Page 47 of Daydreams & Doughnut Cake

The last thing I felt like doing was driving over to Bogg House to collect Maisie so that I could help her with her dress-fitting for the show. But I’d promised I would and I wasn’t going to let her down.

I was still bearing the emotional bruises from unmasking Jackie as the intruder and feeling as small as could be after her thorough assault on my character.

I couldn’t afford to have someone else hating me as well!

When I arrived, Maisie greeted me at the door carrying a wicker basket, with the dress in a carrier bag. She stepped out and closed the front door behind her.

‘Mum’s having a lie-down while Isla is asleep so we have to be quiet,’ she explained as we got in my car. ‘I’ve got her mending basket here. It belonged to Granny Rose but Mum’s got it now.’ Eagerly, she set the basket by her feet and took the dress out of the bag. ‘Do you think we can find some thread to match it?’

‘I’m sure we can. Oh, it really is lovely, Maisie.’

The dress was a size eight but clearly still too big for Maisie. My sewing skills weren’t great but hopefully with a few tweaks here and there, we could get it to fit.

‘I have an idea,’ I told her. ‘We could cut off the bottom of the dress so it’s a good length for you, and we could make a sash from the material to gather the dress in around your waist.’

‘What’s a sash?’

‘It’s like a belt?’

She nodded, hanging on my every word.

‘And actually, I’m thinking maybe a stiff petticoat underneath the dress would give it a nice bit of volume. That’s how they used to wear their dresses in days gone by.’

‘I’ve seen pictures of ladies wearing big, puffy dresses,’ she said excitedly. ‘Do you think we could do that?’

‘Well, I’ve got a long petticoat I wore under a ball gown once. I could shorten it and iron it with spray starch which would make it as good as new.’

‘Great! Mum says she’ll put my hair up in a grown-up style. I want to look so nice that Reuben wishes he hadn’t been so horrible.’

‘He was horrible?’

‘I’ve gone right off him, actually. I was chatting to Mum and she says he’s the lowest of the low.’

‘Mums are usually right,’ I said as I popped the dress back into the bag. It was heartening to hear that Ellie seemed a bit better after our emotional chat the other day. ‘What did Reuben do?’

So she told me all about offering him the cinema tickets and him taking them, intending to use them just for himself.

‘You know what he did next? I was walking home after school with my friend Amy and he ran after us, and right there in front of me he asked Amy if she wanted to go to see a film with him. With the tickets I’d bought!’

‘What? That’s despicable!’ I burst out, felling genuinely gutted for Maisie.

‘I know. It was horrible. All his mates were watching and laughing. I think they’d dared him to do it. But Amy was great. She said why are you inviting me? Those were Maisie’s tickets. You should be inviting her. And you know what he did?’

‘Go on.’ I frowned, not liking the way this was going at all.

‘He screwed up his nose and said, “I’m not going to the cinema withher. She’sweird”.’

‘Ugh. What a nasty ratbag! Well, I have to say, Maisie, you’re definitely better off without thisReubentwit in your life.’

‘He is a ratbag, isn’t he?’

‘He most certainly is.’

‘The thing is, Reuben really thinks he’s peng, so he probably thinks Amy will say yes.’

‘Peng?’

She shrugged. ‘It means he really likes himself. He thinks he looks like Leo Woodhall, which he actually does a bit.’

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