Sari Sleepover

by Narinder Dhami

  Asha groaned. “You know that necklace, the one that Fliss was wearing?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What about it?”

  “I think I lost it round at your place,” Asha said urgently. “You haven’t seen it, have you?”

  I shook my head. “I’m pretty sure it’s not in my bedroom,” I replied. “I’ve just tidied it up.”

  Asha groaned again. “My aunt’s running round looking for it like a mad thing! I daren’t tell her I’ve lost it or she’ll be on the phone to my mum in Delhi straight away!”

  “Why’s Mrs Chopra so worried about it?” I asked. “Is it one of her favourites or something? I mean, it’s not like it’s valuable or anything. You said it was a fake.”

  I could hear Asha take a gulp at the other end of the line. “Actually, it wasn’t a fake at all!”

  “What?” I breathed, horrified.

  “It’s real gold, and those red stones are real rubies!” Asha hissed. “I didn’t think Auntie would mind, not if I returned everything safely.”

  “But – but you told us everything was fake!” I wailed.

  “I know, I know!” Asha muttered. “But I wanted you to like me, so I just borrowed it…” Her voice trailed away miserably.

  “So how much is it worth?” I asked faintly.

  “Auntie says it’s insured for a thousand pounds!” Asha replied.

  I nearly fell off the bed. A thousand pounds! That was a fortune! And Fliss had been prancing around in it with her teddy-bear pyjamas on!

  “We’ve got to find it,” Asha went on, “or I’m history! Boarding school, here I come!”

  “Look, one of us had better ring Fliss and see if she remembers what she did with it,” I said. “I’ll do it, if you don’t want your aunt to hear. And I’ll ring the others too, to see if they remember anything.”

  “Oh, thanks, Frankie,” Asha said gratefully. “I’m just going round to see Kenny and tell her what’s happened.”

  “OK, I’ll call you back at the McKenzies,” I said, and rang off.

  I tapped in the Proudloves’ number and bounced up and down impatiently while I waited for them to answer. We just had to find that necklace. Maybe Mrs Chopra didn’t know yet that Asha had borrowed it, but if my mum met her and mentioned anything about all the dressing-up we’d done last night, Mrs Chopra would soon put two and two together. And then we’d all be dead!

  “Hello?”

  It was Callum, Fliss’s little brother. For ‘brother’, read ‘pest’.

  “Callum, is Fliss there?”

  “Is Fliss there, please?” Callum said in a smug voice.

  “Is Fliss there, please?” I repeated, gritting my teeth. I couldn’t waste time having a go!

  I heard the little creep laughing as he went off to find Fliss. Boy, was I glad I didn’t have any brothers!

  “Hello?” Fliss had picked up the phone.

  “Fliss, it’s Frankie,” I said urgently. “It’s about that necklace of Mrs Chopra’s you were wearing last night.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, Asha’s just phoned me. Mrs Chopra’s going mad because she can’t find it,” I explained. “Asha doesn’t remember taking it home with her, and she wondered what you did with it.”

  “Does she think I nicked it or something?” Fliss asked indignantly.

  “Don’t be daft, Sidebotham!” I snapped, before remembering that Fliss was now Proudlove. “Now what did you do? Did you wear it all night?”

  “No,” said Fliss slowly. “I mean, yes. I think I took it off this morning and left it on your bed when I got dressed.”

  It was my turn to groan now. I’d just made my bed, and there was no sign of the necklace.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Fliss moaned. “If it’s lost, maybe I could buy her another one. I mean, it’s not like it was valuable or anything.”

  “I hope you’re sitting down, Fliss,” I said grimly. “That necklace was worth a thousand quid!”

  The screech from the other end of the line nearly deafened me. “How much?”

  “It was real gold and rubies!” I told her. “And if Mrs Chopra finds out it’s Asha’s fault it’s gone missing, she’s in big trouble!”

  “I didn’t know!” Fliss wailed. “Asha said it was a fake!”

  “Yeah,” I said grimly. “Look, I’m going to ring the others to see if they’ve got any bright ideas. Do you think you could come over and help me look?”

  “I can’t,” Fliss said dismally. “We’re going out to visit my aunt and uncle, and we won’t be back till late.”

  “All right, we’ll see you at school tomorrow and let you know how we get on,” I told her. Then I said goodbye and rang off.

  Next I dialled Rosie’s number, and told her what had happened.

  “A thousand quid?” she spluttered.

  “Yep, and if we don’t find it, Asha’s off to boarding school,” I pointed out. “Do you remember seeing the necklace this morning?”

  “Fliss wasn’t wearing it at breakfast,” Rosie said slowly. “I was sitting opposite her, and I would’ve noticed. Do you want me to come round and help you look?”

  “That’d be brill,” I said. “But you’ll have to make up a good excuse. We don’t want the oldies getting suspicious!”

  “OK,” Rosie agreed, and rang off.

  Then I called Lyndz, and she offered to come over too. Last of all, I called Kenny.

  “Yeah, Asha’s here,” she said in a low voice, “but I can’t talk much ’cos Molly the Monster’s around. If she hears anything, she’ll shop us to Mrs Chopra straight away!”

  Molly is Kenny’s sister. She hates us, and we hate her – simple.

  “Can you and Asha come back here and help us look?” I asked urgently. “Lyndz and Rosie are coming.”

  “All right,” Kenny agreed. “But we’ll have to think of a good excuse!”

  Twenty minutes later the rest of the Sleepover Club, minus Fliss and plus Asha, were on the doorstep. My mum could hardly believe her eyes when they all trooped in.

  “Back again so soon?” she remarked, looking pretty suspicious. “What’s going on?”

  That’s the trouble with my mum. She’s just a bit too sharp.

  “We’re going to work on our Diwali project,” Kenny said innocently. “Asha’s going to help us.”

  “Oh.” My mum seemed to swallow that one! “Well, I hope you all enjoy your visit to the Hindu temple tomorrow.”

  We all legged it upstairs to my bedroom and shut the door firmly.

  “Where shall we start?” Asha asked, looking pretty desperate.

  “Let’s split up,” I suggested. “Kenny, Asha and Lyndz, you take that side of the room. Me and Rosie will search this side.”

  We went all round my bedroom centimetre by centimetre. We looked everywhere. But there was no sign of the necklace.

  “I’m done for!” Asha slumped down on my bed, and put her head in her hands.

  “Maybe Mrs Chopra won’t find out you borrowed it,” Lyndz suggested hopefully.

  “Well, Frankie’s mum knows about all that dressing-up we did,” Kenny pointed out. “And if she mentions it to Mrs Chopra or to my mum…”

  “That’s the trouble with parents,” I said bitterly. “They talk to each other!”

  “So what are we going to do?” Lyndz asked.

  We all stared at each other. None of us had a clue.

  Then Kenny gave a screech which nearly made us all jump out of our skins.

  “I’ve got it!” she yelled. “I bet I know where that necklace is!”

  “Where?” we all yelled back.

  “In Fliss’s sleepover bag!” Kenny said triumphantly. “I bet she accidentally put it in when she packed up her stuff!”

  Asha had already jumped off the bed, looking excited. “Quick, let’s go and ring her!”

  We all piled out of my room and into my parents’, where I picked up the phone and dialled the Proudloves’ number. We all held our breath
while it rang – but then I gave a groan of disappointment as the answering-machine came on.

  “Hello, you have reached the Proudlove residence,” Fliss’s mum was saying in her best posh voice. “I’m so sorry we’re not at home at the moment to take your call…”

  “They’ve gone,” I hissed at the others, as Mrs Proudlove wittered on.

  “Leave a message,” Rosie suggested.

  “There’s no point,” I said, replacing the receiver. “Fliss said they wouldn’t be back till late. Anyway, her mum might hear it!”

  “So what do we do now?” Asha asked, looking miserable again.

  “We’ll just have to wait till we see Fliss at school tomorrow,” I told her.

  “What do you reckon boarding school’s like?” I asked Kenny, as we walked to the Chopras’ house the following morning. Because it was Asha’s first day at Cuddington Primary, Kenny was going to call for her, and me, Lyndz and Rosie had decided yesterday afternoon that we’d go too. I think we all wanted to see just how upset Mrs Chopra was about losing her necklace.

  “It’s gross!” Kenny said firmly.

  “How do you know?” I asked. “Maybe Asha’s getting all wound up over nothing. She might like it.”

  “Would you?” Kenny snorted.

  I shook my head. I felt really sorry for Asha. I’d hate to have to leave home and my own bedroom and all my stuff and be at school twenty-four hours a day! We just had to find that necklace.

  “I’d hate it,” Rosie said gloomily.

  “Maybe Asha did take it home yesterday and she’s found it by now,” Lyndz suggested. But she didn’t sound too hopeful.

  We knocked on the Chopras’ door, and Mrs Chopra opened it. She looked really miserable at first, but she brightened up a bit when she saw us.

  “Hello, girls,” she said, picking her glasses up from the hall table and putting them on. “Asha’s just coming.” She turned and yelled over her shoulder. “Asha! Don’t keep your friends waiting!”

  “Coming.” Asha hurried down the stairs, swinging her school bag. We could tell just by looking at her face that the necklace hadn’t turned up yet.

  “Have a good day,” Mrs Chopra said. “And enjoy your visit to the Hindu temple. Oh, and by the way –” she smiled at us, looking a bit more cheerful “– I’ve got a Diwali surprise for you this afternoon!”

  “Oh, what?” Kenny asked eagerly.

  Mrs Chopra wagged her finger at us. “Wait and see!”

  Then the phone in the hall rang.

  “Excuse me, girls.” Mrs Chopra picked up the receiver. “Oh, hello, Sushila. No, I haven’t found my necklace yet…” Her face dropped and she looked really miserable again. And that was all we heard before Asha shut the door.

  “I feel really bad about this,” Asha muttered as we trailed dismally down the path to the gate. “Auntie loves that necklace. My uncle gave it to her when they got married.”

  “Well, maybe Fliss will have it after all,” Lyndz said, trying to be cheerful.

  “So why didn’t she find it yesterday?” Asha asked.

  “She probably didn’t have time to unpack her sleepover stuff before she went out,” Rosie chimed in.

  We were all pretty quiet as we walked to school. Fliss was our last hope. If she hadn’t somehow accidentally packed the necklace away in her sleepover bag, where were we going to look next? I’d run out of ideas, and from the looks on their faces, so had the others.

  Of course, Fliss just had to be late. We all stood in the playground nearly wetting ourselves with anxiety and looking at our watches every two seconds, wondering where she was. To pass the time, Kenny pointed out some of the other people in our class to Asha.

  “That’s Ryan Scott and Danny McCloud,” she said, nodding at Ryan and Danny who were playing footie as usual. “Fliss is madly in love with Ryan! And that dozy-looking girl is Alana Banana.”

  “Banana? That’s a funny name,” Asha remarked.

  “Her real name’s Palmer,” I explained, “but she’s got about as much brain as a banana! She’s pretty friendly with those two snooty-looking girls over there, the M&Ms.”

  “Yeah, our worst enemies!” Rosie added.

  “The Queen and the Goblin,” Lyndz chimed in.

  Right at that moment Fliss ran into the playground, looking pretty breathless and irritable. We all leapt up and down like mad things, and started waving at her.

  “Look!” I nudged Kenny. “She’s got the same bag she brought to the sleepover.”

  “Well, she must have taken her sleepover stuff out to put her school stuff in,” Asha said gloomily. “That means she can’t have found the necklace!”

  “Don’t give up yet,” I told her as Fliss rushed over to us.

  “We didn’t get back home till really late last night and we overslept!” she grumbled.

  “Never mind that!” Kenny leapt on Fliss and started trying to wrestle her pink rucksack off her shoulder.

  Fliss gave a screech of annoyance. “Get off, Kenny! What’re you doing?”

  “We thought the necklace might have fallen into your bag without you realising,” Lyndz explained, trying to calm Fliss down.

  “Oh!” Fliss’s eyes opened wide. Then her face fell again. “But I’d have seen it when I packed my school stuff this morning.”

  “Maybe you were in too much of a hurry to notice,” I suggested.

  “And your rucksack has got loads of pockets,” Rosie pointed out.

  “Can we look, Fliss?” Asha asked.

  “’Course you can.” Fliss swung the rucksack off her shoulder and put it down on the ground. “I feel really bad about this, Asha.”

  “Don’t be, it was all my fault,” Asha sighed as Kenny undid the rucksack.

  Fliss had so much stuff in there, it was a wonder she could ever find anything! There was a pink Filofax, a bag of fun-sized Crunchies, a huge, bulging pink pencil case covered with silver hearts, a pink hairbrush and matching comb and a bag of about twenty different hair slides, some school books, a list of spellings to learn, a fluffy pink purse (yeah, you’ve guessed it, Fliss really loves pink!), a packet of chewing-gum, a bottle of sparkly pink nail varnish… It just went on and on. Have you seen Mary Poppins? Well, you know that bit where she pulls loads of things out of her bag? That was exactly what Fliss’s bag was like. I don’t think we’d have been surprised if we’d found Callum in there too!

  “Oh, rats!” Kenny said as the bell went before we’d finished going through the pockets. “We’ll have to finish looking in the classroom.”

  Fliss stuffed everything back in, and we legged it into school. We didn’t want Asha to be late into class, not when it was her very first day.

  “Hello, you must be Asha.” Mrs Weaver, the register under her arm, reached the classroom door at the same time as we did. “Welcome to Cuddington.”

  “Thanks, Miss,” Asha said politely, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. I wondered if Mrs Chopra had warned Mrs Weaver that Asha had been in loads of trouble at her school in India – I hoped not!

  “I expect Frankie and the others have told you that we’re doing a topic on Diwali,” Mrs Weaver went on. “I’m sure you’ll be able to help us out.”

  “Yes, I’d like that,” Asha replied.

  We’d already arranged with Mrs Weaver that Asha would be sitting on our table, so as soon as we’d all sat down, we started going through the rest of Fliss’s rucksack. We searched carefully through every single pocket, but there was still no sign of the necklace.

  “Oh, double rats!” Kenny said crossly when we finally gave up. “I was sure it was going to be in there!”

  “Maybe it’s tangled up in your pyjamas or something, Fliss,” Lyndz suggested, “and you didn’t notice when you took them out this morning.”

  “I’ll have a look when I get home tonight,” Fliss muttered, looking really upset.

  “Right, everyone, here’s the coach.” Mrs Weaver got up from her desk.

  I suddenly
remembered that this morning we were visiting a Hindu temple in Leicester. We’d been so worried about the necklace, I’d completely forgotten!

  “Just remember that the temple is a holy place, and I expect you to be on your best behaviour.” Mrs Weaver glared round at us all. “Is that clear?”

  We all nodded. Everyone got up and rushed out of the classroom to try and get the best seats on the coach, but we just trailed miserably after them. We were so depressed, we didn’t even try to fight Ryan Scott and his mates for the back seat, like we usually did.

  “If we don’t find the necklace, what are we going to do?” Rosie asked as the coach pulled out of the playground.

  “We’ll just have to hope that Frankie’s mum doesn’t speak to Mrs Chopra and tell her all about the dressing-up,” Kenny said grimly. “That’s our only chance.”

  “And we can still keep looking for it,” Lyndz said hopefully.

  The problem was, we were running out of places to look.

  The Hindu temple didn’t look that brilliant from the outside. Mrs Weaver had shown us pictures of temples in India that were very old and made of carved stone with big gold towers, but this one just looked like a pretty normal building. That was before we got inside, though! When we did, I finally forgot all about Mrs Chopra’s necklace for a bit.

  The inside of the temple was amazing. It was made of white marble with paintings on the walls, and there were red carpets on the floor. Asha told us that when people came to the temple to worship, they sat on the carpets instead of on chairs. But the best bit was the statues. There were four statues standing in a row, and they were enormous – much bigger, even, than Mrs Weaver. One of them had an elephant’s head and a normal body, and one of them was blue all over! And all the statues had these beautiful garlands of fresh flowers round their necks.

  We started asking Asha loads of questions, and she told us that the blue statue was the god Krishna, and the one with the elephant’s head was called Ganesha, and he was the God of Wisdom.

  “But why has he got an elephant’s head?” Kenny wanted to know.

  Asha was about to explain, when a tubby little man came hurrying over to us.

  “Welcome to our temple,” he said, beaming all over his round face. “I’m Mr Patel, and I’ll be showing you round. If anyone has any questions about the temple or about the Hindu religion, please do ask me.”