Tthe Sleepover Club on the Beach (3 page)

I noticed Fliss nervously clutching her mobile phone. And all at once I started
feeling incredibly panicky and homesick.

We were in the middle of nowhere. There was absolutely nothing here except sky and trees. And rain and mud…

“Oops!” said Mum suddenly. “Almost missed it.” She made a sharp turn, and suddenly we were rattling over a makeshift wooden bridge, between large weeping willows. A sign said “Willow Cottage”.

And there in front of us, smothered with honeysuckle and rambler roses, was the oldest, loveliest, most higgledy-piggledy house I had EVER seen.

I was terrified my mates were going to hate it.

Any minute now they’re going to moan about it being too far from the amusement park, I thought anxiously.

But they didn’t. They didn’t say anything. It was like they were so stunned, they didn’t know what
to
say.

Then Frankie took a deep breath. “Oh, Lyndz,” she said softly. “It’s perfect!”

Minutes later we were looking over our new sleeping quarters, an airy upstairs room which used to be the old hayloft.

All my mates had the biggest grins on their faces.

“We can really stay here by ourselves?” Rosie breathed.

I knew what she was thinking.
Yippee! We can stay up all night and no-one will ever know!

My Auntie Roz beamed at us. “We thought you girls would appreciate some privacy. You’ve got your own bathroom downstairs,
but if you need us in the night, just shout.”

There was a scrabbling of claws on the wooden stairs and a puppy appeared at the top.

“
Aaah
,” said everyone.

“That’s Gizmo,” smiled my aunt. “We haven’t had him long. He still follows me everywhere.”

Don’t ask me what breed Gizmo was. It was something Italian that I’d never heard of. I’ll just describe him to you.

He was the colour of vanilla ice-cream with huge feet like fluffy mules which he totally couldn’t control. One of his soft silky ears had accidentally turned inside out, giving him a puzzled expression.

He galloped up to me, all shy and wriggly, his tail wagging.

“That puppy doesn’t walk, he shimmies!” exclaimed Frankie,

“Yeah, he should be a catwalk model,” Rosie giggled.

“A dogwalk model, you mean,” Kenny corrected her.

Fliss bent to stroke Gizmo, her fair hair
swishing across her face.

Without thinking I said, “If Fliss was a dog, that’s the sort
she’d
be. A gorgeous designer dog with a sexy shimmy!”

Fliss turned bright pink. “That’s such a sweet thing to say!”

Phew, I thought. It’s not every girl who appreciates being compared to a puppy, even one as elegant as Gizmo!

“I’ll leave you to it,” said my aunt. “Come over for tea when you’re ready.”

On her way downstairs, she remembered something. “You can walk to the beach from here,” she called. “Just go through that old gate at the back and walk across the water meadows. Ten minutes’ walk, max.”

Rosie hugged herself. “I can’t believe we can actually
walk
to the beach!” she gloated.

“It’s not like, a pleasure beach,” I pointed out. “Just sea and sand and stones.”

“Pooh! Who cares!” said Kenny to my surprise. “I just want to see those waves.”

We still had to decide who was sleeping where, so we tossed for it. I scored the one by the window, heh heh heh.

After we’d stashed our goodies out of sight we all felt distinctly peckish. So we went through the connecting door into the main cottage, and immediately got hopelessly lost. There were all these funny little steps, and rooms confusingly leading into other rooms. Eventually we just followed the smell of baking and ended up in this huge farmhouse-type kitchen.

Mum and Uncle Phil were sitting at a big pine table, over cups of tea. Mum was showing him photographs of all my brothers.

“Next time you must bring the whole family,” he said firmly.

“Oh dear,” Mum laughed. “
Must
I?”

It was weird. Their mannerisms were exactly the same. But my uncle was heaps older than Mum. Plus he had one of those deep Australian suntans which look like they’ll never wear off.

He suddenly noticed us hovering. “Come in! You must be Lyndz.” He looked faintly surprised. “My word! How these old fashions come back!”

I’d totally forgotten about my Thingybobby
look!

“It’s not exactly a
fashion
,” I said awkwardly.

Mum tactfully changed the subject. “What do you girls want to do first?” she asked, as we tucked into warm scones and strawberry jam.

“Explore this fantastic house,” said Kenny promptly.

“If you don’t mind,” I said.

“No, it’s perfect timing,” said Auntie Roz. “The other guests won’t get back till quite late, so you’ve got the place to yourselves.”

She started explaining about some big do at the local manor house, but I was too busy eyeing all the home-made goodies to pay much attention!

There were flapjacks with apricots in, chocolate brownies, plus a massive apple cake glistening with cinnamon and demerara sugar.

But once my tum was nicely stuffed, my thoughts returned to adventures. “Auntie Roz,” I said shyly. “Have you got any secret passages in this house? Like one that leads
to an old monastery or some smugglers’ caves?”

My mates’ mouths fell open.

“Secret passages, here?” Rosie looked around the room as if she was expecting a hidden panel to spring open there and then!

Frankie gave one of her superior sniggers. “Lyndz, honestly, you
are
funny!” So the others hastily sniggered too.

But my aunt took me perfectly seriously. “Hmmn, secret passages,” she said. “Haven’t come across any so far. But you never know.”

“We’ve got a ghost,” my uncle said unexpectedly.

“Oh, HOW fascinating!” said Frankie at once.

Frankie goes a bit over the top when she’s with adults, like she’s trying to be an honorary grown-up or something.

“Phil!” my aunt protested. “You’ll scare them.”

My uncle shrugged. “It’s quite harmless, so they say. I haven’t seen it myself, but people in the village say it’s got some secret sorrow which won’t let it rest in peace.”

I could see all this talk of ghosts was really freaking Fliss out.

So could my Auntie Roz. “Oh, don’t listen to my old man,” she laughed. “Let me give you a grand tour.”

I want to live somewhere
exactly
like Willow Cottage when I grow up. It’s gorgeous but totally homey. Plus every window had a view to die for.

As we arrived back in the kitchen (by a completely different set of stairs), Uncle Phil said, “Did you tell them about the bikes, Roz?”

We perked up. “Bikes?”

He grinned. “Follow me.”

Uncle Phil took us across the courtyard and unlocked an outhouse door. “Help yourselves,” he said.

We found ourselves looking at a bunch of sturdy old-fashioned bicycles, all polished, pumped up and ready to go. One even had a basket on the front! I was totally speechless.

Kenny was impressed too. “You mean we can like, go off all by ourselves?”

Mum and Auntie Roz had joined us by this time.

“If you wear a helmet,” said my aunt. “There’s not much traffic around here, but its better to be safe.”

“Tell you what,” said Mum. “You girls go for a ride and work up an appetite, and when you come back we’ll get some fish and chips.”

Fliss looked anxious. “That’s a really nice idea Mrs Collins, but we had burgers and fries at McDonalds. And we’ve just had cake and scones. That’s an awful
lot
of calories.”

“Oh, a good bike ride will soon burn those off!” my aunt said cheerfully. “You’ll be famished by the time you get back.”

So we strapped on our helmets and wheeled the bikes over the bridge, ducking slightly to avoid traily weeping willow branches.

We hung over the bridge to look at the stream. It was flowing really fast. As we watched, a little black water bird came swimming along with her tiny babies.

By this time I’d stopped being homesick. I was in heaven. I mean, Cuddington, where
we live, is supposed to be a village, but it’s practically next door to Leicester. At night, you get that weird orange glow from thousands of street lights all like, bombarding the sky with their rays.

But this place was totally and utterly rural! You could just tell the Thingybobby kids would feel totally at home here.

We set off along the lane on our clunky old bikes. I’ll admit we were a bit wobbly to start with, but for me, it was a genuine Thingybobby moment. Though I
did
make a mental note to wear jeans, next time I rode a bike. Cycling in a skirt is
très
drafty.

The rain had stopped by this time, and the sun wasn’t out exactly, but you could see it was thinking about it. Now and then little gleams of light shone up from the puddles.

“It’s so
quiet
here,” said Rosie.

“We’ll soon fix that,” grinned Kenny, and she rang the little bell on her handlebars. DINGALINGALING!

“Hey, there’s a windmill!” Frankie yelled. “The sails are even going round, look!”

She braked violently, took a little Polaroid
camera out of her pocket and snapped a photo. Then we all cycled on again.

“This is so ace,” said Kenny.

“Yeah,” said Fliss. “But I hope we can go to the pleasure beach tomorrow. I really want to work on my suntan.”

“There’s no need to whinge. My mum promised, didn’t she?” I said.

“Oh sorree,” said Fliss huffily.

I know I shouldn’t have snapped like that, but Fliss’s remark made me feel really crabby. I mean, we only had a weekend. We’d be lucky to fit in an adventure at ALL at this rate!

Kenny was tinkling her bike bell, with that Young Scientist expression she gets sometimes. “Do you think they all sound the same?” she said.

We experimented. The bells were all slightly different.

“Coo-ell,” Kenny grinned. “We can have a
wicked
bike-bell orchestra!”

And she started singing that really dumb song about a mouse in a windmill, which we had to sing in Cuddington Infants.

We all joined in, jingling our bells loudly for the chorus. It was totally mad!

Unfortunately, the scowling man in the Ford picked that exact moment to drive past, and we had to drag our bikes into the hedge.

“Did you see his face?” giggled Frankie, as he roared past.

“Did you see his sideburns, more like!” said Kenny. “Talk about stuck in a time-warp. Bet he was a big bad teddy boy back in the nineteen-fifties and he never got over it!”

“Teddy boy?” said Rosie in amazement. “What’s a teddy boy?”

“They went around in gangs, picking fights and slashing cinema seats,” I said. “I have NO idea why.”

“Stylish though,” said Fliss wistfully. “Drainpipe trousers, jackets with gorgeous velvet collars.”

I shuddered. “You think greasy hair is
stylish
?”

I still couldn’t help thinking that our surly ex-ted would make the perfect Thingybobby villain. A poacher say, or a heartless kidnapper. But I didn’t say so, in case Frankie did one of her superior sniggers.

We came to a steep slope and went
freewheeling down, truly one of the world’s
great
feelings!

“Yayy!” Kenny yelled. “Sleepover girls forever!”

But when we reached the bottom of the hill, I jammed on my brakes.

All I could say was “Oh, oh, oh!” I was totally all of a dither.

“What’s up?” said everyone.

“Ssh,” I whispered. “You’ll scare it!”

I put my bike in the hedge and tiptoed over to a low five-bar gate.

On the other side, grazing among the buttercups, was the loveliest Arab pony I had ever seen. Everything about him was lovely – his face, his dark liquid eyes, the way he moved. He still had the gangly legs and soft faintly fuzzy coat of a foal.

My mates can be SO sensitive sometimes. I mean, they
like
horses, but they’re not crazy about them like I am. But they waited with amazing patience while I tried to coax him over.

It was pretty obvious he hadn’t been broken in, and he was really nervous and
skittish. Yet the instant I saw him, I’d felt the strangest bond.

This might sound weird, so please don’t tell the others, but he was
exactly
like the horses I ride in my dreams. It was like I already knew how it would feel to ride him. And it was pure magic…

Suddenly Rosie sneezed, and the pony gave this incredible buck, kicking up clods of earth. He galloped away to the far side of his field, making scared harrumphing sounds.

I’ll come back tomorrow, I promised him silently. I’ll come by myself and we’ll have a proper talk.

“Erm, sorry to spoil things, Lyndz, but I’m getting hungry,” said Rosie plaintively.

“Me too!” Fliss sounded amazed. “Actually I’m
starving
,” she giggled.