They drove to the nearest village in the double-decker bus. Barry sat up on the top deck, near the front, enjoying the view. The village itself looked familiar. And it was. A big sign on the main road in said Bottomley Bottom. But, before they got to the gates for Bottomley Hall, the bus turned off towards a high street where there was a shop called Bottom Sweets.
It was an old-fashioned sweet shop, like the ones in Barry’s world which pretended to be old-fashioned sweet shops. A tinkling bell rang when he and Elliott and Mama Cool went in. Behind the counter were hundreds of high jars of old-looking sweets, pink and green and yellow, and frosted with sugary powders. It smelt of fruit; or at least of all the flavours of fruit that are impersonated by chemicals in sweets.
A man stood behind the counter in a white coat, with the tips of a series of pens visible in his top pocket. He looked a little like Peevish/Jonty/Big Col, only this time he was bald and wore glasses.
“Hello, like, Mr Muddle?” said Elliott.
“Hello, Elliott! Hello, Mrs Cool!” said Mr Muddle, nodding at each of them in turn and smiling. “What can I do for you today?”
They gestured towards Barry, who was standing in between them.
“This young guy would like some, y’know… sweets?” said Elliott.
“Oh!” said Mr Muddle. “Well, that’s what we specialise in here at Bottom Sweets!”
Continuing to smile, he lifted his arm. A little stiffly, he swung it behind him, in what Barry realised was a grand gesture, towards Bottom Sweets’ collection of jars.
“What would you like, young sir?” he said. “Sherbet Bing-Bongs? Pear Mists? Strawberry Slivers? Choccy Nits? Salt Henrys? Bitey Quarters? Nutty Drops? Fizzy Pearls? Sugar Sugars?”
“Er… do you have any sour sweets?” said Barry.
Mr Muddle’s face broke into an even bigger smile. “Aha! A connoisseur of the taste contradiction, are we? A delighter in the mouth dichotomy? A savourer of flavour danger?”
“Pardon?”
“You like sour sweets.”
“Yes.”
“Right. Well, we stock all the usual – Toxic Death, Sour Bads, Mouth Pursers, etc., etc. But…” He produced from his pocket a large gold key. “…I suspect that with a sourerer of your level, we need to go… sourer. Eh? We need to turn the sour dial up… to 13!”
“Yes, please!” said Barry.
Mr Muddle smiled even wider and bent down under the counter.
They could hear the sound of a key going into a lock. It was very clanky. Then what sounded like a rusty metal door being opened slowly and creakily. As if Mr Muddle was opening the door to a haunted house rather than a sweet container.
“Er…” said Mama Cool. “These sweets… will they be…?”
“Yes?” said Barry.
“Nothing,” she said. “Do what you want!”
Mr Muddle’s face appeared above the counter again, his grin now looking quite mad. He held in his hand a plastic tube. The tube was covered in skulls and radioactive signs. He turned it round, to display what it was called, at the same time saying the name out loud:
“A-BOMBS!” he said in a deep, frightening voice. “Where the A stands for… Acid!!”
“Great!” said Barry, taking the tube.
“Beware!” said Mr Muddle, still in the same voice. “Beware the sour sensation, beyond anything ever conceived before, more power—”
“These’ll be fine!” said Barry. And he opened the tube and popped one into his mouth.
Now, in his world, Barry thought of himself as something of a sour-sweet champion. He prided himself, when Lukas and Taj were around, on eating even the sourest of sweets and not reacting; on looking, in fact, as if nothing at all was going on behind his lips.
For the first five seconds of the A-Bomb, it was all business as usual. Mr Muddle and Elliott and Mama Cool looked on, clearly concerned. Mr Muddle said: “Um… I was going to suggest you just took a little lick to begin with…” but Barry kept sucking on the sweet while doing a “no problem” shrug, like he did at home.
And then his mouth exploded.