Kidnapped!

by Jeremy Strong

  Trevor brightened up at once. ‘Three ideas! Great!’

  Tina shook her head. ‘Not three ideas, you dope. Three POSTCARDS. At least three.’

  ‘OK, OK, four postcards. I’ll send you four. Now, PLEASE can we get on?’

  Tina gave him a twinkly smile. ‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that in France, when people meet each other, they kiss on both cheeks.’

  ‘We’re not in France,’ Trevor told her.

  ‘No, but you should practise.’ Tina paused. ‘With me,’ she added, quite unnecessarily.

  Trevor leaped to his feet as if a crocodile had just bitten his you-know-what. ‘I think we should try and train Streaker now. You can tell me what your idea is on the way.’

  He made a grab for my lead and set off for the garden. Tina pulled the remains of a biscuit packet from her pocket and I was beside her in a flash. Biscuits are my favourite, apart from pizza, salami, ice cream, sausages, chips, roast chicken, burgers, crisps –

  ‘You get Streaker to sit and I’ll give her a bit of biscuit as a reward,’ Tina said.

  ‘Right,’ agreed Trevor. ‘Streaker – sit.’

  – roast potatoes, doughnuts, fried onion rings, hash browns, muffins –

  ‘STREAKER! SIT!’

  – digestives, hobnobs, fig rolls, tortillas, flapjacks, cake, strawberries –

  ‘SIT!!’ Trevor tried to help by pushing my back down but my legs were carved from pure steel and my eyes were bulging with one-hundred-per-cent biscuit concentration.

  ‘You’re both hopeless,’ Tina muttered impatiently.

  Trevor snapped back at her. ‘Give me the biscuits and you get her to sit.’

  Tina rolled her eyes as if he was an idiot with an idiot dog and passed the biscuits across to him. Ha ha! They have no idea, those two. I was there in a flish-flash because I am Miss Lightning-on-Legs. As Tina’s hand moved towards Trevor, my mouth headed for that biscuit packet faster than a spaceship on triple warp speed. I knocked them clean from her hand.

  Up they went, cartwheeling through the air. I crouched, I tensed every springy muscle in my body and – BOYOYOINNGG! – up I went, into the air and – SNAP, SNAFFLE, CHOMP – GONE!

  No more biscuits. I even ate the packet. Then I sat down and looked at them both.

  ‘Well,’ Tina sighed. ‘She’s sitting.’

  Ha ha! I love being a dog.

  3 Training Trevor

  Sometimes I have no idea what those two-legs think they are doing. Mr Trevor’s dad keeps going on at him about making me sit still in the car and then Trevor goes on at me about keeping still in the car. What do they think I’m going to do? I am one hundred per cent harmless.

  I will sit there like a statue and not even flap my tongue at them, or my ears. I won’t even blink, though it might be nice to sit in the front. I hardly ever get to sit in the front because Mr Trevor’s dad won’t let me and Mr Trevor’s mum only allows it when Mr Trevor’s dad isn’t there. If I can’t sit in the front I could try the very back as long as there isn’t too much luggage. Maybe I could try lying on top of it. Or I could lean against it, in an I’m-going-on-holiday kind of pose. I bet that would look good. Or I could sit on the back seat with Trevor, as long as I’m not stuck in the middle and can’t see out of the windows properly.

  THE WINDOWS! I love sticking my head out so that the wind makes my ears flap like Trevor’s pants on the washing line and the air goes rushing up my nostrils and I open my mouth and try to catch the wind and eat it because it tastes so fresh!

  Woo-hoo! This car journey is going to be great! I can do all those things while I’m busy being still. Except, I’ve just thought, we won’t be in the car, we’ll be in a caravan. I don’t know what a caravan is. Maybe it doesn’t have windows. I’ll ask Erik. Perhaps he knows.

  Anyhow I had to have another training session today with Trevor and Tina. She was very excited because she’d had a good idea.

  ‘Did you know, when geese are born they think the first thing they see is their mother. In the wild that’s OK because their mother is the first thing they see, but in this TV programme there were some goose eggs ready to hatch but their mother had been killed by a fox. A man took the eggs home and kept them warm –’

  ‘Did he sit on them?’ Trevor asked.

  Oho, that was so funny. I looked at them both, opened my mouth and howled with laughter. Trevor and Tina stared at me.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked Tina.

  ‘I have no idea.’ Trevor’s face was blank. ‘What happened with the goose eggs?’

  ‘They hatched out and the first thing the goslings saw was the man, so they decided he must be their mum.’

  Duh! Is that weird or what? Those baby geese must have been a bit brainless. Maybe their brains hadn’t hatched out, just their goosey bits. Tina went on explaining.

  ‘The geese followed the man wherever he went and as they grew bigger the man realized they would have to learn how to fly, but they didn’t have their mother to teach them, so the man would have to show them instead.’

  ‘But humans can’t fly,’ muttered Trevor, and I barked and barked and barked because I CAN FLY! I can! I can fly like a very flappy thing. I run and run and run until my paws aren’t even touching the ground, they are just a blazing blur and I’m zooming through the air! Well, it feels like flying.

  ‘Shut up, Streaker,’ said Tina, ‘I’m telling a story. So the man went up in a hang-glider and the geese all followed him, and as he took off they had to flap to keep up with him – and they were flying! It was all on film. It was amazing.’

  ‘OK,’ said Trevor. ‘Amazing. But how is that going to help us train Streaker? She doesn’t need to learn how to fly and we don’t have a hang-glider.’

  Tina gave Trevor a very long-suffering look. ‘You can be so dumb sometimes, Trevor.’

  Ouch, I thought. That was a bit tough!

  ‘Listen,’ she went on. ‘The geese learned how to fly by copying the man. Got that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So all you have to do is show Streaker how to behave so she can copy you.’

  Trevor considered what Tina had just suggested. ‘There are two problems,’ he announced. ‘Firstly, Streaker didn’t hatch out of an egg, and secondly, I’m not Streaker’s mum and I wasn’t the first thing she saw.’

  Hang on. That’s three problems, not two. Trevor can’t count. I told you two-legs are useless. Tina didn’t notice either, so who’s the clever one? ME of course! I am Miss Brain-Like-a-Dog-Flap. (I said ‘dog-flap’ because dog-flaps are SO amazingly brilliant, aren’t they? They go flap one way and flap the other way and I can go in and out without having to have doors opened. Is that clever or what? It’s very, very clever and my brain is as clever as that!)

  ‘It could still work,’ said Tina. ‘Let’s try. Nothing else has worked, has it?’

  Trevor looked at me. It was a very stern kind of look. ‘Sit!’ he commanded.

  I thought, Here we go again, but just for once I’ll do it. So I sat down.

  Ha ha! You should have seen the pair of them. Their jaws just about fell on the floor. KERLUNK!

  ‘Wow!’ said Trevor. ‘She did it!’

  ‘See if she does it again,’ suggested Tina.

  ‘OK. Streaker – sit!’

  I thought, Hang on, I’m already sitting, sponge-head. What am I supposed to do – get up and sit down again? So I shuffled about on my bottom to show them I was already sitting.

  ‘No,’ growled Trevor. ‘Get up and then sit down.’

  I thought, I’m not a toy. I’m not getting up and down just because you want me to. So I shuffled about a bit more and then they tried to make me stand up by lifting me and I went all sloppy and floppy and fell through their arms and lay on the floor and showed them my tummy so they could tickle it but they weren’t interested.

  ‘It’s no good,’ muttered Trevor. ‘That was just a fluke.’

  A fluke! Hang on, sunshine, you told me to sit and I did. Just don
’t expect me to do it ALL THE TIME! Anyhow, the best bit came after that because Tina told Trevor to show me how to sit and you are really not going to believe this.

  TINA TURNED TREVOR INTO A DOG!

  She did. Really really really!

  ‘The thing is,’ she told Trevor, ‘you have to be the dog so Streaker knows what to do.’ She undid my collar and went across to Trevor. ‘Put this on.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘Do I look as if I’m kidding?’ She fastened my collar round Trevor’s neck and attached my dog lead.

  ‘You get on all fours and follow me round the room.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Trevor grumbled, but he did it. I sat there and watched as Tina led him round and round the room. I looked the other way because I thought if I watched this any longer I was going to die laughing.

  ‘Now,’ said Tina. ‘Sit.’

  Trevor sat back and Tina took the lead off his collar. She went to the other side of the room. ‘Come here,’ she said and Trevor meekly went across to her. ‘Sit.’ And he did. Tina patted Trevor on the head. ‘Good dog.’

  I’m sorry. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I howled. AROOOOH! AROOOOOOOOH!!

  It was SO funny!

  Then Tina took the collar off Trevor and put it back on me. She attached the lead and tried to take me for a walk round the room but I just sat there. She couldn’t make me budge and she couldn’t make me sit either because I was already sitting.

  ‘You’ll pull her head off if you’re not careful,’ warned Trevor.

  ‘I can’t believe your dog is so stupid,’ Tina snapped. ‘Geese have smaller brains than dogs and they knew what to do.’

  Ah, I thought, that might be the case but dogs have bigger brains than geese and mine is the size of a dog-flap and we are not going to be fooled by silly pretending games. In any case, you never asked me to fly, did you? If you’d asked me to fly I could have shown you. I would have gone WHOOOSH! WHIZZZ! and taken off like a jet fighter because I am supersonic!

  So that was that.

  4 Fun on the Ferry

  France! We are on our way! Tina said goodbye to Trevor – lots of tears and sniffles, boo hoo stuff and nose blowing – all from Tina of course. Trevor tried to pretend he wasn’t there but not very effectively because he was. He looked like an embarrassed tomato – in other words VERY red.

  ‘Is your girlfriend always like that when you go away?’ asked Mr Trevor’s mum.

  ‘She is NOT my girlfriend!’ snapped Trevor.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ sniffed Tina, wiping her eyes again.

  Mr Trevor’s mum put a comforting arm round Tina’s shoulders. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘One day you’ll realize there are much nicer boys than Trevor.’

  ‘I AM nice,’ Trevor declared.

  ‘Not to Tina, you’re not,’ said Mr Trevor’s mum.

  ‘But that’s only because – aaargh! I can’t say anything without getting it in the neck.’

  Ha ha! Now Trevor knows what I feel like. I’m always getting it in the neck. Actually I don’t know what that means but it sounds painful. My neck hurts just thinking about it.

  I went and said goodbye to Erik but he didn’t cry or sniff or anything like that. He just closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep but I knew he wasn’t because I poked him and then he was awake.

  ‘Cheerio,’ I said. ‘I’m going to France now.’

  Do you know what he said? ‘Hooray. Peace and quiet at last.’ And he shut his eyes so that was that. Actually I think he’s jealous. I might come back with a suntan.

  Now we are on the road, zooming along and my ears are flip-flapping out of the window and we are towing a house behind us. That’s what a caravan is! I have found out! It’s a house on wheels and the car can pull it along.

  It’s fantastic! It’s all shiny silver and curvy. It’s got a tiny kitchen and a tiny shower and toilet and a room to sit in and eat. It’s got windows and curtains and Mr Trevor’s mum and dad have got a bed at the back and Trevor and I have got a bed at the front and you push a button and it goes ERGGGGGGGG! and slides down and out from the wall but sometimes it springs back. Trevor said it was his bed and I said it was for both of us but of course he can’t understand what I say but he’ll soon find out. It looks very comfy if you ask me. You have to push buttons for everything. Want water? Push this button. Want to shut the curtains? Push this button. Want to push a button? Push this button. Ha ha!

  I shall lie on our bed at Trevor’s feet and look after him because now that Tina isn’t around there’s nobody else to take care of him. I shall be like his guide dog for the blind except he isn’t blind but he does trip over a lot and last year he walked into the pond at school. (He was watching a hot-air balloon pass overhead with its burners going SKRRUUUURRRR SKRRUUURRRR and didn’t look where he was putting his feet.)

  We had a bit of bother crossing the Channel on the ferry because I was supposed to stay in the car. Well, nobody told me that, did they? So I got out with everyone else and went racing off to see what was up the stairs and guess what? What was up the stairs was even more stairs. I was panting when I got to the top and I couldn’t see where the others had got to so I went looking for them. In fact loads of two-legs were looking for them. I tried telling them where to search.

  ‘You go that way,’ I said. ‘I’ll go this way.’

  But they kept following me, which was pretty stupid of them if you ask me, and we were rushing all over the place. Soon the crew had joined in but we couldn’t see Trevor or Mr Trevor’s mum and dad anywhere. Eventually I got right to the very top deck and I saw a two-legs standing behind a big long window and I wasn’t sure but it did look like Mr Trevor’s dad so I barked and barked and dashed into the room where I’d seen him to say ‘Found you!’

  Guess what? It wasn’t Mr Trevor’s dad. It was a very large two-legs wearing a snazzy uniform with lots of gold buttons and wobbly things on his shoulders that looked like golden hairbrushes except they wobbled.

  Anyhow, when Mr Gold Buttons saw me he let go of the giant steering wheel he was holding and shouted and pointed and told me to get out so I sat down. I thought I’m not going to be spoken to like that! He didn’t seem nice at all and he looked like the sort of person that might harm Trevor so I decided I should keep an eye on him. In fact I decided to keep both my eyes on him.

  Mr Gold Buttons didn’t like that at all and I knew that meant he knew that I knew what he was up to and he knew that I knew he knew what I was up to too. After that I felt a bit confused and before I could say ‘Woof woof’ all the other two-legs came pouring into the big room and Mr Gold Buttons started shouting at everyone to get out, not just me. Then I saw Mr Trevor’s mum and dad AND Trevor too. It was very strange because they were in the bunch of people that had been following me around all that time. Why didn’t they say?

  I was mighty pleased to see them and rushed over. Then Mr Gold Buttons started yelling and saying that he was going to throw us all overboard. He was going to turn the ship round and take us back to England. He was going to hand us over to the French police as soon as we landed. He was going to put us all in jail.

  Do you know what I told him? I said, ‘Make your mind up, mate!’ But of course he just thought I was barking. I keep telling you those two-legs are useless. Anyhow, I got taken back to the car and I had to sit inside for the rest of the voyage. Huh! Although between you and me I can tell you I didn’t sit for very long. I stood up sometimes and once I went and sat in the driver’s seat and I rested my head on the steering wheel only it made a terrible noise like the noise a massive headache would make if headaches made noises.

  It only stopped when I took my head off the wheel but it took me a long time to find that out and by then several two-legs were standing outside the car hammering on the windows. They were a little bit open to let fresh air in but the two-legs couldn’t get in so they just had to stand outside and shout.

  Eventually we got to France without any more trouble, w
ell not much at any rate just one or two small things like Mr Trevor’s mum and dad couldn’t find the sandwiches they’d brought with them for the journey. That was because I’d eaten them when I was stuck in the car on my own. I mean what else is a dog supposed to do? Die of boredom? Those sandwiches had SAVED MY LIFE!

  Soon we were on the road and heading for the campsite. I have never been camping before. Neither have Trevor and his mum and dad. I wonder what it will be like?

  We stopped in a French town for some lunch and I saw some French dogs. They look just like British dogs and guess what? They speak the same language! Brilliant. But they do have a funny accent. Trevor once got a great Christmas present. It was a voice changer. It was like a megaphone but when you spoke through it your voice came out all funny. French dogs sound just like that. Maybe they all got voice changers for Christmas and then ate them because I have heard that French dogs like eating even more than I do. (I bet they don’t. I can’t imagine anything that likes eating more than I do. I am the world’s speediest speedster and eatiest eater too.)

  It was so hot that Mr Trevor’s dad opened up the sunroof on the car and then I put my paws on the front seat in front of me and stuck my head out of the top. WOOO-HOOO! It was brilliant. I could almost eat the clouds. CHOMP! CHOMP! I shouted at everything. I shouted at the sky and the trees and the other cars and the big trucks and the two-legs wandering about and the French dogs (and they shouted back but I couldn’t hear them because we were whizzing even faster than I can run).

  When I looked behind me I could see our house on wheels following and barked at that too but my ears kept getting blown across my eyes by the wind and then I fell over. My head got stuck between the two front seats just as Mr Trevor’s dad went to pull on the handbrake only he grabbed my muzzle instead and clamped his fingers round my teeth and he was so surprised we nearly crashed into a hedge and guess what?