Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8 by R. A. Spratt Read Free Book Online Page B

Flom of Belgium. And he was delighted to fly in and craft a masterpiece for her, in exchange for six tea chests full of her chocolate fudge brownies. (Like Nanny Piggins, he preferred to make financial transactions in cake. Cash can lose its value but cake has an inherent undisputable worth.) Piers only had a brief window of availability before he had to fly to South America and craft a 60-metre-high statue of an up-and-coming dictator, so this was why Nanny Piggins was forced to pose for this pre-emptive statue. She reasoned it was worth doing because even if she lost, she could always put it in the front garden and invite local children to come over and lick it instead.
    Nanny Piggins was just entering the third hour of holding her pose (she had chosen to pose holding a cake in the air in triumph) when there was a knock at the door.
    ‘Who could that be?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
    ‘ Je ne sais pas ,’ said Piers, which is Belgian for ‘I haven’t the foggiest’.
    ‘There’s no way Mirabella could have discovered you’re here, is there?’ asked Nanny Piggins, growing alarmed.
    Mirabella Coeur was the world’s second greatest marzipan artist. She and Piers had a fierce rivalry. They would often turn up at each other’s events and denounce each other, partly because Mirabella believed in a modern expressionist style of marzipan art whereas Piers was a conservative practitioner of traditional marzipan values. But mainly because, of course, they were secretly in love with each other but had not realised it yet.
    ‘If it is her, let her in,’ said Piers. ‘I am not afraid of that woman.’ A statement he truly believed, even though he unconsciously contradicted himself by slipping a paint palette into the seat of his pants in case she burst in and started kicking him.
    ‘I’ll go and see,’ said Michael. He was eager to answer the door because he had never seen two confectioners fight before.
    But it was not to be.
    ‘It’s the retired Army Colonel who lives round the corner,’ said Michael. ‘He wants to know if he can come in and talk to you.’
    Nanny Piggins sighed. ‘If he has come round to propose to me again, I don’t have time for it today. Tell him to come back on the weekend. Then I can bake him his favourite Dundee cake, which should soften the blow when I refuse.’
    ‘I don’t think he’s come to propose today,’ said Michael. ‘He’s brought a friend who’s wearing a military uniform with a very smart hat, and his leg is in a cast.’
    ‘Has he come round to propose?’ asked Nanny Piggins, suspiciously. She intensely disliked being proposed to by men she had not even met.
    ‘They say they have a problem they want your help with,’ said Michael.
    ‘What do you think, Piers?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Have I been posing long enough? Will you be able to continue without me for a while?’
    ‘Oui, oui,’ said Piers. ‘If you leave your shoes I can focus on your feet until you return.’
    And so Nanny Piggins, still wearing her mayoral robes (homemade from red crepe paper, cotton balls for the fur trim, and linked chocolate coins for the mayoral necklace), led her impromptu guests into the kitchen where she got out a cake and a pot of tea. (Military men always like tea.)
    After the Colonel’s friend had finished saying, ‘Mmmm-mmm-mmm, this is sooooo delicious,’ many times (he had never tried one of Nanny Piggins’ cakes before), they got down to business.
    ‘What seems to be the problem?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
    ‘Well, Bert here was my sergeant in the –’ began the Colonel. ‘Actually, I can’t tell you which campaigns because it is all top-secret and hush-hush. But we fought side by side in many a sticky situation.’
    ‘Oh I know all about sticky situations,’ sympathised Nanny Piggins. ‘I once fell in a vat of maple syrup. Fortunately I had a large supply of pancakes on hand so I was able to eat my way out.’
    ‘Yes,’ agreed the Colonel, ‘well anyway, Bert