Mega Sleepover 2. Narinder Dhami

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СКАЧАТЬ “Tomorrow, we are going to the Pet Show at the Village Hall and if Merlin wins a rosette I will tie it to his tail. We are at war with the M&Ms…again. They had better look out.” She slammed her diary shut and said. “Now, give, give, give, give, give.” She held out her hands for the hamster.

      “You promised you weren’t going to talk about that,” complained Fliss. But she passed Gazza over while she wrote hers.

      Then everyone wanted a turn, so we played Pass the Hamster for a bit. When Rosie went to the bathroom she brought back a toilet roll which was just about used up. She tossed it onto the bed and Kenny put Gazza down so he could wriggle through it, like a tunnel but he seemed more interested in filling his pouches with it.

      Next Fliss read us what she’d written: “I haven’t got a pet to take to the you-know-what so Rosie is letting me keep Gazza at her house. It is very kind of her. She is my best friend. She can take him out and play with him whenever she likes – as long as she is careful.”

      Kenny looked at me and rolled her eyes. Sometimes Fliss is unreal. It was then that Rosie came up with her other idea. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t such a good idea, but at first we thought it was.

      “Why not take Gazza tomorrow?” she said to Fliss. “You can pretend he’s yours. No one’ll know.”

      “Yeah, why not?” said Kenny.

      I nodded too. I thought it was a great idea, because, if Fliss had a pet to take, it would mean we could talk about the Pet Show, without her moaning on.

      “I don’t know,” said Fliss, doubtfully, “what if someone recognises him?”

      “How would they?” said Rosie. “One hamster looks much like another.”

      “What if there’s anyone from school there?”

      We thought about that. It was unlikely our teacher, Mrs Weaver, would be there, but what about other people from our class? And then, as if it had dawned on us all at once, I said, “Oh, no…” and everyone joined in, “The M&Ms.”

      They’d be sure to recognise Gazza. Those two didn’t miss a thing.

      “Oh, well, it was a good idea while it lasted,” I said.

      “Hang on,” said Kenny, “You could keep him in a box, or something, until they do the judging. The M&Ms’ll be too busy with their own pets. They’ll probably be in different rooms. I doubt if they’ll put the cats and dogs together with the small pets.”

      “Yeah. Good thinking, Batman,” I said.

      You could see Fliss was tempted, but she was still worried about it. Fliss always gets her knickers in a twist if she does anything wrong in case she gets found out. But she really wanted to join in with the rest of us, so in the end she said, “OK, but you’ve all got to promise not to tell anyone, though.”

      We all made the Brownie promise and just then Rosie’s mum came in and told us to turn off the lights and settle down. I was sure she hadn’t heard us but Fliss went bright pink, as if Rosie’s mum could read her mind. When she got up to put Gazza in his cage, she dropped him twice. Fortunately both times he landed on the bed. At last she put him in his cage, but she was so nervous she didn’t fasten the cage door properly. It was nearly an hour before we realised and by then Gazza had completely disappeared.

      After Rosie’s mum went out we lay in bed and counted to twenty-five before we sat up. Sitting up in the dark, with our torches turned on, whispering, is the best thing about sleepovers, I think. Sometimes we tell stories or sing songs or tell jokes. Sometimes we pretend we can talk to ghosts but that can get a bit too scary. Later on, when it’s really quiet and we know the grown-ups aren’t coming back in, we get out our midnight feast. But it was too early so we decided to finish off our Sleepover Club membership cards.

      We’d got some old ones we’d made right at the beginning, but now Rosie’s joined we decided we’d make some new ones with photos and everything.

      Do you want to see mine? Isn’t it excellent? Not as good as Fliss’s, though. Hers looks dead posh. She got her mum to take her into Leicester to get a proper passport photo done. The rest of us had to cut up old photographs. I had to cut my face out of a picture at my Uncle Alan’s wedding when I was little. Everybody started laughing at it, so I told them what my gran always says, “Small things amuse small minds!”

      On the back of the cards we wrote our names, ages, addresses and hobbies. When we’d finished them we signed them. Well, the rest of us did. Kenny did this weird squiggle that looked as if someone had nudged her elbow. Then we passed them round and read each others’.

      “I didn’t know your hobby was stamp collecting,” I said to Fliss.

      She went a bit red. “It isn’t but I didn’t know what else to put. I don’t really have a hobby.”

      “Course you do,” said Lyndz. “You go to Brownies, don’t you? You go to dancing classes and gymnastics. You’re interested in fashion.” She reeled off a few more.

      “Oh, I didn’t realise they were hobbies,” said Fliss, grabbing her card back. She’s so dozy. She scribbled away and soon ran out of space.

      For my hobbies I wrote: Reading, Brownies, Pop Music, Collecting Teddies and Acting. I just lurv being in plays. It’s the best.

      Kenny had written: Football, Swimming, Gymnastics, Snooker, Brownies.

      Rosie had put: Netball, (I’d forgotten that), Soaps (she’s mad about them), Pop Music and Brownies.

      Next I read Lyndz’s. She’d written: Horses, Painting, Horses, Brownies, Horses, Cooking Horses.

      “Cooking horses?” I said.

      “Let me see that.” She grabbed it back from me. She’d just missed out the comma. “Oh, very funny, I don’t think.”

      I thought it was very funny, actually, and so did Kenny. We creased up.

      Later on, when we were sure Rosie’s mum wasn’t coming back, we got out the food, put it in a big bowl and passed it round. I’ll tell you what there was: sherbet dabs, Black Jacks, Love Hearts, a Snickers bar, six marshmallows and a packet of Original Pringles. We all tucked in straight away.

      “D’you think we should give Gazza something?” said Fliss.

      “It doesn’t seem fair leaving him out,” Rosie agreed.

      But really there was nothing apart from Pringles we thought a hamster might eat and we weren’t really sure about those. We decided we’d try him just with a couple of crumbs to see. Fliss got out of her sleeping bag and went to get him.

      That’s when we realised he’d gone.

      

      “He’s not here,” she wailed. “Oh, help, where is he?”

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