Annabel's Starring Role

by Holly Webb

  “We have to tell Mr Hatton what they did!” she spat, as soon as she was within earshot.

  Cara and Emily looked at each other anxiously, but left it to Max to point out the problem with this.

  He didn’t mince words. “Are you mad? You know what he’s like. He’ll probably put us in detention for telling tales, and then make mean jokes about it in French for the rest of the year, so that everyone knows. No way.”

  Amy scowled even more, but didn’t attempt to argue – Max was right. Mr Hatton was deeply unpredictable, which was why everyone was scared of him.

  “Of course,” Max mused, “you could just make sure he finds out. Without actually telling him.”

  “How?” Amy asked eagerly, her eyes lighting up.

  “Could we get someone else to tell him?” asked Emily hopefully.

  “No. You need to tell him without him realizing what you’re doing somehow. I know! French tomorrow morning – when he does conversation—”

  All three girls groaned. Conversation was Mr Hatton’s pet form of torture. At the end of most lessons he would make everyone put their books away, and then he’d pick on people to talk in French. Everyone hated it.

  “No, listen. You volunteer, and you bring the subject round to the play. Keep saying about the auditions being on Tuesday and Annabel being Cinderella – he’ll work it out.”

  Cara looked worried. “Isn’t he going to smell a rat? No one ever volunteers for conversation.”

  Max smirked at them. “Nope. Sorry to tell you, but everyone in the class knows that Amy shows off all the time.” He watched her carefully as he said this, but Amy just stiffened slightly, and said nothing. “If she volunteers to start talking about the play it’s because she’s in it and she wants everyone to know. Perfectly normal.”

  Amy clearly didn’t want to agree, but couldn’t resist the plan. “I don’t even know the French for audition,” she said grudgingly.

  “L’audition, I should think,” said Max airily. “But you should probably go and look up what you’re going to say in the library, if you’re going to try it.” Then he walked off, smirking to himself. If there was anything better than getting the triplets into trouble, it was getting them into trouble but making someone else do the work for him…

  Amy hared off, looking determined, but she and Max hadn’t realized they were being watched. As the triplets and their friends had come out into the playground, Saima had spotted the little huddle over by the fence. It was very odd for Amy and her bratty mates to be honouring anyone else with their company, and it was positively suspicious for them to be talking to Max – he’d ganged up with them before to get at the triplets. As Amy and Max plotted, Saima caught Annabel’s eye and jerked her head in their direction. “Look.”

  Annabel was too hyper to take it seriously. “They’re welcome to him,” she giggled.

  “I want to know what they’re up to,” said Saima, as she watched Amy dashing away to the library. “Come on, Bel. We’ll be back in a minute,” she called to the others, grabbing Annabel by the arm and making for the main building.

  Annabel was still giggling as she and Saima sneaked into the library.

  “Ssshhh! Stop it, Bel, they’ll hear us!” Saima scooted into position behind a shelf of Biology books and peered round carefully. Annabel crept after her with exaggerated tiptoeing movements, still smirking. They could hear Amy talking from behind the next set of shelves, where the Modern Languages books were.

  “It’ll be easy. We’ve got our words written down, so all we have to do is read it out. But make sure you two sound like you’re making it up on the spot. Once we’ve told him that there was an audition for the play on Tuesday after school, and that we’re all going to be in it, he’s bound to ask if anyone else is. Annabel will have to say yes, and there we go.”

  Amy chuckled nastily, and Cara and Emily tittered. Annabel turned back from the gap in the shelves that she’d been peering through, and gazed in horror at Saima. This was a disaster – obviously Max and Amy between them had worked out that the triplets had switched for detention, and now they were aiming to get them into big trouble. Saima and Annabel flattened themselves against the shelves as Amy and the other two went past, then dashed out after them – they had to find a way to stop this happening!

  Katie, Becky and the others were chatting happily when Annabel and Saima got back, but one look at the two girls’ faces was enough to shut them up.

  “What’s the matter?” Becky asked anxiously. “You look as though something terrible’s happened.” She immediately thought of the play. “Did Ms Loftus change her mind?”

  “We’re dead,” Annabel declared – less dramatically than she usually would; this was too serious for messing about.

  Katie clocked her sister’s desperate expression. “What? What’s happened?”

  “Max and Amy know about yesterday, that it wasn’t me in detention, and they’re going to tell Mr Hatton. They’ve got this plan and they’re going to tell him in French tomorrow and he’ll kill us and they’ll probably stop me being in the play—” Annabel had to pause here, the words had been spilling out too fast for her to breathe. Her intake of breath was almost a sob, and Becky put an arm round her comfortingly.

  Annabel stayed miserably quiet, her head hanging, and everyone looked at Saima for more information. She quickly explained what they’d overheard in the library. “I don’t know how we can stop them,” she finished despairingly.

  Annabel lifted her head. “We can’t.” She sounded as though she thought the world was about to end.

  Katie looked grim. “I’m not going to give Amy Mannering the satisfaction of getting us into trouble. We’ve got to go and tell Mr Hatton ourselves – before those two do. If Max and Amy go through with that plan it’ll be really embarrassing. I don’t want to have a massive row with Mr Hatton in front of our whole class.”

  Everyone shuddered.

  “So you really think we have to go and tell him? I’m really sorry, Katie, I didn’t mean to get you in trouble too.” Annabel’s voice was full of horror.

  “It was my idea, Bel, don’t be a muppet. We’ll tell him after school. He might be in a good mood, being about to go home. Let’s hope so, anyway.” Katie shrugged. “It seemed like such a good plan at the time. Oh, Bel, don’t cry!” She’d noticed Annabel’s suspiciously bright eyes and pink nose. “Look, we’ll grovel, it’ll be OK.” Katie caught Becky’s eye over Annabel’s shoulder – she looked doubtful. Katie gave the tiniest eyebrow-shrug, a “well, what else can I say?” face. It had to be OK, somehow. Katie just wasn’t quite sure how they were going to pull this one off.

  The afternoon seemed to go horribly quickly, and all too soon the triplets were standing outside the staffroom door, gulping in unison. Becky had uncharacteristically told Katie not to be so stupid when she pointed out that, actually, Becky hadn’t done anything wrong and didn’t need to be there. Somehow it didn’t feel right to knock on the staffroom door, so they hung around looking embarrassed until a member of staff galloped up the stairs and gave them a funny look.

  Katie swallowed. “Um, I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but would you be able to see if Mr Hatton’s there, please?” She was already in buttering-up mode.

  After what seemed like ages, the teacher came back out looking a bit harassed, and said that Mr Hatton was helping Ms Loftus in the hall, so Katie grimly led the way down there instead. They crept round the door, and spotted Ms Loftus and Mr Hatton standing on the stage, apparently transfixed by the ceiling. It turned out they were looking at the stage lights, and Mr Hatton, of all people, was talking in a very professional-sounding way about tightening the spots and adding different coloured gels. Was he helping with the play?

  Annabel took a deep breath. “Um, excuse me?”

  The teachers turned round, looking surprised.

  “Annabel!” Ms Loftus sounde
d pleased. “We didn’t notice you were there. Have you seen the cast list? Congratulations!” She turned to Mr Hatton. “This is Annabel Ryan, she’s playing Cinderella. She really shone in the auditions on Tuesday.”

  Normally Annabel would have been preening at this, but instead she flinched at the dreaded word, Tuesday – would Mr Hatton notice?

  It seemed he did. He frowned slightly, and then in a politely interested voice, one that the triplets recognized from French – it meant he was about to go ballistic if he got the wrong answer – he murmured, “Tuesday? Now, that is interesting. I had the distinct impression that you were in detention on Tuesday, Annabel.”

  Annabel, for once, was tongue-tied, but she finally managed to mutter, “Um, yes. I was. But I wasn’t. If you see what I mean.”

  “No.” Mr Hatton was now tapping his finger on his chin – another bad sign.

  Katie broke in – Annabel obviously wasn’t getting anywhere. “We swapped,” she admitted, deciding just to get it over with. “I did Annabel’s detention so she could go to the audition.”

  Ms Loftus seemed shocked, and Annabel gave her a miserable, apologetic look.

  “Why are you telling me this now?” asked Mr Hatton, sweetly.

  Katie flushed, but answered, “Because someone else is going to tell you anyway.”

  “Well, at least you’re honest – sometimes. You didn’t consider coming and explaining all this before Tuesday afternoon?”

  “We didn’t think you’d listen,” Annabel whispered unhappily.

  This was quite true, of course, and Mr Hatton could see that she meant it. “After your disgraceful behaviour in my lesson, it would have been perfectly reasonable to stop you going to the audition. However, if you’d had the sense to ask, I would have rearranged your detention. But you preferred to be sly and underhand instead.” He watched the triplets shrink slightly. “You should be ashamed of yourselves – using your appearance to deceive people like that.”

  He went on like this for some time, and even Katie was having trouble holding back tears. It made it worse that Ms Loftus was nodding along grimly. Mr Hatton seemed to know an enormous number of words for dishonest, and he used all of them. He finished off by setting each of them a huge chunk of French exercises to do (he apparently knew their textbook off by heart, scarily enough), different bits for each of them, as “Obviously I can’t trust you not to copy from each other if I give you the same work to do.” He gave Becky slightly less than the others, but told her she should have had the sense to stop them, so he wasn’t letting her off.

  Eventually, the triplets slunk away, still cringing. It wasn’t until they were halfway home that Annabel stopped in the middle of the pavement.

  “What?” asked Katie, grumpily. She’d decided that she was definitely never, ever doing anything like that again.

  “I’ve just realized – it worked. He made me feel so awful that I hadn’t thought about it, but Amy and Max are going to go through with that stupid plan tomorrow, and it’ll all be for nothing. I’m still going to be in the play!”

  Chapter Four

  Annabel didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone look quite so frustrated as Amy at half-past ten on Thursday morning. She and Cara and Emily had been carefully parroting their prepared sentences for ages now, and Mr Hatton was showing no sign of getting the hint. He seemed fairly pleased with their sudden interest in French conversation, but that was about it. Amy lapsed into a mulish silence, and Mr Hatton turned to the rest of the class. He asked, in French, whether anyone else was going to be in the play. The entire class stared back at him with looks of polite incomprehension on their faces. No one had a clue what he’d just said. Mr Hatton sighed, and started to go through his sentence again on the board. As he explained each word, Amy brightened up – Mr Hatton was actually going along the right lines now.

  “So—” he turned back from the board – “Qui d’autre jouera dans la pièce?”

  Several hands went up, Annabel’s included, and Amy held her breath. Surely, after all the times she’d said the auditions were on Tuesday after school, he had to make the connection? Yes! He was picking on Annabel.

  Two minutes later, Amy was practically banging her head against the desk, and Cara and Emily were looking confused. How could a teacher be this stupid? All right, he had just told Annabel that her grammar, vocabulary and accent were despicable, which would usually have been quite satisfying, but that wasn’t the point right now. And the triplets were looking unbearably smug for some reason. It was almost as though they knew … but they couldn’t. Could they? She caught Annabel’s eye, and all at once it was obvious that they did. Annabel’s triumphant grin just couldn’t mean anything else. Amy ground her teeth. How did the triplets always manage to come out on top? Well, somehow she was going to get Annabel Ryan – she didn’t know how just yet, but darling Cinderella had better watch out…

  That afternoon was the first rehearsal for the play. Annabel and Saima were in the hall less than two minutes after the bell went. The rest of the cast trickled in gradually, chatting to each other about the play and their parts. Eventually Ms Loftus strode in, looking pleased to see everyone there already. She was followed by various other members of staff – Mr Becket, the Music teacher who’d been at the auditions; Mrs Cranmer, one of the Art teachers; Miss Davies, the Textiles teacher, and, scarily enough, Mr Hatton.

  “What’s he doing here?” muttered Annabel to Saima in horror.

  “No idea,” Saima mouthed back at once, wide-eyed.

  Ms Loftus stood in the middle of the hall, with the other teachers gathered slightly sheepishly around her. “Hello everybody, and welcome to our first rehearsal! Now, we don’t have a huge amount of time – only five weeks until the performance!” Everyone groaned. “So we need to work really hard. Because there’s a lot to do in a short time, I’ve been lucky enough to get lots of other staff to help, as you can see. Mrs Cranmer will be doing scenery and Miss Davies will be organizing the costumes, which is great, and they’ll be asking for volunteers to help out. They’ll be making lists of people at the end of the rehearsal, so have a think about that, please. Mr Becket is in charge of the singing, as you know, and I’m delighted to say that Mr Hatton will be giving me a hand with the direction and the backstage crew.”

  Mr Hatton smiled grimly, and everyone in the cast stared back, slightly gobsmacked. He was the last teacher they’d expect to be helping with the school play – it was more his style to be complaining about the amount of homework time it took up.

  “So, let’s get going everyone. Mr Becket has your scripts” – the Music teacher was struggling under a huge pile of paper – “so if you could take one each. And please remember that that is your only copy.” As a Drama teacher, Ms Loftus was perfectly able to breathe accents of death into those words. “If you lose your script, I will not be giving you another one. You’ll just have to borrow one and photocopy it.”

  The entire cast descended on Mr Becket, who had the sense to dump the scripts on the stage and run before he disappeared under the flailing mass. Eventually, everyone had managed to secure a script, and people trotted back to their perches, eager to see how many lines they’d ended up with.

  Annabel flicked excitedly through the script, nodding with pleasure as she saw how many of the pages Cinderella appeared on. By about two-thirds of the way through, she was starting to look a little anxious. She looked over at Saima, who was reading her big scene, where she transformed Annabel, and obviously imagining herself in a glittery Fairy Godmother costume.

  Saima glanced up, and grinned at her. “Isn’t this brilliant? I’m so excited.” Then she appeared to read Annabel’s mind. “You know, you’ve got loads of words. It’s a fantastic part. And two solos as well.”

  “Mmmmm.” Annabel smiled, but rather worriedly.

  Saima looked more carefully at her. “Are you panicking about learning the line
s?”

  “A bit. I hadn’t thought there’d be so many. I’m on almost every page!”

  “It’ll be OK. You’ve got Becky and Katie to help you learn them, for a start – my mum and dad are always so busy, I can’t see them having much time to test me.”

  Annabel brightened up. Saima was right. “I bet Katie and Becky will help you too. And I will – we’ve got one scene we can practise together, anyway.” She grinned happily at Saima – this was going to be so cool! Then her smile deepened – Josh Matthews was heading in her direction – was he coming to talk to them?

  “Hi! You had a look through the script?”

  “Mmm. It’s good, isn’t it?” Annabel stammered slightly from nervousness – he was so good-looking!

  “Did you notice page thirty-six?”

  “Er, no, I don’t think so.” Annabel riffled through the script. The ballroom scene – she smiled to herself, imagining the gorgeous dress she’d be wearing. Oh! She’d just noticed the stage directions – the prince was supposed to kiss Cinderella! Annabel blushed very pink and looked up at Josh. “Oh yes…” she murmured rather lamely. Well, what was she supposed to say when she found out that a boy she really, really liked was going to be kissing her in front of half the school?

  Josh grinned, and turned to go. “Well, see you!”

  “Um, yeah,” Annabel muttered, and gazed after him with a slightly glazed look in her eyes.

  “An-na-bel! Wake up!” Saima was giggling. “Stop it, you look as though you’re about to fall at his feet. You have to be a little bit hard to get!”

  Annabel jumped. “Sorry! I just hadn’t realized – I suppose it’s obvious that the prince kisses Cinderella, but I didn’t think about it. Wow.” She hugged the script to herself tightly – this play was just getting better and better!

  Ms Loftus had given them a quick rundown of this version of Cinderella at the audition, so she was eager to get straight on with the play now. It started with an introductory scene set several years before the rest of the play, when Cinderella was a baby. Annabel kept half an eye on what was happening onstage while she read carefully through her first scene – she didn’t want to be like the people up there now. The two Year Nines had had no chance to see what they were saying before they had to say it, and they were stumbling and giggling in embarrassment. The next scene was at the palace, with Amy as the queen. She was good – Annabel had to admit it, grudgingly. She told herself that Amy’s stuck-up manners suited the part.