And by and by, there came a fad for spreading it on toast,
For simple, hearty food was what the people loved the most.
The meadowes of the south were where the largest parsnips grew.
Those cultivated here were thought the finest kind for stew.
Whilst on the Blizzy Lizzies, where the air was cold and dry,
The parsnips pluck’d from out the soil were mostly served in pie.
The parsnips of the east were rather soft, and bland, and stodgy.
Consumed in hefty quantities, they’d make one’s tummy dodgy.
But glad to say, the parsnips that were grown in
Roxy stopped reading. It had taken her the past five days to struggle through the entire book once. Now she was struggling through the whole thing all over again, just to be absolutely certain that she hadn’t accidentally missed something – anything – interesting the first time around.
There had been seventy-three chapters just as dull as this one.
There were thirty-six chapters even duller to come.
The entire book, apart from one random page (maybe Mrs Tabitha had been having a rare Normal Person Day) was written in verse.
Yep. Verse. That rhymed. Just like Trixie T McWitch’s weird roommate advert that was still crumpled up in Roxy’s dressing-gown pocket.
But this interesting coincidence didn’t actually make the book one iota more interesting. It was in fact so STOMACH-ACHINGLY TEDIOUS that it almost made Roxy want to actually read the week-old copy of Royal Rumorz magazine that she was only using to disguise Mrs Tabitha Cattermole.
Almost.
“He is so lush,” came a breathy voice from across the room.
It belonged to Bijou Splendid, whose bedroom Roxy was in.
Bijou was perched at her pink dressing table skimming a Royal Rumorz of her own.
Her copy of the magazine was the very newest, hot-off-the-press edition. Bijou was always hot off the press. She had her own MeMeMeTeeVee channel, where she presented a super-popular vlog called B’s Buzz. Here she discussed the latest celebrity gossip, doled out fashion tips and said mean things about people she didn’t like.
Bijou could get away with saying mean things – indeed, Bijou only had a super-popular vlog in the first place – because her father was Atticus Splendid, Soup Minister.
“Roxy?” Bijou snapped now, when Roxy didn’t respond. “Are you still there?”
“Yep, Bijou. Still here,” said Roxy from the squishy depths of a pink glittery beanbag.
Roxy wasn’t a fan of pink. Or glitter. Or Bijou, come to think of it. But when Bijou had first noticed her yesterday morning, sitting with her book and her headphones in a quiet part of the Ministry’s famous courtyard garden, Roxy hadn’t felt able to turn down the invitation to hang out.
Partly because it hadn’t been an invitation so much as a command.
But also because, when all was said and done, Roxy was new in Rexopolis. And she was freakishly tall for her age. With weird springy hair that stood up in loo-brush tufts, no matter how much she tried to coax it not to. And in a month’s time, when the holidays ended and she finally took up the place her sister Gretel had found for her at the nearest school, Roxy would be heading to class every day with Bijou Splendid. So while she might not want Bijou as a friend, she certainly didn’t want her as an enemy.
“Then tell me what you think of this Spencer Sparke-Plugg poster.” Bijou was brandishing her magazine.
Roxy forced herself to look interested as she peered across the room at Bijou’s magazine page.
The photo of Spencer Sparke-Plugg looked pretty much like all the other posters of the cheesy pop star that adorned the pink bedroom: way too much tan and way, way too many teeth.
“Oh, it’s great.” Roxy stuck up a vague thumb, hoping that now she’d be left in peace so she could concentrate on Mrs Tabitha.
Not that there was much peace, thanks to the music blaring out from Bijou’s speakers. Even more sadly, this music was – of course – Spencer Sparke-Plugg.
Bijou began to croon to the pop star’s latest track as she tore out the poster and tacked it to her mirror. “She got that pale green skin (and she knows it!)… She givin’ me those evils… I’ll never get ooooouuuuuuut-a-heeeere…”
“You know that’s a cover version, right?” Roxy couldn’t help saying, although she regretted it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. “I mean, it’s originally an H-Bomb and the Missiles song. A classic, in fact.”
“Whatevs.” Bijou rolled her eyes. “Spencer’s version is way better than all the wailing in the original. You can dance to it!”
“Yes. Um, I’m not sure it’s meant to be danced to. If you listen to the lyrics, they’re actually quite—”
“Are you a Spencer Sparke-Plugg fan or not?” Bijou snapped, putting down her magazine and glaring at Roxy in the mirror.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Huge fan. Huge.” This was a huge fib. Roxy hoped it wasn’t obvious. She’d gone too far out on a limb with the whole H-Bomb comment; she could see that now. What was wrong with her? She wanted to fit in, so why hadn’t she just kept her mouth shut?
“And who else do you like?” Bijou stabbed a finger at another of the tanned, toothy boys in her poster collection. “Do you like him?”
“Oh, yes, love him.” Roxy didn’t have the faintest clue who “him” was, so she winged it. “Adore his music. That latest track … I mean, wow.”
Bijou swivelled on her dressing-table stool and stared at Roxy as if she’d just vomited all over the pink glittery beanbag. (Which might have improved it.)
“That’s not a musician. That’s the prince. Queen Ariadne’s son.”
“Right. I know that. I … thought you were pointing at someone else…”
“You don’t seem to know much important stuff,” said Bijou, her small eyes narrowing. “Where did you say you’re from, again?”
“Um, well, my dad moves around a lot. The last place we lived was Daisyfield, near the border with Shiny-Newland. Before that we lived in Mount Pleasant for a couple of years, and before that we lived abroad, in Parvenia, actually, and before that…” Roxy was blabbing. She was a nervous blabber. “I moved here to Rexopolis – to the Ministry, obviously – a few weeks ago. To live with my sister.”
“Well, where do you live in the Ministry?” Bijou snapped. “Not those grotty horrible staff quarters, with all the cleaners and stuff?”
“Yeah, in the grotty horrible staff quarters,” Roxy admitted, feeling a stab of guilt. It wasn’t Gretel’s fault she was a loo-cleaner, after all, and if it weren’t for her sister inviting her to live in those very same grotty horrible staff quarters … well, she didn’t know where she’d be right now. Her brand-new stepmother had made it clear there was to be no bedroom for Roxy in the flashy new house her dad was building for her in Bronze Beach, on the north-western coast of Illustria. (And her father, as usual, had simply gone along with whatever his latest wife wanted.)
“My sister’s a cleaner here,” she added, lifting her chin. “And actually, the staff quarters aren’t that bad. We won’t even be there for much longer. We’ll need a bigger place, now that I’m here for good—”
Bijou held up a hand, halting Roxy’s fresh attack of blab-mouth.
“Daddy would freak,” she said, “if he knew I had the cleaner’s sister in my bedroom.”
Roxy could – should, in fact – have taken offence at this and marched out of the room.
But something else Bijou had said stopped her.
Daddy was, of course, Atticus Splendid, Soup Minister.
If there had been one thing Roxy hadn’t been able to shake off since that night in the vault – apart from the musty smell of damp socks, of course – it had been something the cupcake-delivery girl had said about the Ministry above them.
You actually think this is the Ministry for Soup.
Maybe Roxy – who had recently, after all, been given the nickname Question Girl – could lea
rn something interesting from hanging out with Bijou after all.
“Uh, Bijou –” she tried to sound casual – “you know how obviously you’re the person who knows everything going on around here …”
“So, like, I’m not saying you can never hang out with me or anything …” Bijou was pouting at herself in the pink mirror now, twisting her hair into a high ponytail.
Roxy continued “… haven’t you ever wondered – or asked your dad, maybe – why there actually is a Soup Minister at all…?”
“… but it would probably be better if you just, like, didn’t do it very often …”
“… because …” Deep breath, Roxy. “I don’t know if you’ve ever actually noticed, but there doesn’t seem to be very much soup around Rexopolis. Around the whole of Illustria, in fact. I’ve lived in this country pretty much my entire life, and I’ve only eaten soup maybe twice in that entire time. And it was plain old cream-of-tomato. Not exactly unusual. And now that I’m actually living here in the Ministry, it’s occurred to me that it’s a bit weird to have an entire Ministry in charge of any kind of soup at all.”
“… and anyway, I’ve got to film my next vlog post for B’s Buzz in a few minutes, so you’d better go.” Bijou sauntered over to the beanbag. “I’ll need this,” she added, reaching down and grabbing the copy of Royal Rumorz from Roxy’s hand. “There’s a ‘Which Hottie Is the One for You?’ quiz in there. I want to do it live.”
There was a thud, and then a strong smell of damp socks.
Mrs Tabitha Cattermole had slipped out of the magazine and fallen to the floor.
Bijou stared. “What’s that?”
“Oh, nothing! Just a book!” Roxy grabbed for it, but not fast enough. Bijou had grabbed it herself and was holding it at arm’s length.
“It smells of … Ewwww…! What is that?”
“Damp socks,” Roxy jabbered, seeing an opportunity. “Really stinky, vile socks that have been mouldering away on someone’s cheesy feet for ages. So if you just give it back to me, pretty much right now-ish, I’ll take it far, far…”
Bijou’s eyes were practically popping out of her head. “Is it –” her voice became a whisper – “old?”
“Old?” Roxy echoed. “Yeah, it’s old. But it’s really bor—”
“SECURITEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” screeched Bijou.
And then the bedroom door burst open, and four ginormous SMOGs barrelled through.
3
“Do you have any idea,” Gretel asked Roxy, “what you’ve done?”
It was the very early hours of the next morning and the sisters were home, in Gretel’s tiny bedsit in the Soup Ministry staff quarters.
Despite the fact that it was smaller and drabber than anywhere Roxy had ever lived, she had still been relieved to return here a few minutes ago. After the hours she’d just spent in the Ministry’s Decontamination Zone, this place felt fabulous.
“Do you have any idea,” Gretel went on, “of the trouble you’ve caused? The strings I had to pull to get you out of that place?”
“Strings?”
“Favours I’ve had to promise.” Gretel wasn’t looking at her; she was too busy removing her cleaning overalls and stripy scarf, and pulling on her fluffy bunny slippers. “I’ll be paying the price for your little escapade from now until Christmas!”
“Sorry,” Roxy said, for (what felt like, but probably wasn’t quite) the fifty millionth time. “I truly am, Gretel. But what do you mean, you’ve had to promise favours?”
“I don’t know yet, Roxy! Someone will probably make me work all the really unpopular shifts or something. You don’t need to know any more about it. Did they feed you?”
“Huh?”
“In the DZ – I mean, the Decontamination Zone. Did they give you anything to eat?”
“No. There wasn’t time. As soon as we got there, they started hosing us down with these big jets of water, and then they took away my clothes and gave me this –” Roxy pulled at the papery yellow jumpsuit she’d been told to wear – “and then they put me in this kind of creepy white cell for about three hours, and…”
“OK, I get it. You haven’t eaten.” Gretel reached into a cupboard on the wall that was only just visible among all Roxy’s music posters. It was where she kept her allergy medicine, her knitting and a few of her dreary snacks. “Here. Eat.”
Silently, Roxy took the packet of Proon Puffs that Gretel was holding out for her and sat down on the end of Gretel’s bed. She was hungrier than she’d ever been in her life. Hungrier, even, than that time when Dad and Lindsey (Stepmother Number … was it Six?) had gone away for the week, locking the front door behind them and forgetting to leave Roxy with a key. So she didn’t even care that Proon Puffs were the least delicious breakfast cereal on the planet. At least they were food.
“I mean, what were you thinking, Roxy? Breaking into an underground vault!”
“I didn’t break in. I followed a tunnel. From your bathroom, incidentally. And by the way, G, did you already know why that bath doesn’t work? Did you know about the loose panel and the steps?”
“Of course I didn’t, Roxy! I spend all day cleaning bathrooms. The last thing I ever think about is my own!” Gretel glanced towards the door that led to the bathroom, looking as if she’d happily board the whole room up right now if she had some wood and a hammer handy. “I had absolutely no idea anything like that was down there. It’s some supply tunnels from the olden days, I gather. It’ll be sealed off, by the way, as soon as one of the Ministry handymen has the time.”
“I was just intrigued, that’s all.” Roxy stared at the floor. (Actually, she stared at her thin mattress, which almost entirely covered the floor.) “It’s not like there’s anything exciting for me to do around here.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault I have to work such long hours, you know. I have two of us to think about these days!” Gretel, looking more-than-usually weary and cross, perched on the other end of the mattress. “So what exactly did the Minister say when he came to talk to you?”
This had been, among many hairy-scary moments, the hairiest and scariest of them all: Minister Atticus Splendid himself, appearing in Roxy’s cell.
“Well, it was weird.” Roxy’s stomach rumbled, and she remembered she was supposed to be eating the Proon Puffs. She took a big handful. “He mostly just told me off for upsetting Bijou.”
“So he didn’t mention … old stuff?”
“Actually, he did. And that’s exactly what he called it too!”
I hope you’re not going to waste any more of your time looking for old stuff, the Soup Minister had said, beetling at her out of his pale, watery eyes. He had looked very, very large in the small cell and very, VERY orange against the bright-white tiles and floor. And I do hope you aren’t going to tell anyone else about it. Nobody’s interested, for one thing.
“Well, nobody’s really interested in old stuff,” said Gretel.
“Mmm,” said Roxy. She chewed for a moment longer, then, as Gretel stood up to get her pyjamas, she went on, “The thing is, though, Gretel; if nobody’s interested, why was I rushed off to be decontaminated in the first place?”
“Because of that stinky old book you took – stole, I don’t need to remind you – from the vault! Heaven only knows what terrible mould spores were all over that thing!”
“That’s what the Ministry needs an entire Decontamination Zone for? In case some old book gets taken off a shelf?”
“No, I’m sure it’s—”
“You’ve always told me Illustria is the cleanest, tidiest, safest place to live in the entire world! Why does it need a Decontamination Zone? In the Soup Ministry, of all places. And another thing –” Roxy was exhausted, but her brain was buzzing – “why did Minister Splendid himself come and quiz me about it all? I mean, I don’t know how much you see of the Soup Minister when you’re cleaning his loo (not much, if you’re lucky) but does he strike you as the kind of man who usually bothers chatting with eleven-year-old
s?”
“Roxy—”
“And you should have seen how relieved he looked when I agreed that old stuff was really boring, and that I’d never talk about it again. And how happy he looked when I told him I’d not really understood anything I read in Mrs Tabitha Cattermole anyway.”
“Roxy—”
“And then as he was leaving, just before he shut the door behind him, I heard him telling someone they could cancel Mrs Smith now … whoever that might be … and then he said, Obviously we’ve got WAY bigger fish to fry right now – which, OK, is probably the most soup-related thing I heard him say, if he was talking about actual fish, which I’m pretty sure he wasn’t, and then—”
“Roxy!” Gretel bellowed. “That’s enough!”
Which was a shock, because Gretel never bellowed. She was one of the quietest and most mouse-like people Roxy had ever known. Actually, with her pebbly glasses and her blinking, she was actually more mole-like than mouse-like.
“For the last time,” she went on, “there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SUSPICIOUS GOING ON IN THE MINISTRY FOR SOUP! There are no conspiracies. There is no dark and thrilling intrigue. There is nobody called Mrs Smith. There is only soup. Do you understand, Roxy?”
“But, Gretel—”
“ONLY SOUP!” roared her sister.
There was a short, uncomfortable silence, during which Gretel put a Proon Puff into her mouth and crunched it irritably.
“Ugh!” She spat it into her hand. “Have they changed the recipe? This tastes awful!”
“No, but … OK, I sprinkled in a bit of sugar when I first opened the pack the other day…”
“SUGAR?” As always, the mere mention of the sweet stuff looked as if it might make Gretel faint. “How many times have I told you, Roxy?”
“That sugary cereal is dangerous? That sugary anything is dangerous? Roughly, ten bazillion times.” Roxy banged the packet down so hard that several bone-dry Puffs actually flew into the air. “I mean, in the name of Diabolica, Gretel, can you PLEASE just CHILL OUT about everything?”
Roxy & Jones Page 2