Well, come in, if youâre coming in. And sit down. This time weâre in deep trouble. This time we could be in doom for ever. And this time it was not my idea. Uh-oh! Thereâs the phone.
âFrankie! Itâs for you.â
âComing, Mum.â
Youâd better come down and listen in. Iâve got a feeling this could be bad news.
âHello?â
âFrankie, is that you?â
âNo, itâs Betty Boop.â
âLook, be serious for once. Has Brown Owl been round to your house?â
âNo! Why?â
âSheâs been here already, so youâd better look out.â
âWhat happened? Go on, tell me the worst.â
âI canât, my mumâs coming. Iâve been grounded and that includes the phone.â
âOh, help, Kenny! I think sheâs at the door now. What should I do?â
âHide. Run away. Emigrate. But disappear!â
Come on. 5â4â3â2â1, letâs get gone! Upstairs, quick!
Right, close that door. On second thoughts, lock it, we donât want to be disturbed. This is seriously serious. What do you think sheâll tell them? Oh, p-lease, not everything! I mean, we havenât done anything terrible. Itâs not as if we meant to wreck the supermarket. We were just trying to be helpful, which is what sheâs always telling us Brownies are supposed to be.
I blame Rosie. None of this would have happened if we hadnât 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 Iâd 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. Sheâs my best friend. That doesnât mean we never fall out â we argue at least once a day â but we always make it up.
And Fliss. Her real nameâs Felicity Sidebotham, but please donât bother with the jokes, sheâs heard them all before. And, as everybody knows, Fliss doesnât have much of a sense of humour.
And Lyndsey Collins. Now she does. Lyndz is a great laugh.
So thatâs how it used to be.
Now thereâs Rosie as well, which, in case you canât count, makes five.
Rosieâs only recently moved round here; she doesnât know many people yet, so we thought weâd be friendly. OK, we were curious as well. Sheâd 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 havenât been inside, but weâre 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, âI think we should let Rosie join the Sleepover Club.â
I said, âWhat for?â as if I needed to ask.
âWell, I feel sorry for her; sheâs got no friends.â Lyndz is the sort of person that would rescue a fly if it fell in a puddle.
âThatâs not our problem,â said Fliss. âAnyway it would make five and fiveâs an odd number and odd numbers never work.â Fliss likes everything to be tidy. She even lifts hairs off your cardigan while sheâs talking to you.
But for once I agreed with her. âWe donât really know her, do we? She might be a drip. She might be a scaredy cat. She might be really boring.â
âSheâs not,â said Lyndz. âShe passed the test, didnât she?â
I suppose she did. We wouldnât 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 Pooleâs office. We dared Rosie to take a bite out of a biscuit in the teachersâ tin on the staff-room table and then put it back. She ate half the biscuit, so we had to let her join. But thereâs something about her Iâm still not sure about.
âWell, I donât care who joins,â said Kenny, âas long as we have a laugh.â
âBut she doesnât laugh, thatâs the trouble,â I said. âSheâs a bit of a sad case, really.â
âThatâs because her dadâs left,â said Lyndz.
âSoâs mine,â said Fliss.
âYes, but youâve got another one,â Kenny pointed out.
âAndy is not my dad,â Fliss insisted.
We argued for ages until Fliss said, âLetâs stop bickering and have a vote and settle it once and for all.â She can be so bossy sometimes. âThose in favour.â