The Quigleys in a Spin Read online

  He looked up at Mum. Mum was sitting on the extension roof with her arms folded, looking down at him. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I forgot. You're stuck up there.’

  There was a small silence while they thought about this. Lucy almost began to cry, but she stopped herself enough to say, in a small voice, ‘I don't like Mum being stuck up there.’

  Will held her hand. ‘Don't worry,’ he said kindly. ‘We're going to get her down. You'll see.’ He looked up at Mum. ‘What's their number?’ he called.

  ‘Whose number?’

  ‘The fire brigade.’

  Mum said that she didn't want Will to call the fire brigade, not even to be rescued herself. ‘I know what you can do,’ she said. ‘You can go round to some of our friends to ask for help lifting the ladder.’

  ‘Will you be OK while we're gone?’ Lucy asked.

  Mum nodded, and looked at Will. Will took charge. ‘Come on, Lucy,’ he said briskly. ‘We don't want to leave Mum up there all day.’

  While they were gone, Mum sat on the roof alone, thinking. She wasn't scared any more. She felt sure that Will and Lucy would help get her down. They were sensible children. Will could be a bit dreamy, and Lucy was stubborn sometimes, but they were both kind-hearted and thoughtful. Some days, it was true, all she ever seemed to do was tell them not to be so loud, or ask them to tidy their room, or stop doing cartwheels in the kitchen. But in fact there were just as many nice moments, which were somehow easier to forget. She smiled to herself. Stuck up on the extension roof, waiting to be rescued, she felt oddly lucky. She drew her knees up to her chest, and looked across the back gardens lit up in the afternoon sun, and told herself that in future she would remember the nice moments too.

  Will and Lucy went down the street. They went past the blind lady's house, and the house with the sparrow bush, and the house which builders were repairing.

  ‘It's funny, isn't it,’ Will said, ‘the way Mum didn't like climbing the ladder. Do you think she's scared of heights?’

  ‘I don't know,’ Lucy said. ‘What's it like being scared of them?’

  Will thought about it. ‘Do you remember that rice pudding Dad made with cayenne pepper once?’

  Lucy shuddered.

  ‘Well, it's a bit like that. Your insides feel wrong.’

  They came to Gary and Elena's house, and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. At the end of the street, they tried at Ted and Sally's, but they were out too. ‘Haven't they gone to stay with their grandma and grandpa?’ Lucy said.

  They tried three more houses, but no one was in. At the last house, a babysitter answered the door, and told them that it was the Woodcraft folks’ annual barbecue in the park.

  ‘That's why so many people are out,’ Lucy said to Will. ‘What shall we do now?’

  Will put his hands in his pockets to think. He usually found it easier thinking with his hands in his pockets, it made him feel cunning. Sometimes, though, he was distracted by things he found in his pockets. Today he discovered a rubber band, fifty pence, a dead battery, a crisp packet and one of Mum's back teeth which he was going to swap at school. He spent a few minutes examining them all with great interest, especially the fifty pence piece.

  ‘What can you buy for fifty pence?’ he asked out loud.

  ‘Sweets,’ Lucy said promptly. She liked sweets. ‘From the sweet shop round the corner.’

  ‘What sort of sweets?’

  Lucy said, ‘Oh, I don't know, gobstoppers, Refreshers, white mice, Black Jacks, Fruit Salads, liquorice string, sherbet fountains, jelly beans, Toffos, flying saucers, Freddo frogs.’

  ‘OK,’ Will said. ‘Let's go.’

  Mum was getting quite chilly on the extension roof when Will and Lucy got back. She knew they were back because she heard the front door shut. Then she heard them talking. Then she heard them put on the television. They didn't come out to the patio though. In the end she had to call them, and Will and Lucy came out with their mouths full and looked up at her curiously.

  ‘Oh!’ they said. It was quite a shock to see Mum still up there.

  ‘Couldn't you get down?’ Will asked.

  Mum gave them a look, and suddenly they felt very embarrassed. They both began to explain different things at the same time.

  Mum interrupted them. ‘Never mind. The problem is, I'm still stuck here.’

  Will and Lucy were just thinking about this when they heard a key turn in the front door, and Dad appeared, looking battered. He often looked battered when he'd been to London. It was the trains, he said, that did the battering. The children ran loudly towards him.

  ‘Hello,’ he said wearily. ‘I'm glad to see you too.’

  ‘No, you don't understand,’ Will said.

  ‘You don't,’ Lucy said. ‘We're really glad to see you. And so is Mum.’

  Dad stood on the patio and looked up at Mum, and Mum sat on the extension roof looking down at him, and Dad began to laugh.

  ‘What's funny?’ Mum said.

  ‘You're so good to me,’ Dad said. ‘I've had such a hard day in London, and the trains were so bad, but you always know how to cheer me up.’

  Will and Lucy began to explain.

  ‘What do you mean, Fatbrain's stuck?’ Dad said. He pointed, and they turned round and found Fatbrain sitting on the patio, cleaning a paw. He sat there in a comfortable way, as if he'd never been up on the roof at all. From time to time he looked pityingly up at Mum on the extension roof.

  ‘Fatbrain!’ Lucy cried.

  ‘Flab-head!’ Will cried.

  ‘Now you know why I don't like cats,’ Dad said.

  An argument began about cats, which was interrupted by Mum. ‘Excuse me!’ she said crossly. ‘Would somebody mind getting me down?’ She said ‘somebody’ but she was looking at Dad.

  Dad took off his jacket.

  ‘Be careful, though,’ Mum added. ‘The ladder's heavy.’

  Dad paid no attention to this. ‘I think I can manage to lift up a ladder,’ he said.

  Five minutes later, after a lot of heaving and some swearing, and the sort of help from the children that made the ladder seem heavier, Dad eventually got it into position. ‘It is heavy,’ he panted. ‘But it's a good ladder. They don't make ladders like this any more.’

  Will and Lucy grinned.

  ‘And now,’ Dad said to them. ‘Watch carefully. This is how you do a rescue.’

  He sprang lightly onto the ladder and began to climb, and when he was halfway up, it split down the middle with a tremendous crack, and left him hanging from the eaves of the extension roof. The two halves of the ladder fell sideways and smashed through the hanging baskets. There was a noise like the sudden roaring of a crowd, which Dad made all on his own, and the next second he was lying next to Mum on the extension roof, gasping and groaning.

  ‘Good rescue,’ Mum said.

  Dad made a face. ‘Bloody ladder,’ he said. ‘Thank God they don't make them like that any more.’

  After Will and Lucy had got over their astonishment, they did a little dance on the patio because having Mum and Dad stuck on the roof was the most exciting thing that had happened in ages. And besides, as Will said, they definitely had to get the fire brigade now. ‘I ought to phone Dani and Matt first,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘so they can come and watch the fire engine smash its way down the street.’

  But Lucy wasn't sure. ‘Mum didn't want us to get the fire engine,’ she said. Will began to argue, but she added, ‘And we have to make up for forgetting about her before, when we went to the sweet shop by mistake.’

  Will looked ashamed. ‘All right,’ he said glumly. ‘Only I hope you can think of some good ideas.’ He shouted up to Mum and Dad, ‘We're going to get you down, but you have to wait a bit while we think of good ideas. It's Lucy's turn to think first.’

  Dad rolled his eyes. ‘Just go round to one of our friends’ and get help,’ he shouted back.

  Mum explained that all their friends were out for the evening. ‘Let Will and Lucy thi
nk for a while,’ she said. ‘I'm sure they'll come up with something sensible.’

  Dad made a short, loud noise to show he disagreed, and Mum and Dad began to argue among themselves, while Will and Lucy sat on the lawn taking it in turns to think of sensible ideas.

  ‘We could fill up the paddling pool so they could jump into it,’ Will said.

  ‘That's not a sensible idea,’ Lucy said.

  ‘What sort of idea is it then?’ Will asked sharply.

  ‘It's a very damp idea,’ Lucy said. ‘I've got a better one. We can make a pile of things, like the garden furniture and the barbecue set and the lawnmower, and climb up it.’

  But Will thought Lucy's idea too wobbly.

  Fatbrain came to sit in Lucy's lap, and they stroked him thoughtfully while they concentrated.

  ‘What about tempting them down with smells, like we tried to do with Fatbrain?’ Will suggested. ‘Bacon, say, or lasagne. Once they get hungry, they'll find a way down by themselves.’

  They both thought this was a good idea, but too slow, so they thought some more.

  In the meantime, Mum and Dad sat on the roof watching them. ‘You can tell they're being sensible by how thoughtful they look,’ Mum said, and Dad replied, quite forcefully, that he was prepared to bet a goodish amount of money that any ideas they had would be mad and possibly dangerous.

  Just then, Will shouted up to them.

  The End

  A DAVID FICKLING BOOK

  Published by David Fickling Books

  an imprint of Random House Children's Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product

  of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2005 by Simon Mason

  Ilustrations copyright © 2005 by Helen Stephens

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House

  Children's Books, in 2005.

  DAVID FICKLING BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.

  www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mason, Simon

  The Quigleys in a spin / Simon Mason; illustrated by Helen Stephens. — 1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  SUMMARY: The further adventures and misadventures of the four members of the Quigley family—

  Mum, Dad, Lucy, and Will.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-54351-6

  [1. Family life—England—Fiction. 2. Humorous stories. 3. England—Fiction.]

  I. Stephens, Helen, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.M4232Qvm 2006

  [Fic]—dc22

  2005018482

  v3.0