by Holly Webb
Becky shuddered, and shook her head. She muttered something about homework and turned back to the table.
Annabel stroked the smooth folds of the dress, and admired the crystal beads she’d sewn on so carefully – or would have done, except they weren’t there. She gave the dress a puzzled look, and then her face cleared. Somehow her dress had got mixed up with one of the other two. Perhaps Becky had been trying hers on again too! She flicked a glance quickly round at her sisters – Katie was working away, and Becky was now staring hard at the table, probably pondering a difficult question. She didn’t really want it to be too obvious that she was putting this dress back – after all, the three dresses were supposed to be absolutely identical, so how would she know this one wasn’t hers? Even though she’d convinced herself it was OK to make her dress different, she wasn’t sure what Katie and Becky’s reactions to the added extras would be. Quickly she found the dress-bag in Becky’s wardrobe and pulled it out, not noticing that Becky was now gazing at her in horror.
Annabel had got as far as undoing the zip, before Becky managed to find her tongue. “Wh-what are you doing?” she quavered.
Annabel jumped, and nearly dropped the dress, and Katie turned round curiously. “I’m just going to try the dress on again, that’s all!” Annabel blustered.
“But that’s Becky’s dress,” Katie pointed out – she could see that it was Becky’s wardrobe door that was open.
Annabel shrugged, and tried to brazen it out. “I think they got mixed up,” she murmured vaguely, hoping that Katie would just shut up and go back to her homework. She shouldn’t have tried to do this with the other two in the room, she told herself crossly. Well, the worst that could happen was Katie had a go at her for trying to make her dress more special – and in Katie’s current mood she wouldn’t care anyway! This thought trailed off as Annabel drew out the dress and caught sight of the chewed skirt. She gasped sharply.
“What’s the matter?” asked Katie, getting up to look. Becky was glued to her chair, watching in panic as the whole disaster began to unfold.
“Beckyyyy!” Annabel snarled. It was obvious that this was something to do with Becky – the dress had been in her wardrobe, and she was looking unbelievably guilty. Annabel wasn’t an animal expert, but those holes looked like chewing, and that had to be Becky’s fault. She flung the dress on to her bed and marched over to her sister, who shrank back in her chair, gazing up at her like a rabbit caught in headlights.
“What happened to my dress! It was those disgusting little beasts, wasn’t it?”
She veered off and headed for the rat cage, looking as though she wanted to strangle one of them. That got Becky out of her chair faster than anything else could have done. She whizzed across the room and stood in front of the cage, fending Annabel off.
“It wasn’t their fault! Don’t touch them! Annabel, please!”
“I said I didn’t want them in our room! I said it would be a disaster, and now look what they’ve done!” Annabel’s voice rose to a wail as she pointed at the ruined dress.
Katie peered over. “Oh wow. Oh no – the rats did this?” She turned a horror-struck face to Becky.
“I’m really sorry, Bel!” Becky had realized that the rats were no longer in immediate danger from Annabel, who was practically in tears now as she knelt in front of the dress and fingered the damage, and she came over to look at it with the other two. “I must have left the cage open by accident, and the dress was lying on your bed – they – they –” She trailed off, realizing that Annabel probably wouldn’t react well to any more rat info. But it was too late.
“They what?” Annabel snapped.
“They made a nest out of it…” whispered Becky, and Annabel wailed again.
“When was this?” Katie asked, getting straight to the point.
“Yesterday. I didn’t know what to do, so I just swapped Bel’s dress with mine while I tried to think of a plan.”
Annabel glared at her. “Well, I think that’s a very good plan. You can wear the horrible chewed-up dress to the wedding, and I’ll wear yours! And those rats can go and live in the garden shed where they should have been in the first place!”
Becky’s face crumpled. Of course, it was perfectly fair that she should wear the rat-eaten dress, but somehow she’d managed to blank out the reality of one of them having to wear it – and that it was ruined because of her. Now it was obvious that she was going to be the one to spoil Auntie Jan’s wedding. And she’d done all that worrying about Katie!
Katie looked at her two sisters, now both crying, and sighed resignedly. No use expecting any help from them then. She picked up the dress, and held it out in front of her critically. Stupid thing. Oh, she could see that it was very pretty, but she and “very pretty” just didn’t really get on. Still – now that something awful had happened to one of the dresses, she was feeling a bit guilty. After all, this was exactly what she’d been wishing for. Now she’d got it, she was realizing that however much she didn’t want to wear a satiny meringue, she wanted the wedding to go beautifully for Auntie Jan even more. It was time somebody did something, instead of sitting on the floor crying. Unfortunately, that was as far as she could get – she had no idea what you did with a dress full of holes.
“Oh, stop crying, you two! It won’t help. You shouldn’t have let the rats get out, Becky, and you shouldn’t have left your dress on the bed, Bel. It’s both your faults, and now we’re just going to have to sort it out.”
Streaming tears, Becky looked up at the dress as Katie held it out, still considering the damage. “That – that dress has got – beads on it,” she hiccupped.
Katie looked at them. “Uh-huh.” She looked at Becky. “And?”
“Well, it – shouldn’t have.”
“Oh. I see what you mean. The others don’t?”
Becky shook her head, and gazed at Annabel.
“I put the beads on because I wanted it to be sparkly,” Annabel sniffed. “It took ages, and now it’s sparkly with holes!”
Katie rolled her eyes – as if a meringue wasn’t enough. “So you sewed these on?” she said thoughtfully. “Have you got more?”
“Some.” Annabel was sitting up straighter now, looking consideringly at the dress. “And Saima’s got loads. She was with me when we bought them in the craft shop in town.”
“So, can you mend it? Add more beads somehow?”
“I don’t see how,” moaned Annabel, slumping back down again. “It’s still got holes in – adding beads won’t stop that.”
Becky suddenly jumped up, and headed for the door. “Wait for me a minute,” she called back over her shoulder, leaving the other two staring after her, not sure whether to feel hopeful or not.
She came back waving a copy of Brides magazine. “Look! I just remembered when you said about the beads not filling in the holes, Bel. Auntie Jan was looking at this dress, and said she thought it was really pretty, but not her style. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t do it.”
She pointed to a picture of a wedding dress, modelled by an impossibly tall girl with perfectly upswept hair and the whitest teeth ever.
“Look at the design round the skirt!” The long creamy-white dress had a decoration of shimmery gold beads that formed a lacework around the hem.
Annabel looked at it critically. “It’s a bit cutesy – those little heart shapes.”
Becky decided not to comment on this opinion from someone who was wearing heart-shaped earrings, heart hairclips and very probably had hearts printed on her knickers.
“Yes, so we’d do it better! I thought when I saw what Cassie and Fang had done that it was almost like lace…” She shut up. Annabel’s face was saying very clearly that she did not want to hear about the lace-making abilities of rats, and Becky really didn’t want to remind her sister they existed – she might remember her demand for them to be exiled to t
he shed.
But Annabel, for the moment, was more concerned with the beading plan. She picked up the magazine and studied the picture carefully, looking from it to the dress and back again. “It might work,” she said dubiously.
Katie looked over her shoulder. “It would be pretty obvious, wouldn’t it. I mean, everyone would notice that this dress was different to the other two.”
“It’s already got beads on,” Becky argued. “This would just be more.”
But Annabel was nodding. “I only put a few on before – I just thought it would make it a teensy bit different, not that people would really notice. You couldn’t not notice that.” She pointed to the photo.
Becky’s eyes filled with tears all over again. It had seemed such a good idea!
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it,” said Katie slowly. “I’m saying we’d have to do the other two dresses as well.”
The others looked at her in shock.
“What, change them on purpose?” whispered Becky.
“Mmm. If you think we can do it well enough, Bel. ’Cause otherwise we’re going to have to go to Mum and tell her that this dress needs to go back to the dressmaker and have half a new skirt put on it. And from the look on her face when she found out how much they were going to cost in the first place, I don’t think she’d be very happy.”
Becky flinched, and Annabel looked serious for once. That was true. What with the dresses, and shoes and jewellery and everything else, the wedding was costing a lot, and Mum was helping out Auntie Jan with loads of stuff, so she was stressed and busy anyway, plus there was all the work she was trying to cram in.
All three of them realized at the same time that Mum was probably working so hard because she was trying to make some extra money to pay for the dresses. They exchanged worried looks, and then decisive ones. They were going to sort this out themselves, without upsetting Mum any more.
Annabel whipped out her mobile. “We’re going to need help. Sorry to be mean, Katie, but you can’t sew. We need people who can – and we need somewhere we can do this without Mum walking in and going ballistic. I’m calling Saima, OK?”
Katie and Becky nodded fervently. Saima was almost as much of a fashion goddess as Annabel, and she had a huge loft-conversion bedroom that would be perfect for turning into a dress workshop.
Annabel called, and quickly explained the situation to Saima. Katie and Becky could hear the horrified exclamations as Saima heard the fate of the dress. She seemed to be up for helping out, though.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh yes, good idea! Yes, go and ask.” Annabel looked over at Becky and Katie. “Saima’s suggesting we have a sleepover on Saturday at her house, and we’ll invite the others too. That way we’ve got a chance of getting all three dresses done. Hi! It’s OK? Excellent. Yeah, we’ll go and ask our mum, but I’m sure it’ll be OK. We’re not doing anything this weekend.”
That was what Annabel thought, but when the triplets surged downstairs to tackle Mum, she was surprisingly doubtful.
“Oh. Well, I don’t know…”
“Why not, Mum?” asked Becky, sounding panicky – surely this last chance wasn’t going to be snatched away? “We’ve done all the wedding stuff, haven’t we?”
“Ye-es,” Mum agreed hesitantly. “But I wanted to talk to you – we’ve had an invitation for Sunday.” She was trying to sound upbeat, but the girls could tell from her voice that she was worried about how they were going to react to her news. They frowned at her. What was going on?
“Jeff – Max’s dad – has asked us all over for Sunday lunch.”
The three identical frowns deepened as the triplets digested this. Even Becky wasn’t feeling very charitable to Max right now. After all, it was his fault all of this had happened! If she hadn’t been feeling so stressed out by him she’d never have left the rat cage open.
Mum continued, with the air of someone who knows there’s a fierce wild animal (or three fierce wild animals) close behind them, and is trying very hard not to run however much they want to. “And I said that would be lovely.”
There was a meaningful silence. Finally Annabel said, “But that’s on Sunday. We can be back from Saima’s in time to go to lunch – if we have to.”
Katie took a deep breath. It looked like not making a fuss about the lunch at Max’s house could be the only way to get the dresses sorted. She noted Becky’s pleading stare, and nodded. “Exactly. Please, Mum! We’ll be back in loads of time.”
“Oh, OK then,” Mum sounded relieved – as though she’d expected a fight, and was happy to compromise. “You’ll have to do all your homework on Saturday before you go, though.”
“Uh-huh!” That was Becky, as she whisked out of the kitchen door, chasing the other two up the stairs. They needed to have a crisis meeting!
Chapter Seven
Max had obviously been told about the lunch too, because he got worse and worse all week. He was in detention twice for disrupting classes while he tried to upset the triplets – pulling Katie’s hair, deliberately knocking all Becky’s stuff on to the floor. Normally the weekend would at least have been a rest from him, but now they had to go and have quality time with him and his dad! Katie was furious, and had a real go at him in the playground on Friday. What really worried Becky though, was that the look of malicious glee, which used to terrify her when Max was being awful, had gone entirely. Instead Max looked desperate – as though he knew he was fighting with his back against a wall. She was still certain that because he didn’t have his mum, the relationship between their parents was going to be harder for him than it was for her and Katie and Annabel, and she still felt sorry for him – though she tended to forget that when he was tripping her up in the corridor on the way to geography.
“You did that on purpose!” Katie yelled, squaring up to Max as Annabel and the others hurried to pick Becky up. “I can’t believe you, you’re mad! You could have really hurt her!”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby!” scoffed Max, although he did peer round at Becky a little anxiously, to see if she was hurt enough to get him into trouble. She looked shaken but mostly OK, so he decided to make a quick getaway. When the girls arrived in geography he was sitting there with all his books out, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt. Katie seethed through the rest of the day – even though it had been Becky Max had tripped, she was still taking it as a personal insult. It was becoming obvious that Sunday was going to be torture.
What made it even worse was that Mum was so excited about it. Becky had seen her trying on outfits in front of the mirror and humming to herself, and she kept making cheerful little references to Sunday. She was going to get a big shock when she saw Katie and Max in the same room together – it was going to be awful. Becky decided she needed advice. She hated arguments so much, and she really wanted Sunday not to be a total disaster, for Mum’s sake if nothing else.
She headed up to the loft that evening to email Dad. It might seem funny to talk, to him about problems with Mum’s new boyfriend, but after the first months of awfulness, her parents’ split had left them on reasonably good terms. Becky knew Dad would be happy that Mum was meeting new people.
She opened up her email account and tried to think what to say. This was going to take some explaining – for a start because she still didn’t know how she felt about the whole thing.
After half an hour of typing and deleting and more typing and deleting again, Becky sighed as she hit “send”. It felt better having moaned thoroughly to somebody – but it wasn’t as if Dad could actually do much to help.
By standing over her armed with a maths textbook, Katie had managed to get Annabel to finish all her homework in time for the sleepover at Saima’s. Now they just had to find a way to get the three dresses in the car without Mum realizing what was going on. Katie wanted to roll them up inside their sleeping bags, but Annabel nearly had a fit at this. In the end the
y had to resort to the time-honoured ploy of one triplet as the distraction while the other two got on with whatever it was they weren’t supposed to be doing. This was one of those times when being a threesome got really useful.
The triplets had stowed all their stuff in the car, and were just grabbing their jackets – Mum insisted they took them – when Annabel suddenly screamed.
Mum jumped and dropped the car keys. “What? What?”
“There’s a massive spider, there on the ceiling!”
There was a spider, but only because Katie had gone out in the garden and caught it and put it there on purpose. Annabel was well known to be terrified of spiders – the plan had involved great personal sacrifice on her part, and she’d had to be towed through the hall with her eyes closed by the other two ever since the long-legged creature had been put in place.
“Oh my goodness,” said Mum faintly, looking at the spider. “So there is. Well. It’s quite big, isn’t it…”
Annabel had inherited her terror of spiders from Mum, but Mum always tried incredibly hard to pretend she didn’t mind them. It didn’t work.
Katie smiled. “Would you like me to get it down, Mum? Can you help me get the stepladder out?”
“Oh! Oh yes, that would be very helpful, Katie, thank you.” Mum dived through the kitchen door, where she was safely out of sight of the horrible thing, and headed for the big cupboard by the back door. Katie beetled after her, signalling at the other two – go, go, go!
Becky and Annabel dashed upstairs for the dresses and hid them in the boot of the car just in time. Katie captured the spider in a jam jar and took it back out to the garden to set it free. By now it was feeling deeply confused, and it scuttled under the fence to next door, where it was hoping for a quieter life.
The triplets were pretty sure that when they got to Saima’s house, Mum would go and have a cup of tea with Saima’s parents and let them unload the car, and luckily they were right. They whisked the dresses up to Saima’s bedroom before anyone could spot what was going on. Saima was bouncing about excitedly. She’d got out all her beads, and her sewing stuff, and loads of bits she’d borrowed from her mum, who was brilliant at making clothes. The best thing was that Saima’s mum had a dressmaker’s dummy, a sort of body on a stand that you could use to fit dresses on. That would be very helpful for hanging the dresses on while they worked out the bead decoration.
