Fizzlebert Stump Read Free Page A

asked.
    ‘Yes, did they mention us?’
    ‘Well, we didn’t really talk for very long.’
    ‘Oh well, I expect they liked the clowns,’ she decided, pleasing herself.
    ‘Probably,’ he said.
    ‘Well, Fizzlebert,’ his mother said, ‘I’m glad you’re making friends.’
    Then she was gone back inside.
    ‘Friends,’ Fizz said to himself, with a sort of grumbly sighing noise best spelled something like ‘harrumph’ but pronounced however you like.
     
    Not much later he went to bed himself, filled with the last little bits of excitement left over from the evening’s show but with much more of the disappointment he’d got from those kids. Meeting them had been more exciting than the audience roaring, and when they’d gone away . . . why, that was crushing. He actually felt crushed.
    And why had they gone? They’d gone, Fizz thought to himself as he lay in his bed, because he had a silly name. He just wished he was normal. Why did he have to live in a stupid circus?
    And those were the thoughts rattling round his head as sleep finally overtook him and almost brought this chapter to an end.
    But first there’s a tiny flashback. Just before he went in for the night he stood up and stretched and noticed something on the ground where the kids had all fallen over when that boy had done his silly dance. It was a book. Fizzlebert liked books and so, in case it rained and the book got ruined, he took it indoors with him.
    Now the chapter ends. There we go. That’s it. It’s stopped now.

 
    Chapter Three
    in which a mind reader is met and in which rabbits are discussed
    The next morning Fizzlebert woke up in bed. This was a good start. Sometimes he woke up on the floor, which wasn’t such a good start. It wasn’t that he fidgeted in his sleep, but if the circus was travelling through the night then sometimes the caravan would sway on a sharp corner and if he’d forgotten to do up the buckles then he’d be tipped out on the floor. Fortunately the floor wasn’t particularly hard and the fall wasn’t particularly far, but on the whole everyone would agree it’s nicer to wake up in bed than out of it. And that was exactly what Fizz thought too.
    While he was sat in the caravan’s tiny kitchen eating his breakfast (which was his usual candyfloss and cornflakes) he flicked through the book he’d found the night before. He could only assume that one of those horrible kids had dropped it. He didn’t want to be accused of stealing the book, but he didn’t know what to do with it. He had tried asking his mum, but she had already put her makeup on, ready to rehearse some new routines with the rest of the clowns, and she couldn’t give a sensible answer.
    ‘You could hide it in this bucket of custard,’ she’d said, ‘unless you’re afraid of the sharks.’
    That was typical of her. No help at all.
    He wondered who else he should ask.
    The book itself was a novel, and normally Fizz liked novels. He liked ones about adventures in outer space or in steamy jungles with dangerous animals, or with robots if at all possible. He’d read the first few pages and it was clear this novel had none of that. It was a story about life in a circus. Fizz thought a book ought to be an escape, ought to open a doorway into a different life for a few hours. This book didn’t seem to do that at all. It just looked plain boring.
     
    After breakfast Fizz had lessons. Even kids who live in circuses have to have some sort of schooling (it’s the law), but I dare say the classes Fizz attended weren’t quite like the ones kids like you get at school.
    All his different subjects were taught by different members of the circus. Each person taught Fizz the subject they felt they knew most about. For example, Madame Plume de Matant, the woman who told fortunes in a dimly lit and heavily perfumed tent by peering into a crystal ball (which was just an upside down goldfish bowl filled with purple smoke, but it looked all swirly and spooky