Bindi Babes by Narinder Dhami Page B

answers?” I blustered.
    Jazz turned to Geena. “She's got absolutely no idea,” she said in disgust.
    “Oh, really, Amber!” Geena snapped. “You'll have to do better than this.”
    I gritted my teeth. “When's the next parents' evening?”
    “When we get our reports,” Jazz replied.
    That was at least five months away. Five months of Auntie interfering and making us cook and stopping Dad from buying us stuff and sending us to bed early. No human being alive could be expected to put up with that.
    “All right,” I muttered. “I'll think about it.” I eye-balled my sisters sternly. “We'll
all
think about it. There must be a way.”

    Brave words. They haunted me for the rest of the day. It was all I could think of. Luckily, we had the student teacher, Mademoiselle Véronique, for double French after break, and she was too busy trying to stop George Botley looking up rude words in the dictionary to notice that I didn't do much work. At lunchtime I met Geena and Jazz in the drama studio to paint backdrops for the special assembly. Geena's best idea was this: we wait until Mr. Arora is on break duty, then Geena pretends to be ill and faints. A phone call brings Auntie rushing to the school, and she and Mr. Arora meet for the first time.
    I accused Geena of hoping that Mr. Arora would pick her up and carry her in his strong arms to the school office. Geena said, what was wrong with that? I then added that it was a much better idea if
I
fainted, as I was in his class and had plenty of time to choose my moment. But Geena was hovering menacingly over me with a paintbrush, so I decided to let her have her way—this time.
    Nothing had come to me by the end of the day, but I wasn't giving up. Not when we walked out of school at four o'clock and saw Dad waiting outside in the car.
    “Look, your dad's here,” said Kim, the queen of stating the obvious. She was trailing along with us, determined not to be left behind.
    Geena looked twitchy. “Why? What for?”
    “It'll be something to do with Hitler in a sari,” I muttered. “You can bet your bottom dollar.”
    “I can't cope with Dad turning up unexpectedly all the time,” Jazz said in an agitated voice. “I'm not used to it.”
    Dad was fidgeting in the driver's seat. He looked massively uncomfortable. “Hi, girls,” he said awkwardly. We looked at him with raised eyebrows and he cleared his throat. “Er—your auntie called me at work and asked me to pick you up,” he stammered. “She wants us to have a nice family dinner tonight.”
    Geena snorted in disgust. “Dad, do you actually
like
her interfering all the time?” she demanded, a bit recklessly.
    Dad tried to look stern and failed badly. “She's just trying to help, that's all,” he said lamely. “Oh, and you're to bring any of your friends who want to come.”
    Geena, Jazz and I immediately glanced over our shoulders to check that none of our mates had overheard.
    “Thanks, I'd love to,” Kim said in a pleased voice.
    “No,” I said. “You don't want to do that.”
    “Oh, I do,” Kim assured me.
    “Kim.” I said her name so savagely, every letter was one beat long. “You don't
really
want to come,
do you
?”
    “Yes, please,” Kim said cheerfully.
    “I'll talk to you later,” I said under my breath as we got into the car.
    Kim sagged, looking a bit worried, but it didn't stop her getting in too.
    As Dad drove home, I daydreamed in the back of the car. A wedding. Auntie in red and gold with rows of tinkling bangles on her wrists, hands patterned with henna. Mr. Arora in a white suit and a dashing pink turban. Singing and dancing and feasting. And then the bride leaves home and I get my bedroom back and everything goes on exactly as it did before she arrived… .
    “What happened to Ma Macey?” Geena asked, as we drew up outside our house.
    We peered out of the car windows. There was a trowel, some clippers, a pair of gardening gloves anda black bag half full of weeds in her front