Girls Out Late Read online

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  It’s great when you have a best friend. It can be even better when you have two best friends. Ellie, Magda and Nadine are in Year Nine and they make a fantastic threesome. I invented them in the space of half an hour! I was staying at my daughter, Emma’s flat, and she was patiently teaching me how to use her computer. I am a total technophobe and a very slow learner. I found myself getting very upset and irritable as I struggled with her unfamiliar keyboard, making all sorts of silly mistakes.

  I decided to distract myself by making up a new story. I wanted to write about teenagers for a change. I typed Three girls on Emma’s computer. I thought about my first girl. I liked the name Ellie so I typed that too. I decided she would tell the story. I wanted her to be lively and creative and very good at art. I didn’t want her to be a super-girl with a fabulous figure and absolutely everything going for her. I decided she’d be an ordinary comfy girl size – so she’d worry a bit about getting fat. I gave her little round glasses and a lot of wild, curly dark hair. I liked her a lot.

  I felt that Ellie might have a weird, cool gothic girl as one of her friends. I found my fingers typing the name Nadine. She’d be into alternative music and wear black all the time and be much more daring than Ellie. She’d also be one of those irritating girls who could stuff Mars bars all day and still stay as thin as a pin.

  I wanted my third girl to be a bright, blonde, bubbly girl, full of fun. I called her Magda. I thought she’d be boy-mad, a little bit spoilt, but basically a great friend to Ellie and Nadine.

  There! I had my three girls sorted out by the time I’d typed a page. I found I’d mastered the new keyboard – and I was all set to start my story!

  There are four stories about Ellie, Magda and Nadine. Girls out Late is the third book in the series. Ellie, Magda and Nadine tell a little white lie to their parents and go off to a concert together – and end up staying out very late indeed . . .

  This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form (including any digital form) other than this in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Epub ISBN: 9781407043081

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  GIRLS OUT LATE

  A CORGI BOOK 978 0 552 55748 1

  First published in Great Britain by Doubleday

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  A Random House Group Company

  Doubleday edition published 1999

  First Corgi edition published 2000

  This Corgi edition published 2007

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Jacqueline Wilson, 1999

  Illustrations copyright © Nick Sharratt, 1999

  The right of Jacqueline Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Corgi Books are published by Random House Children’s Books,

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Girl Time

  Chapter Two: Time to Go Home

  Chapter Three: Rhyme Time

  Chapter Four: Doom and Gloom Time

  Chapter Five: Good Times

  Chapter Six: Bad Timing

  Chapter Seven: Dangerous Times

  Chapter Eight: Running Out of Time

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  To Meetal Malhi

  and Harriet, Polina and Rebecca

  We’re going out tonight, Nadine and Magda and me. It’s not a Big Night Out. We’re certainly not going to stay out late. We’re just going on this little after-school shopping trip. No big deal at all. We’ll meet at half past six at the Flowerfields Centre. Wander round the shops on their late night. We’ll eat in McDonald’s, then home by nine like good girls.

  I don’t bother to dress up or anything. I change out of my school uniform, obviously, but just into my black baggy trousers. They’ve been in the washing-machine one spin too many times so that they’re now technically not black at all, more a murky grey. Still, they’re just about the only trousers in the whole world that are big without making me look enormous. They almost give the illusion that there’s a weeny little bum and long lean legs hiding under all that bunchy material.

  I try my newest stripy pink top but I’m not too sure about it now. It’s a little too bright to be becoming. It makes my own cheeks glow positively peony. I wish I looked deathly pale and ethereal like my best friend Nadine. I’m stuck with permanently rosy cheeks – and dimples.

  I search the airing cupboard for something dark and plain and end up purloining a dark grey V-necked school sweater belonging to my little brother, Eggs. It fits a little too snugly. I peer long and hard in my mirror, worrying about the prominence of my chest. No matter how I hunch up it still sticks out alarmingly. I’m not like my other best friend, Magda, who deliberately tightens the straps of her Wonderbra until she can practically rest her chin on her chest. My own bras seem to be a bit too revealing. I try tucking a tissue in each cup so that I am not outlined too outrageously.

  Then I attack my hair with a bristle brush, trying to tame it into submission. It’s as if my entire body is trying to get out of control. My hair is the wildest of all. It’s longish but so tightly curly it grows up and out as well as down. Nadine is so lucky. Her long liquorice-black hair falls straight past her shoulders, no kinks at all. Magda’s hair looks incredible too, very short and stylish and bright red (dyed). It looks really great on her but if my hair was that short it would emphasize my chubby cheeks. Anyway, with my bright pink face I’d be mad to dye my hair scarlet. Not that my stepmum Anna would let me. She even gets a bit fussed when I use henna shampoo, for God’s sake.

  Anna eyes me now as I clatter into the kitchen to beg for some spare cash. Eggs is sitting at the table playing with the hands of my old alarm clock, muttering, ‘Four o’clock, telly time, fun. Five o’clock, more telly time, fun fun. Six o’clock, teatime, yum yum.’

  ‘That’s my alarm clock,’ I say indignantly.

  ‘But it’s been broken for ages, Ellie. I thought it might help him learn the time. Do the big hand thing, Eggs,’ says Anna.

  ‘Honestly, it’s embarrassing having such a moron for a brother. And he was the one who broke it, fiddling around with the hands.’

  ‘Twelve o’clock, midnight, big sister turns into a pumpkin!’ says Eggs and shrieks with laughter.

  ‘Are you off out, Ellie?’

  ‘I’m just meeting Nadine and Magda to go late-night shopping.’

  ‘Seven o’clock, bathtime, splashy splashy. Eight o’clock, bedtime, yuck yuck.’

  ‘What about your homework?’

  ‘I did it when I came home from school.’

  ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘I did, honestly.’