The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson Read Free Book Online Page A

Raymond – and indeed the doctor was not always as kind to darling Raymond as he might have been.
    Mr Trottle now came in looking cross because he had sat on his portable telephone again and asked what was the matter.
    ‘Our Little One is ill,’ said Mrs Trottle. ‘You must tell Willard to drive to the school after he has dropped you at the bank and let them know.’
    ‘He doesn’t look ill to me,’ said Mr Trottle – but he never argued with his wife and anyway he was in a hurry to go and lend a million pounds to a property developer who wanted to cover a beautiful Scottish island with holiday homes for the rich.
    Raymond’s screams grew less. They became wails, then snivels . . .
    ‘I feel a bit better now,’ he said. ‘I might manage some breakfast.’ He had heard the car drive away and knew that the danger of school was safely past.
    ‘Perhaps a glass of orange juice?’ suggested Mrs Trottle.
    ‘No. Some bacon and some sausages and some fried bread,’ said Raymond.
    ‘But, darling—’
    Raymond puckered up his face, ready to scream again.
    ‘All right, my little sugar lump. I’ll tell Fulton. And then a quiet day in bed.’
    ‘No. I don’t want a quiet day. I feel better now. I want to go to lunch at Fortlands. And then shopping. I want a laser gun like Paul has at school, and a knife, and—’
    ‘But, darling, you’ve already got seven different guns,’ said Mrs Trottle, looking at Raymond’s room which was completely strewn with toys which he had pushed aside or broken or refused to put away.
    ‘Not like the one Paul’s got – not a sonic-trigger activated laser, and I want one. I want it.’
    ‘Very well, dear,’ said Mrs Trottle. ‘We’ll go to lunch at Fortlands. You do look a little rosier.’
    This was true. Raymond looked very rosy indeed. People usually do when they have yelled for half an hour.
    ‘And shopping?’ asked Raymond. ‘Not just lunch but shopping afterwards?’
    ‘And shopping,’ agreed Mrs Trottle. ‘So now give your Mumsy a great big sloppy kiss.’
    That was how things always ended on days when Raymond didn’t feel well enough to go to school – with Raymond and Mrs Trottle, dressed to kill, going to have lunch in London’s grandest department store.
    The name of the store was Fortlands and Marlow. It was in Piccadilly and sold everything you could imagine: marble bath tubs and ivory elephants and sofas that you sank into and disappeared. It h ad a Food Hall with a fountain where butlers in hard hats bought cheeses which cost a week’s wages, and a bridal department where the daughters of duchesses were fitted for their wedding gowns – and none of the dresses had price tickets on them in case people fainted clean away when they saw how much they cost.
    And there was a restaurant with pink chairs and pink tablecloths in which Raymond and his mother were having lunch.
    ‘I’ll have shrimps in mayonnaise,’ said Raymond, ‘and then I’ll have roast pork with crackling and Yorkshire pudding and—’
    ‘I’m afraid the Yorkshire pudding comes with the roast beef, sir,’ said the waitress. ‘With the pork you get apple sauce and redcurrant jelly . ’
    ‘I don’t like apple sauce,’ whined Raymond. ‘It’s all squishy and gooey. I want Yorkshire pudding. I want it.’
    It was at this moment that the rescuers entered the store. They too were having lunch in the restaurant. When Ben had told them how Raymond was going to spend the day, they decided to follow the Prince and study him from a distance so that they could decide how best to make themselves known to him.
    ‘Only I want Ben to come,’ Odge said.
    Everyone wanted Ben to come, but he said he couldn’t. ‘I don’t have school today because they need the building for a council election and I promised my grandmother I’d come to the hospital at dinner time.’
    But he said he would go with them as far as Fortlands and point Raymond out because the Tr ot-tles had gone off in the Rolls