Jungle Tangle Read online

  ‘Who?’ said Coriander faintly.

  ‘Well …’ Grandma pushed potato round her plate. ‘A man ’oo’s committed most of ’is crimes in England. A man ’oo’s robbed more banks, smuggled more animals, traded more weapons, done more Chinese burns in our country than anywhere else in the–’

  ‘Grandma,’ said Abbie, ‘what have you been up to?’

  ‘Ahem, well, I might’ve asked the Chief Super to phone Scotland Yard. They were thrilled to take Klench. Said it’s only fair ’e goes to prison in the UK.’ For a woman who’d leapt off a bridge, tramped through the jungle and risked her life for her granddaughter, Grandma looked surprisingly nervous.

  ‘And?’ said Abbie sternly. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’

  Grandma’s cheeks went plum. ‘Well, there’s prisons and there’s prisons and there’s …’

  Then it all tumbled out … ‘Bradleigh prison. And I thought if Klench went there I could visit some time, and help ’im learn to stand up to ’is mother, ’coz whether she’s really in ’is mind or not, ’e believes she is, and what sort of chance does ’e stand with a woman like that, so if I don’t do somethin’ Klench’ll never be rid of ’er, and ’e’ll never change, and ’e’ll just carry on with ’is wickedness forever, and …’ Grandma took a breath. She looked at Abbie, who looked at Perdita, who looked at Coriander, who looked back at Grandma, who said, ‘Look–’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Coriander raised her hand. ‘I understand.’ She took a deep breath. ‘As long as he’s locked away, what does it matter if he’s nearby? And you’re right. It’s worth a try. Maybe with your help he can become a new man. Kind.’

  ‘Caring,’ said Perdita.

  ‘Considerate,’ said Abbie.

  ‘Cute,’ said Grandma. Everyone stared at her. That was pushing it.

  ‘What about Dollarine?’ said Abbie. ‘Where will she go when her parents are in prison?’

  ‘To live with ’er grandparents,’ said Grandma. ‘Apparently they run a centre for abandoned pets in California. Dogs bought for Christmas then dumped in January. Pythons that frighten the neighbours, aardvarks that dig up the lawn – that sort of thing.’

  Perdita clapped her hands. ‘Perfect! Maisie-Lou will love it.’

  After lunch the Chief Superintendent invited them all to stay at his house until they flew back to England. But Abbie whispered to Grandma that Fernando and Carmen would have to hide in her handbag, which was no way to spend the last two nights in your country of shrinkage. So the visitors declined politely.

  The Chief Super insisted on giving them a lift to the Hotel Cóndor where they’d spent their first two nights in Ecuador.

  ‘Come again to Ecuador,’ he said, beaming at the hotel entrance. ‘You always welcome at my home. And who know – thanks to these arrests, perhaps next time I president.’ He puffed out his already puffed-out chest. He smoothed his already smooth hair. He shook them by the hand. He kissed them on the cheek. He bowed. He saluted. He cleared his throat and sang the Ecuadorian national anthem. Then he marched off picking his nose.

  * * *

  Over breakfast next morning Coriander suggested that they visit the equator. Fernando and Carmen, who’d been shrunk before its discovery, were thrilled to learn that their country of conquerage sat slap-bang in the middle of the world.

  When they arrived at the monument, the heads insisted on having their photo taken. That was easier said than done amid a crowd of tourists. But at a quiet moment Abbie popped Fernando on one side of the yellow line that halved the world and Carmen on the other.

  ‘I love you from north to south,’ shouted Fernando.

  ‘I love you from top to bottom,’ declared Carmen, which, even when you have no bottom, is a lovely thing to hear.

  Then Gav ruined it all. Coriander had switched him on, feeling it was only right to take his photo too. He capered either side of the line like an electronic Rumplestiltskin.

  ‘Turn around and touch your toes,

  Hold your partner by the nose.

  If you want the real equator

  Follow me – or see you later.’

  He skipped off along the paved avenue.

  Abbie glanced at her guidebook. Gav was right. ‘Modern data shows that the equator is actually 240 metres north of the marked line,’ she read.

  Trust him to spoil the fun. She waited till he returned from the real equator. ‘That’s enough of your lip,’ she said firmly, switching him off.

  Email: [email protected]

  Subject: Letter from the Equator

  I can’t believe it’s our last day in Ecuador. I know I haven’t written for a while, but we’ve been busy having the adventure of several lifetimes. If I told you about it, you’d never believe me. So here’s a game to help you work it out for yourself. Use the words to piece together what happened to us in the jungle. Send your answers to The Bradleigh Bellow.

  Armadillo

  Crooks

  Tarantula

  Superdooperglooper Glue

  Mint-green

  Disguise

  Ecclescake

  If you find it really hard, here’s a clue.

  It’s really hard.

  So hard that Grandma Hartley-Absinthe will award the winner a lifetime pass for Ecuadorian bridge jumping.

  Good luck!

  * * *

  On Wednesday morning it was a sad yet happy Mr Dabbings who stood before the class. ‘Bad news and good news, lads and ladles. Which do you want first?’

  ‘Good’ shouted the left half of the class and ‘Bad’ the right.

  The teacher wagged his finger. ‘Eeny meeny miny mitch. Knit one, purl one, drop a stitch. OK. Bad it is.’ He placed his palms flat on the desk and leaned forward. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said slowly, ‘the zoo is definitely going to close down.’

  A gasp went round.

  ‘But what about the petition?’ cried Claire. ‘The whole school signed it.’

  It was true. Even Marcus had scrawled his name to avoid suspicion. Greg had given him the funniest look. In fact, Greg had given him the funniest looks ever since Monday’s news about the hippo’s escape. And he’d steered clear, too.

  Mr Dabbings sighed. ‘We tried, kids. But the problem is no one knows why Hepzibah walked out. So no one can be sure it won’t happen again – with her or another animal.’

  ‘Why don’t they put them all in cages, then?’ asked Rukia Zukia, whose middle name should have been Sensible but was actually Lukia. ‘Like other zoos. Then it can stay open.’

  Mr Dabbings shook his head. ‘No can do. The Platts don’t want it to be like other zoos. They insist their animals must be as free as birds.’

  ‘But they’re animals,’ said Craig, who wasn’t the sharpest Frube in the tube.

  ‘What I mean,’ said Mr Dabbings patiently, ‘is that Mr Platt refuses to run a zoo where the animals are locked up. And he refuses to sell it to anyone who’d do that, which is basically everyone.’

  ‘Hey, sir,’ shouted Henry, ‘how d’you know all this?’

  Mr Dabbings shifted from one sandal to the other. ‘I’ve been, er, spending some time at the zoo. Which brings me to the good news. Wend–, I mean Miss Wibberly, and I are …’ He held up his left hand. On the fourth finger sat a knitted green band.

  ‘ENGAGED!’ roared the class.

  ‘Pure cashmere wool,’ he said proudly.

  ‘I thought only ladies wore engagement rings.’

  ‘It’s a statement, Terrifica. Of our equality, unity and harmony.’ Mr Dabbings sighed with joy. ‘All big words, kids, which basically mean that I’ll be doing the dishes. There’ll be an announcement in The Bradleigh Bellow tomorrow. You’re all invited to the wedding, 25 December.’

  ‘But that’s Christmas Day!’

  ‘Indeed, Henry.’ Mr Dabbings beamed. ‘We chose that date to show that every day of our marriage will be like Christmas.’

  * * *

  Mrs Strode-Boylie picked up a dirty sock from
Marcus’s floor. She sighed. Just like his dad, expecting her to clear up after him. She really should get them to tidy their own messes. But whenever she’d suggested it, their sulky silences made it easier to do it herself.

  She made her way through the T-shirts and trousers on the floor and picked up Marcus’s waste-paper basket.

  She took it downstairs to empty in the kitchen bin. It was packed tight. She wiggled the contents out. Broken pencils, a comic, two apple cores, a tightly crumpled white paper bag. Another crumpled bag. Another one … and another …

  Genevieve frowned. Bag after bag was stuffed in the basket. And at the bottom was a pile of white crystals. No! Was Marcus sniffing something? Or injecting? Or pouring it into his ear or whatever they did these days? Her heart racing, Genevieve smoothed out a packet on the kitchen table.

  She breathed out with relief.

  Licking her finger, she tasted a few crystals to check. Yes. Thank goodness. Sugar.

  Odd, though. Since when was Marcus addicted to sugar? Eighteen one-kilo packets – hardly a bedtime snack. Terry would have a fit. Imagine the headline:

  BY GUM! DENTIST’S SON NEEDS DENTURES

  Genevieve frowned across the table. Talking of headlines … her eye caught the front page of Monday’s Bellow. Terry had ordered her to frame the article about the zoo closure.

  She gasped. A crazy thought had popped into her head. So crazy it couldn’t possibly – Genevieve chewed her lip – be true. She’d go and knock it straight on the head.

  She went into Terry’s office. She switched on the computer and Googled ‘hippopotamus’.

  ‘No!’ She tried another website. ‘No!’ And another. She put her head in her hands. Then she went to the hall and dialled the Fniggs’ number.

  No, Mrs Fnigg told her, Marcus hadn’t come round last Saturday, and was everything all right?

  ‘Fine,’ Genevieve whispered. ‘Thanks.’

  She put down the phone and burst into tears.

  29 - Zoo Blues

  ‘Abbie!’ Mum and Dad waved madly across the barrier in the Arrivals area. Ollie had already wriggled underneath and was hurtling towards her. He crashed into her arms. Dad swung his legs over, ran up and smothered her in a hug.

  Mum scuttled round the barrier and shoved through the stream of arrivals. ‘Sorry!’ she snapped, sounding anything but. ‘It’s my daughter.’

  Abbie put down her rucksack, held out her arms and hugged them all. Grandma removed her top teeth, scraped off a toffee then hugged them all.

  ‘We’ve missed you so much,’ Mum sobbed, laughed and gasped all at once. ‘We were so worried.’

  ‘With good reason,’ said Grandma. ‘This young lady’s been a right ’andful. Frightened the life out of us, worried the pants off us and – oh yes – ’elped save our bacon.’

  ‘No, Grandma, you did.’ Abbie laughed. ‘We’ll tell you all about it after that lot untangles itself.’ Matt, Perdita and Coriander were blocking the gangway with a muddle of cuddle.

  When Dad offered to pull Grandma’s new shopping trolley for her, she swatted him away. ‘Get your paws off. I won’t ’ave any Tom, Dick or Graham draggin’ me Saco Supremo. Top of the range, you know,’ she added so proudly and loudly that a passing grandpa heard thunder in his hearing aid.

  Abbie, too, refused to let Dad carry her rucksack. ‘You’ll disturb the happy couple. They’re fast asleep.’

  ‘Esleep? How we esleep when you bang us about like the jumpeeng beans?’ shrieked a voice.

  Abbie led everyone to a quiet spot and lifted Carmen out. ‘Mum, Dad, Ollie, Matt: meet Mrs Feraldo.’

  ‘I happy to hello.’ Carmen twitched her nose. Dad gave a little bow. Mum gave a little curtsey. Matt gave a little sigh.

  Abbie stared at him. He had his wife and daughter back. So why did he look as dismal as dishwater? ‘Are you OK, Matt?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Y-yes.’ He rubbed a finger over his teeth and glanced at Dad.

  Dad put his arm round Abbie. ‘Let’s get to the car, darling. We’re dying to hear about your adventure.’

  Which they did: or at least the bare bones. Travelling home in the Hartleys’ car, Abbie and Grandma told their story. Mum, Dad and Ollie listened, enthralled.

  In the Platts’ van, driving behind them, there must have been a different story. Because when they all arrived at the zoo, Coriander jumped out and rushed through the entrance gate.

  ‘What’s happened?’ said Abbie.

  Perdita couldn’t speak. Tears were streaming down her face. She ran after Coriander.

  Mum laid a hand on Abbie’s arm. ‘There’s been an … incident, darling.’ Then Dad explained all about Hepzibah’s escape and the zoo having to close.

  ‘NO!’ Abbie yelled. She too rushed into the zoo.

  Everyone gathered by the hippo pool. Charlie was there, gazing at Hepzibah as she wallowed in bubbly bliss, immune to all the fuss.

  ‘We can’t imagine why she, um …’ Charlie’s huge ears wiggled wretchedly. ‘Not like her at all. And she’s back now, happy as – you know. No sign of wanting to, um … again.’

  ‘How could you, Heppie?’ yelled Perdita.

  ‘Ssssh.’ Charlie put a finger to his lips. ‘Please don’t make her feel, um … It wasn’t her fault. She was just – you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t!’ Abbie cried.

  ‘Nor does anyone else,’ said Matt. ‘We have no idea why she walked out. And we can’t risk it happening again. Hepzibah’s not used to town life – the crowds and traffic. If anything startled her she might panic. Someone could get killed. She could get killed.’

  ‘So?’ cried Perdita. ‘Build cages, then! Anything’s better than closing the zoo.’

  Coriander clutched Matt’s hand. Her face was white. ‘No. We can’t do that. The whole point of this zoo is to give the animals as much freedom as possible. We can’t lock them up now. They’d feel so betrayed.

  Everyone knew that was true. But no one would admit it. So they gazed in silent misery at Hepzibah’s giant yawn.

  The homecoming was ruined. Abbie didn’t even smile at Wendy’s poster in the café window.

  Underneath she’d added:

  Abbie hardly tasted Dad’s welcome dinner of Bourbon lasagne followed by Jammy Dodger soufflé. And, in her distraction, she stepped on the welcome-home anaconda which Ollie had made by threading fifty-nine toilet-roll tubes on a piece of string and draping them round the house.

  For once, though, Ollie didn’t cry. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘I’ll feed it a tapir. That’ll make it fat again.’

  Which didn’t help one bit, because tapirs made Abbie think of the zoo, which made her think of the not-much-longer zoo.

  There was no question of school the next day. Abbie and Perdita spent the Friday ‘recovering from their flight’, which meant moping round the zoo, crying a lot, having hugs and emptying the café of chocolate bars.

  ‘Mum says we can keep Clement and Persephone,’ said Perdita, stroking the tortoises’ shells.

  ‘Gee whizz. Aren’t you the lucky ones?’ sighed Abbie. ‘Nothing personal,’ she added, as Clement’s eyes shone in a way that reminded her of boyfriends being dumped on TV soaps.

  ‘And Mackenzie can stay too.’ Perdita tickled the claws of the parrot, who refused to leave her shoulder.

  Big deal, thought Abbie. That means you’ll only have to get rid of the tiger, the ostriches, the penguins, the eagle, the chameleons, the zebras, the porcupines, the seals, the giraffe, the crocodile, the elephant, the orang– NO! The thought of losing Vinnie, Winnie and Minnie to a jungle adaptation centre in Borneo got her sobbing for the eighteenth time that day.

  ‘Sorry.’ Abbie wiped her face with her sleeve. ‘I just can’t bear to think of the orangs.’

  That set Perdita off. She began to howl. Mackenzie shrieked. Then Abbie howled, Perdita shrieked and Mackenzie wailed. Then Abbie shrieked, Perdita wailed and Mackenzie howled. It was like Rock, Paper, Scissors for the Very D
istressed.

  ‘Anyway, how do you send an animal home?’ Abbie sniffed. She imagined wrapping the giraffe in brown paper, addressing the parcel ‘African Savannah’ and then discovering that Alphonse didn’t fit in the post box.

  She pictured putting Silvio in a crate and writing ‘Indian Jungle: Handle with Care’, by which time the tiger would have chomped through the box.

  She thought of packing Gina’s suitcase with brushes to paint the forests of Thailand, only to find that the ellie exceeded the airline’s luggage allowance.

  By five o’clock Abbie had had enough. She’d hugged all the huggable animals and waved to all the unhuggable ones. She’d spilled enough tears for a bath and filled up with more chocolate than a vending machine.

  ‘I’d better go home,’ she sighed, standing by the penguin pool.

  ‘OK.’ Perdita was fitting a pair of goggles round a penguin’s head. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Abbie turned to go. ‘What the …?’ She gasped. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  Walking towards them, with his head bowed, was Marcus Strode-Boylie. A lady with dark curls led him by the hand. A carrier bag hung from her arm.

  ‘Hello,’ said the lady, whom Abbie recognised as Marcus’s mum. ‘You’re Abigail and Perdita, aren’t you?’ Her pretty face was grim. ‘I wonder, dear,’ she looked at Perdita, ‘could I have a word with your parents?’

  ‘Sure.’ Perdita smiled as cheerfully as a girl who’s about to lose her home, plus all her furry and feathered friends, can smile. ‘Hi, Marcus.’

  He stared at the ground.

  ‘Thanks for helping out while we were away,’ said Perdita. ‘Dad told me.’

  Abbie gawped. Marcus helping out? Penguins might fly! The penguin tried to and fell flat on its beak.

  ‘The goggles are for swimming, not flying, you jackass.’ Perdita helped the penguin up. ‘Not the smartest birds,’ she explained to Mrs Strode-Boylie. ‘Come with me.’

  Coriander and Matt were standing by the hippo pool with Mum and Dad. Hepzibah was in the water, her mouth agape, while the Platts cleaned her teeth with very long brushes. Mrs Strode-Boylie stopped nervously at the edge of the grass.