by Lou Kuenzler
But, best of all, he presented Mo with a certificate saying could stay open for business.
As soon as his inspection was over and Stella and the film crew had gone home, Mo threw her arms around me.
“Thank you, Violet. You saved the café,” she beamed.
“I couldn’t have done it without Anne and Stella’s help,” I said. “Now the café is there’s no way the council can close it down.”
I pointed to a smiling, signed photograph of Stella on the wall.
“Both the twins are happy now there’s no more ,” I said. “Whenever I see Stella cooking or talking about food, she really does grin. Properly. Just like in that photo.”
Congratulations on such an Udderly Perfect café! Thank you for sharing your recipes! Love, Stella x, it said.
“And I have just the thing to put up beside it,” chuckled Mo, slipping the Health and Safety certificate into a gold frame. had been awarded five stars.
“Look,” I giggled. “It’s even signed by Mr Zeal. Perhaps you should get a photo of him as well.”
The second TV series we made is called … and it stars Anne Lightfoot. Though, just as we planned, nobody knows it’s her – she’s like a mystery adventurer. There is no blonde ponytail any more, of course. Anne appears in a black suit with a face mask. She has lots of different suits – a tretchy one for climbing, a waterproof one for swimming and an extra-thick one for skiing. They call her the She does all the stunts herself, but nobody ever knows who she is, because she doesn’t say a word.
That’s the whole point of . Have you seen it? Different kids appear on the show each week. They are the presenters – they do all the talking. Anne does all the really stuff – the sorts of things parents would never let their children do. Things like putting their heads inside a crocodile’s mouth. But the children still get to meet the animals and explain what’s going on.
“In the first episode I’m going to be with dolphins off the coast of Wales,” Anne told me over the phone. “Do you know any kids who could help us? Someone who’d like to splash about like a mermaid perhaps?”
“How about Violet herself?” I heard Stella laughing in the background. “She’d make a mermaid. She even has her own suit.”
But I had a better idea than that.
“I know two girls who would be perfect,” I said.
And that is how Nisha and Rosie got to be a little bit , just like me.
“I can’t believe I’m really here,” said Nisha as we bobbed up and down in the sea. A family of dolphins swam round and round us – close enough so we could reach out and touch them.
“I love dolphins,” squealed Rosie, around beside us in a pair of big orange armbands so that she could stay afloat.
“We know you love dolphins,” laughed Nisha. Rosie had told us this about a million times already.
Instead of her long blonde mermaid curls, Rosie still had short hair from where she had cut it all off.
She looks like a little prickly sea urchin, I thought. But she was incredibly cute with her gappy-toothed smile, and blowing to the dolphins.
I caught a glimpse of her Patty Pocket doll poking out above one armband. She was still wearing her tiny pink bikini. But since I had last seen her, Patty’s beautiful long curls had been snipped away. She had short hair just like Rosie’s now.
I think I had a lucky escape, I chuckled to myself. I’d rather face the jaws of a lion than a toddler with a pair of scissors.
“I love dolphins,” said Rosie again, swallowing a mouthful of sea water. “I love dolphins. I love dolphins.”
“Good,” I giggled, pulling my snorkelling goggles further down over my face and paddling away. Rosie kept looking at me very strangely, as if she recognized me from somewhere. I didn’t want her to think that Princess Tiny-Twinkle, her mini-mermaid doll, had come to life.
Markus, the same director who had worked on , jumped into the water between us.
“We’re about to start filming now,” he said as Anne joined us. “When I say ‘Ready’, swim towards the camera. Rosie, you say how much you love dolphins. Nisha, you can tell the viewers that these are bottlenose dolphins, sometimes seen in waters off the UK.”
“I love dolphins!” shouted Rosie at the top of her voice.
“Not quite yet,” smiled Markus. “I’ll tell you when we’re ready.”
“What about you, Violet?” asked Nisha, swimming back towards me. “Aren’t you going to be filmed?”
“Not today. The dolphins are just for you and Rosie,” I said. “I’m going to film next week. Anne is taking me diving in a cage to see .”
“But what if you shrink?” hissed Nisha. “You’ll slip though the bars and the sharks will gobble you up like a mini sardine.”
“Yikes! I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “You’d better come with me and keep a look out, just in case.”
“Me? With sharks?” Nisha didn’t look so sure, but before she could say anything else, Markus waved in our direction.
“We’re ready to film the dolphins now. Join in if you like, Violet,” he said. “The more the merrier. But don’t worry. We are definitely going to use that and film we shot of you riding the giraffe that time.”
“Really?” A huge smile spread across my face. I couldn’t believe I would be on telly doing such amazing things – riding a giraffe and swimming with sharks.
“I will be I grinned.
I felt an excited in the tips of my toes.
Oh no … I couldn’t shrink. Not now. Not in the middle of the sea.
“I think I need to get back to the boat,” I said, and I started to paddle as fast as I could…
Acknowledgements
A very thank you to everyone at Scholastic. Especially Alice Swan for never from the editing task and Genevieve Herr for last minute . Also to Alison Padley for her design and Hannah Cooper and Sam Aaronberg for all the publicity. To Kirsten Collier for illustrations. Also Pat White and Claire Wilson at RCW for all their help and support. And to Sophie McKenzie for reading and re-reading again! Thanks also to my husband and children and all the people (like Maureen to whom this book is dedicated to) who have helped our family out in many different ways so that I can sneak away and write.
Scholastic Children’s Books
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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2013
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2014
Text copyright © Lou Kuenzler, 2013
Illustration copyright © Kirsten Collier, 2013
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eISBN 978 1407 14669 0
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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