The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue Read Online Free PDF

done?’ she cried, wrenching at her hair and making it stand out in surprised orange tufts. Gnarled fingers clawed each side of his face and she stared into his eyes. Abruptly, her mood changed.
    ‘I thought, for a moment…your eye.’ She sighed dramatically but then seemed to get hold of herself, pushing Ralf aside so she could spoon jam into a mixing bowl. Head throbbing, Ralf watched as she dropped the spoon with a clatter and marched back into the pantry.
    ‘And that’s the last we’ll say on the matter!’ she called from the darkness, before emerging with a tin of sardines, opening them and tipping them into the bowl. ‘Hungry?’
    Ralf glanced at the bowl, which she was mixing ferociously. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said softly, then left her to it.
     
    On the morning of his twelfth birthday, Ralf woke with a start. Grumbling to himself, he dressed and made a quick check of his attic. All was as he’d left it – a bit tatty and lopsided, but no major damage. The roof hadn’t blown off in the night and a falling meteor had not flattened him. But, he thought gloomily, there was still plenty of time for either of these things to happen.
    He stomped over to the calendar with the day’s date marked off so heavily in red and stared at it critically. What was special about today? Nothing. Twelve years old? Who cared? With his thickest, blackest pen Ralf scribbled off the previous day then shook his head. He really must get a grip. Just then, Gloria launched into her morning ‘voice exercise’ routine. Her screeching echoed through the walls. Ralf winced. Everything was normal.
    He didn’t know it then, but the rest of the day would be far from normal. The ‘Something’ that he had been waiting for had, in fact, already happened.
     
    A minute later Ralf scrambled through the trapdoor, down the ladder and on to the upstairs landing. Gloria was in the bathroom – the room had a lovely echo – and he could see her clearly through the open door. Arms outstretched and shouting, she was transfixed by her own reflection in the mirror. The fact that she sounded like a distressed cat trapped in a large saucepan did not seem to bother her.
    ‘Morning,’ said Ralf, half-heartedly.
    ‘Still here then?’ Gloria patte d him on the arm. ‘Never mind, boy.’ Then she forgot him. ‘Me, me, me, meeee! Ai, ai, ai ai!’
    He went down stairs and then out of the front door to collect the milk. A plane droned overhead. He squinted skywards and his heart bubbled in his chest as a lone Spitfire cut across the sky and sliced into a bank of clouds in the distance. He’d read about old fighter planes, of course, but had only ever seen them in displays and flies by on the Queen’s birthday. Strange that one should be heading across London alone at this time in the morning.
    In fact, it was more than strange. There were n o aircraft cleared to fly over the Heath that day and this particular Spitfire had not been seen in British skies for over sixty years.
    Ralf stooped to pick up the milk, but a flare of electricity across his neck stopped him short. At the far end of the drive, standing in the shadow of the gate was The Hooded Man. The man he’d seen outside Pizza Piazza! A pole of some sort towered over him. Was it some kind of placard? At the top of the pole, something metal flashed in the morning sun and then the man was gone.
    For a second Ralf panicked, thinking that some form of disaster was bound to follow but then his brain took over from his instincts. There was no reason to think that seeing The Hooded Man meant something bad would happen. It might not even be the same man! And even if it was, it was certainly none of his business.
    It was not until much, much later that Ralf realised how spectacularly wrong he was about that.
    There was no birthday breakfast waiting but Ralf expected none. There was milk, bread and some not too rancid butter and he ate quickly. He had just started to clear away his plate and the