Tthe Sleepover Club on the Beach by Angie Bates Page B

going to make my Sleepover Club mates sick with envy!
    But right now I could do with a rest. In fact, you must be a total mind-reader! I was just unpacking my rucksack when you walked in, but now I’ve got a better idea. I’ll empty everything out, and you see if you can figure out what we got up to on our last sleepover.
    Heavens, where did all this sand come from, hint hint!
    Ooh, and this teeny strand of pink seaweed!
    Hmmn, what else is there? Old rubber flipflops, sunglasses, assorted pebbles and pretty shells… Oh, and right down at the bottom, four absolutely ancient, hopelessly sandy adventure books.
    Don’t laugh! The characters might look like kids from a 1940s knitting pattern, but they provided crucial inspiration for our latest sleepover.
    And let me tell you this sleepover had EVERYTHING. Sun, sand, sea and a thrilling race against time to find hidden treasure.
    Yeah, that’s what I said. Hidden treasure!
    No, I’m not having you on. I’m deadly serious.
    Want me to tell you all about it? Look, shove those boxes out of the way and sit on my bed. Squish back against my cushions, go on, that’s what I do.
    Now are you sitting comfortably?
    Then I’ll begin…

It all started with an earache.
    You know the kind of illnesses where you feel very slightly fragile and everyone spoils you rotten? I
lurve
those. Sometimes Dad buys me silly treats on the way home from work: sherbet necklaces and stick-on tattoos and puzzle books.
    Well, my ear infection was nothing
like
that. It made me totally miz, even after the antibiotics had kicked in. And I had to miss loads of school. I didn’t mind about lessons, obviously, but I hated not seeing my mates. Plus, my illness TOTALLYdisrupted our Sleepover schedule.
    I was praying I’d recover in time to go on our school trip. But when the day came, Mum said I was nowhere near well enough to go bombing off to Skeggy on a coach.
    On the other hand, she saw absolutely NO reason to cancel the paddling party she’d arranged. She’d invited her best mates and all their little kids to our house. Which, if you include my little brothers, makes eight screaming, sticky-fingered under-fives in total! Lucky ol’ me, eh.
    Things weren’t too bad at the start. The sun shone and the mums nattered and the little ones splashed around in our ancient paddling pool, like cute little water babies. I just sprawled in a deckchair, looking interestingly pale in my sunglasses, pretending to read a magazine. Also privately wondering how I’d
ever
squeezed into that teeny weeny plastic pool. If I jumped in now, I’d create a major tidal wave!
    Then quite suddenly the heavens opened and it POURED. The mums scooped uptoddlers and plates of sandwiches and ran for shelter.
    Unfortunately Dad had started one of his famous DIY projects, putting our sitting room completely out of action. (My dad makes
Changing Rooms
look like a bunch of wimpy amateurs!) So the paddling party had to picnic in the kitchen.
    Just imagine it. Eight screaming toddlers all spilling juice and trampling on sandwiches and occasionally on each other’s fingers.
Total
nightmare!
    I just couldn’t take the mayhem. So I sneaked off to the bombsite formerly known as our sitting room, to watch TV by myself.
    But the telly was swathed in several sheets of industrial plastic.
    My star sign is Libra, and I’m a really easygoing person. My mates will tell you that normally I take things like disappearing tellies completely in my stride.
    But you’ve to got remember I was seriously stressed out. My house was filled with rampaging rugrats and there was completely nowhere to run. And my ear stillhurt, a LOT. And the no-telly-situation was just the last straw.
    And I’m sorry, OK, but I completely lost it. Actually, I went totally ballistic. “ARGH!” I yelled. And again. “AAARGH!!!”
    But no-one heard me. This was because Mum and her mates had finally succeeded in persuading all the kiddiwinks to sing Five Fat Sausages at the