Katie's Secret Admirer by Holly Webb Page A

the alterations to her dress, and she looked about as unexcited as Becky had ever seen her. In fact, she looked downright sulky. She’d kept her trainers on, and she was irritably scraping the toe of one back and forth on the carpet, and not even looking at herself in the mirror!
    â€œKatie!” Annabel hissed. “Come over here! I want to see all of us together!”
    Katie looked round, and shrugged, and just then the dressmaker, who’d been consulting with Mum about something, bustled back over with her pins and shooed Katie towards the centre of the room.
    â€œThis is really so exciting,” she continued, still talking to Mum. “I’ve made dresses for twins before, but never triplets, and they’re so completely identical! No one will be able to tell them apart in these frocks.”
    Mum smiled, but cast a slightly worried glance over at the triplets. They generally weren’t keen on dressing alike – she’d had tantrums from them before about wearing matching outfits that their Gran had sent them.
    Katie stomped grimly into the middle and stood there, looking as unlike a bridesmaid as it was possible to do in a sticky-out net-skirted dress. She looked like she was going to bite the next person who mentioned the word wedding.
    Becky sighed. Katie just wasn’t a dress person – and as for crystal jewellery, and posies, and high-heeled lilac satin slippers… She moaned every time they had to go to a dress fitting, and whenever Auntie Jan rang up with more wedding ideas she rolled her eyes horribly, but Becky hadn’t quite realized how much she meant it. Looking at her now, Becky was starting to feel a teensy bit worried. Katie wasn’t going to scowl like that all the way through the wedding, was she…?
    Annabel didn’t seem to have noticed the danger signs. “Katie! You’ve still got your trainers on, you muppet! You need to put the proper shoes on, or the dress won’t hang right!” She clicked her tongue exasperatedly, and exchanged an “honestly!” look with the dressmaker.
    Katie sullenly went back to get the high-heeled shoes that the dressmaker had lent them to try on with the dresses, and Becky nudged Annabel. “Do you think she’s OK?”
    Annabel gave her a blank look. Most of her brain was filled with sparkly net just now.
    Becky went on trying to explain, although she had a suspicion that Annabel wasn’t actually capable of processing the idea that someone could not like this dress. “She looks – cross.”
    Annabel gave Katie a vague glance. “No, she’s OK. She’s just bored standing around, that’s all. Look, Becky, do you think that this dress needs something – I don’t know, more twinkly about it? I wish Auntie Jan had gone for that bead decoration I pointed out to her in last month’s Brides magazine. It would have just added that extra something .” Annabel pirouetted in front of the mirror, scowling thoughtfully. Perhaps she could … no, that wouldn’t be fair … but then again … the other two wouldn’t mind, would they? Deep in her daydreams of crystal beads, she entirely failed to register Katie’s miserable face, and the concern in Becky’s eyes.
    Mum didn’t seem to have spotted Katie’s bad mood either – she was inspecting the prices of shoes and tiaras and things, and looking slightly worried.
    It was definitely up to Becky to do something. She left Annabel trying to work out from which side she looked nicest, and went over to Katie, carefully gathering up the skirt of her dress – it wasn’t finally sewn yet, and it was delicate. She edged around the dressmaker, who was measuring Katie’s hemline, and stood next to her sister, mulling over the best way to cheer her up. Of course – Katie had been at football practice that morning, and she’d been trying to explain Mrs Ross’s new team