“Five, of course,” said Rosie.
“How many of us are there?”
“Five,” said Kenny, frowning.
Frankie grinned. Then she ripped open a crisp packet noisily and started cramming the contents into her mouth.
I sighed. Frankie loved ‘keeping us in suspenders’, as she put it.
“Come on,” I said. “Give us a clue.”
“Mm-mm-mm-mm,” she muttered through her munching.
“What?” we asked her.
She gave a big gulp and licked her crumby lips.
“Stars in Their Eyes,” she replied. “School version, of course. Why don’t we go in for it as the Spice Girls?”
“Yeah! Fantastic! Can I be Baby Spice?” yelled Fliss.
She took a flying leap off the end of the bed. There was a squelchy sound. Then silence. Then an awful scream. She’d landed right in Molly’s carrot cake and squashed it all over the carpet. Fliss is very fussy, just like her mother. She absolutely hates getting in a mess. When we saw bits of creamy orange sponge squidging between her bare toes, we all collapsed.
“Oh no, oh no, I think I’m going to wet myself,” giggled Rosie, which made us all laugh even more.
Then I heard Mum coming up the stairs.
“Girls, girls, what’s going on up here? Is everything all right?” she called out.
“Yes, yes,” I panted, between hoots of laughter. “Fliss just put her foot in it, that’s all!”
Luckily for us, the doorbell rang. Mum dashed down the stairs to answer it, giving me a chance to get a sponge from the bathroom and do some cleaning up.
When we’d all calmed down, we got down to some serious snacking and talking.
“Who’s going to be who, then?” asked Kenny.
“I think you should be Sporty Spice,” Frankie told her.
Although we all like sports and all play netball, Kenny is seriously sports mad. She never wears anything but jeans and sportswear. Tonight, she was wearing jeans and a Leicester City Football Club sweatshirt. They’re her favourite team. My dad and grandad are mad about them, too, and sometimes we all go to matches together.
We all agreed that Kenny was perfect for Sporty Spice and, to save arguments, we agreed that Fliss could be Baby Spice. She has the right colour of hair, after all.
It was a bit difficult choosing Ginger Spice, because none of us has got ginger hair. But my mum has a big trunk full of dressing up clothes, amongst which is a red wig she bought to wear at a fancy dress party. I felt sure she’d let me borrow it. So I became Ginger Spice.
We all thought Frankie was perfect for Scary Spice, because she’s such an extrovert. Although she doesn’t wear glasses, she’s got some sunglasses that the lenses keep falling out of. So she said she could just wear the frames.
“Don’t think I’m going to get my tongue pierced, though,” she said, with a shudder.
“You could stick a blob of chewing gum on it, to look as if it was,” suggested Kenny.
“Yes but when I sang, it would go flying out into the audience,” Frankie said.
“It might hit one of the M&Ms,” said Rosie, giggling at the thought.
“Right in the eye, with any luck,” I said.
Frankie laughed and spluttered crisps everywhere. As usual, we were all getting covered in crumbs. It’s as if, when we get into a room together, we become grot magnets and pick up every crumb, foodstain and drip going. It’s like magic. I think every bit of dropped food and spilt drink in the universe looks around and says, “Oh look, it’s the Sleepover Club, let’s go get ‘em!” and they all come whirling in our direction and go splot, all over us.
Four Spice Girls were decided. That left Rosie to be Posh Spice.
“But I’m not posh!” she protested.
“Your hair’s the right colour, though,” Fliss pointed out.
“Okay. Now, how about our clothes?” Frankie said. She was being the boss, as usual. None of us really minded, though. At least she got things done, so the rest of us could be lazy.
“Kenny’s all right, she can just wear what she normally wears,” said Fliss.
“And so can you, Fliss,” Rosie said. “That silver dress of yours is a bit like one that Emma wears.”
By ‘Emma’, she meant Baby Spice, of course, not Emma of the dreaded M&Ms, my very worst and dreadest enemy!
“There’s always Mum’s dressing-up box,” I said. “Anything we haven’t got, we’re bound to find in there. She’s even got some genuine stripy T-shirts from last time they were in fashion.”
“Cool,” said Frankie.
“Now that we’ve decided who we all are, how are we going to do our show? Mime to one of their records?” I asked.
“No way. I want to sing!” insisted Fliss.
The rest of us glared at her. We didn’t want to sing and get laughed at by all the boys in our school. Of course, she hoped Ryan Scott would hear her wonderful voice and fall madly in love with her. I tell you, Fliss is saddest of the sad!
“We’ve got to sing. They do on Stars in Their Eyes,” said Rosie. “Besides, I want to sing Say You’ll Be There.”
“No, we’ve got to do Wannabe!” yelled Frankie.
“Mama,” begged Fliss.
“Okay, okay,” Kenny said. “Tell you what we’ll do. We’ll put the CD on and try them all out and see which one we do the best.”
We soon found we had a mega problem. The louder we sang, the louder we had to turn the volume up in order to hear the Spice Girls. And the more we turned it up, the louder we had to sing, until we were screeching at the tops of our voices.
I switched the machine off in the middle of Mama.
“It’s no good,” I said. “We’ll just have to mime.”
“No, no!” Fliss wailed.
“Or else get hold of a karaoke tape with just the music on,” suggested Frankie.
That was the best idea anyone had had all day. In fact, we were so happy about it that we decided to eat our tub of ice cream, which was busy melting.
Before we could even pick up a spoon, doom struck in the shape of my oldest brother, Stuart. He hammered on my door and yelled, “Hey, Lyndz, you haven’t seen the food that was in the fridge in the garage, have you?”
My hand shot to my mouth and I felt quite ill.
Fliss let out a squeak like an electrocuted mouse.
Frankie groaned, “Oh, no,” then we all tried to be as quiet as anything.
But it was no good. Stu came barging in, totally ignoring my Keep Out notice on the door.
“Aha! Thought as much!” he said, swooping on the ice cream. Luckily, we hadn’t even got the lid off yet.
“I’ll have those chocolate biscuits, please. And the big bag of crisps,” he demanded.
“Er…” I went. The others had gone bright pink and were starting to giggle. “Shut up!” I hissed at them.
I saw Kenny trying to push the remains of one of the biscuit packets under the bed, but I had so much junk over there that it wouldn’t go.
“Don’t tell me you’ve scoffed the