“Hiya, Coleen love,” Mum called, waving at me. “The match is about to start. There’s some tea in the flask if you want it.”
“Sorry, Mum,” I said, striding past. “Stuff to do. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Me, Mel, Lucy and Ben walked on up the touchline of the Western Wanderers’ pitch to where Frankie Wilson and his dad were standing. I felt like we were in one of those TV shows like Torchwood, where the camera goes all slow-mo as the team stride purposefully towards the lens. A long leather coat would have been good at this point, I decided. But I had to make do with my old puffa instead.
“Frankie Wilson?” Ben growled, coming to a stop inches away from where Frankie was standing. Me, Lucy and Mel clustered around behind Ben, trying to look cool and collected.
“That’s me,” Frankie said in surprise. “Who are you?”
“Someone you really don’t want to meet,” said Ben, stepping a bit closer.
“What’s going on?” Frankie asked.
“That’s what we want to know,” said Mel.
“You little worm,” I added.
“How could you do something so horrible, Frankie?” Lucy asked, her bottom lip trembling.
Frankie Wilson was looking more and more bewildered. “What are you on about?” he said.
“Standing Lucy up, you twerp!” I said. “Laughing at her and then running away!”
“But Lucy’s the one who stood me up last weekend,” Frankie protested.
Whatever we’d been expecting Frankie to say, we hadn’t been expecting that.
“What?” Mel screeched.
“Are you deliberately messing with our heads?” I demanded.
“Your message!” Frankie turned to Lucy in complete confusion. “The one about meeting in the park instead of The Music Place. I waited for half an hour. Where were you?”
“What message?” Lucy said.
“You know,” Frankie insisted. “You gave it to my brother at school, remember?”
“Brother?” Mel said in disbelief.
A faint memory of Summer Collins’ voice earlier that week jogged in my memory.
He calls himself Frankie, not Jimmy, Miss…
Click, clunk, click went the pieces as they all fell into place. A picture suddenly popped into the confusion, as clear as day.
“Your brother,” I said weakly. “He’s not called – Jimmy – by any chance, is he?”
“Back in Cornwall, Jimmy was always the troublemaker at school,” Frankie explained, once we were all sitting down and recovering from the shock of discovering that two Frankie Wilsons had been running around Hartley the whole time without anyone noticing. “Being twin brothers meant that I got a lot of stick for the stuff Jimmy was doing. I did my best to get on, but it’s pretty tough when people kept expecting me to be as crazy as Jimmy. So when we moved up here, Mum and Dad thought it would be a good idea to put us in different schools.”
“Why didn’t you say anything about having an identical twin brother?” I asked.
“I probably should have,” Frankie admitted. “It would have saved a lot of trouble, I guess. But I liked just being me for a change – not one half of two people. I never thought it would get us into this kind of mess.”
“But why does Jimmy call himself Frankie at school?” Mel persisted.
“He never liked his name much,” Frankie said with a frown. “Always preferred mine. He probably thought it would be a laugh pretending to be me.”
“Maybe he really wants to be you,” Lucy said.
“Hardly,” Frankie snorted. “We don’t exactly get on. I should’ve known Jimmy was up to something when he gave me that message about the park.”
I wondered if Lucy had a point. Perhaps Frankie was all the things Jimmy wanted to be. So what better way to be Frankie than to use his brother’s name – and then go on and mess up his brother’s date?
Ben stuck out his hand. “I owe you an apology, mate,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Frankie replied, shaking Ben’s hand.
“Does Jimmy ever come to watch your brother Billy playing?” Lucy asked.
Frankie shook his head. “Jimmy’s not into footie the way me and Billy are. He tried to play once, but he had two left feet.”
Another reason why Jimmy wants to be Frankie? I wondered. I felt like I was turning into some kind of super-psychiatrist, and it was starting to do my head in.
“So,” Frankie said to Lucy. “Now we’ve sorted that out, wanna meet up at The Music Place again some time?”
Lucy blushed to the roots of her hair. Looked like lurve was back on the tracks at last.
“How about next weekend?” I suggested, zooming to Lucy’s rescue. “Come to my nan’s sixtieth birthday party if you like. We’re all going to be at The Music Place from about six thirty on Saturday night.”
“You’d better have a couple of code words in case Jimmy tries to jinx you guys again,” Mel joked.
“How about Doreen and Patrick?” I suggested. “That’s my nan and grandad’s names.”
“Wicked,” Frankie said, nodding.
And the shine off Lucy’s smile could probably have been seen from outer space.
Back at home, Em was glowing from head to foot with a top win against the Western Wanderers. Mum pulled a casserole out of the oven that had been cooking for four long lovely hours, and everyone sat down to eat. Well, everyone except Em.
“Three-nil, three-nil,” she sang, doing this funny little victory dance around the kitchen. “Three-nil, three-ni-hil!”
“Yes, yes,” Dad grinned. “Girl of the Match, we know. Well done, love. We’re proud as punch.”
“Cheers, Dad,” Em said, flopping down in her chair at last.
“So you worked everything out with Frankie then?” Mum asked me, ladling out gorgeous steamy bowls of beef casserole and passing them round.
“Totally,” I said, attacking my casserole like I hadn’t eaten for weeks. “Turns out it’s his twin brother Jimmy that’s been messing us around at school all along.”
“Sounds like this Jimmy needs to be taught a lesson,” Dad said.
Ping. My brain lit up. Maybe it was time to teach Jimmy Wilson a thing or two about how it felt to be set up. But before I could take that brilliant thought any further, Dad had moved on to the subject of Nan’s birthday party.
“We’ve got both sets of Mum’s neighbours lined up,” he said, “and your nan’s best mate Susan, plus us lot and a couple of mates each for Coleen and Em. Vinny’s given us a great deal on a big table in the café. We just need to work out how we’re going to get Mum down to The Music Place without letting on.”
“Easy,” I said promptly. “You guys get set up at The Music Place and me and my mates will drop round to Nan’s just as she’s getting ready for the birthday tea she still thinks she’s getting at our house. I’ll tell her I’ve found her and Pops’ initials on that stool, and that she’s got to come with me to see it before we go back to ours.”
“What about the sixties theme?” Em asked. “Can I be Bobby Charlton?”
“You can be whatever you like, love,” Dad laughed.
“Bobby Charlton?” I said in disbelief. “He’s like, bald.”
“Brilliant,” Em giggled. “I’ll get a special baldie wig, and I’ve got that old England strip from the sixties that you gave me last birthday, Dad.”
I shook my head in despair. My sister is too weird sometimes. Why did she want to be an old footballer when the sixties was famous for some of the best fashion in the world? Are we even related?
“We’ll get Nan a lovely outfit on Saturday morning,” Mum said. “She still loves all the sixties styles, so she’ll look perfect for a sixties party; even one that’s a surprise.”
“What are you going to wear, Coleen?” Dad asked.
“Dad,” Em moaned. “Don’t be asking her that. We’ll all be here for hours.”
“Zip it, cheeky,” I said warningly.
My outfit was going to be a surprise. I needed a can of silver spray paint and some peace and quiet on Saturday afternoon, and ta-da! I was going to knock everyone’s socks off.
Thinking these happy thoughts, my brain drifted back to the question of Jimmy Wilson. Now we knew what he was up to, we could turn it in our favour and set him up, big time. All my plan needed was a little bit of help from Lucy…