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HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF Secret Meeting first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2004 Is Anybody There? first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2004 Sugar and Spice first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2005 First published in this three-in-one edition by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2007 Text © Jean Ure 2004, 2004, 2005 Illustrations © Karen Donnelly 2004, 2004, 2005 The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780007248209 Ebook Edition © 2005 ISBN: 9780007369591 Version: 2016-12-12
For Chris and Joan with love and respect
Table of Contents
For Chris and Joan with love and respect
Contents My friend Annie is completely bonkers. Loopy, wacko. Seriously doolally, as my nan would say. She does the craziest things! Like in biology, one time, we were supposed to be dissecting plums, and when Miss Andrews said, “Annabel Watson, where is your plum?” Annie said, “Oops, sorry, miss! I ate it.” “Ate it?” said Miss Andrews. “Ate your plum?” She couldn’t believe it! I could, ’cos I know Annie. She drank some paint water once, when we were in juniors. She said it looked so pretty, like pink lemonade. Some people think she does it to show off, but it’s not that at all. She just happens to be a very zany sort of person. I, on the other hand, am desperately sensible and boring. I would never do anything silly, if it weren’t for Annie. She is always getting us into hot water! The only times I ever have my name in the order mark book are when Annie’s told me to do something and I’ve gone and done it, even though I know it means trouble. Like, for instance, hiding ourselves in the stationery cupboard when we should have been outside playing hockey. I knew it would end in disaster. I only did it ’cos I hate hockey – well, and because Annie said it would be fun. What she didn’t realise was that Mrs Gibson, our head teacher, was due to take a special sixth form study group in our classroom. With us still in the cupboard!!! Mrs Gibson was quite surprised when someone opened the cupboard door and we fell out. We were quite surprised, ourselves. That was two order marks. One for missing hockey, and one for damaging school property (trampling on the stationery). Then there was the time she decided – Annie, I mean – that we should
