Izzy's River (8 page)

“She’s keen!” Emily said, sounding surprised.

“She’s left her coat.” Poppy picked it up.

“And the list, more importantly,” Maya pointed out. “Do you think she’s OK?”

Izzy flung her arms round her dad, and he stared down at her in surprise. “What did I do to deserve that, Iz?”

“Well… You haven’t actually done it yet…”

“OK. What are you after?” Her dad heaved a huge, exaggerated sigh.

“Can I have a sleepover?”

“A what?” Her dad’s face developed a hunted sort of look.

“A sleepover. All four of us, next weekend, on the Saturday, after we’ve had the first day of the clean-up, because it would be really grim just going home by ourselves afterwards, wouldn’t it?”

Her dad didn’t look as though he thought it would be grim at all. He looked over at Poppy’s mum in a worried way. “Um, I don’t know much about sleepovers…”

Poppy’s mum rolled her eyes. “They
can
be fun… Poppy has had a couple. I have to say, hers were less trouble than when the boys have them. The mess!”

“Please, Dad! We wouldn’t make a mess at all! I promise!”

“What are you talking about?” Poppy asked curiously, as the others came down the stairs.

Izzy looked at her dad with huge, hopeful eyes.

“Oh, all right. I suppose…” he murmured.

Izzy hugged him again. “You really deserve it now!” Then she turned to the others. “Dad says we can have a sleepover on Saturday!”

Her dad sighed. “Hopefully you’ll all be really, really tired…”

SEVEN

Izzy woke up on the Saturday morning and leaped out of bed, running to the window to see if it was raining. It had been spitting on and off the previous day, and all four of them had spent most of the time at school staring anxiously out of the classroom windows. They wouldn’t call the clean-up off if it was wet, of course, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

She dragged the curtains open hopefully – a greyish sort of day, but no actual rain. That was probably good. If it was too hot, it would be hard to be outside all day, working.

“Izzy!” Her dad was calling her. “Oh, you’re awake, that’s good. We should have some breakfast and get going.”

Izzy scrambled into some old clothes, and took a few minutes to tidy up her bedroom – the others
weren’t going to sleep there, there wasn’t room, but they’d be bound to come upstairs some time and she wanted it to look nice. She’d even vacuumed the carpet the day before, after she’d frantically tidied up downstairs. She’d carefully paced out the space on the living-room floor, and she was pretty sure there was enough room for them all to sleep, providing no one minded squashing up a bit.

She knew it was stupid to be so nervous about a sleepover but she’d never had one before – she’d never been on one, either, so all she knew was what happened in books. She hadn’t even had anyone over to her house this whole year at school. So it was reasonable to be a bit nervous, wasn’t it? Before her tidying-up spree, she and her dad had spent ages at the supermarket, trying to work out what to get for tea that everyone would like. It took even longer because Izzy insisted on reading the label on absolutely everything – even the biscuits – to check that they were properly vegetarian for Maya. And Fairtrade. And then they had to go back and change the loo rolls for recycled ones.

She looked round anxiously downstairs, and her dad shook his head. “Izzy, it’s spotless!”

“How did you know what I was doing?” she asked
– he hadn’t even been looking at her, he was making toast.

“Because you haven’t stopped worrying about the state of the house, or the fact that the grass needs cutting, or that our wallpaper’s a bit old-fashioned, ever since we got home on Saturday. Your friends are coming because they like
you
– not because they’re worried that we’ve got flowery wallpaper in the downstairs loo!”

“I wish we’d painted it,” Izzy muttered.

Her dad just sighed. “I suppose if you’re stressing about the house and this sleepover, it means at least you’re not worrying about the clean-up.”

Izzy stared up at him with panicky eyes. “Do you think we need to worry about it?” she asked through a mouthful of toast. She put the rest of the piece down on her plate. She hadn’t been very hungry to start with, and now she couldn’t eat a thing.

“No! Oh, for goodness’ sake, Iz! It’s fine. I shouldn’t have said anything.” Her dad eyed her anxiously. “Cheer up, sweetheart. It’s going to be a great day.”

“No one’s going to turn up, probably,” Izzy murmured.

Her dad rolled his eyes and grabbed her plate, emptying the unfinished toast into the bin. “All right.
That’s enough. Let’s get going now. I can’t sit here with you looking like a dead duck any longer.”

He swept her out to the truck, which he’d already packed with the bag of high-vis vests and heavy gloves, and the bundles of litter-pickers. They had to drive a slightly different way to the river, as of course they couldn’t take the truck through the park. Luckily there was a side road that went fairly close, so the skip could be left there. For anything really heavy, they’d just have to get lots of people to help carry it.

Izzy peered anxiously out of the front window as they arrived in the little road close to the river. “The skip isn’t there!”

“Izzy! It’s only nine o’clock! It’s not due till ten. Calm down, or I’m going to be raving by the end of the day.”

“Sorry.” Izzy leaned against his shoulder. “I know I’m being stupid. I can’t help it. I just keep worrying.”

“Mmmm.” Her dad shook his head. “Well, stop it. It’s going to be fine. It’s not raining. And even if no one else turns up, you and me and your friends and their families can still pick up loads of mess. So smile!” He was smiling too, but Izzy could hear a tired note in his voice. She’d been a pain this week, she knew it. Once in a while she had the horrible
thought that her dad wished she’d gone with her mum when they split up. It wasn’t very often that she thought it – hardly at all, really – but if ever he had, it would be now.

And she was only trying to get everything right, she thought miserably, staring out of the window. It was her idea. She would be the one who got blamed if stuff went wrong.

“What are you looking like a wet weekend for?”

Izzy jumped, nearly throttling herself on her seatbelt.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to make you jump like that, I thought you’d seen me.” Poppy eyed her anxiously through the window. “Are you OK? You were looking really miserable.”

“She’s stressing that no one’s going to turn up,” Izzy’s dad told Poppy, getting out of the truck.

“Well, I’m here, and so’s my mum, and my dad’s coming later when he’s done the supermarket shopping. And Alex is here, and at least six of his mates from the canoe club have promised they’re coming.” Poppy beamed at her. “So we might get two of them.”

“Has he brought his canoe?” Izzy asked worriedly.

“Yes,
of course
he has.” Poppy shook her head. “You
really are stressing, aren’t you?”

“Come on, you two, help me carry this lot.” Izzy’s dad handed them each a bundle of litter-pickers, and heaved down the big bag of vests and gloves.

“Excuse me! Are you the ones organising the clean-up?” An elderly lady with a dog was just turning into one of the houses.

Izzy nodded. “Yes,” she agreed cautiously, hoping that the lady wasn’t going to object about the posters they’d put up, or anything like that.

“Such a good idea! I’ll be along later, with my daughter.”

“Oh! Thanks!” Izzy beamed, and Poppy nudged her.

“You see! You’re just worrying for the sake of it.”

Two hours later, Izzy had stopped worrying, simply because she didn’t have the time. She was in charge of the sign-up sheets – the lady from the council had explained that they had to get everyone’s name and address, just in case anything went wrong – and people just kept on turning up. So far the local paper had sent a photographer, and loads of people had had to pose, beaming, with litter pickers. Four of Alex’s friends had arrived – including Maddy,
the girl he was secretly going out with, and Poppy’s mum had guilt-tripped Jake into helping too, so Alex was trying very hard not to let Jake work out what was going on. Poppy thought it was hysterical, and kept making unhelpful comments just where Jake couldn’t quite hear them, to make Alex panic. Izzy thought the photo the photographer had taken of them all lined up in their canoes was going to come out with Alex looking demented, he had such a fixed, panicked grin on his face.

“Hello, Izzy!”

Izzy flinched. She really hadn’t been expecting
them
to turn up. She stared at Ali, who was wearing very short shorts and a pair of flimsy sandals that weren’t really suitable for scruffing about on the side of a river. Lucy and Elspeth looked pretty much the same – except Elspeth had a floaty skirt on.

“Um, you might get a bit muddy…” Izzy murmured.

“We won’t,” Ali told her firmly – as if the mud wouldn’t dare.

“OK. Well, can you put down your names and addresses, please?”

“Why?” Lucy demanded.

“Er, because that’s the way we have to do it. We
have to count people. For Health and Safety.”

“That’s so stupid,” Lucy muttered, and Izzy sighed. No one else had complained. Why was it always these three?

“Hi, Maya!” Ali called, super-sizing her smile and waving madly.

Maya flicked a horrified look at Izzy, who just shrugged.

“Is your mum here?” Ali asked, looking around eagerly.

“No, she’s filming in Brazil.”

Izzy grinned. Maya had already told them all this, with a furious description of exactly what her mum’s flights were doing to the environment. Then she’d sighed and admitted that she wished she was going too – although obviously she wouldn’t have wanted to miss the clean-up. It was just that a luxury hotel with a spa and an infinity pool did sound nice. Even if it probably was an ecological disaster. “Mum kept leaving the hotel page open on her laptop,” Maya sighed. “It looked gorgeous.”

“Oh.” Ali was frowning. “I thought she would be.”

“Well, she isn’t!” Maya snapped back. She was getting really fed up with Ali trying to suck up to her because she was such a little celeb-junkie.

“Here.” Poppy’s mum hurriedly slung a high-vis vest round Ali, and shoved a couple more at Lucy and Elspeth. “Come and work on this bit.”

Ali looked round, as if she was planning to walk away, but her mum’s car was disappearing up the road already. She stomped off in her little gold sandals, twitching at the high-vis vest as if it actually hurt to wear it.

“I really, really hate her!” Maya hissed crossly. Then she sighed. “But I suppose I should have guessed she’d turn up. She’s desperate. Do you want a rest from taking the names, Izzy? You’ve been doing it for ages.”

Izzy nodded. “Yes please. I haven’t actually touched a bin bag yet.”

Maya grinned at her. “I don’t think you’re missing much…”

“I know, but I’d feel stupid if I didn’t do any picking up stuff. Here’s the sheets.” She passed them over to Maya, and took her gloves and black bin bag in exchange.

The river bank was already looking a bit clearer, but there was definitely going to be more work to be done tomorrow. Alex’s friends from the canoe club were picking stuff out of the water, but it was quite
tricky – if they tried to pull something heavy, they ended up tipping, and a couple of them had already come close to capsizing. Alex’s secret girlfriend, Maddy, had nearly gone in twice, and Alex had been so obviously fussing about her that Jake was now giving him suspicious looks.

Izzy went down to the edge of the water where they’d been piling up the stuff they were dragging out – there was the bike that Billy had got caught up in – or
a
bike, anyway, there looked to be bits of several different ones in the pile.

Alex waved at her, and she waved back, feeling glad that he wasn’t in a huff because he’d been blackmailed into helping.

“What are you trying to get out?” she yelled across the water to him.

“Another bike,” he called back. “We’ve done four so far.”

“This isn’t just a bike,” one of his mates said, as he grappled with it. “It’s a motorbike. Or half of one, anyway.”

Alex shrugged at Izzy. “Where does all this stuff come from?”

Izzy shook her head, smiling, and walked along the edge of the river, stuffing rubbish into her black bag.
It was sunny now, and she’d taken her jumper off. It was lovely feeling the hot sun on her arms. She was daydreaming a bit, imagining her sleepover later. The day was going so well, she’d stopped worrying about everybody hating the tea and being miserable and calling their parents to go home. Now she was imagining Poppy saying it was the best sleepover she’d ever been to, and please could she come to Izzy’s house again.

She didn’t notice Ali and Elspeth and Lucy, all holding sacks but not actually doing very much, sitting a little further up the bank, and watching her.

“Look!” Alex called to her, and she turned round, right on the edge of the bank, to see what he wanted. “It
is
a motorbike, or bits of it.” He was paddling towards her with a wheel balanced on the front of his canoe. “Weird, isn’t it? Maybe someone crashed it and threw it in in a strop?” His face changed suddenly and he scowled so angrily that Izzy flinched, wondering what she’d done. “Oi! Don’t you dare!”

Izzy teetered on the edge of the water, someone’s hand on her arm. For half a second she thought she’d stumbled – it was just too hard to believe that Ali and Elspeth were deliberately trying to push her into the
water. Lucy looked as though she couldn’t believe it either – she was hanging back, looking scared. Izzy clawed at the air, trying to save herself, but she was too late. She managed to grab at Ali’s high-vis jacket, but it wasn’t enough to stop her falling.