The Spoon of Doom Read Free

to get, and he’d be pretty glad to offload it onto some unsuspecting relative somewhere.
    â€˜Alas, not any more,’ said Mr Saltman. ‘They’re all sadly deceased. A series of unfortunate accidents means you are the last of the Piddler family.’
    Dad looked decidedly uncomfortable.
    Mr Saltman pulled out a pile of papers. ‘I’m afraid there’s no actual cash in the estate. And there’s no residential property, either – your great uncle sold his house and furnishings years ago.’ He scanned the paperwork. ‘But there
is
his factory.’
    What
?
    â€˜He owned the Piddler’s Porridge factory, and now it belongs to you.’
    A tingle of excitement crackled through my bones.
    But Dad wasn’t smiling. ‘I don’t like porridge,’ he said grimly. ‘I’ve never liked porridge.’
    I wasn’t too keen on porridge, either, but that didn’t stop me from dancing on the spot. We’d inherited a business. Maybe we were millionaires! Images of corporate jets and long limos fluttered into my brain. I pictured my parents swapping their scraggy jeans for nice suits and matching briefcases. No more slithery slimy stuff. No more embarrassingincidents at the dinner table when my friends came round. Hey, maybe we could even go on holiday!
    I had a million billion questions bubbling inside my head, and as soon as Mr Saltman had gone (carrot cake wisely left untouched on the plate), I went on the attack…
    Why hadn’t they told me we were really Piddlers?
Had Dad known about the factory?
And what was wrong with porridge anyway?

    But Dad just shrugged and sighed and then escaped to the garden to see to his snails.
    Mum was unusually quiet, too, and after clearing away the cups, she bustled off to check on her ladybirds. (Three hundred of them currently live behind our bathroom mirror. Don’t ask.)
    So I was left to mull it over by myself. Why weren’t my parents leaping around at our good fortune? After all, it isn’t every day you inherit a factory.
    It was a mystery. And my parents aren’t generally mysterious people; they leave their letters lying around. (Always dull stuff about creepy crawlies.) They don’t hide their bank books. (There’s never much in the bank anyway.) And they always involve me in major decisions, stuff like:
shall we have fish fingers for tea tonight? Or baked beans on toast?
    Now, here we were, suddenly the owners of a secret cereal factory, and yet neither of them seemed the least bit excited at all.

Chapter Five
    Piddler’s Porridge. The name rolled off the tongue nicely. But I’ll admit it also left a bit of an aftertaste. It made me think of someone caught short at the breakfast table, and having to ‘go’ in their cereal bowl.
    It was Saturday. The day after it all happened, and me and my parents were standing peering through the gates, gazing at Dad’s inheritance.
    The factory stood high on a hill above our town, in an industrial park where loads of old factories lay sprawled like dead dragons. Many were empty. Most were crumbling. And by far the crumbliest of all was Piddler’s Porridge.
    It was at this point I realised we probably weren’t millionaires.
    The factory was big and dark and ever so slightly scary looking. I think it might have originally been red brick. But now it was soot black. A high wall surrounded it, with an ancient old metalgate at the front. There were no lights on. And the only evidence that something might actually be happening inside was a finger of pale smoke that rose from the chimney.
    This wasn’t quite what I’d imagined. But I tried not to show my disappointment because Dad wasn’t looking happy, either.
    He sighed deeply. ‘I suppose we’d better show our faces.’
    â€˜Try not to worry, Gordon,’ said Mum, taking his hand. ‘I know it’ll be all right.’
    But Dad didn’t smile. His