’s car. But Rosie said he couldn’t talk either, so we thought perhaps she didn’t want us to go to her house because of Adam. But we were wrong about that too.
I had to go and put my foot in it, didn’t I? Me and my big mouth!
We were leaning on Rosie’s gate; I said, “It’s Friday today, if we had a sleepover tonight we could write the letter and take it to Dave’s tomorrow.”
“Wicked!” said Fliss. “And we could make all our plans for OBD.”
I kept staring at Rosie’s house, hoping she would take the hint, but she didn’t.
“Well, we can’t have it at mine,” said Fliss. “My mum still hasn’t got over the bubble-bath episode.” Some time I’ll tell you that story!
“Don’t look at me,” said Lyndz. “My mum and dad are decorating, again!” Lyndz’s mum and dad are always doing something to her house. Extending it or decorating it or taking it apart and putting it back together again.
“I suppose I could ask mine,” Kenny offered. “But Monster-features will only interfere.” Kenny has the worst sister the human imagination could conjure up. We call her Molly the Monster. And poor old Kenny has to share a bedroom with her!
We’d already had the one last week at mine, so that left just one person and I was getting tired of dropping hints.
“What about at yours?” I said to Rosie, straight out, just like that. But the minute I’d said it, I wished I hadn’t. Rosie went bright red and shook her head.
“Why not?” I said.
“Because,” said Rosie, starting to look as if she might cry.
“Look, if it’s because of Adam…” I started, without knowing how I was going to finish.
“We don’t mind, honest,” said Fliss.
“No,” said Lyndz. “I’ve got an uncle in a wheelchair.”
“So?” said Rosie. “What about it? This is nothing to do with Adam, you stupids. It’s the state my house is in.” And then she burst into tears.
She told us her dad was a builder. He’d bought the house to do up, but he’d met his girlfriend soon after they’d moved in. Now he’d gone off and left them in this amazing big house which Rosie said was a complete tip.
“He says he’ll fix it, but he never does. It’s horrible! There’s hardly any carpets. My bedroom’s got no paper on the walls.”
“We don’t care about wallpaper,” I said, trying to make her feel better.
“Well, I do,” she said, going through her gate and slamming it behind her. “It’s not fair. I hate everybody!” And she went up her path, sobbing.
All the others were looking at me as if to say, “Well, I hope you’re satisfied now.”
But I wasn’t. I felt terrible. I hadn’t meant to make her cry. I went straight home and asked my mum if we could please have another sleepover at my house. I even got down on my knees into my famous begging pose.
“Pretty please,” I said, “with cherries on the top.”
My mum looked down at me pretending to be a well-trained dog, and shook her head. “I don’t know what makes you think that performance is likely to persuade anyone,” she said.
But it did. I got straight on the phone and rang round.
“It’s on for tonight! Sleepover, at mine. Seven o’clock.”
“You’re wonderful,” I told my mum. “I’m your slave for ever. Whatever you desire, command and I will obey.”
My mum just grinned and kept on watching the news, but my dad said, “Right, that’s two cups of tea now and extra washing-up for a week.”
“It’s a deal,” I said. “You’re the best.” Thank goodness for groovy parents!
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I think they started to get suspicious that night when we were so keen to go to bed early. Usually I have to beg and plead with them to stay up late on a Friday for Friends. It’s my best programme! Coo-el. But there we go. Sometimes there are more important things even than Friends! So by eight o’clock we were all in our jimjams in my bedroom, talking really quietly.
Kenny and I were sharing a bed again, Lyndz and Felicity had got the bunks and Rosie was on the camp bed this time. She was looking like a wet weekend again, even though nobody had mentioned her outburst at the gate. It felt funny, because we were all thinking about it, even though we weren’t saying anything, if you see what I mean. It was as though there was an elephant standing in the corner but no one was mentioning the fact.
“Right, let’s get started,” said old bossy-boots Fliss. “Who’s doing the typing?”
I can tell you now what she’ll be when she grows up: a teacher! She’s always practising bossing us about.
“I’ll do it,” I said, turning my computer on. The others all crowded round me. “Right, I’m ready,” I said.
Then we all sat there looking at the blank screen.
“Dear Dave…” said Felicity. Then she sat there looking very pleased with herself.
“Oh, good start,” I said. “Well, that’s the hard bit over.”
“‘I really fancy you,’” said Kenny. “‘How about going out with me?’”
“That is so sad,” I said.
Rosie shook her head. “Brown Owl definitely wouldn’t say that.”
“So what would she say, clever clogs?” said Kenny.
“Something like: ‘I’ve seen you around school; you look like a nice person.’”
“You look like a nice person,” said Kenny in a whiny voice. “That’s so naff. Where’s the romance in that?”
“There’s no lurv in that,” agreed Lyndsey, getting all giggly. I could just see them starting each other off again.
“Listen! Listen,” I said. “Rosie’s right. It doesn’t have to be sloppy stuff. I’ll write down what she just said.”
“Then say something about how she likes country and western music,” said Rosie.
“Oh, yes,” said Fliss. “That’s important, Frankie. Don’t forget that bit.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve put that. Then what?”
“Put: ‘I’d like to go out with you. How about it?’” said Kenny.
I wrote: ‘I’d like to go out with you.’ Brown Owl wouldn’t say “how about it"!
“Anything else?”
“That’s enough, isn’t it?” said Rosie.
“Don’t we want to say where they could meet?”
“The bus station.”
“Outside the chippie.”
“The park gates.”
“Put: ‘I’ll be wearing a red carnation’,” said Kenny.
It was like a story we were making up. We could have put anything. Dave might turn up, but there was one bit we still hadn’t worked out.
“How on earth are we going to get Brown Owl there?”
“We’ll just choose a place where we know Brown Owl’s going to be,” said Kenny, as if that was the easiest thing in the world.
“Not at Brownies. She won’t want him turning up there,” said Fliss.
