Becky's Dress Disaster (6 page)

That was what Annabel thought, but when the triplets surged downstairs to tackle Mum, she was surprisingly doubtful.

“Oh. Well, I don't know…”

“Why not, Mum?” asked Becky, sounding panicky – surely this last chance wasn't going to be snatched away? “We've done all the wedding stuff, haven't we?”

“Ye-es,” Mum agreed hesitantly. “But I wanted to talk to you – we've had an invitation for Sunday.” She was trying to sound upbeat, but the girls could tell from her voice that she was worried about how they were going to react to her news. They frowned at her. What was going on?

“Jeff – Max's dad – has asked us all over for Sunday lunch.”

The three identical frowns deepened as the triplets digested this. Even Becky wasn't feeling very charitable to Max right now. After all, it was his fault all of this had happened! If she hadn't been feeling so stressed out by him she'd never have left the rat cage open.

Mum continued, with the air of someone who knows there's a fierce wild animal (or three fierce wild animals) close behind them, and is trying very hard not to run however much they want to. “And I said that would be lovely.”

There was a meaningful silence. Finally Annabel said, “But that's on Sunday. We can be back from Saima's in time to go to lunch – if we have to.”

Katie took a deep breath. It looked like not making a fuss about the lunch at Max's house could be the only way to get the dresses sorted. She noted Becky's pleading stare, and nodded. “Exactly. Please, Mum! We'll be back in loads of time.”

“Oh, OK then,” Mum sounded relieved – as though she'd expected a fight, and was happy to compromise. “You'll have to do all your homework on Saturday before you go, though.”

“Uh-huh!” That was Becky, as she whisked out of the kitchen door, chasing the other two up the stairs. They needed to have a crisis meeting!

Chapter Seven

Max had obviously been told about the lunch too, because he got worse and worse all week. He was in detention twice for disrupting classes while he tried to upset the triplets – pulling Katie's hair, deliberately knocking all Becky's stuff on to the floor. Normally the weekend would at least have been a rest from him, but now they had to go and have quality time with him and his dad! Katie was furious, and had a real go at him in the playground on Friday. What really worried Becky though, was that the look of malicious glee, which used to terrify her when Max was being awful, had gone entirely. Instead Max looked desperate – as though he knew he was fighting with his back against a wall. She was still certain that because he didn't have his mum, the relationship between their parents was going to be harder for him than it was for her and Katie and Annabel, and she still felt sorry for him – though she tended to forget that when he was tripping her up in the corridor on the way to geography.

“You did that on purpose!” Katie yelled, squaring up to Max as Annabel and the others hurried to pick Becky up. “I can't believe you, you're mad! You could have really hurt her!”

“Oh, don't be such a baby!” scoffed Max, although he did peer round at Becky a little anxiously, to see if she was hurt enough to get him into trouble. She looked shaken but mostly OK, so he decided to make a quick getaway. When the girls arrived in geography he was sitting there with all his books out, looking as though butter wouldn't melt. Katie seethed through the rest of the day – even though it had been Becky Max had tripped, she was still taking it as a personal insult. It was becoming obvious that Sunday was going to be torture.

What made it even worse was that Mum was so excited about it. Becky had seen her trying on outfits in front of the mirror and humming to herself, and she kept making cheerful little references to Sunday. She was going to get a big shock when she saw Katie and Max in the same room together – it was going to be awful. Becky decided she needed advice. She hated arguments so much, and she really wanted Sunday not to be a total disaster, for Mum's sake if nothing else.

She headed up to the loft that evening to email Dad. It might seem funny to talk, to him about problems with Mum's new boyfriend, but after the first months of awfulness, her parents' split had left them on reasonably good terms. Becky knew Dad would be happy that Mum was meeting new people.

She opened up her email account and tried to think what to say. This was going to take some explaining – for a start because she still didn't know how she felt about the whole thing.

After half an hour of typing and deleting and more typing and deleting again, Becky sighed as she hit “send”. It felt better having moaned thoroughly to somebody – but it wasn't as if Dad could actually do much to help.

 

By standing over her armed with a maths textbook, Katie had managed to get Annabel to finish all her homework in time for the sleepover at Saima's. Now they just had to find a way to get the three dresses in the car without Mum realizing what was going on. Katie wanted to roll them up inside their sleeping bags, but Annabel nearly had a fit at this. In the end they had to resort to the time-honoured ploy of one triplet as the distraction while the other two got on with whatever it was they weren't supposed to be doing. This was one of those times when being a threesome got really useful.

The triplets had stowed all their stuff in the car, and were just grabbing their jackets – Mum insisted they took them – when Annabel suddenly screamed.

Mum jumped and dropped the car keys. “What? What?”

“There's a
massive
spider, there on the ceiling!”

There
was
a spider, but only because Katie had gone out in the garden and caught it and put it there on purpose. Annabel was well known to be terrified of spiders – the plan had involved great personal sacrifice on her part, and she'd had to be towed through the hall with her eyes closed by the other two ever since the long-legged creature had been put in place.

“Oh my goodness,” said Mum faintly, looking at the spider. “So there is. Well. It's quite big, isn't it…”

Annabel had inherited her terror of spiders from Mum, but Mum always tried incredibly hard to pretend she didn't mind them. It didn't work.

Katie smiled. “Would you like me to get it down, Mum? Can you help me get the stepladder out?”

“Oh! Oh yes, that would be very helpful, Katie, thank you.” Mum dived through the kitchen door, where she was safely out of sight of the horrible thing, and headed for the big cupboard by the back door. Katie beetled after her, signalling at the other two – go, go, go!

Becky and Annabel dashed upstairs for the dresses and hid them in the boot of the car just in time. Katie captured the spider in a jam jar and took it back out to the garden to set it free. By now it was feeling deeply confused, and it scuttled under the fence to next door, where it was hoping for a quieter life.

The triplets were pretty sure that when they got to Saima's house, Mum would go and have a cup of tea with Saima's parents and let them unload the car, and luckily they were right. They whisked the dresses up to Saima's bedroom before anyone could spot what was going on. Saima was bouncing about excitedly. She'd got out all her beads, and her sewing stuff, and loads of bits she'd borrowed from her mum, who was brilliant at making clothes. The best thing was that Saima's mum had a dressmaker's dummy, a sort of body on a stand that you could use to fit dresses on. That would be very helpful for hanging the dresses on while they worked out the bead decoration.

Saima drew in her breath in horror when she saw the rat-chewed dress. “Oh no! Look at it.” She drew the skirt out and surveyed the damage, shaking her head. “I didn't realize it would be this bad,” she confessed to Annabel. “But I'm sure we can sort it,” she added, seeing her friend's panicked face.

“I could kill those rats,” Annabel muttered furiously, shooting a glare at Becky. Only the knowledge (drummed into her by Katie) that it was partly her own fault for leaving the dress out on her bed, which they'd been forbidden to do, was stopping Annabel from demanding that Becky move the rats out to the garden shed to live with the guinea pigs. But she still kept making nasty comments about traps and poison all the time.

When Fran and Megan had arrived, Saima and Annabel called a strategy meeting. The rat-customized dress was on the dressmaker's dummy and Annabel stared glumly at it. “OK. You all know the situation. We've got three dresses, and we need to turn them into something like this.” She brandished the page from the wedding magazine.

Fran peered over at it. “Can I see?” She held out a hand. “This is really nice! Have you got everything we need?”

Saima held out a shoebox that was full of little pots and packets of beads.

“Wow! Saima, these are beautiful. You've got all these different purpley ones, and some silver. You could do a fantastic design with these.”

Fran's enthusiasm seemed to rub off on Annabel and Saima, and they went into a huddle with a sketchbook, drawing out various patterns, and trying to fit them to the shape the rats had already mapped out on the dress. Annabel had brought tracing paper, and eventually they came up with a spray of flowers and leaves that they all agreed on.

“And the best thing is,” Saima said excitedly, “that it actually looks better in that random sort of scatter that the rats made. If we'd tried to do it ourselves I don't think it would be as good. And you wanted beads in the first place. Those rats have done you a favour, Bel!”

Annabel sniffed. She was never going to admit
that.
But the design was looking great – now it was just a case of sewing it, and finding out whether they were good enough to make it work…

Becky, Katie and Megan had been sitting watching. As none of them were hugely artistic, they hadn't felt like they could add much – they were there to be the slave labour.

“OK!” Annabel stood up. “Me and Saima will sew the beads on my dress, 'cause that's the most complicated one with all the
chewed bits
.”
Here she glared at Becky. “We need to stop it fraying any more. Becky and Fran will do her dress, and then when we've finished we'll all do your dress, Katie.”

“What do we do?” asked Katie, sounding slightly hurt. OK, so she couldn't sew to save her life, and nor could Megan, but they wanted to do
something
.

Annabel grinned at her. “This is where being boringly good at maths comes in useful for once. You two can sort the beads out for us. Look,” she handed over the original flower design, “these are silver, these are violet – you see? All the colours are marked on. You need to put the right beads for each bit in these little bowls.”

Katie nodded briskly.
That
she could do. Everyone got to work. Saima had a really cool sound system, and she put some music on to liven things up. Luckily her parents had promised to stay out of the way, as long as they went to bed at a “reasonable” time.

Becky and Fran started the ticklish job of sewing on the beads, one by one, following the pattern. It was difficult, but fun – and they did look very pretty.

After half an hour or so, Annabel got up and stretched. “Oof! I've got a crick in my neck. How's yours going, Becky?” She peered over. “That looks nice – but hey, hang on, that flower's meant to be the lilac colour, not the crystal! You'll have to undo it.”

Becky looked horrified – that flower had taken ages – but Fran gazed at the dress thoughtfully, and then over at Annabel's. She shook her head. “I'm not sure, Bel. I think it would be better if they weren't exactly the same – I mean, obviously it's going to be the same basic design, but I don't see why each petal has to be the same. What's the point of hand-decorating the dresses if they still look like a machine did them?”

Annabel looked slightly gobsmacked. Fran was so easygoing that she didn't often disagree – but Annabel could see she was right.

Becky grinned at her. “And that's what you wanted in the first place, Bel,” she pointed out. “A dress that was just the teensiest bit different.”

Annabel pulled a face at her, but went back to her own dress with no more argument.

The sewing took a great deal longer than the sorting out of all the beads, and so Katie and Megan were at a loose end fairly quickly. They unrolled their sleeping bags in an out-of-the-way corner, and settled down to chat with everybody.

“I can't believe we've got to go to lunch with Max tomorrow,” Katie grumbled. “He's such a little monster, and he's just getting meaner and meaner.”

Becky sighed. Why couldn't Katie see it? Max was only getting meaner because he was miserable. She decided to have one more go at explaining this. She'd read Dad's reply to her complaining email before they came out, and he'd been really sympathetic. He told her that Katie and Bel had been moaning about it too, and as far as he could see, the only way forward was what she was already trying – getting Katie and Max to understand each other a bit more.

“I reckon he's only being a pain because he's scared,” she said timidly.

Katie grinned evilly. “Good. The more scared the better.”

“Don't be horrible!” protested Becky. “You don't really mean that.”

“I do,” replied Katie firmly. “He's a pig and I can't stand him. And stop trying to make everything nice, Becky, it won't work. It's your fault that I have to go tomorrow, because if it hadn't been for needing to sort the dresses out I would've said no.” And she turned over pointedly to talk to Megan.

Everyone looked a bit surprised at Katie's sharpness, and Fran gave Becky a sympathetic look. Becky just stared back at her, lost for words. She'd tried her best with Katie. What else could she do?

The dresses were eventually finished well after midnight, and they looked fantastic – even Annabel was pleased with the way they'd turned out. The girls crawled into their sleeping bags, exhausted, but triumphant – surely even Auntie Jan would like them?