Sleepover Club Blitz (6 page)

Finally Iris remembered our soup and hurried away.

Lyndz collapsed on a chair. “I’m all in,” she giggled, fanning herself with her hand.

“That was like a total work-out!” Fliss puffed.

“But did you have FUN?” grinned Edith.

“Yeah, actually,” I said. “It was cool.”

“Wartime dances
were
wonderful,” Edith sighed.

“I bet,” giggled Fliss. “All those good-looking spies!”

“It was a strange time,” said Edith. “We were so young. Yet we knew we could die at any moment. I suppose that’s why people married in such a hurry in those days.”

“I was wondering,” said Fliss shyly. “How did they manage for wedding dresses? I mean clothes were rationed, right?” Fliss’s mum got married in the summer, and Fliss is still heavily into weddings!

“If they had any sense, they didn’t bother,” yawned Kenny. “If I thought I was going to die next day, I’d just drag on any old thing. I mean, if you’re just going to BLEED all over it!”

“No way!” Fliss objected. “I’d want it to be incredibly romantic.”

Edith gave her a sympathetic smile. “A lot of wartime brides would agree,” she said. “A friend of mine made a wonderful wedding dress out of parachute silk.”

Fliss’s eyes shone. “That is SO thrilling!” she breathed.

“Of course, it was impossible to have a traditional wedding cake,” Edith went on. “Eggs were like gold in those days.”

“What did they do?” giggled Kenny. “Make a papier mâché one, or something?”

Edith’s eyes sparkled. “Almost!”

We stared at her. She was serious!

“People hired splendid cardboard replicas,” she explained. “They
looked
like the ultimate dream wedding cake. Beautifully iced and decorated with a tiny bride and groom perched on the top.”

“What’s the point of cake, if you can’t eat it?” scoffed Kenny.

Edith smiled. “Actually, the fake cakes had a hidden drawer.”

“What was inside?” asked Fliss.

“CAKE, you nutcase!” we all yelled.

“That’s right,” chuckled Edith. “One teeny postage-stamp-sized slice of genuine wedding cake.”

Which is exactly the kind of weird detail I would never have found out about, if we hadn’t gone back in time with the Blitz sisters.

Our home-made soup was ready by this time. Personally I’m more of a tinned-soup girl. But I
quite
enjoyed the Second World War kind. Maybe because I helped pick and chop all the soup veggies myself.

After lunch, Iris and Edith drove us back to our waiting parents. This time the trip seemed to be over in a flash. I didn’t quite know what to say to the sisters, now we were back in our own century, so I gave them both a shy little hug and rushed over to Mum.

“You’re quiet,” she said, as we drove home. “Didn’t you have a good time?”

I leaned my head against her shoulder. “I had a great time,” I told her. “The best.”

When I got home, I rushed up to the bathroom and ran myself a bath. I splashed in tons of my sister’s incredibly expensive bath stuff (I’m strictly forbidden to use it, which only made it all the more luxurious!!). Then I stepped out of my prickly Blitz clothes, and submerged myself in hot scented water. Aaah! Pure bliss.

After my bath, I put on some comfy clothes and went in search of a nice little snack. Then I curled up on the sofa with the TV remote and my knitting. Since our trip back in time, we’re all totally nuts about knitting!

As you can imagine, I was seeing my mod cons in a whole new light. There’s a lot wrong with the twenty-first century, I thought contentedly. But it’s MY century, and it rocks!

Before I went to bed, I folded up my 1940s clothes. When I got to the coat, I felt something rustle inside the pocket. It was my evacuee luggage label. I traced my finger around the letters of my Second World War name. “Nice knowing you, Audrey,” I murmured.

I put on my nightie and cuddled down under my duvet. The friendly glow of a street-lamp peeked between my curtains. I could hear Mum and Tiff downstairs, laughing at the TV.

Wow, I thought. I have such a great life! I don’t have to worry about bombs or blackouts, or food rationing.

Not many people get a chance to be a completely different person for a whole weekend. Probably even fewer people get to travel back in time.

I badly wanted to say a special thank you to Iris and Edith for giving us such an amazing experience. But all I could think of was flowers, which was WAY too corny.

Hang on, I thought suddenly. I won the competition! Why don’t I hand this problem over to the others, and get a good night’s sleep?

So I did!!

I don’t mean to get personal, but I bet there’s times when you toss and turn worrying about like,
everything
in the universe. Am I right?

Well, here’s some advice from Auntie Rosie. Get yourself down to Iris and Edith’s WW2 time-capsule house, right now! I’m not saying I’m totally cured, but since my weekend with the Blitz sisters, I have practically resigned from my post as chief Sleepover Club worry-wart. And believe it or not, this laid-back approach WORKS!

Once I’d have stayed awake all night, brainstorming ideas for a special thank-you present for the Blitz sisters. Instead, I caught some serious Zs. And when I woke up, I didn’t just feel wonderfully rested, I felt totally serene! I floated happily through the house saying, “Hello lovely Cartwright family members!”, “Hello TV!”, “Hello, comfy clothes, soft furnishings and friendly central heating radiators!”

Then it dawned on me. Since my weekend as Audrey Harris, all my old Rosie-type worries had just like, VANISHED!

Here’s a typical old-style R.C. worry. “Oh, woe! Will my lovely hard-working mum ever get together with anyone in this lifetime? Or will she just be this lonely single person for ever and ever?”

Don’t tell the others (it’s kind of private), but I used to fret about this sort of stuff non-stop. It’s SO-O tiring, like holding up the sky all by your lonesome. But that morning I just KNEW that none of these worries could COMPARE with the spine-chilling horror of looking up and seeing a sinister plane overhead, just about to drop bombs on everyone I love…

I went off to school, thinking my new improved thoughts, catching up with the others at the gate. To my surprise, Fliss was glowing with excitement.

It turned out,
she’d
been wondering how to thank the Blitz sisters, too. But guess what? Fliss had also come up with the perfect solution!

“But I can’t tell you yet,” she said apologetically. “I’m not being funny, OK? I’ve just got to clear it with Miss Pearson first.”

Fliss and Miss Pearson whispered in a corner for AGES, while we looked on, dying of curiosity. Then the plot REALLY thickened, because Miss Pearson suddenly announced that she was excusing Fliss from class for “a very special mission”.

Fliss trotted off, looking incredibly self-conscious. She didn’t appear again until lunch break.

“Come on, spill those beans!” Frankie commanded, as Fliss joined us at our table.

Fliss glanced round cautiously. “Not here, OK!” she hissed.

“Spies at ten o’clock,” muttered Kenny.

We followed her gaze and saw the M&Ms eyeballing us suspiciously.

As soon as we’d bolted down our lunch, Fliss dragged us off to a secluded corner of the playground, and unveiled her Big Idea.

Kenny’s eyes gleamed. “Wow! That is so wicked!”

“Stomping,” agreed Frankie.

“You’re a total star, Fliss,” I told her.

I meant it. She’d come up with the coolest thank-you idea ever.

Hey, keep your hair on! I’ll tell you what it was in a minute, OK!

First I want to see if you can guess. Here’s a couple of TINY clues. Fliss’s radical idea involved:

1. A great deal of red, white and blue crepe paper.

2. A large tin of Spam. (No, I’m deadly serious!)

3. A number of old records.

4. And the letters V and E are HIGHLY significant.

I sound like mystic Meg, don’t I!!

Yesss!
Fliss wanted to give Iris and Edith their very own Victory party – a small-scale version of those cool street parties people had in 1945, to celebrate the end of the war!

Luckily, Miss Pearson was totally up for it. The party was scheduled for Friday afternoon. So we had almost a week to get ready.

With our teacher’s help, we transformed our classroom with red, white and blue streamers. (Now you know why we needed all that crepe paper!) We also hung up dozens of little Union Jacks.

Our teacher baked a special V.E. cake, a HUGE one, and decorated it with groovy red, white and blue Union Jack icing. (V.E. means Victory in Europe, by the way.) Everyone agreed to bring in 1940s party food, including Spam sandwiches (aaargh!), little fairy cakes, jam tarts and sausage rolls. OK, maybe sausage rolls aren’t authentic, but what’s a party without them, right?

Anyway, hang on to your gas mask, because I’m going to fast-forward through the preparations, and cut to the actual party.

Our class really did the Blitz sisters proud! Almost
everyone
had dressed in period style, starting with Miss Pearson, who had actually put her hair up in something called a “snood”. That’s a fancy hair-net, to you and me. I’d never heard of them, but Fliss said snoods were a MAJOR fashion statement back then. Our teacher even made her face up in period style – in other words, zero eye make-up, lots of pale powder, and LOADS of glossy red lipstick! She looked totally fab!

“You look exactly like those film stars in the sisters’ film mags,” Fliss told her admiringly. “Only not so chubby,” she added quickly, in case Miss Pearson thought she was being cheeky.

Even the boys got into the V.E. spirit in a big way, greasing their hair into side-partings and wearing hand-knitted sweaters with those tragic 1940s boys’ shorts. They look even sadder with Nike trainers. But who knows, it could be THE look for next season! Did I tell you Ryan kindly offered to be our party DJ, and provide authentic ’40s sounds?

Owen was the only boy who refused to join in the general party mood. He just lounged in the background, doing his sulky supermodel pout. But I noticed that my mates still stole longing glances at him.

Suddenly Danny yelled, “They’re here, they’re here!”

A familiar vintage car came chugging into the playground.

Fliss went pale. “What if they HATE my party?” she fretted. “What if they think it’s really naff?”

Panic is SO-O catching, isn’t it? We held our breath, waiting for the knock on the door. And finally, it came.

Miss Pearson snapped her fingers. “Now!” she mouthed.

Ryan punched a button on the stereo, and our classroom filled with big band music. Tingles went down my spine. And for a split second, I was Audrey Harris again, a scared human parcel with a label around my neck.

Then the door opened and Iris and Edith walked in – with two cute little toddlers, both clutching Furbies. The sisters stared around our classroom in amazement.

“You did all this for us?” Iris breathed.

“You
dear
children,” said Edith in a husky voice.

Just then, one of the toddlers saw the food. “Oooh, goody! Cake!” she shouted happily. Everyone burst out laughing.

Yes, as you probably guessed, Fliss’s V.E. party was a V. BIG success!! Everyone bopped and boogied to the mellow sounds of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Victor Sylvester. We also played loads of silly games like musical chairs and charades.

The toddlers turned out to be twins. Their names were Harvey and Alice, and they were Iris’s
great
-grandchildren, which made them precisely one-eighth German.

“It’s so-o perfect that Iris brought them along,” Frankie said earnestly. “Because the horrors of the Blitz are now totally in the past, and those beautiful little kids are like, our planet’s future.” Frankie always has to go way over the top, but for once we all agreed with her!

Incidentally, those little twins absolutely LURVED everyone in the Sleepover Club. They kept dragging us off to get them more fairy cakes, burbling away in toddler-speak, like they’d known us for ever.

Then the M&Ms tried to muscle in, going, “So what’s YOUR name, you little sweeties?” in icky voices, and making a fuss of their Furbies.

Poor Alice and Harvey totally freaked out. They went scurrying back to Iris, wailing, “Go ’way! Not your sweeties. Not!”

“Dad always says toddlers have more sense than grown-ups,” chortled Kenny.

“Yeah,” agreed Frankie. “They saw through the Gruesome Twosome in a FLASH!”

By the way, the M&Ms looked like they were loving our Victory party as they jitterbugged frantically in their ’40s outfits. But if you knew the signs (and BOY do we know the signs), you could see they were spitting with rage inside!!

Suddenly Miss Pearson signalled to Ryan to turn down the music. She clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Everyone having a great time?” she asked.

“Yess!” yelled (almost) everyone.

“Good! Because you’ve all worked extremely hard,” Miss Pearson beamed. Then she picked up a large leather-bound book.

“Durn durn DURN!” sang Danny McCloud. “Iris and Edith, this is YOUR life!”

Miss Pearson grinned. “This class has been collecting people’s memories of the Second World War,” she explained to the sisters. “They also acquired copies of wartime photos taken locally. We put them in this special book, together with our own writing and artwork on the Blitz.” She did one of her Oscar-ceremony pauses. “We’d like to present it to you with our heartfelt thanks for all your help!”

The Blitz sisters looked so touched, I was absolutely certain they were going to burst into tears. Edith quickly pulled herself together. “We’ll treasure it,” she said briskly. “And thank you for this wonderful party.”

“It was Fliss’s idea,” Kenny blurted out.

Fliss went bright red. “Actually, it was Mum’s,” she confessed. “She always says, there’s nothing like a party to say thank you!”

Frankie gave me a nudge. “And the Sleepover Club does LURVE to party!” she giggled.

Suddenly the door flew open and this glamorous woman wiggled in. She wore a low-cut dress the colour of vanilla ice-cream and girly shoes with incredibly high heels. A pair of trendy sunglasses perched in her wavy blonde hair. She wagged her finger at Owen. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, you naughty boy,” she cooed. “Keeping Mummy waiting all this time!”

Our mouths fell open in amazement.

Owen’s mother flashed Miss Pearson a dazzling smile. “So sorry to interrupt your little party,” she cried, “but my son has to be at an incredibly important photo-shoot in half an hour!”

Owen looked furious. “I told you I’d meet you out the front, OK?” he hissed at her.

His mother burst into peals of fake laughter. “Now, now, give Mummy a proper smile,” she said playfully. “You won’t get any modelling work pulling that sulky face!”

“Just get off my case, will you?” Owen jumped up and stormed into the corridor.

“Boys!” his mother sighed. “Who’d have them?” And she went tiptapping frantically after Owen on her high heels.

“Will you STOP moaning on?” we heard Owen whinge. “Anyway, you shouldn’t wear that dress. It makes you look really old and fat!”

My mates stared after him. They looked completely dazed, as if they’d suddenly woken up from a long and rather strange dream. They’d finally realised that Prince Owen was a slimy frog after all.

Lyndz swallowed. “Erm,” she croaked. “I have an important announcement. My humiliating crush is finally dead and buried.”

Kenny looked queasy. “Ditto,” she said.

Frankie nodded. “Yeah,” she said huskily. “Next time I fancy someone, it’ll be an actual person. Not someone’s sad little pet poodle.”

Lyndz giggled. “Give Mummy a proper smile, you naughty boy!” she spluttered.

I noticed Fliss hadn’t said a word.

“What about you, Fliss?” I asked cautiously “Do you still fancy Owen?”

She looked scandalised. “Don’t be
stoopid
! I went off him AGES ago!” And she went back to gazing fondly at Ryan Scott.

That was totally music to my ears. “Thank goodness for that!” I sighed. “It was like, you were all possessed by the evil LURVE demon!”

My mates cracked up laughing, and suddenly they were all hugging me and jumping up and down and howling, “Yuck! Ugh! Gross!! How come we EVER fancied him?!”

The M&Ms glared at us through narrowed eyes. It’s their meanest (and commonest) expression. They’d given up pretending to have a ball by this time. I gave them a cheery wave, which only made them madder than ever, heh heh heh!

Then I took a giant bite out of my yummy Union Jack cake. And as I watched Iris’s great-grandchildren jitterbugging happily to a funky Glenn Miller tune called
Little Brown Jug
, I wished with all my heart that revenge could
always
taste so sweet!!