Lamp gazed at Casper in open-mouthed glee. “Did you see me do that?” he gasped. Lamp had never got more than one point on a test before (and that was in art when the task was ‘Draw your best impression of an ink splodge’).
The lesson went on, Lamp’s hand carried on shooting up and up, collecting points like a reckless driver in a speed-camera factory. The rest of the class didn’t stand a chance. Soon Casper’s mind drifted to the evening that lay ahead – opening night at The Battered Cod, two hundred demanding diners and a whole heap of washing-up. What if his dad blew up another oven? What if Cuddles threw another tantrum? What if Mayor Rattsbulge ate another table? The possibilities were too horrifying to consider.
Just as Lamp secured his forty-third point by solving the famine problem in Africa, the door slammed open and four burly young men, muscles stacked up to their chins, stomped through.
“LUNCH MUNNY!” shouted the biggest one.
The Brewster brothers had arrived.
All round Casper the terrified children hid behind their hands. Miss Valenteen dived under her desk with a squeal.
“S-stay calm,” whispered Snivel. “If you don’t m-move, they c-can’t see you.”
The Brewsters tromped round the classroom, collecting loose change in a bucket. Lamp proudly presented his Brewster an egg and found it stuffed into his mouth (which was fine by him).
“The b-biggest one’s Bash,” whispered Snivel. “Then there’s Spit, Clobber and P-pinchnurse.”
Casper frowned. “Pinchnurse?”
“W-we’re named after the first fing we do after we’re born. I s-snivelled. P-pinchnurse pinched a nurse.”
A Brewster, with one fat caterpillar of an eyebrow, stopped at Snivel’s table. “Lunch munny.”
“Clobber, it’s m-me.”
“You what?” A glimmer of recognition crossed Clobber’s eyebrow. “Pocket munny.”
As Snivel emptied his pockets, a shadow loomed over Casper’s desk, the fetid stench of hot-tuna breath filling his nostrils.
“Lunch munny.”
Trembling, Casper looked up. The biggest Brewster of all, the one Casper guessed was Bash, towered above him, his toothless grin and shrunken forehead punctuating a face that looked almost entirely like a bruised potato.
“I…” trembled Casper, “I d-don’t have any.”
Bash leant even closer. “Lunch munny,” he whispered, the tuna stink singeing Casper’s nose-hairs.
“I promise, I don’t have any! I’ve already given it to her.” Casper pointed at Anemonie and was relieved to find the biggest Brewster’s eyes searching for the point’s target.
“He’s lying! Don’t listen to hURRK—” Anemonie Blight was lifted upside down by a bushy-nose-haired Brewster and shaken around by her feet, loosening all the cash hidden in the lining of her blazer. Then she was dumped in a corner with all the other empties.
Bash scowled at Casper. “Tomorrah, you bring dubble.”
Casper nodded vigorously.
The brute pointed to his eyes and then Casper’s eyes and then to his own fist, which meant something vaguely threatening and dangerous, but Casper wasn’t quite sure what.
After the whole class had been done and Miss Valenteen had written out a cheque, Bash thanked everybody for their time and led his brothers away to the next classroom.
“S-sorry,” said Snivel. “You d-don’t want to m-make Bash angry.”
Casper smiled weakly. “I’ll try not to. How have you lasted this long?”
“Q-quite a lot of h-hiding.”
The lesson continued as before, except that Miss Valenteen was back to her shaky self. Lamp racked up goodness-knows-how-many points, a gold star and the Nobel Prize for Literature, while Casper and the rest of the class looked on agape.
When the bell rang, the kids skittered out of the room and down the corridor, peeping round each corner for Brewsters.
“How d’you do that back there, Lamp?” asked Casper.
Lamp shrugged. “Dunno. I think I was just lucky.”
“You can’t have just been lucky seventy-six times in a row!”
“Seventy-seven, actually.”
Next lesson was music, where Lamp played a faultless rendition of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto on a tiny xylophone.
At lunch, Snivel was recruited by his brothers for a cricket match (he played the stumps). Casper and Lamp watched at the boundary, wincing every time one of the Brewsters was bowled out. Casper tried to recite The Battered Cod’s menu to Lamp from memory, but it got really tiring really fast after Lamp starting reciting it back to Casper in Latin.
In English, Lamp finished the grammar worksheet before Mr Falstaff could hand it out, and then in religious studies, he disproved three religions only to create four more.
The bus home was a sombre affair for everyone apart from Lamp. His blazer was covered in gold stars, so he was pretending to be the night sky.
“Look, Casper! This is Ursa Minor, and that’s the Big Dipper.” He marked out the shapes of the constellations with an excited finger. “And this is the Swallowing Donkey, and this one doesn’t have a name yet, so I’ll call it Trevor.”
Halfway home, Casper remembered that Teresa Louncher was still stuck in that locker. He swore he’d remember to let her out tomorrow.
On the back seat, Anemonie nibbled her fingernails and growled at anybody who came too close. She’d never been anything but Queen of the Classroom before (except once, when she declared herself Holy Empress of the Playground and got Ted Treadington to build her a temple out of lunchboxes). But now she was nothing more than a lowly peasant at the Court of Lord Brewster. That sort of thing stung.
“Can I come round?” asked Lamp. “I can’t remember where I left my house.”
“Not tonight. We’re doing the grand opening of The Battered Cod. You coming?”
“Will there be food?”
“It’s a restaurant. Of course there’ll be food.”
“Because I love it when there’s food.”
The tractor ground to a halt in Corne-on-the-Kobb’s village square and Sandy Landscape bellowed, “’Ere we are, kiddies, ’ome an’ dry, safe an’ sound, bread an’ drippin’. Don’t leave yer berlongin’s on the bus unless it’s sammiches.” The children tumbled out through the carriage door and scampered off home to cuddle their mummies. Lamp shuffled off with an eager wave, leaving Casper almost alone in the square.
Sitting on the step by the boarded-up cheese shop was that grubby Frenchman Renée, sucking on a tiny grey cigarette.
Casper waved.
“’Allo, boy.” His fat lips curled into a smile. “Are you being ready for… er… ze large evening?”
Casper nodded. The fact that Renée’s cheese shop was opening on the