Davina Dupree's Bizarre Birthday Balloon Ride (3 page)

There was a tense pause, as we all stared at the clasp. Then –

‘Wow,' Giles said, his shoulders slowly going down. He gave the clasp a firm tug and it moved! The fire in that burner reduced at once. He quickly covered the clasp of the other burner in the gel, and a few seconds later managed to turn that one down too.

‘This really is magic gel Mr Duffy,' he turned and pumped the old man's hand up and down. ‘Thank you so much, you've saved all our lives. What on earth is it?'

‘Used to be a scientist when I was younger,' Mr Duffy cackled, and suddenly I noticed a gleam in his eyes I hadn't been aware of before. Hmm, he's a lot more intelligent that we realised, I thought. ‘Worked for the government on top-secret missions, making substances I can't possibly tell you about. But I also made a few things for myself, one of them being this gel that loosens my reading spectacles whenever they become too stiff. I can't stand it when they won't open properly when I've settled down to read a good book, so I always carry a bottle of magic gel with me wherever I go. You might want to wash your hands now Giles, that stuff's properly toxic.'

‘Thanks, will do,' Giles looked tired now. ‘Won't be a minute.' He popped down stairs.

Phew – what an adventure! I hope we don't have any more nasty surprises like that, Diary. I just want to enjoy this fabulous view CALMLY!

Well, well, well, Diary,

There is DEFINITELY something
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going on aboard this hot air balloon, you mark my words. Arabella and I have vowed to get to the bottom of it, for our own safety as well as for the safety of everyone else on board.

After we'd explained the drama of the morning to Aiden, Amy and the twins, and everyone had oohed and aahed, and said how glad they were Mr Duffy's ointment had got the burners working again, we all relaxed and enjoyed our trip across the sea.

It was beautiful weather, and Giles – now in FULL control of the burners – steered us out over sparkling blue waters, and we all loved peering over the balcony to see what we could spot.

‘A dolphin, look Hugo,' Hattie shrieked, jumping up and down, pointing. To all our delight we saw a whole pod of dolphins jumping and flipping below us, it was like they were putting on a show! Then we sailed over some golden sand islands that were very small and had one or two luscious looking palm trees each.

By that time we were all feeling a little peckish, so Giles stabilized the burners and went below to prepare a picnic lunch. But as he climbed carefully back up the stairs, holding an enormous tray absolutely crammed with the most
DELISH.COM
food and drink, the balcony wobbled violently from side to side and Amy, who was nearest, managed to grab the tray just before Giles fell over. She carefully slid it on to a table, just before the whole cabin swung sideways.

Arabella gasped and put her hand over her mouth.

‘Look,' she said, her voice sounding muffled. We all looked over and couldn't believe our eyes. One of the four ropes attaching the balloon to the cabin had been severed.

Giles immediately jumped up the rest of the stairs and strode over to the two rope ends, that were flailing about in the breeze.

‘This is a clean cut,' he said grimly, turning to stare round at us all. ‘This is sabotage. Someone one board is TRYING to stop the balloon from working. Did anyone see who was near this rope?'

We all looked around at each other. Suddenly I didn't trust ANYONE on board, except Arabella. We all shook our heads.

‘The problem is, Giles,' Arabella said glumly. ‘We're all so hungry after our exciting morning, we'd all clustered round the hatch to see what yummy food you were bringing up. I, for one, didn't even THINK of looking behind me.' There were general grunts of agreement from everyone else.

‘In that case,' Giles said. ‘We must turn round and make our way back to our landing site. None of us are safe until we find out who is purposefully putting all our lives in danger. And,' he went on. ‘It doesn't take a genius to work out that the burner clasps jamming was probably the work of our vandal too. Everyone, make sure you're wearing your parachutes at all times. If anyone has ANY information about who might be responsible, come and see me AT ONCE.' And with that he bent to pick up his tool kit, eyebrows lowered.

I looked around at everybody, wondering who on earth the culprit was. It isn't a nice feeling to know that you are standing next to a secret vandal who might send you plummeting towards earth at any second. For once, Mr Duffy wasn't grinning, but was running a hand over his wrinkly forehead saying, “Oh deary deary me” over and over again. Even Crackers looked glum, sitting on his owner's foot, his ears drooping. Amy cuddled Hugo and Hattie close to her; the twins looking unusually timid and sweet and not like the typical brats they are. Aiden, looking pale, closed his laptop with a soft click, and became lost staring into space. Arabella and I, feeling awful but also EXTREMELY
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, shuffled over to the tray of food and drink that sat at an angle on a nearby table. I managed a few cheese straws, four blueberries and a slice of lemon tart, although to be honest, my heart wasn't really in it.

Right Diary, Arabella and I are going to casually hang around each person on board, seeing if we can pick up any clues or hints as to who's acting suspiciously. It's important they don't realise what we're doing, so we're bringing some props with us, like reading books and our cameras, so we can pretend to be busy while we're actually doing serious detective work. We're then going to go back to our room for an emergency meeting.
And
check our parachutes are on correctly and in FULL working order. Blimey, I didn't think we'd actually have to
use
them...

Right, Diary,

I'll copy out the notes we've made so far:

Suspects

Hugo and Hattie:
Extremely
annoying six year old twins who go round breaking things, poking people, screaming and fighting just to get attention. Even while we were watching them this afternoon, they snapped Amy's favourite headband, drew on the walls of the cabin sitting room, took everything out of the fridge for no reason and tried to kidnap Crackers. Possible motive for trying to break hot air balloon: it could be their biggest attempt EVER to get lots of attention, even if it means getting MASSIVELY told off in the process. Another thing that might be annoying them is that their babysitter – Amy – spends most of the time staring at her phone instead of them.

Amy: Bored babysitter but nice girl to chat to. This afternoon, while we were watching the twins roll around on the floor screaming, she told us all about Woodlands Festival where her cousin's band was playing. ‘Apparently it's held in a glade in the middle of a wood,' she said, her eyes lighting up. ‘There's a huge stage covered by a canopy made from moss and leaves where all the bands play, loads of different stalls where you can buy jewellery, clothes and food and when it gets dark, hundreds of lanterns and candles are lit around the edge of the glade. I don't think it's far from here. I
really
wish I was there.' Possible motive for trying to break hot air balloon: if she thinks we're near the site of the festival, she might want to try and land the balloon nearby so she can go and watch her cousin's band play. Seems unlikely, but you never know...

Aiden: Wow, that boy NEVER stops looking at his laptop. After he'd stopped staring into space following the discovery of the cut rope, he opened his laptop, slid his glasses up his nose with his finger, and spent the next two hours staring at the screen. Arabella and I both sneaked round behind at separate times, to try and work out what he was doing, but to be honest, none of the symbols and signs on his screen made any sense to me whatsoever. I think he was playing a complicated game about aliens, he kept typing numbers and letters into small boxes and this seemed to move different aliens and spacecraft around a complicated grid. MEGA
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. Possible motive for trying to break balloon: To add some excitement to his otherwise boring, laptop obsessed day?!

Mr Duffy: A funny old man who is cleverer than he seems. When I first met Mr Duffy, I thought he was a nice old man who liked to live in the past, and talk about his younger days a lot. But since he presented Giles with magic gel during the burner crisis, and announced he used to be a scientist that worked on top secret missions for the government, I've noticed he's much sharper and more intelligent than he pretends to be. His eyes are so bright and quick, but he hides them behind smudged spectacles most of the time. Possible motive for trying to break balloon: Maybe he still works for the government and bringing the balloon down is somehow part of a secret mission? He could pretend to be helping Giles fix the balloon, but this could all be part of his undercover plan?

Crackers: A scruffy cross-bred dog, who likes sitting on people's feet. When Arabella and I were in the sitting room, trying to scrub the twins crayon scribbles off the walls, I noticed that Crackers has really strange bursts of energy. One minute he was lying across Mr Duffy's feet, snoring, while his master did a crossword in the paper. And the next he suddenly jumped up and ran in circles round the room like a mad thing. Honestly, at one point he jumped too near to the table and sent a glass of water crashing to the floor. Luckily the glass didn't break but Mr Duffy's feet got soaking wet. He didn't seem to mind though, just cackled his dry old laugh and went back to his crossword. Possible motive for breaking balloon: Crackers could have accidentally broken the burners with an unexpected mad fit of energy, maybe he jumped up and jammed them by mistake. Although that doesn't explain how he could have snipped the rope in half. Bitten it perhaps? Hmm, seems unlikely.

Giles: Long suffering pilot who is no longer looking very happy. Arabella and I asked Giles if there was anything we could do to help, while he taped the rope back together with industrial strength black tape. He just snorted and turned his back on us, which seemed rather rude, although I know he's depressed about the secret vandal on board. Possible motive for breaking his own balloon: maybe he's bored with his job and wants a career change? Or maybe he needs some money and wants to stage an accident so he can claim on the insurance. My old nanny, Carrie Whepple, once said that silly people do that sometimes. But he looked genuinely upset when he saw that the rope had been cut, so I think that's unlikely somehow.

Me and Arabella: Well I know neither of us did it so I'm not even going to bother writing anything here.

Right Diary, me and Arabella are going to go down to the kitchen now and see if we can find something to eat. Giles told us we'd all have to fix our own dinners tonight as he'd be busy checking the safety and security of each part of the balloon. I
do
hope we have a calm and uneventful night!

Crisis, Diary!

You'll never guess what's happened. Basically, everything was quite calm aboard our balloon during most of the afternoon and evening. When Arabella and I went down to the kitchen we found a cupboard full of bread, and several packets of ham in the fridge, so we decided to make sandwiches for everyone. I brought a plate of them up to Giles who was still stomping around the balcony, re-tying all sorts of ropes while huffing and puffing loudly. He looked a bit calmer when he saw the sandwiches though, and even said thank you. Hattie and Hugo wolfed theirs down quickly and asked for more, Amy ate one then said she wasn't hungry, Aiden placed his next to his laptop then forgot to eat them because he was too busy staring at the screen and Mr Duffy and Crackers ate six between them.

By eight o'clock things had almost got back to normal. Giles came downstairs and put some music on in the sitting room, and the stressed atmosphere slowly oozed away, especially when Amy took two very tired twins off to bed. Arabella and me went off to our room just after half past nine, and I must have fallen asleep pretty quickly because I don't remember anything after that until there was a terrible BANG!

I jumped out of bed and Arabella fell out of hers, and we ran up to the balcony, dragging our dressing gowns and slippers on as we went. Giles was there, and in the moonlight his face looked ghostly white and his eyes were as large as saucers.

‘Look,' he said, his trembling hand pointing upwards. ‘The vandal has struck again.'

We looked up and saw, to our HORROR, that a hole had been made in the fabric of the balloon.

‘Hang on,' Arabella said, looking about herself wildly. ‘Are we going downwards rather fast?'

Giles shook himself and jumped into action.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Go and get your parachutes on girls, then wake up all of the others and tell them to get theirs on. You all need to meet me up here on the balcony STRAIGHT AWAY. You've got to be quick, there's no time to lose. We're all going to have to jump before the balloon gets too low.'

Gulping, and suspecting I'd gone rather pale myself now, I turned and descended the stairs fast, Arabella close behind me. We grabbed our parachute packs and with trembling hands helped put each other's on, then swiftly went from room to room waking up each person and helping them on with their parachute.

‘I thought that bang was a loud firework,' Amy said, yawning.

‘Are we going to have to jump?' Hugo shouted. ‘Oh goodie!'

‘What bang?' Mr Duffy crackled when I'd eventually managed to wake him up by shaking him VERY hard. ‘Now where did I put Cracker's parachute?'

In less than five minutes, all nine of us on board stood on the balcony, shivering – and not just with cold. Even Crackers had a parachute strapped to his back, I thought it made him look like a superhero dog.