Midnight by Jacqueline Wilson Page B

us, well within earshot. I felt freeze-framed, unable to rewind. Will looked hard at me for one heart-stopping moment and then looked straight ahead. He walked right past us without saying a word.
    â€˜Who was
that
?’ said Jasmine. ‘He’s a bit different from those other idiots. Do you like him? You’ve gone crimson.’
    â€˜That’s Will, my brother,’ I said.

Dear C.D.,
    I wonder how long it takes you to create each of your wonderful books? You must sit at your drawing board all day and half the night to manage so many. Twelve books in seven years, and that’s not counting the colouring books or the calendars.
    Do you ever lose all sense of time?
    Love from
    Violet
    XXX

From
The Book of Fairy Spells and Potions
by Casper Dream
A Fairy Enchantment
A charm using occult words.

Six
    I DIDN’T KNOW if Will had heard or not. I couldn’t be sure. He’d given me that one long look, but that
could
have been coincidence. Maybe he hadn’t heard a word. Maybe I was just kidding myself because I couldn’t bear Will to know that I’d betrayed him.
    I was so enchanted with my sudden astonishing friendship with Jasmine that I didn’t even want to think about Will. Jasmine and I whispered and wrote notes all through lessons and walked round arm in arm together at lunch time. Jasmine linked her arm through mine as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I’d been friends with Marnie and Terry for more than a year and we’d never linked arms once. Marnie and Terry disapproved of girls who went round cosied up together and called them stupid names.
    It was so wonderful to be with Jasmine instead of Marnie and Terry.
    â€˜Come to tea with me,’ she said suddenly, when the bell went for the end of school.
    â€˜I’d love to,’ I said at once. ‘But won’t your father mind?’
    â€˜No, of course not,’ said Jasmine. ‘We’re renting this flat near the river. It’s in this big mansion block, Ellmere House. Do you know it?’
    Of course I knew it. It was a wonderful dark gothic building, with many turrets and cupolas. It looked just like one of the fairy palaces in my Casper Dream books. It seemed a perfect home for someone like Jasmine. I couldn’t possibly miss the chance of going to tea there, though I knew Mum would be worried sick. I didn’t want to phone her. She’d fuss and want to know all about Jasmine and ask embarrassing questions. I didn’t want to get bogged down in all that. I just wanted to go home with Jasmine. So I did.
    I walked along beside her. I kept looking round, hoping lots of people would see me with my new friend. I saw our shadows bobbing along behind us, mine little, hers tall and slender, her long hair standing out around her head and waving in the wind. Our arms were linked again so that our shadows were Siamese twins. I pretended Jasmine’s shadow was mine. I wondered what it would be like to be her. I imagined what her flat would be like, lavishly furnishing it in my imagination, giving it purple-velvet curtains and crimson sofas, scattering Persian rugs on the polished wooden floorand hanging cranberry-glass chandeliers from the ceiling.
    The real flat was a disappointment, almost as beige and boring as my own house – neutral colours, corduroy-covered chairs with floral cushions, and insipid watercolour prints on the pale walls.
    â€˜Oh it’s lovely,’ I said politely.
    â€˜No it’s not,’ said Jasmine. ‘None of this stuff is
ours
. It comes with the flat. It’s weird, it’s always the same sort of stuff no matter which flat we’re in. Come into my bedroom. That’s got some of
my
things in it.’
    I thought it was the most wonderful bedroom in the world, although I knew Marnie and Terry would scoff.
    Jasmine didn’t have her own television or computer, she didn’t have an elaborate music player, just a little CD