“Mum, look!” Lila raced into the kitchen, where Ellie and Max were eating breakfast before school. “It’s arrived!”
“Is it the invitation?” Mum dropped the clingfilm she’d been wrapping round Ellie’s sandwiches, and seized the silvery envelope. “Oh, look, isn’t it pretty, with the little flowers woven into the paper…” She eased the envelope open very carefully.
“Gorgeous,” Lila said admiringly.
Lila and Mum glared at him. “Auntie Gemma and Liam’s wedding invitation, of course!”
Max shrugged. “But we’ve known about the wedding for ages. Why do we need an invitation? What are you getting so excited for?”
Lila sighed, and Mum shook her head. “It’s important, Max. Auntie Gemma’s been waiting ages for these to arrive. They were a special order. You know she wants everything to be perfect for the wedding.”
Max groaned. “Yes… You never stop going on about it. I’ll be glad when it’s over. Only another month of wedding, wedding, wedding…”
“Can I see, Mum?” Ellie asked, leaning over to look at the pretty dark pink and silver card. “Ooh, it’s got all our names on. ‘Miss Ellie Thomas’.” She giggled. It sounded very posh. Then she frowned thoughtfully. “It doesn’t mention Rascal…”
Lila rolled her eyes. “Ellie! You weren’t expecting Auntie Gemma to invite a dog to her smart wedding, were you?” Lila looked over at Rascal’s cushion. “Especially not that dog…”
Ellie had to smile. Rascal was asleep on his back, with all four paws in the air. His paws twitched every so often, and as she watched he started running in his sleep, his little legs bicycling. “He’s lovely!” she told Lila firmly.
“Yes, he’s a lovely little monster, Ellie! Rascal at a wedding! Just think about it!” Lila folded her arms and stared at Ellie.
Ellie sighed. “I suppose so.” She had to admit that Lila was right. Wherever Rascal went, chaos always seemed to follow…
“So when’s the wedding?” Jack asked.
“The beginning of May,” Ellie explained. “Auntie Gemma wanted it to be springtime, but not too cold.”
They were waiting for their dog-training class to start, and Ellie had just been telling Jack about the wedding – and how Rascal couldn’t go.
“So is it a big smart do, then? Do you have to wear some pink frilly dress?”
“It’s very smart. And I have to go and try on my bridesmaid’s dress next week.” Ellie made a face. “I’m looking forward to it, but Auntie Gemma didn’t know that dog training is on a Wednesday now, so I’m going to have to miss next week’s class.”
Rascal and Jack’s huge Great Dane Hugo had been moved up to the intermediate dog-training classes, which were once a week on Wednesdays. The lessons were slightly more difficult, and some of the other dogs were very clever. There was a German shepherd called Frisky who Ellie thought had been given totally the wrong name. He wasn’t frisky at all – he was the best-behaved dog she’d ever seen. Ellie was convinced that if Dan, Frisky’s owner, told him to walk up and down the hall on his hind legs holding a dog biscuit between his teeth, he’d do the trick without even licking the biscuit. But Dan was very nice, and he’d told Ellie that Jack Russells were a nightmare to train, and she was doing really well with Rascal. Since Rascal had just shot in front of Dan and tripped him up, it was good of him to say so.
Unfortunately, Amelia and her spaniel Goldie had moved up too, which meant she was still there to make mean comments about Rascal and Hugo all the time. She was waiting for the class to start too, sitting close to them with Goldie on her lap, and a superior look on her face. She had her hair drawn up into a ponytail with a feathery band round it, and she looked far too smart for dog training – she always did.
“I was a pageboy at my cousin’s wedding when I was five,” Jack told Ellie. “I had to wear this awful blue velvet suit. It was a disaster.” He shuddered.
“What happened?” Ellie said anxiously.
“I was supposed to be walking behind my cousin carrying the rings, but she was walking really slowly, and I trod on the end of her dress … the long train bit. I tripped over and fell on top of the train, and my cousin ended up pulling me down the aisle on it. I kept hold of the rings, though,” Jack added.
Ellie laughed, but she couldn’t help thinking, what if she did something awful like that?
“You’re going to look dreadful in a bridesmaid’s dress.”
Ellie looked up, her eyes widening.
It was Amelia, of course, with a nasty smile on her face. “You’re the kind of person who always wears jeans, Ellie. You’ll just look a ratty mess.”
Ellie glared at her, and then smiled. “Um, Amelia…”
“What? You know I’m right, Ellie.”
“Actually, it wasn’t about that. Did you know that Hugo’s eating your hairband?”
Ellie had to admit it was quite nice going to a dog-training class where Rascal wasn’t the worst-behaved dog for once. Jack’s mum took Amelia’s hairband to the ladies and washed off the dog-slobber, but Ellie had a feeling it was never going to be the same again. It didn’t help that she and Jack kept looking at each other and cracking up all the way through the class.
At least it made the lesson a bit less serious. Rascal was finding the intermediate level fairly difficult. Jo was trying to teach the dogs the same kind of things they’d learned in the beginners course, but they’d all got a bit more tricky. So they’d practise sit and stay, but now the dogs had to stay for more than two minutes.
Rascal’s worst bit was the food manners training, when the dogs were supposed to ignore bowls of food, and not beg or jump up if their owners were holding a biscuit. For Rascal, ignoring a food bowl was torture. Frisky and Billy, a Lab who was almost as un-frisky as Frisky, sat gazing at the bowls with angelic expressions, and even Hugo managed not to eat anything, although he did keep standing up and looking hopefully at Jack.
Meanwhile, Rascal had already wolfed down half his crunchies, and stared at Ellie as though she was mad when she took the bowl away.
Ellie sighed. “Maybe you’ll be better when Max brings you next Wednesday,” she told Rascal. But she didn’t feel very hopeful.
