How to Get the Friends You Want (9 page)

When I wanted to be friends forever with Sasha, Tammy and Abina, there was a list of things I was scared might happen if they came to my house:

1 Mum cooking anything except frozen pizza

2 Dad saying something mad and meaning it

3 Primrose being a drama queen

4 The house looking as if an earthquake had hit it – which it mostly had, that earthquake being Primrose.

If I still wanted to be friends and they were coming to my house, there was a list of actions I would have to take to try and stop these things from happening:

1 Hide the vegetables

2 Make sure Dad wasn't around

3 Make sure Matt was

4 Do the housework myself – it's no good waiting for Mum to do it because she's always busy with the business, and Dad's motto is ‘Nature abhors a vacuum cleaner'.

Sasha, Tammy and Abina all had neat, tidy houses and non-embarrassing families. Even their pets were tidily outside. They were organised and calm; they probably never got in the kind of state I'd have been in if I still wanted to be friends and everything kicked off just before they were about to arrive. But I didn't want to stay friends forever, so I let it wash over me.

Sasha, Tammy and Abina were coming at two o'clock and we didn't start lunch until half past one. As it happened, Mum had cooked frozen pizza, but she'd also boiled up a vat of sprouts to go with it, and even a handful of sprouts will make your house smell like something's died in your drains.

Dad had been holding out all week to talk to
the agony aunts because he was fed up with his footie friends not having any people skills. They were still teasing him and calling him Daphne, but now they were also annoyed with him for dropping out of the five-a-side.

However, when he did his conference call, the agony aunts kept laughing at him because they thought he was joking when he wasn't.

‘They said honesty was the best policy when we were talking about Jeannie's letter from Guilty of Gossington, who was wondering whether to tell his girlfriend he'd gone off her, but when we finished talking about the letters and Kay asked us if we liked her new hair colour...'

‘Oh, dear – you didn't,' sighed Mum.

‘Well, pardon me for having a point of view, but purple was bad enough – blue-black makes her look like a witch in a wig.'

Primrose was texting under the table and refusing to eat her sprouts so Mum was getting wound up with her, but Primrose didn't care. She was away with the love-fairies, all gooey-eyed, like she always is when she's texting with Matt.

‘He says we should have a special celebration for our six-month anniversary,' she said. ‘We're going to wear the same clothes and go for a walk on the cliff path, just like the first time we went out.'

That's dating, Polgotherick-style.

‘Six months isn't till after Christmas,' said Mum.

‘You probably won't even still be going out with him,' said Dad.

Primrose gave a strangled squeal and stood up, scraping her chair across the floor. She's got super-sonic emotions; she can go from gooey-eyed to wild-eyed in under two seconds.

‘How could you say that?'

She stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. We heard her footsteps stamping away up the stairs.

‘What?' goes Dad. ‘It's true!'

‘Just because something's true, that doesn't mean you have to say it,' said Mum.

Dad normally does the dishes on a Sunday but he got in a huff and said he was late for his match. He looked for his notepad and voice-recorder, muttering away to himself that at least you knew where you were with work and you also knew where you were with sport.

‘Someone scores a great goal, you tell it like it is. Someone plays like a hippo with a headache, you tell it like it is...'

‘Can you do the dishes then, Peony?' said Mum.

‘Sorry, but not really – I've still got to clean out Dennis before my friends arrive.'

I opened both the doors of his hutch and fetched a black bag and a brush. Dennis got all territorial. He crouched behind his food bowl ready to pounce.

Mum gathered the dirty plates noisily and dumped them in the sink. She turned the taps on so hard the water sprayed all over the place like a fountain in a force nine gale.

Right then, there was a rat-a-tat-tat on the front door. Dennis thumped hard with his back feet, making his hutch floor rattle like a drum. Dad was nearest the door, so he opened it, just in time for Sasha, Tammy and Abina to hear the ear-splitting scream that suddenly erupted from Primrose's bedroom.

Dennis thumped again. Primrose started to wail. I read in Amazing Animals of the World that a lion's roar can carry up to five miles away, which sounds impressive until you hear what Primrose can do.

Mum grabbed a tea-towel and disappeared up the stairs to try and stop her from waking up the Australians. The sudden movement spooked Dennis. He burst out of his hutch and shot round the room, making Sasha, Tammy and Abina spill back onto the doorstep.

Dad said, ‘It was lovely meeting you, girls,' as he edged past to go to his match. Then he remarked
on what nice shoes they were wearing, looking back at me in a smug way as if to say, ‘See, I can do it if I want to!'

I jumped up and got to the door just in time to stop Dennis from disappearing down the front steps. I scooped him up and ushered Sasha, Tammy and Abina back inside.

We heard Mum's voice upstairs saying something soothing and then Primrose screamed, ‘Go away, Mum! You aren't helping!' Mum didn't go away, but went on trying to talk her down, which only made her wail again.

‘Do you mind if I finish cleaning out Dennis?' I said to Sasha, Tammy and Abina.

They sat round the half-cleared kitchen table, watching while I wrestled the old newspaper out of Dennis's hutch and tried to sweep up the old hay, with him tugging at the brush. I didn't do that nose-under-hand thing so I knew it would get messy.

I managed to get the paper and hay into the black bag, and then Dennis abandoned ship and dived in after it, kicking around furiously in it, making bits fly back out.

‘He's very lively,' Sasha said, picking up a stray sprout and popping it back in the bowl.

‘He's sweet,' said Abina.

Primrose yelled again and Dennis did one of
his dashes. Tammy only just lifted her feet up in time.

I lined Dennis's hutch with fresh paper, put the hay in the bedroom end and gave him fresh food and water. He arrived back from his dash just as I finished, jumped up into his hutch, grabbed the food bowl in his teeth and tipped it over.

‘All done!' I said, cheerfully. ‘Would you like to see round the house?'

As we went up the first flight of stairs we could hear what Primrose and Mum were saying.

‘Happiness has made me fat!' Primrose wailed.

‘But most of your clothes fit fine,' Mum said.

‘He wants me to wear the dress I was wearing on The Day!'

‘He won't care what you wear. What about this yellow one?'

‘Noooooooooooooo!'

As we went up the second flight to Primrose and my bedrooms we saw clothes strewn over the landing and, looking in at her door, Mum sitting on the bed amongst a heap of clothes, trying to stay calm and reasonable.

‘Primrose darling, he loves you. Even if you have put on a little, teeny, tiny bit of weight...'

‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!'

Mum mouthed, ‘Hello,' to Sasha, Tammy and Abina – or she might have said it out loud, but we
couldn't hear her. We went into my bedroom and closed the door.

‘Wow – you really do like dogs!' Tammy said.

‘And you've got so many books about animals,' goes Sasha.

We had a look through some of my books and they seemed really interested, especially when I showed them the sections on pot-bellied pigs and fancy rabbits in the one about unusual pets.

The noise was quite loud in my bedroom and Primrose can keep it up for hours, so I suggested we went back downstairs. When I opened the door we were hit by a wall of sound as Primrose yelled, ‘He's going to dump me – I know he is! I might as well finish with him now and get it over with!'

We sat around trying to watch TV for a while, and then Mum came through on her way back down to the kitchen. She said Matt was coming over later.

What she meant was that it would soon be over. Primrose would wash her face and put on some make-up, find a baggy sweater to hide in and melt into Matt's arms.

Mum didn't stop to chat – you never feel like talking when you've been Primrosed. You feel like moving to the Antarctic and living with the seals.

‘Hmm...' I said, when she had gone. ‘This might not be pretty.'

‘Are they going to have a big row, do you think?' said Sasha. ‘Is she going to dump him?'

‘I don't know,' I shrugged.

‘Perhaps it would be better if we weren't here when he comes.'

We played on the PlayStation after that, with the sound of Mum tidying up in the kitchen coming up from downstairs and Primrose flinging stuff around in her bedroom above.

‘We don't seem to have come on a very good day,' Tammy said later, as they were leaving.

‘Oh, it's just the normal Sunday,' I said. ‘Next week, you could come for lunch if you like.'

‘You'd be most welcome,' Mum said. ‘There's always plenty to eat if you like winter veg!'

The chance of Sasha, Tammy and Abina wanting to come again was about the same as the chance of Primrose and Matt making it to their six-month anniversary.

It felt a bit sad but in a way, it really couldn't have gone better.

I didn't go to Sasha's after school on Monday or Tammy's on Wednesday because they were practising their Young Voices and I said I was too. They probably thought I was practising with my team, but the truth was Toby and Jess hadn't invited me and I didn't want to keep asking.

I was practising though, just on my own. I wrote my speech and re-wrote it, until it was the best I
could make it, and then I learned it by heart, like Sasha and her team, until I got it perfect.

It was the Cornish regional final and the two top teams would be going on from there to the South West final in Bristol. When Mum and Dad and me arrived at the hall, it was already filling up.

The teams had their own section of seating on one side at the front, and the judges' chairs were in the middle, behind a long table.

Mum and Dad went to find some seats and I took my place with Toby and Jess. We were in the row behind Sasha, Tammy and Olivia, and they turned round to wish us good luck. Everyone was very excited.

Looking around the hall I saw Mum and Dad sitting near the back and a few rows down from them, Toby's mum and dad with his little sister, Leah. Jess's mum was close to the front but I couldn't see her dad, so maybe he had to work late that night.

By the time the judges filed in, the hall was packed. The first teams to go up were from Truro, Penzance and St Ives, and then it was Sasha's turn. Her team looked perfect up there on the stage, a perfect matching set of school uniforms and tidy, tied-back hair.

Their speeches were perfect too. They stuck to the correct timings for each part, even the
bit where the Chair takes questions from the audience, which is tricky to time. They were so going to win.

We had to go straight on after them. Toby was in shorts but at least they were proper grey ones, so it looked as if he was wearing school uniform from the knees up. Jess didn't normally wear uniform to school – no-one knew how she got away with it, but she had her own versions of blue tops over grey skirts or trousers. So she'd had to borrow a school sweatshirt, and it was a bit too big. I was wearing my best school uniform because I wanted to do my best for Toby and Jess.

As we went up on stage, I caught sight of Jess's dad at the back of the hall. He must have arrived too late to get a place next to her mum. The head judge jotted something on his notepad and then nodded to us to begin.