“Ask her, cowardy custard!” they whispered, when Mum rang me back from work to find out what I wanted that was so urgent.

        “OK!” I hissed at them, lips glistening blueberry lip-gloss.

Fingers crossed behind my back for luck, I took a deep breath, “Just want to know if I can go to the school dance tonight, Mum?”

“Don’t trifle with me, Candy, or you’ll get your just desserts. I SAID NO!”

 I was thinking my chances of going dancing weren’t going to come to fruition.

“Please?  Pretty please, cherry on the top?”

“NO!” she repeated loudly so that everyone in the room heard her.

“Pie in the sky, then. Ha! Ha!” said my cheeky little brother.

My sister, no angel, delighting in my agony too, said,

“Well, that’s how the cookie crumbles!” She gave me a smile as sunny as a great big curvy banana, and laughed her socks off, coughing and spluttering loudly.

“Some water, Melanie, for that cough? Drop o’ honey and lemon?”

Granny Smith’s a peach – and she’s nobody’s fool.

My other sister, Cherry, pointed at my bronze neck and scarlet cheeks, saying,

“Can’t go round tarted up with your make-up caked on like that, Candy-floss!”

Huh, I thought.  As if…What a load of Rhubarb.

“Eeh, Claire! Stop your waffle, now.  You are such a doughnut!” sniggered Dad.

“Candy-Apple, Turn over the phone to me,” signalled Gran, chewing a Snickers bar, waggling a chocolaty finger to get me to pass my mobile.    (She often calls me candy-apple does Gran)

She pleaded,  “Sweet kid only wants to go dancing with her friends from school,” then listened; pursed her cherry lips; shook her head, solemnly.  That was it then!  No dancing for me.