Narinder Dhami - Starring The Sleepover Club

I don’t crimp my hair very often, because it takes ages, but I really wanted to look good in our sleepover video. After I’d done my hair, I painted my nails silver. I love silver nail varnish, and I’m allowed to wear it sometimes at weekends, if The Oldies are in a good mood. I was hoping that tonight I could get away without them noticing.

Wait a minute, the man at the video shop desk is giving us funny looks. Maybe we ought to pretend we’re looking at the films. Come on, Nathan’s over the other side of the shop now, so we should be OK. Just keep an eye out for him, that’s all.

Well, when I finally made it downstairs, carrying my sleepover kit and my sleeping bag, my dad raised his eyebrows.

“What happened to that scruffy little girl who used to be our daughter?” he said to my mum.

“Oh, zip it, Dad,” I said. “I just threw on the first things I could find.”

“It looks like you just threw on some silver nail varnish too,” said my mum.

“This is a special occasion, Mum,” I said. “When I’m a famous actress, people will be paying thousands of pounds to get their hands on this video.”

Did I mention to you that I want to be an actress when I grow up? That’s why I was really looking forward to tonight. It was going to be my very first chance to see myself on film.

“Come on then, Michelle Pfeiffer,” said my mum, “I’ll run you over to Fliss’s.”

“OK,” I said. Fliss doesn’t live that far away from us, but I had all my sleepover stuff to carry, and besides, it looked like it was going to rain, which would wash all the crimping out of my hair quicker than you can say “Bad Hair Day”.

“Mum,” I said when we were in the car and on our way, “can we—?”

“No,” said my mum.

“What do you mean, no?” I glared at her. “You didn’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Oh, yes I do.” My mum turned into Fliss’s road. “You were going to say, ‘Can we get a camcorder?’”

I was speechless. Parents can really make you mad sometimes, can’t they?

“Well, why can’t we?”

“Because they’re too expensive, that’s why,” my mum said. “Do you know how much they cost, Frankie? Six or seven hundred pounds. Which reminds me.” We stopped at some traffic lights, and she turned to look hard at me. “No fooling around tonight. Do exactly what Fliss’s mum tells you. Because if anything happens to that camcorder, you and your friends are going to be paying for it out of your pocket money for a very, very long time.”

“Oh, Mum,” I groaned as we pulled up outside Fliss’s house. “Have I ever let you down before?”

“Yes, you have.”

“Bye, then,” I said quickly, and dived out of the car before she could get launched on a list of sleepover disasters.

I was just about to open Fliss’s gate when Kenny’s dad’s car pulled up, and Kenny jumped out. I stared at her. She was still wearing her Leicester City top because that’s all she ever wore when she wasn’t at school. But she wasn’t wearing her favourite pair of jeans with holes in the knees or her Timberland boots. Instead she was wearing brand-new jeans and proper shoes. With heels. And she’d only gone and crimped her hair.

“You’ve crimped your hair!” I said.

“So have you!” Kenny stared back at me, and we both started to laugh. “We’re going to look like twins on this video!”

A little red car stopped by the kerb while we were still laughing. Rosie’s mum waved to us from the driver’s seat, and then Rosie got out. She looked really cool in a long skirt and a matching top. And her hair was crimped.

Rosie looked at me and Kenny, and her face went pink.

“You’ve crimped your hair!” she gasped.

“I think we’ve already had this conversation,” said Kenny.

“We’re triplets now!” I said, and we all started to giggle.

Then I looked over Kenny’s shoulder, and saw Lyndz walking up the road with her brother Tom. Lyndz looked good in a pink skirt and a black top. But guess what she’d done to her hair?

“Oh-oh,” I said. “Crimped hair alert!”

“Oh!” Lyndz gasped when she saw the rest of us. “You’ve—”

“Crimped your hair!” we all chimed in. “Just like you!”

“Wow,” Tom said, grinning all over his face. “Looks like a hairdresser’s worst nightmare.”

Lyndz gave him a shove.

“Get lost, moron,” she said.

Still laughing, Tom went off, and we all stood outside Fliss’s house, and looked at each other and our crimped hair.

“Oh, well,” said Lyndz with a big grin, “I think we all look great.”

“Come on,” Kenny said, pushing open the gate. “I’m dying to get inside and get filmed!”

We all hurried up the path. I rang the bell, and Fliss opened the door. She was wearing a spotless, cream-coloured lacy dress with matching tights and shoes, and her hair was piled high on her head. It had been stuck with pins all over to keep it up, and it looked pretty uncomfortable. She took one look at our hair, and burst out laughing.

“You’ve all crimped your hair!”

“Yes, we had noticed,” I said.

“Is that the girls, Fliss?” Andy, Fliss’s mum’s boyfriend, came out of the living-room with a camcorder balanced on his shoulder. He stopped and moved it slowly in our direction. Immediately we all started squealing and giggling and shoving each other.

“Come on, girls, give us a smile!” Andy said.

We all began to wave and smile at the camera. This was certainly going to be one sleepover we would never forget.

So there we all were, sitting in a row on Mrs Sidebotham’s cream-coloured sofa, trying not to look bored out of our skulls. Which we were, actually.

“Oh, come on, girls.” Andy sighed from behind the camcorder. “Do something interesting, can’t you?”

We all looked down at our feet. Andy sighed again, and lowered the camcorder.

“What’s the matter with you?” he said, “You don’t usually sit here and do nothing when you come round for one of these sleepovers, do you?”

We all looked at each other. No, of course we didn’t usually sit there and do nothing when we had a sleepover. But today was different. Today we were being filmed, and although Andy wasn’t exactly Fliss’s real dad, he was still sort of like a parent. That meant that some of the things we might have done, we couldn’t do. So the safest thing was to sit on the sofa and do absolutely nothing. After all, as my grandma says, why go looking for trouble?

When we’d first arrived at Fliss’s, it had been fun being filmed. Fliss’s mum had made a great big tea, and we’d all sat down to eat, while Andy kept dodging around the table trying to film us all. It took us about ten minutes to get over the urge to wave and grin like an idiot every time he pointed the camera in our direction, and then after that we were OK.

It was after tea was over that things started to go wrong. If it had been a normal sleepover, there were lots of things we could have done. Sometimes we just used to sit and talk, until it was time to go to bed. But a lot of the things we talked about were Private and Top Secret, and we didn’t feel like talking about things like that with Andy and his camcorder sticking to us like glue.

One of the other things we do when we go to Fliss’s is think of ways to annoy her snobby neighbours. They’re called Charles and Jessica Watson-Wade (yes, really) and they have a baby called Bruno, which I thought was a dog’s name. The last time we slept over at Fliss’s, we had a killer of a time winding-up the Watson-Wades. Fliss’s mum went mad (and so did every other mum and dad), but it was worth it. The problem was, how could we play Winding-up the Watson-Wades when Andy and his camera were right behind us?