The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop (6 page)

“But Lily,” Mum said, “you won’t like diving; you don’t even like swimming.”

Lily tried to look casual, though her stomach was going up and down like a lift. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“Well, if you’re sure—Bruce, do they need any special clothes?”

“Just ordinary luggage for one night away,” Dad said, looking at the letter. “Everything else is provided.”

“I’m terrified,” Lily admitted to Demerara, when the two of them were alone in her bedroom. “I hate the thought of being deep underwater. But I knew it was our first job, so I tried not to show it.”

The immortal cat was lying on the bed with one paw placed on a cushion, while Lily painted her claws with gold nail polish. “You mustn’t worry,” she purred. “The SMU takes good care of its agents—it’ll cost millions if you die.”

“I suppose that’s a comfort,” said Lily. “Are you coming?”

“Of course, dear—I’m your commanding officer.”

“If you’re there I’ll have someone to talk to. Oz hasn’t said one word to me since he met Caydon. I might as well be invisible.”

“Boys need other boys,” Demerara said. “It’s the same with cats. In the meantime, you and I can be girls together. And you’ll make new human friends when you go to your new school.”

“No, I won’t. It’ll be just like our last school. The girls there thought I was mad and laughed at me because I can’t learn long division.”

“What’s long division?”

Lily groaned softly. “I don’t know! My teachers keep me in at recess to explain it—and then I think I’ve got it—and then I forget it again the next day! And everybody else just seems to know without being told—even people who seem a lot thicker than me.”

“Is it a sort of spell?”

“No,” said Lily. “If it was, I could see the point. It’s math.”

“Well, I know you’ll make friends. I’ve been watching the children walking to school since 1927, and some things never change.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’m always right, dear.” The cat broke off suddenly, and her green eyes darted suspiciously around the walls. “Do you hear something? Are these roses behaving themselves?”

“Yes.” Lily glanced at the wallpaper; the faces of the yellow roses were beaming, and there was somehow an atmosphere of cheekiness.

“Hmm. Anyway, as I was saying, I’m sure lots of fascinating friends are waiting in your future—and you’ll also see the point of Caydon.”

“Why do we need him?”

“We just do.” The cat’s eyes were flinty; Lily was starting to recognize her stubborn look. “All the spells need three witches—one for each mold. Now please dry my claws with your hair dryer.”

“OK.” Lily stood up to fetch her hair dryer, and this time she thought she heard scattered tittering from the wallpaper roses.

“Shut up!” squeaked Demerara. “Any more bother from you lot and I’ll have you painted over! Lily, when my claws are dry, the fur round my neck needs more volume—do you have any curlers?”

Lily was almost glad when her mother called upstairs that the diving man had arrived. Dangerous diving couldn’t be more stressful than being Demerara’s beautician; the cat was a little furry slave driver.

There was a young policeman in the kitchen, with very short blond hair and large pink ears. His feet, in their thick police boots, were enormous. When he stood up to shake hands with Lily, the whole room seemed to shrink.

“This is Alan,” Mum said happily. “He works for the river police—isn’t it wonderful that they’re teaching London schoolkids to dive?” Incredibly, she seemed to think this was the most normal thing in the world.

She turned away from them, and Alan quickly showed Oz and Lily a plastic card like Demerara’s, with a fingerprint instead of a paw mark.

“We’d better be off,” he said. “Thanks for the tea, Mrs. Spoffard.”

“Goodbye, darlings, I hope you have a lovely time.” Mum hugged Oz and Lily.

Lily had to make an effort not to cling to her; Mum mustn’t know how scared she was. “See you tomorrow.”

Caydon was waiting in the street, sitting on the low wall in front of the flats with his backpack at his feet. Demerara sat on the wall beside him.

“Hi, Caydon,” Alan said, shaking his hand. “I hope you didn’t have any trouble getting away.”

“No, Gran was all for it,” Caydon said. “She says it’ll be good for me to do as I’m told for a change.”

“Quite right,” said Demerara. “When you’re diving, obeying orders is a matter of life and death.”

The young policeman was grinning all over his pink face. “So you’re the talking cat—I thought my sergeant was having a laugh!”

“Did you indeed,” Demerara said crossly. “How very unprofessional.”

Alan glanced at his watch. “Where’s the talking rat?”

“I didn’t know Spike was coming,” Lily said.

“Unfortunately, we can’t do without his underworld connections,” Demerara said.

“She means other rats,” said Alan. “This Spike is a legendary figure among his own kind.”

Demerara examined one of her painted claws. “I know where he’ll be—go round the corner and look for the drain with smoke coming out of it.”

At that moment a small brown shape scuttled across
the empty street toward them. Spike was dirtier than ever, and very out of breath. “Ugh! Ugh! Am I late?”

“Hi,” said Alan.

“You’re the river policeman, are you? Nice to meet you, and you don’t need to worry about security—I’ve got a special squad waiting inside a broken pipe under Westminster Bridge.”

Alan had a black car with darkened windows. He put Oz and Caydon in the backseat, with Demerara sitting between them. Lily took the front seat. Spike was banished to the trunk, because Demerara said he smelled disgustingly of smoke and she refused to travel anywhere near him.

Once again, Lily found herself feeling sorry for the sewer rat. He was rather disgusting, but he was also very easygoing; he didn’t at all mind riding in the trunk.

Oz asked, “Can you say where you’re taking us?”

“You don’t need to know where,” said Alan, “but I can tell you that you’ll be taking a practice dive in our testing tank—have any of you done scuba diving before?”

“I’ve been snorkeling,” Oz said. “That was pretty good.”

“We’re going scuba diving?” Lily’s voice trembled. “I can’t do that—I don’t even know what it is!”

“It stands for self-contained underwater breathing
apparatus,” said Caydon. “You wear an oxygen tank, and you can get down really deep—like those guys in TV fish shows.”

“The Thames isn’t that deep,” Oz said. “It would be really cool if we were diving in the sea.”

Alan gave Lily an encouraging smile. “The first dive is the worst—I was scared stiff.”

“Really?”

“I thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe down there.”

This was one of Lily’s fears, and it was a relief to hear Alan mention it so casually. “Is it very hard?”

“The secret is to forget about it and breathe normally.”

She shivered. “Suppose something goes wrong?”

“That’s why I’m here,” said Alan. “To make sure nothing does.”

“I always sing myself a little song.” Demerara’s voice floated at them from the back seat.

“Yes, but you’re immortal and you don’t need breathing equipment,” Alan said.

Lily found that she felt less paralyzed with nerves; Alan was very confident. “How did you get involved in the SMU?”

“I shouldn’t really tell you, but since you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act—I was just a normal constable in the river police, until I found a mermaid.”

He had all their attention now.

“Seriously?” Caydon asked.

“Oh, yes. It was about three in the morning, and a member of the public called to say they’d heard someone screaming under one of the bridges. We took the boat to have a look—and there she was.”

“What was she like?” Lily asked.

“She was no beauty, that’s for sure,” Alan said. “Her top half was like a little old woman, all covered with seaweed and screaming her head off. Her bottom half was the back end of a fish, and she’d got her tail caught on an old shopping cart someone had chucked in. The guy who was with me fainted, but I kept my head and cut her loose.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know—she just slipped away into the water and she was gone. The SMU recruited me the next day. You wouldn’t believe all the unexplained stuff in that river!”

“Are there many mermaids?”

Alan said, “No, I was lucky—you only get a sighting every hundred years or so, when the weather’s very bad and they get washed in from the sea. But I’ve seen giant octopuses, I’ve towed away a dead sea dragon, I’ve threatened the captain of a ghost ship with arrest—it’s the most interesting job I’ve ever had.”

“How could you arrest a ghost?” Oz asked.

“Ghost ships have to abide by regulations, same as
everyone else,” said Alan. “And I was working with a ghost policeman. You meet all sorts in this line of work.”

He was driving south, toward the river, and stopped suddenly at a large, dull building like a school, tucked away in a dull side street.

“Head office,” Alan said. “It doesn’t exist officially, of course. Come on.”

They all got out of the car. Alan opened the trunk and found Spike fast asleep on Lily’s backpack. His unsavory little body left a smear of dirt, which Lily tried not to mind about; he got enough telling-off from Demerara.

Alan led the three children and two talking animals into the SMU’s officially nonexistent building.

“First things first,” Alan said cheerfully. “You’ll be issued ID cards, and someone will take your measurements.”

Caydon pointed at Spike. “Do they have special tiny equipment for him?”

“I don’t need it.” Spike laughed wheezily. “A bit of drowning never did me any harm.”

“Stop showing off,” Demerara said. “You should be down in the sewers—you don’t want to keep your fans waiting.”

“OK, old girl.” The good-tempered rat waved a paw and trotted out into the street. “See you later!” he said, slipping down the nearest drain.

The policeman at reception handed Alan a cardboard box. “The cat needs to sign for this—it’s the stuff she requested from the secret vault.”

“Oh, yes.” Demerara made one of her leaps up to the desk. “I hope it hasn’t gone bad.”

Lily, despite her nerves, was interested to watch the cat “signing” a thick book by putting her paw on an ink pad and making a print in a thick ledger. The strangest thing about this place was its lack of strangeness—it was like a very ordinary office, and none of the staff were at all surprised to meet animals who talked.

Alan took the cardboard box. He opened the lid to reveal three glossy chocolate coins. “These are safe, right?”

“It’s one of Pierre’s recipes,” Demerara said proudly. “I moved his leftover magic chocolate into the ministry’s high-security preservation vault—to be honest, I didn’t trust Spike not to eat it. These are Duck Drops, which improve people’s swimming.”

Lily was relieved to hear they would be getting some magical help; these sounded like just the thing for someone like her, who couldn’t even swim a whole length at Washford Waterworld.

“Well—” Alan looked at the chocolate coins and smiled. “I’m jealous—they smell great.”

They did have a lovely rich, sweet scent, and were made of the very best creamy, glossy chocolate—you’d
never think it had been languishing in a vault for years. Oz and Caydon ate theirs quickly, but Lily let her chocolate coin dissolve slowly on her tongue; the taste was wonderful.

And she did feel a bit less scared of being underwater.

“OK, let’s run through it one more time,” Alan said. “You three stick close to me on the way down, and when we get to the tram, watch for Ms. Demerara’s signal to join hands—just like we practiced.”

It was just past two o’clock in the morning, as they could see from the face of Big Ben looming above them. Oz, Caydon, Lily and Alan stood on the deck of a small motorboat. They were all wearing wet suits, oxygen tanks, large goggles, nose clips and mouthpieces.

No amount of Duck Drops could stop Lily from being nervous. The test dive that afternoon had been in a plain tank like a very deep swimming pool. The water that lapped and sucked around the launch looked as black as ink, and filthy; jumping into the Thames was going to be much more dangerous. Oz and Caydon were hugely excited, but they had gone very quiet. Alan had fixed powerful flashlights to their goggles, and they were all joined to the boat by
long ropes. Alan took Lily’s hand and the two of them did the backward roll into the water, just as they had practiced.

Slipping into the cold, dark underwater world was a shock, and Lily had to make herself concentrate on keeping her breathing steady—no matter what Alan said about breathing “normally,” she couldn’t feel normal with the mouthpiece and nose clip. Very cautiously she dared to make a few movements with her arms and legs, and was surprised by how fast she could propel herself with her flippers.

Demerara suddenly swam into the beam of the flashlight, looking so funny that Lily nearly upset her breathing by laughing. The cat had little flippers on her back paws, and wore a tiny red wetsuit with “Property of Her Majesty’s Government” stamped on the side. She did not need oxygen, but the water made her sneeze out clouds of bubbles.