Read Online Annabel's Perfect Party by Holly Webb - Free Book Online

“Hmmm?”
    â€œI did really badly in my French test.” Annabel paused, and then gabbled the rest. “I only got six out of forty and Mr Hatton put me in detention.”
    â€œ Six ?” squeaked her mother in horror. “How did you manage to only get six ? You don’t find French that hard, do you?”
    â€œNo, of course not,” said Annabel disgustedly. “I forgot to learn it, that’s all.”
    â€œOh, that’s all. Really, Bel, I suppose this was what you were supposed to be doing the night you and Katie had that argument,” said Mrs Ryan crossly. “Well I have to say, I think you deserve to be in detention.”
    Hmmm. This was not going well.
    â€œOh, well, I suppose at least you’re honest enough to tell me about it,” sighed Mrs Ryan, picking up the yoghurt again, but staring into the pot as if something horrible had drowned in it.
    Annabel summoned up her best smile. “Mmm. You have to sign the detention slip. . .”
    Having got that out of the way, Annabel decided it would be best to leave the yoghurt to work its magic for a couple of minutes before she got to work on the more important part of her mission:
    â€œMum, you know on Tuesday you said we couldn’t have a party. . .”

Chapter Eight
    Annabel had come back upstairs that night looking fairly smug, but Katie and Becky put it down to her not having got into trouble with Mum about her French – Bel was lucky that way. She avoided having to talk too much to her sisters by grabbing her French vocab book and curling up in bed with it, saying she needed to do some serious learning – after all, they could hardly argue with that.
    The next morning, though, there was no avoiding the subject of parties. The French disaster and its aftermath, followed by Katie’s exciting news, had nearly driven Mum’s birthday party ban out of Becky’s and Katie’s minds. But as soon as they got up on Thursday morning, Becky remembered.
    â€œKatie, Mum’s in a good mood at the moment, isn’t she? With your being in the football team? Do you think if we asked her ever so nicely, and promised her we wouldn’t fight about it, we could convince her to let us have a party?”
    â€œMaybe,” conceded Katie cautiously. “She was really pleased about the football. It might be worth a try. What do you reckon, Bel?”
    Annabel, who’d been brushing her hair and grinning to herself in the mirror, realized that she ought to be taking more of an interest here, or the others would really start to suspect. “Mmm. I think so. Let’s try.” She couldn’t hide a smug, excited sort of smile, but luckily the others just thought she was keen on the idea.
    The triplets were particularly polite at breakfast, handing each other things without being asked, and smiling a lot, as if to say that the idea of them fighting about a party was absurd – they were devoted sisters. Of course, they were, but today they were making sure that everybody knew it.
    After a while of extra-quiet, extra-polite toast-munching, punctuated by milk-slurping from Annabel who was having cereal, Katie caught Becky’s eye and waggled her eyebrows in a way that made her look positively demonic. They had decided earlier that as Becky hadn’t actually been part of the argument that had got Mum so angry, she had better be the one to bring the subject up again.
    â€œMum?” wavered Becky, while Katie nodded encouragingly at her.
    â€œMmmm?” said her mother through a mouthful of toast.
    â€œWe were wondering. . .” Katie rolled her eyes in disgust and made a “Get on with it!” face. “Well, we were wondering about what you said about our birthday party? That we couldn’t have one because we were fighting? We’re really, really sorry and everything, and we thought maybe, if we come up with something that we’d all