It had been a very successful royal visit. For once her husband had behaved himself and not said a single thing to embarrass her. The weather had been gorgeous and her choice of hats had suited every occasion better than she’d hoped. The prime minister of Brazil had turned out to be rather more handsome in real life than the photos she had seen, and the banquet last night had been one of the most jolly and entertaining events she had attended in years. Once she was sure there were no more press photographers in the vicinity, Queen Elizabeth kicked off her neat white shoes and flexed her royal toes against the carpeted floor of their private plane.
A gin and tonic sat beside her, and her husband was already sound asleep in his seat.
Bliss, thought Queen Elizabeth as the plane rolled back from its stand at Rio airport and began its journey to the runway. Through the little round window she could see hundreds of people waving British and Brazilian flags and the distant flash of camera phones getting one last snap of the royal plane before it returned to London. The Queen waved back, even though no one would have been able to see her. Old habits die hard.
* * *
This would turn out to be the only part of the journey home the Queen would enjoy, for not only did it transpire that all of the royal food, apart from the peanuts, had mysteriously vanished, but they would also experience random bouts of turbulence all the way home, which even the highly trained royal pilot could not explain. Queen Elizabeth would never know that it wasn’t turbulence that shook her plane so wildly. It was all due to a party being held in the cargo hold. A gang of deadly monsters were celebrating their return to England in true monster style—although one of them had been stupid enough to fall for the same old trick and was having to fly alongside the plane, his gold feathers glinting in the sun as he hovered in the slipstream of the royal jet.
