I took my place in front of the cameras. A few minutes later I was joined by Alice. She was tossing and stroking her hair, but she completely ignored me. Kenny, Frankie, Fliss and Rosie were standing behind Greg, and I could tell just by the way they were smirking that they had something awful up their sleeves.

“Action!”

I tried to concentrate on my lines, but all the time Alice was twitching about beside me.

“Cut! Are you all right, Alice?” asked Greg. “Do you have a problem?”

“No I’m fine!” she smiled, and started twitching again.

Kenny and Frankie were pulling faces at me, and it took me all my time to keep my face straight. At last Alice looked composed again.

“Action!”

This time, before I’d even begun my line, Alice started scratching her neck.

“Cut!”

I heard Fliss mutter very loudly, “How unprofessional!”

“Alice darling, what is going on?” asked Greg. He looked a bit irritated.

Alice had gone quite red in the face and looked as though she was about to cry.

“We’ll give it one more try,” said Greg, sighing. “And… Action!”

I was just about to start my line when Alice let out an almighty scream.

“A spider!” she yelled. “Get it off me!”

A spider was dangling in front of her face. I tried to pull it off her, but she pushed me away.

“Not YOU!” she yelled. “This is all your fault!”

I could see Kenny and Rosie creased up at the back of the room. Frankie was looking a bit alarmed because she hates spiders herself, and Fliss was telling anyone who would listen what a bad actress Alice was anyway. Bad actress or not, everyone was crowded round her – and the cameras were still rolling. It was hysterical. I laughed so much I thought I was going to wet myself. I didn’t of course, but my hiccups came back again. I got them so badly that I just couldn’t get rid of them. Poor Greg looked horrified. There was no way that we could do any more filming.

“I think we’d better call that a day for you, Lyndsey,” said the woman I had seen earlier. She ushered us all out of the room. “You’ll be hearing from us in a few days’ time. Your mum’s given us your address. Thank you for coming.”

Angel called “Goodbye” to us, but Mum couldn’t get us out of that building fast enough. I thought she was going to be really angry with us, but as soon as we were outside she exploded with laughter.

“That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” she gasped. “I’d love to see that on film. They ought to send it to one of those television outtakes programmes!”

She was laughing so much that tears were streaming down her face, and that set us all off again. It was only when Mum realised that people were staring at us that she managed to calm down.

“Come on, we’d better get out of here!” she spluttered, and we ran giggling back to the van.

When we were on our way home I said to Kenny, “It was you, hic, who put that spider in Alice’s, hic, hair wasn’t it?”

“Course it was!” she laughed. “I saw it by the door as we went in, and when she was so awful to you, I thought that I’d make use of it if I got the chance.”

“Cool!”

We chatted about how awful Alice was all the way back to Cuddington. The others tried various methods of making me lose my hiccups too, but none of them worked.

“Bye, Lyndz! You were a star!” they all yelled as we dropped them off at their homes.

I wondered what Dad would say about the audition when we got back, and Ben. He’d thought it was really cool that I might be on the telly. Now I’d just go back to being his boring sister.

Everyone was in the kitchen when we got in – even Stuart.

“At least I’ll get all their stupid comments over with at once!” I thought to myself.

Mum started telling them what had happened, but she couldn’t stop laughing so I carried on. But because I was laughing and hiccuping they couldn’t understand a word I was saying. By the time we’d finished, everyone was rolling about on the floor.

“Fantastic!” gasped Tom. “I wish I’d been there!”

“Me too!” shouted Stuart, holding his sides.

And I knew that Ben thought it was funny because he wouldn’t leave me alone all the rest of the day. He kept following me around wanting to play at ‘televisions’! Spike just kept saying ‘pider’ and laughing his head off. The only rotten thing about that afternoon was that Mum made me swallow a teaspoon of vinegar to get rid of my hiccups – and it worked! I don’t think I’ll be trying that again in a hurry though!

I got the letter about the commercial on the following Wednesday. I knew that I hadn’t got the part, but I still had butterflies as I opened the envelope. It was just a standard letter saying that they were very sorry but after much consideration they felt that I wasn’t the right person for the part.

“Well, you wouldn’t want to work with Miss Sniffy Knickers, would you?” said Kenny when I showed her the letter.

“Nah, that would be awful!” agreed Rosie.

“What did the woman say? They’d have to see if the chemistry was right between you?” asked Frankie. “There was so much bad chemistry you’d probably have blown each other up!”

We all roared with laughter at the memory.

“Well, I thought that you were far too good for that advert anyway!” grinned Fliss.

At least we were all still friends, Fliss might not have been so generous if I had got the part.

The sad thing about all this is that Angel no longer teaches us drama. She told us at our class that evening that the Production Company had been so impressed with her that they’d offered her a job coaching actors for its commercials. She’ll be so good at that, but it means that we’re going to miss out on our classes. She promised to try to find us another teacher, but we haven’t heard anything yet.

But hey, at least we’ve got our own play to work on. Which reminds me, we’d better get our skates on. The others will be here in a minute and we want to rehearse one last time before our parents show up. Dad keeps threatening to video the whole thing just in case we have one of our famous mishaps. And the chances are that we will.

Fliss said she’d do all our make-up, so I hope she won’t be late. We won’t get Kenny to wear any though, not unless it’s some of that gory fake blood or something. Frankie said she’d do a plan on the computer saying which scene follows which. We haven’t got a script or anything – we just sort of improvise, like Angel taught us – but we do need to know which scene to move on to. You can be a sort of prompter if you like, and look at Frankie’s plan. Rosie’s organised most of the scenery too, so maybe you should have a word with her to see if she needs a hand. It’s a good thing you came, isn’t it?!

I can tell by all that shrieking that the others have arrived. And what do you know, Fliss has washed the dye out of her hair and she’s back to blonde! Kenny’s teasing her about it so I’d better try to calm things down. I don’t know about the play, but we seem to create enough drama just hanging out together for a feature length film!