The Luna Laboratorium Read online

  About the Book

  THE CADDY KIDS ARE BACK IN AUSTRALIA TO FIND THE MISSING PIECE OF THE FAMILY PUZZLE. BUT THEY UNCOVER A SECRET DEEPER THAN THEY COULD HAVE IMAGINED …

  After learning that their mother might still be alive, Kick, Bert, Scruff and Pin have vowed to search for her. They’ll comb the whole world if they have to! But it seems Mum’s last-known location was closer to home.

  With a bewildered Uncle Basti in tow, and their mysterious friend Bone determined to tag along, the kids set off for Sydney. The clues lead them to a place the Caddys have dreamed of visiting: the spectacularly noisy, gloriously exciting Luna Park. But it’s not just fun and games they encounter here. What big surprises are in store?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Meet the Caddys

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 The Bestest Fairground Ride in the Whole World

  2 No, Pin Should Never be Ignored

  3 Commander Bone is on a Mission

  4 Fresh Intelligence

  5 Stand-Off

  6 Trick Number 17: The Masterful Vanishing Act

  7 Trust Your Instincts

  8 Sparkle City

  9 Other Mothers

  10 Coathangers and Crazy Faces

  11 Where to Begin?

  12 A Palace of Fun?

  13 All Too Horribly Grown-Up

  14 Turning to Bone

  15 Secrets

  16 Pin’s Discovery

  17 A Mother’s Secret

  18 An Impossible Decision

  19 Golly Galoshes — Another Clue!

  20 A Fishing Expedition

  21 Basti Prepares Us for the Worst

  22 Corralling the Chooks

  23 Reaching the Top

  24 Operation Luna, Phase 4

  25 Cocoons and Butterflies

  26 Practising Being Grown-Up

  27 A Doorstop Surprise

  28 Lucie to the Rescue

  29 Into Unknown Worlds

  30 A Kerplunk We Don’t Want

  31 Accepting a New World

  32 Hurting Heads

  33 Let There be Light

  34 A Hand

  Epilogue

  The Kensington Reptilarium advert

  The Icicle Illuminarium advert

  Copyright Notice

  For Ticki, Boh, Biahbi, Zhahgoo – and Mr Nolly

  ‘No, no, no. I do not do airborne.’

  Mr Charlie Boo is having none of it. Yes, he has been trained in martial arts in Rangoon and hat-frisbeeing in Haiti, but the World’s Greatest Butler will definitely not be placing his ample, pinstriped behind on the magical flying chair of the Kensington Reptilarium. The flying chair on its golden chains that is waiting so enticingly to zoom up, up, up into the centre of the most glorious building in London, and dangle cheekily under the glass dome that brushes the sky.

  Four Caddy kids cry:

  ‘But look, you can even swing wildly on the chair!’

  ‘Make it spin!’

  ‘Juggle!’

  ‘Dance!’

  ‘Why not, Mr Boo, why?’

  ‘Because it is just not done, Caddy monkeys one, two, three and, er, where are you? Pin-sized. Four.’ He sighs as Pin steps out from Scruff’s shadow with a chameleon perched on his giggly head and a baby green tree snake wrapped around his wrist – his brand new (wriggly) hat and bracelet in this madhouse of Caddyness.

  ‘That’s Caddys major, intermediate and minor, sir,’ young Master Pin reminds the butler sternly. They’re the nicknames Charlie Boo uses for us when he’s in – how can I say it – a rather better mood than this one. ‘And minor, um, minor,’ Pin continues, pointing at himself. ‘So there’s major minor, and minor minor.’ Our little brother stops, confused. If his eyes could spin, I tell you they would.

  Charlie Boo just holds his head like an invisible axe is splitting it open. Squeezes it in pain. ‘Why did my life veer so wildly out of control after you four ruffians from deepest Australia crashed into it?’ he thunders, taking Pin’s chameleon and placing it firmly on his own head and wrapping Pin’s snake securely around his wrist. ‘Back to your cages, all of you. And I’m not talking about the reptiles.’

  We giggle. Mr Boo sighs. ‘Everything was so beautifully neat and ordered and in cages before you lot.’

  ‘Boooooooooooooring,’ Bert throws in, theatrically, like an opera singer. Which means that, yes, she is singing it. In a fur wrap and red silk evening gown plucked from the attic and tied in a knot at her knees. Exactly what Charlie Boo’s head does not need at this point.

  ‘Miss Albertiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina!’ A cry of furious pain from the butler. Eyes squeezed shut as if offended at the horror of the sight. And what remains of his hair scrunched in agony.

  In response, Bert blows a bubble of our new-fangled Dubble Bubble gum that came directly off some ship meant for American servicemen during the war. We have a lot of war contraband in this house. It’s that kind of place. Rations? Here? Excuse me? It’s early 1946 but Scruff assures us that the gum won’t have gone off yet (he is our chief taster and food demander at all times).

  The bubble gets bigger, bigger. Becomes a bubble in a bubble, then a bubble in a bubble in a bubble.

  ‘Woooooooooooooooow.’ We other Caddys look on in awe. Fingers are itching to pop it.

  But in a move worthy of a samurai warrior – or a gentleman who has studied butlering in Rangoon – Mr Boo flings up his cane and promptly pops bubble after bubble. One. Two. Three.

  AMAZING.

  We all gasp, Bert incuded. Clap wildly. A circus act. Who knew? Charlie Boo needs to be in the show we’re currently devising for the delight of Campden Hill Square – Caddy Cacophony and Crinkly Crocodiles. As director, I’ll even give him star billing.

  ‘Kindly remember who you are talking to, Miss Albertina.’ Mr Boo’s voice is clipped and tight. ‘Your superior, in every way.’

  ‘Except when it comes to branding cattle!’ Scruff pipes up with a cheeky twinkle in his eyes. ‘And lasooing brumbies! And throwing spears! And finding water under bushes! And jumping off water towers! And driving cars you’re not meant to with bricks tied to the pedals!’ Yep, he’s looking right at me with that last one. ‘That would be Kick.’ He adds helpfully, bowing to me.

  Thanks, mate. You’ll keep.

  Little Pin is suddenly raising his hand in the middle of all this like he’s the goodest good boy in the entire class (I don’t think so). ‘But, um, Australia is not the deepest, is it?’ (It is, mate. Well, it and Antarctica.) ‘You haven’t been there, Mr Boo. Its sky really, um, hurts. You have to squeeze up your eyes, like this.’ Pin screws up his face like he’s directly facing a glary midday sun. ‘It’s not like your sky.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Your England one.’

  ‘Which is low,’ Bert throws in by way of running commentary, ‘grey. Sad. And constantly crying.’

  Mr Boo steps back. Looks at all four of us like he’s going mad, like he really can’t deal with this anymore. He’s expecting a new shipment of extremely rare hippopotamus worms from Africa right this minute, on their way to London zoo for its brand new hippopotamus enclosure and having a stopover at our legendary Kensington Reptilarium first. (I say ‘our’ because that is what it feels like now – we’re part of the old, worn, grubby, ratty furniture in this place.) And the worms must be kept alive at all costs and are Charlie Boo’s favourite animals in this entire house.

  Hence the severe case of butler stress, in all its glory, before us. Which needs shaking up. So we can get our proper, cheeky, chocolate-airplane-dispensing Charlie back.

  As if he’s reading my mind Scruff whoops. He grabs Pin’s hand and drags his little brother onto the seat of the flying chair. Bert jumps in too. ‘Kicky!’ Pin yells, reaching out to me. The sensible oldest sister and surrogate mum of this crazy lot.

  Ah, what the heck, I’m right behind them. The sensible one? Yeah, according to no one.

  Hang on, Scruff’s in control of the panels here.

  Not a good idea.

  What was I thinking?

  The chair jerks wildly, stopping and starting abruptly, and we all scream as it finds its rhythm and zooms fast, super fast, faster than ever before to the first floor, then spins past all the cages of snakes and lizards and geckos and goannas like it’s suddenly found a new profession as a fairground ride and can’t wait for its big moment. To show off. Just like some of us, present company excluded.

  ‘I say, can we have a bit of slow-down here, Scruffty Scruff,’ Bert says nervously.

  He will not. In fact, in typical annoying-boy fashion, he cackles like a maddened wizard. ‘Faster! Louder! Higher!’

  ‘This isn’t Luna Park, mate,’ I warn.

  ‘Scruuuu-uuuuuuuuuuuuuf,’ Pin squeals in terror as we zoom around quicker and quicker, almost touching the cages now. ‘Stop. I can’t hold on anymore.’

  All of a sudden, Pin lets go.

  As if his arms have stopped functioning as part of his body. He slips under the thin chain that’s holding us in and is now outside the chair, scrabbling with frantic hands for something, anything to hold on to as we’re all screaming and grabbing at air, baby-soft hair, jumper, arm, more air. His two little hands find the chain and grip onto it for dear life. It’s a long way down.

  ‘Stop, Ralph Caddy, stooooooooop!’ I boom to my crazy cowboy of a brother.

  Scruff is all panicked and flustered, fumbling at the controls. ‘I–I can’t remember how!’ His head a compl
ete knot at what he’s done and how to get out of it. Has ceased functioning.

  Pin is screaming. Bert and I try to grab his hands tighter, scrabble to make this blasted chair stop but it’s so hard, the machine is out of whack and wobbly like its suddenly taken on a mad life of its own, bucking like a brumby now. Dipping! Jerking! Hopping like a kangaroo! Spinning around the room like a rabbit in a pen! Jerking like a bull in a ring!

  Whoooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

  And all the while Charlie Boo is running madly around the ground floor with his arms outstretched, trying to keep directly under the crazy chair to catch a random falling child if he can. His face is deathly pale. It’s a plunge below us to crack a skull, or break a back.

  ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!’ I’ve never heard that sound come from Pin’s mouth before.

  None of this is working.

  Uncle Basti strides into the room with Perdita the cobra around his neck.

  ‘Barbarians! What is this racket?’ he bellows. Looks up. ‘Oh. I see.’

  Pin screams again. Slips a little further from our hands. The chair is not stopping fast enough. It’s on a crazy path to destruction and is not listening to anyone.

  Basti, in a flash, unwraps Perdita from his neck, hands the deadly snake to an extremely reluctant Charlie Boo, then climbs the ladder to the first floor. Actually not climbs, runs up. He’s extremely fast, yet old and wrinkly. How does that work?

  Because of panic, that’s how. Sheer, blind, terrified panic. Our dear little Pin is too precious, to all of us.

  With one arm gripping the top of the ladder, Basti leans his entire body out and opens wide his free arm. Misses the chair as it zooms past. Stretches out further. Further. Catches the chair on its next revolution. It comes wildly to a bucking halt.

  Pin jerks clean out of our hands.

  We all scream. Eyes are shut in horror.

  Eyes open.

  And there Pin is. Safely locked in Basti’s arm like he’s got a Christmas tree tucked under it coming back from the Portobello Market.

  ‘The things you lot will do for a cuddle.’ Basti shakes his head. ‘You could have asked, you know.’

  We burst out laughing. Except for Pin, who is as pale as a ghost. Stricken with silence. Most uncharacteristic of him.

  ‘I really wish you crazy Caddy mob would just grow up,’ Charlie Boo snaps, still clutching his head. ‘Is that too much to ask? Could we possibly go on that journey? Begin it?’

  For once, the four of us are silent.

  ‘K-Kicky?’ Pin murmurs with chattery teeth as we all climb from the chair onto solid ground. ‘The – the library. Quiet. Now. Not jump. No move.’ He seems to have lost the power of proper speech.

  I nod. Recognise his shivery lips, pale skin and rapidly blinking eyes as a state of shock. It means the world has suddenly become very confusing and he needs a long, squeezy cuddle from his biggest big sister. In the quiet. And once, long ago, that cuddle would have come from his mother. But, now, that kind of thing is left to me. And I’m only thirteen, but I’ll try not to grumble about that. Try.

  Grow up indeed, Mr Boo. Pah. I’ve been grown-up for years and he knows it.

  ‘Come on, little man.’ I hold out my hand to Pin while smiling at Charlie. ‘The library it is.’

  ‘Poor books.’ The old man shakes his head. ‘The last time they had any peace was the twenty-third of December or thereabouts. Your day of arrival, I do believe. And the seismic shock has been felt across the length and breadth of this land ever since.’

  Gosh, he really is in a sore mood.

  ‘As it should be,’ Scruff declares defiantly, then becomes very quiet as if he has just remembered that he is skating on extremely thin ice after the Wildly Swinging Chair incident that almost turned the Caddy quartet into a trio.

  ‘Troops! The library. About turn,’ I command. Not needing any new Scruff flare-ups at this point to distract from the moment.

  Because Charlie Boo is urgently signalling to Basti that he’d like to be relieved of Perdita the cobra this instant. But he is attempting to do it in a way that isn’t going to disturb the deadly snake around his neck and cause it to go on the attack. And this is rather difficult. In fact, Basti’s peering like he’s suddenly blind and going ‘eh’ in a way that I’m sure is prolonging his butler’s agony.

  I catch a twinkle in my uncle’s eye that I recognise as pure Caddy. He’s enjoying the World’s Greatest Butler in a state of high rufflement. It’s extremely rare.

  ‘Miss Kick, please take over all cuddling duties immediately. I have a butler to attend to.’

  ‘With pleasure, Captain Caddy.’ I salute crisply.

  Pin runs into my arms and, hang on, I seem to be forced to carry his trembling limbs all the way. Hmm, he’s got me well and good here because carrying of all types was meant to be outlawed the day he turned four. But trembling with uncontrollable fear gets me every time. I stagger past the legendary library sign:

  Scruff, feeling bad, leaps ahead and sweeps open the door with a flourish of a bow. We stagger into my favourite room in the entire Reptilarium. Stumble across to the lounge under the tall windows that is the length of the room. My darling, darling – heavy – boy. He’s still trembling. I am, too. For different reasons.

  I collapse on the couch with Pin still attached, on my lap now, like he never wants to let me go. Bert is on one side, Scruff on the other. We hold, and hold. The four of us, in the afternoon stillness, in the golden, slanting, three p.m. light.

  ‘I wish Mum was here,’ Bert says quietly.

  ‘And Dad,’ Scruff adds. He suddenly grabs a pudgy Pin arm and strokes it, murmuring over and over, ‘I’m sorry, buddy, I’m sorry.’

  I lean my head on the back of the lounge and shut my eyes. Sometimes this parenting malarkey is just too hard.

  ‘Is it snowing again, Kicky?’ Pin asks.

  ‘It might well be,’ I sigh, without opening my eyes.

  Because the sky was like a big pregnant cow’s belly earlier on, and snow is Pin’s favourite thing in the whole wide world, here, in London. Besides Charlie Boo’s chocolate airplanes and Perdita’s watchful grumpiness and Basti’s hats. Pin had never seen snow before London, none of us had, because home is the middle of the Australian desert. A day’s car ride away from Alice Springs and so hot you can fry an egg on the bonnet of our pickup truck. Which we did regularly.

  Pin suddenly leaps up and gazes out the tall window, across Campden Hill Square and its black-limbed, witchy trees reaching up into the iron-grey sky so low it touches the rooftops. The rest of us are just happy to sit on the couch, heads thrown back, staring at the ceiling with its enormous map of the world painted on it (pre 1770, thank you very much. I know, because there’s only half of Australia on it).

  The three of us older, responsible (not) Caddys can’t move. It’s really exhausting almost losing someone, then having them rescued, then calming them down, then thinking about how close you’ve just come to imminent death. Thanks to a brother who can’t keep his hands off a lever. I glare daggers at him just as Bert does.

  Snap.

  ‘Bone,’ Pin says out of the blue.

  ‘I know, I know. I miss him too, little man.’ I sigh.

  Bone, our ghostly friend from a great house in the north now burnt to the ground. Mysterious, magical Bone. Who we had to leave behind. Who made us laugh. Who Bert was madly in love with, then wasn’t when it looked it might actually be me – yes, grumpy, awkward, know-it-all tomboy Kick – who he really, truly liked. How could that be? Our magnificent Bone with his blast of blond hair then disappeared into the wintery woods of the Icicle Illuminarium and didn’t ever answer our cries to come back. To stay with us. To play.