Tthe Sleepover Club on the Beach Read Free Page B

mum really taking us to the seaside?” she squeaked. “That is so-o cool! I’ve got the cutest bikini! It’s pink with darling little—”
    I pretended to gasp. “Pink! Wow! You don’t say?”
    My mates were on the phone all evening, babbling happily about sunbathing and candy floss and amusement arcades. Butinstead of getting excited with them, I started to feel slightly fed up. It didn’t seem to occur to my mates that I might have ideas of my own. I kept saying, “There’s more to Suffolk than amusements, you know.”
    “Like what?” demanded Kenny.
    Like, it’s the perfect place for adventures!
    But I just said carelessly, “Oh, Mum’s got loads of local info. There’s this old city which totally disappeared under the sea.”
    “Big hairy deal!” said Kenny scornfully. “I can’t exactly see us playing the fruit machines underwater!”
    Modern kids are so unromantic! Thingybobby kids would fall over themselves at the prospect of a drowned city.
    “Plus there’s some cliffs which are like, haunted by ghostly sweethearts,” I said eagerly. “And there’s this church where that Civil War guy Cromwell’s soldiers totally blasted the door with their muskets. And once—”
    Kenny made loud yawning sounds. “Bo-oring.”
    I sighed. Maybe when we actually crossed over the border into Suffolk, my mates would change their minds.
    I know, I thought. I’ll get Mum to pack us a picnic exactly like the ones they have in those books.
    I grabbed some scrap paper, thought for a minute, and started scribbling a list:
potted shrimps, ginger beer, Spam
…
    Three days later we were bowling down wide country roads with our sunroof open. It was horribly early still, about 8am, but it was really sunny and warm.
    Suddenly Rosie said, “Aren’t you hot in that cardi, Lyndz?”
    “No,” I said fiercely. Though actually, I was. Very.
    “Those old-fashioned hair slides look cute though,” she said quickly.
    “Not so sure about the little ankle socks,” said Kenny under her breath.
    OK, maybe I’m a really sad person, but I felt like I had to dress the part at least. I had to show a
bit
of faith. Otherwise how was our Thingybobby adventure ever going to materialise?
    It’s not like I was getting much support.
    Mum had totally put her foot down about the picnic. “I
refuse
to get up at the crack of dawn and pack a picnic,” she’d said irritably. “Anyway potted shrimps are 95% pure butter! As for Spam, who
knows
what they put in that stuff! And you
hate
milk! No, Lyndz, we’ll stop off at a McDonalds instead.”
    I don’t know what things are coming to, do you? Mums in books always get up to make their children’s picnics. And OK, so I don’t
generally
drink milk, it’s true, but it sounds so lovely in Thingybobby books – all warm and frothy and fresh from the cow.
    But I didn’t mind SO much about the picnic. It was my mates who were really depressing me.
    I did
try
to get them in an adventurous frame of mind.
    “Uncle Phil’s house is really near the sea,” I babbled. “I wonder if we’ll hear the waves swooshing at night. Hey! Maybe if we hunt around, we’ll find the secret tunnels under the cliffs, where old-time smugglers stashed their loot.”
    But I might as well have been talking tomyself, because my mates just gave me pitying looks, then went back to arguing about which to play first, Steps or Westlife. Then Mum said crossly, “Hey! When do I get to listen to MY music?”
    She meant it too! We actually had let her play her cheesy oldies! I didn’t know
where
to put myself.
    But I haven’t told you the worst thing yet.
    Fliss’s stepdad had given Fliss her very own mobile phone.
    Apparently, after she agreed to come on this trip, she went into a Fliss-style panic about being stranded miles from civilisation. So Andy bought her a phone! A seriously expensive one with about a zillion different functions. So of course Fliss had to keep taking her new toy out of its trendy little case to