Dress to Impress

by Coleen McLoughlin

  “Right,” said the supply teacher. “Mr Andrews is sick, so you’ve got me today. My name is Mrs Holmes, and I’d like a bit of quiet for register.”

  Mrs Holmes had this really sing-song voice that went up at the end like a ski jump. Listening to her doing register got kind of mesmerising after a bit.

  “And last of all,” said Mrs Holmes, glancing down the room, “Jimmy Wilson?”

  “He’s sick too,” said Summer. “And he calls himself Frankie, not Jimmy, Miss.”

  Something whirred deep down in my brain. But before I could work out what the whirring was about, Lucy tugged my sleeve.

  “He’s not here!” she whispered in relief. “Frankie’s not in!”

  “That’s great, Lu,” I said, patting my mate’s arm.

  To tell the truth, I was feeling like a balloon that was rapidly losing air. I’d been all set to tear a strip off Frankie Wilson, and now I wasn’t going to get a chance.

  It looked like Mel was feeling the same way. “Drama next,” she said as the bell went and everyone packed up their stuff for class. “I hope Miss O’Neill lets me play a really angry person.”

  “Make that two,” I sighed.

  Every day that week, I prepared myself to tackle Frankie Wilson. I was determined not to let him off the hook for what he’d done to Lucy. But every day I was disappointed. Whatever Frankie had, it must have been pretty nasty. I tried to cheer myself up by picturing him vomiting all day and all night. It worked, kind of.

  By Thursday, it was clear that Frankie wouldn’t be coming into school until the following week.

  “Let’s forget about him,” Mel said as we went into town after school on Friday afternoon. “That little weasel is taking up too much head space.”

  “You’re right,” I nodded. “Let’s go to Lions’ Walk and chill out for a bit.”

  Lucy looked reluctant at the mention of Lions’ Walk.

  “Come on, Lu,” I coaxed. “It’s not Lions’ Walk’s fault that Frankie Wilson did that to you. Don’t let him spoil the stuff you’ve always enjoyed doing.”

  With a bit of careful persuasion, we got Lucy as far as the little parade of shops and had a nose around. But when I suggested we got a Coke at The Music Place, she dug her heels in.

  “I can’t face them in there,” she said, shaking her head as we got to the doors.

  “They won’t even remember,” Mel said. “Honest, Lucy. You’re worrying about nothing.”

  The big glass doors of The Music Place swung open with a crash, making us all jump.

  “You know where you can stuff that Coke, Ben Hanratty,” Jasmine Harris yelled, before running away down the mall with her shiny ponytail flying behind her.

  Ben came barrelling out behind her. His trousers were dripping wet and fizzing gently. “I can’t stuff it anywhere, can I, Jas?” he shouted back furiously. “You just dumped it all down me!”

  “Ben!” Lucy squeaked.

  Ben swung round. He looked totally freaked out when he saw us all standing there and gawping at him.

  “Lu!” he mumbled. “I’ll…Look…See you later, yeah?” And he took off after Jasmine, leaving a trail of Coke splashes along the way.

  “Blimey,” I said after a minute, my heart still bouncing around my stomach. Even covered in Coke, Ben Hanratty was gorgeous. “It all kicks off at The Music Place, doesn’t it?”

  “There you go,” Mel said, gently steering Lucy through the swinging doors. “Now they’ll be talking about Ben instead of you. You are yesterday’s news, babe.”

  Lucy reluctantly let us guide her into The Music Place café, choosing a corner table where she could sit with her back to everyone else. While Mel ordered us some Cokes, I looked round at the store.

  It was nice and busy. There were kids browsing the racks and hanging around the computers. And by the looks of things, three of the six listening booths were in use.

  “Three Cokes for you,” said Mr O’Hara, bustling up with a tray in his hands.

  “Hello, Mr O’Hara,” I said, taking our drinks gratefully. “I thought you said you’d retired?”

  “I’m working today to help out my son,” said Mr O’Hara. “It’s good to see the place busy again.”

  “I’m Coleen by the way,” I said.

  I introduced Mel and Lucy, and Mr O’Hara shook hands with them both. Watching him bustling back across the café, I suddenly remembered my big plan for Nan’s birthday.

  “You know what Nan told us about how she’d carved her initials on one of the old stools?” I said to the others in excitement. “What if her and Pops’ initials are still there?”

  “What are you waiting for?” Mel said. “Go and see!”

  I pushed back my chair and ran over to the booths. I peeped into the first empty one. Then, hoping no one was about to come in, I bent right down and peered underneath the two white stools. There was a bunch of scribbles, but nothing that looked like initials.

  I tried again in the next empty one, and the next one after that. Then I had to wait until the three occupied booths emptied out. I was determined to find Nan’s initials. If I could find them, I could put into action the best birthday plan in the world.

  Two couples spilt out of two of the booths, smiling goofily at each other and holding hands. I pictured my nan and grandad doing the same thing forty years earlier and sighed, feeling all soppy. Maybe, now Ben wasn’t going out with Jasmine any more…

  Thinking happily about Ben Hanratty, I looked under the stools again. On the second stool in the second booth, something that looked like DA + PM was carved very faintly into the white plastic. I felt a rush of excitement. Nan’s name is Doreen, and Pops was called Patrick! But what had Nan’s surname been before she married Pops? I realised I didn’t know.

  “Left something in here, did you?” said Mr O’Hara over the top of the swing door.

  I straightened up in a hurry and bumped my head on the stool I’d been staring at. “I was looking for my nan’s initials,” I explained, feeling a bit stupid as I rubbed my head.

  Mr O’Hara rested his hands on the door. “Sounds like you’ve got a story there,” he said.

  I told him about Nan’s sixtieth birthday, and how Nan and Pops had met over their Beatles track. “So I had this great idea,” I explained. “If I could find the right stool, then maybe I could put up a plaque in the booth which had their names on for Nan’s birthday. If your son thought it was OK,” I added hastily.

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea,” said Mr O’Hara at once. “What a lovely grandaughter you must be, to think of something like that.”

  “Nan’s the lovely one,” I said, shuffling my feet and feeling a bit embarrassed.

  “You find out if you’ve got the right initials,” said Mr O’Hara, “and I’ll suggest it to my son. We could even work out a discount for you if you wanted to have your nan’s party here with us, and then reveal your plaque as a surprise at the end. How about that?”

  “Perfect!” I said in excitement, picturing a brilliant sixties-themed party at The Music Place. It beat dinner round ours for originality, that was for sure!

  “Nan’s surname was Adams before she married Pops,” I gabbled at Mel and Lucy on Saturday. “I asked Dad last night. So those really are Nan and Pops’ initials from forty years ago on that stool!”

  “Brilliant, Coleen,” Mel grinned. “So are you going to do this brass plaque then?”

  “Mum and Dad think it’s a fantastic idea,” I said happily. “Dad even told me the date Nan and Pops met in that booth – it sounds like they used to celebrate it like a wedding anniversary in their house. So I’m doing it for definite.”

  “What about the party?” Lucy asked.

  “They went for that too,” I said, hugging myself with delight. “We’re going to have it as a surprise for Nan a week today!”

  My head had been spinning ever since Mum and Dad had agreed to my idea. A sixties theme had brought loads of ideas rushing into my brain. Doing my hair in a
beehive, maybe. Or making a fabulous sixties minidress out of one of Mum’s old flowery pillowcases. Dad would totally have to let me do wild eyeliner, and we’d have the old jukebox in the café playing Beatles tracks all night long. It was shaping up to be a wicked party!

  I towed Mel and Lucy into the shoe-repair place on the corner of Lions’ Walk where they did little plaques for anything you wanted. I chose the words, and we waited while the engraver wrote it all down exactly as I said it.

  “So,” I said as we stepped back outside again, “that’s the easy part of today over with. Are you ready for the hard part, guys?”

  Em’s next footie match was against the Western Wanderers in Hartley West, about three miles out of the centre of town. Frankie hadn’t missed one of his little brother’s football matches yet, and we couldn’t believe he would still be ill after a whole week. It was time to sort Frankie Wilson out once and for all. So we were all going along for the showdown.

  Lucy swallowed. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.

  Arm in arm, we walked down to the market place where the bus stop for Hartley West stood beside the market cross. To my surprise, Ben Hanratty was sitting gloomily on the market-cross steps.

  “Hiya,” Lucy said, sitting down beside her brother. “Where’s Ali and Dave then?”

  “Dunno,” said Ben with a moody shrug. “They fixed up something without me cos they figured I’d be with Jasmine. But Jas dumped me last night. You probably guessed as much after seeing us at The Music Place.”

  “That’s tough,” I said sympathetically. Yes, yes, yes! I squealed inside my head.

  “You could come to the footie with us if you want,” Lucy suggested.

  Ben lifted his head. “What footie?” he asked.

  I explained about my sister’s team, stumbling over my words a bit. It’s really weird how Ben scrambles my tongue every time I look at him. “It’s only the under-eights, but it’s a good laugh,” I finished.

  “And Frankie’s going to be there,” Lucy mumbled.

  Ben’s gaze sharpened. “That moron who stood you up last weekend?”

  “That’s the one,” Mel agreed.

  “If that little runt’s at the match, I think I’ll have a word,” Ben said in a dark sort of voice which meant a very nasty word indeed.

  “Here’s the bus,” I said brightly, trying to hide the effect Ben’s heroic words had just had on me.

  Earth to Jasmine? I thought as we all climbed aboard. You dumped Hartley’s answer to Johnny Depp? What were you thinking of?

  Eight

  “Hiya, Coleen love,” Mum called, waving at me. “The match is about to start. There’s some tea in the flask if you want it.”

  “Sorry, Mum,” I said, striding past. “Stuff to do. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Me, Mel, Lucy and Ben walked on up the touchline of the Western Wanderers’ pitch to where Frankie Wilson and his dad were standing. I felt like we were in one of those TV shows like Torchwood, where the camera goes all slow-mo as the team stride purposefully towards the lens. A long leather coat would have been good at this point, I decided. But I had to make do with my old puffa instead.

  “Frankie Wilson?” Ben growled, coming to a stop inches away from where Frankie was standing. Me, Lucy and Mel clustered around behind Ben, trying to look cool and collected.

  “That’s me,” Frankie said in surprise. “Who are you?”

  “Someone you really don’t want to meet,” said Ben, stepping a bit closer.

  “What’s going on?” Frankie asked.

  “That’s what we want to know,” said Mel.

  “You little worm,” I added.

  “How could you do something so horrible, Frankie?” Lucy asked, her bottom lip trembling.

  Frankie Wilson was looking more and more bewildered. “What are you on about?” he said.

  “Standing Lucy up, you twerp!” I said. “Laughing at her and then running away!”

  “But Lucy’s the one who stood me up last weekend,” Frankie protested.

  Whatever we’d been expecting Frankie to say, we hadn’t been expecting that.

  “What?” Mel screeched.

  “Are you deliberately messing with our heads?” I demanded.

  “Your message!” Frankie turned to Lucy in complete confusion. “The one about meeting in the park instead of The Music Place. I waited for half an hour. Where were you?”

  “What message?” Lucy said.

  “You know,” Frankie insisted. “You gave it to my brother at school, remember?”

  “Brother?” Mel said in disbelief.

  A faint memory of Summer Collins’ voice earlier that week jogged in my memory.

  He calls himself Frankie, not Jimmy, Miss…

  Click, clunk, click went the pieces as they all fell into place. A picture suddenly popped into the confusion, as clear as day.

  “Your brother,” I said weakly. “He’s not called – Jimmy – by any chance, is he?”

  “Back in Cornwall, Jimmy was always the troublemaker at school,” Frankie explained, once we were all sitting down and recovering from the shock of discovering that two Frankie Wilsons had been running around Hartley the whole time without anyone noticing. “Being twin brothers meant that I got a lot of stick for the stuff Jimmy was doing. I did my best to get on, but it’s pretty tough when people kept expecting me to be as crazy as Jimmy. So when we moved up here, Mum and Dad thought it would be a good idea to put us in different schools.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything about having an identical twin brother?” I asked.

  “I probably should have,” Frankie admitted. “It would have saved a lot of trouble, I guess. But I liked just being me for a change – not one half of two people. I never thought it would get us into this kind of mess.”

  “But why does Jimmy call himself Frankie at school?” Mel persisted.

  “He never liked his name much,” Frankie said with a frown. “Always preferred mine. He probably thought it would be a laugh pretending to be me.”

  “Maybe he really wants to be you,” Lucy said.

  “Hardly,” Frankie snorted. “We don’t exactly get on. I should’ve known Jimmy was up to something when he gave me that message about the park.”

  I wondered if Lucy had a point. Perhaps Frankie was all the things Jimmy wanted to be. So what better way to be Frankie than to use his brother’s name – and then go on and mess up his brother’s date?

  Ben stuck out his hand. “I owe you an apology, mate,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Frankie replied, shaking Ben’s hand.

  “Does Jimmy ever come to watch your brother Billy playing?” Lucy asked.

  Frankie shook his head. “Jimmy’s not into footie the way me and Billy are. He tried to play once, but he had two left feet.”

  Another reason why Jimmy wants to be Frankie? I wondered. I felt like I was turning into some kind of super-psychiatrist, and it was starting to do my head in.

  “So,” Frankie said to Lucy. “Now we’ve sorted that out, wanna meet up at The Music Place again some time?”

  Lucy blushed to the roots of her hair. Looked like lurve was back on the tracks at last.

  “How about next weekend?” I suggested, zooming to Lucy’s rescue. “Come to my nan’s sixtieth birthday party if you like. We’re all going to be at The Music Place from about six thirty on Saturday night.”

  “You’d better have a couple of code words in case Jimmy tries to jinx you guys again,” Mel joked.

  “How about Doreen and Patrick?” I suggested. “That’s my nan and grandad’s names.”

  “Wicked,” Frankie said, nodding.

  And the shine off Lucy’s smile could probably have been seen from outer space.

  Back at home, Em was glowing from head to foot with a top win against the Western Wanderers. Mum pulled a casserole out of the oven that had been cooking for four long lovely hours, and everyone sat down to eat. Well, everyone except Em.

  “
Three-nil, three-nil,” she sang, doing this funny little victory dance around the kitchen. “Three-nil, three-ni-hil!”

  “Yes, yes,” Dad grinned. “Girl of the Match, we know. Well done, love. We’re proud as punch.”

  “Cheers, Dad,” Em said, flopping down in her chair at last.

  “So you worked everything out with Frankie then?” Mum asked me, ladling out gorgeous steamy bowls of beef casserole and passing them round.

  “Totally,” I said, attacking my casserole like I hadn’t eaten for weeks. “Turns out it’s his twin brother Jimmy that’s been messing us around at school all along.”

  “Sounds like this Jimmy needs to be taught a lesson,” Dad said.

  Ping. My brain lit up. Maybe it was time to teach Jimmy Wilson a thing or two about how it felt to be set up. But before I could take that brilliant thought any further, Dad had moved on to the subject of Nan’s birthday party.

  “We’ve got both sets of Mum’s neighbours lined up,” he said, “and your nan’s best mate Susan, plus us lot and a couple of mates each for Coleen and Em. Vinny’s given us a great deal on a big table in the café. We just need to work out how we’re going to get Mum down to The Music Place without letting on.”

  “Easy,” I said promptly. “You guys get set up at The Music Place and me and my mates will drop round to Nan’s just as she’s getting ready for the birthday tea she still thinks she’s getting at our house. I’ll tell her I’ve found her and Pops’ initials on that stool, and that she’s got to come with me to see it before we go back to ours.”

  “What about the sixties theme?” Em asked. “Can I be Bobby Charlton?”

  “You can be whatever you like, love,” Dad laughed.

  “Bobby Charlton?” I said in disbelief. “He’s like, bald.”

  “Brilliant,” Em giggled. “I’ll get a special baldie wig, and I’ve got that old England strip from the sixties that you gave me last birthday, Dad.”