Ivan Brett - Casper Candlewacks in Attack of the Brainiacs!

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 same night as his dad’s restaurant had been a worry, but not for long. The villagers liked cheese, but only when it came in heavy yellow bricks. French cheese, with all its liquid middles and herby crusts and essence de cowshed, would not appeal to the villagers one morsel.

Through the window of The Battered Cod, Casper could see Julius Candlewacks teetering on a ladder, grasping for a massive wonky lampshade that hung just out of reach.

“Better go and help,” grimaced Casper.

“Ah, c’est bon. Say ’allo to your fazzer.”

Casper trotted the rest of the way across the square.

Ting-a-ling.

“Dad?” Casper pushed open the restaurant door, caught the corner of the ladder and sent it toppling over, leaving Julius Candlewacks hanging from the lampshade.

“Help!” Julius flailed his legs about and suddenly realised he was terrified of heights. “I can’t hold on! I’m too young to die!”

“Just jump. It’s not far.”

“It’s miles! I’ll break my legs! Get me a parachute or something.”

“We don’t have a—”

RRRRIPPPP went the lampshade and, along with Julius, it tumbled to the carpet.

Julius checked he was alive, breathed a sigh of relief and then noticed how far the bit of lampshade in his hands was from the rest of the lampshade. “Oh.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

“It’s fine!” He sprang to his feet with forced jollity. “It’s modern. Half a lampshade is the new lampshade. Soon everyone’ll be doing it. Now, plenty to do.” And he tottered off to look at the list of unfinished jobs scribbled all over the Today’s Specials blackboard.

It had just gone four o’clock, which left three hours until opening time.

“How can I help?” asked Casper.

“Right,” Julius read down the list. “You need to connect that oven, peel the spuds, get a new fridge, sweep up the old fridge, label the meat pile and fix the lock on the loo. Got that?”

Casper groaned.

Ting-a-ling.

“Caspy!” Casper’s mother, Amanda Candlewacks, burst through the restaurant door. She had long blonde hair, scratches all over her face and a wriggling baby in a bag slung over one shoulder. “Look at me, Caspy, I’m a real mother!”

“How was your first day with Cuddles?”

“Wonderful! We went to the park, she caught some squirrels, I lost her down the back of the tumble dryer—”

The baby screeched and thrashed about, gnashing its razor-sharp teeth. This was Cuddles, Casper’s sister, the least cuddly baby since Clemmie Answorth adopted a cactus. (The cactus didn’t last long, by the way. It was eaten by Cuddles, along with Clemmie Answorth’s shoes and purse and Don’t Eat my Cactus sign.)

“But I think she might be broken. Can you take a look at her, darling?” Amanda smiled sweetly at Casper.

It didn’t take long to see, or to smell, what was going on. “Mum, her nappy’s full. Like every day. You just need to change her.”

“Change her?” Amanda’s brow furrowed in confusion. “But I like this one.”

“Not all of her, Mum. Just the nappy.”

“How do I do that?”

“I showed you yesterday.”

“But I need to do it today,” she giggled.

Casper sighed and laid Cuddles out on Table 4. His mum wasn’t a quick learner. She wasn’t even a slow learner. As it turned out, Amanda Candlewacks wasn’t a learner at all. What’s more, she was about eleven years late to this ‘mothering’ malarkey, and she couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. But today, with Casper going to school, Amanda was faced with her first full day of unaided mothering.