The Sleepover Club Bridesmaids: Wedding Special. Angie Bates

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СКАЧАТЬ actual wedding day and give them to Mum, and the jinx would be like, cancelled!

      “Find four what?” frowned Rosie. “Speak English, Kenny.”

      Kenny sighed and gabbled a quaint little rhyme that went: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”

      “Oh, those somethings,” the rest of us said immediately.

      I wiped my eyes. “I didn’t know that was like a good luck thing,” I sniffled.

      Lyndz wasn’t too impressed. “Fliss’s mum seems like the mega-organised type to me,” she objected. “She probably had her somethings sorted ages ago.”

      I gave my nose another big blow. “Uh-uh,” I said. “She’s been too busy organising all the dresses and the reception and everything to even think about good luck stuff.”

      “Well, there you go,” said Kenny smugly. “Now you can take care of them for her. That way you get to be a good daughter AND cancel the wicked M&Ms’ ladder spell all in one go.”

      “Yippee!” grinned Rosie. “Now let’s go and try on our meringues – I mean, dresses!”

      “You’d better not call them that in front of my mum,” I warned, cheering up a bit more.

      Mum was making our bridesmaid dresses herself. I helped pick out the colour, actually. It was also my idea to have like, cute little ballet shoes dyed to match. Mum had gone to loads of trouble, sitting up night after night, stitching away, and now the dresses were almost ready. The fitting was just for Mum to check the hems before she finished them on her machine.

      Actually, I think Mum was as excited about the dresses as we were, because she whipped open the door before I could even get my key out.

      “Do you girls fancy a little snack,” she said, “before we do the fitting?”

      Frankie giggled. “Maybe we should have the fitting and then have our little snack,” she said. (I don’t know if the others have told you, but my mum’s snacks are sometimes a wee bit over the top and take forever to prepare!)

      “Good point,” agreed Kenny.

      “Oh, well, if you’re sure.” Mum flew upstairs to fetch the dresses. She called down to us from the landing: “Shut your eyes, girls!”

      “Mu-um!” I moaned. “We’re not five years old.”

      We shut our eyes all the same. There was loads of mysterious rustling as Mum came back downstairs. Suddenly I got this wildly excited feeling, like you do just before you open your eyes on Christmas morning.

      “You can look now,” said Mum, sounding breathless.

      She had draped the dresses over the sofa, so we could see them properly. We gasped.

      “Oh, they are so-o gorgeous,” breathed Rosie.

      The last time I’d seen the fabric, Mum was struggling to cut out gazillions of fiddly little pattern pieces on our living-room floor. So I was every bit as dazzled as the others.

      “We’re going to look like fairy-tale princesses,” whispered Lyndz.

      “Some of us, maybe,” muttered Kenny. “The rest of us will look like total—”

      “You first, Kenny dear,” said Mum brightly.

      Good ole Kenny! We could tell she was absolutely freaking out inside, but she stood there like a docile little lamb and let Mum slip her rustly satin dress over her head. Though it was just as well Mum was concentrating on Kenny’s hemline, because Kenny’s face was a total picture.

      The minute Mum disappeared to hunt for a tape measure, Kenny clenched her fists. “Don’t any of you say a WORD,” she hissed. “I KNEW I’d look like a meringue.”

      Frankie frowned. “Actually,” she said, “you look really pretty.”

      “Pretty!” Kenny snarled. “Huh! Don’t make me laugh!”

      Honestly, I wish you could have seen that girl, pulling hideous troll faces at us in her frothy peachy bridesmaid’s dress. We all cracked up.

      Naturally, Kenny thought we were laughing because she looked awful in the dress. She clawed at it furiously, trying to get it off, but Mum had pinned the material at the back, so she was basically trapped.

      Luckily, just then Mum walked back in and said a totally perfect thing.

      “Oh, Kenny,” she said softly. “You make that dress look so special.”

      We could see Kenny struggling to figure out if “special” was some kind of polite adult code for “weird”. Then she gave my mum a shy little grin.

      “Hey, thanks Mrs Sidebotham,” she said. “Erm – about that snack?”

      

      Did I tell you we’d planned to hold our next sleepover the following Saturday? In other words, immediately AFTER the wedding?

      Don’t laugh, but for some reason I felt completely unhinged every time I heard myself say those three little words.

      After the wedding. After the wedding. After the…

      It was like I couldn’t imagine it. As if the wedding was making HUGE quantities of fog, and I couldn’t see anything beyond it.

      I’d known about Mum and Andy getting married since New Year, yet I still couldn’t quite believe it was going to happen. I think Mum felt that way too. She’d been really stressed out the last few days. In fact, on Friday night she went to bed practically the same time I did!

      When I woke up on Saturday morning I snuggled under my duvet, picturing how thrilled Mum would be with me for tracking down her lucky somethings all by myself. Obviously I didn’t plan to spoil my good deed by mentioning the evil ladder spell. Besides, if Kenny was right, that stupid ladder didn’t have a chance against my four magical gifts.

      I chanted the rhyme softly under my quilt. “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”

      Suddenly I sat up, totally freaked out. Yikes! I had exactly one week left to get my act together!! Not to mention that I still hadn’t figured out what my brother and I were giving Mum and Andy for a wedding present…

      “Oh well,” I sighed. “I’ve got all today to crack that one.”

      But as it turned out, I was totally wrong about this.

      When I went downstairs, Mum and Andy were rushing round like maniacs, cleaning the house.

      “What’s up, you two? Is the Queen Mum dropping by?” I joked.

      My СКАЧАТЬ