CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The next morning was the start of Parents’ Weekend and it dawned crisp and clear. My insides were trembling with excitement over the plans we had for the day.

All this excitement wasn’t quite drowning out the sad feelings that I had about today, and that I still hadn’t talked about with Pym. That felt pretty horrible. Usually I could talk to Pym about anything, but talking to her about my parents felt wrong somehow, as if talking about them meant that I didn’t really love my family, or like I didn’t think that they were enough for me. I couldn’t bear the idea of upsetting Pym. I might not call her “Mum” but she was the best mother I could ask for. It was a pretty jumbly, sad, grey feeling, and I didn’t know how to make things better.

In her own way, Ingrid also had mixed feelings about Parents’ Weekend. “I love my parents,” she groaned after we met Kip outside in the entrance hall, “but they’re so embarrassing.”

Kip had been uncharacteristically quiet about the whole thing.

“What about your parents, Kip?” I looked over at him. “What time do they get here?”

“Oh, they’re not coming,” he said lightly.

“Not coming?” I frowned, crinkling my forehead. “Why not?” Ingrid asked, her face concerned.

“Just couldn’t make it, I guess,” Kip said, avoiding our eyes. “They’re really busy, you know. They were really sorry about it. They’ll be at the next one.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Well,” I said cheerfully, “you can always just hang out with us. Plenty of room for one more at the circus. Plus,” I added, with a sneaky look at Ingrid, “Boris said he reckoned you were on track to become a great strongman.”

“Really?” Kip’s head snapped up and he looked closely at my face. I plastered on my best angelic smile.

“Absolutely,” chimed in Ingrid. “He said you were obviously getting stronger. And taller.”

Kip’s face lit up. “Well, I did show him my chart,” he said very seriously. “And Boris said that being half a centimetre taller made all the difference.”

“Exactly,” I said, nodding in agreement.

“Precisely,” Ingrid echoed, and we both smiled sweetly.

Kip looked at his watch. “I’m starving,” he said. “Are we going in for breakfast, or what?”

Ingrid and I shared a look of relief and a secret, silent high five behind Kip’s back before we all bustled into the dining hall.

Parents started arriving after breakfast and I was excited to meet Ingrid’s mum and dad. Ingrid’s mum looked like a grown-up version of Ingrid but without the glasses. She was very tall and thin with long, pale blonde hair and big, pale blue eyes that looked a bit dreamy. Ingrid’s dad was much shorter, with thin mousy hair and – like Ingrid – thick spectacles that made his blue eyes look enormous.

“Hello, children,” Ingrid’s mum said. “Nice to see you again.”

“Mum,” said Ingrid with a sigh. “You’ve never met them before. This is Kip and Poppy. My best friends.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Ingrid’s dad shortly. He was peering around the entrance hall where we were standing with a big group of other parents and children. “What are we waiting for?” he huffed. “It’s very draughty in here.”

“It’s a tour of the school,” said Ingrid patiently. “It was on the schedule I sent you.”

“Well, it was supposed to start seven minutes ago, so I assumed it had been cancelled,” Ingrid’s dad grumbled, looking at his watch. Ingrid rolled her eyes.

Luckily Pym and Luigi turned up at that moment. The rest of my family were off working on their top secret plan, plus we had decided that including everyone on a school tour could have led to difficulties.

“Pym!” I said, happily. “And Luigi! These are Ingrid’s parents.”

“So lovely to see you again!” Ingrid’s mum beamed at Luigi.

“Oh, and you!” exclaimed Luigi. “How have you been?”

“Fine, fine,” said Ingrid’s mum, still smiling.

“Sorry, have you two met?” asked Pym.

“No,” said Ingrid shortly.

“Really?” said Luigi, baffled. “How extraordinary. I could have sworn you were the Princess of Baronthorn.”

There was a pause. “You thought Ingrid’s mum was the Princess of Baronthorn?” I asked.

“Who?” asked Luigi.

“Ingrid’s mum,” I said, pointing at her. “Mrs Blammel.”

“Delighted to meet you.” Luigi swept into a little bow. It was my turn to roll my eyes then.

“Ahem.” A cough interrupted us. Turning towards the staircase we spotted Mr Grant standing on the third stair up. “If you’d all like to follow me, the tour is about to begin.” We all grinned then, because a tour with Mr Grant was bound to be interesting.

Everyone fell in behind him as he started guiding us up the staircase. “So, I’m going to show you around some of our classrooms,” he was saying with a smile. “That way you can see where it is that your children spend their time having fun . . . and learning of course!” He laughed, and all the women (and some of the men) in the group joined in a bit too loudly, their moony eyes glued to Mr Grant’s handsome face. “Now, this is an interesting piece of school history.” Mr Grant came to a halt on the second bend in the staircase in front of a large painting. “This stunning piece of art used to hang in the great hall, and it’s a portrait of the final owner of Saint Smithen’s before it became a school: Lord Phineas Scrimshaw.”

I gasped and next to me I felt Kip and Ingrid stiffen. Phineas Scrimshaw? I looked at the painting and gasped again. I had seen it before. It was the portrait that Maxwell Dangerfield had taken such a fancy to. To think that we had actually been looking at the face of Phineas Scrimshaw every day on our way to lessons! It suddenly struck me that Phineas Scrimshaw had been a real person who ate and slept and laughed and lived right here, who had walked up and down these exact stairs two hundred years ago. It made me feel a bit shivery, but I also finally understood why Miss Baxter had given me the assignment to research the school. Looking at all the paintings that crowded the wall, I felt like I was seeing them for the first time. I realized that each one was a story connected to the building’s history. It felt funny to think that I was part of that history now as well.

“Of course Lord Scrimshaw was also something of an explorer in his youth, and he was a great collector,” Mr Grant continued.

Ingrid’s dad perked up. “A collector? A collector of what exactly? Did he collect . . . stamps?” he squeaked urgently.

Ingrid buried her head in her hands and Mr Grant looked surprised. “Er no, not stamps,” he said apologetically. “Natural history samples. Fossils mostly.”

“Oh, well, I’m hardly interested in a load of old bones,” Ingrid’s dad huffed. “Nowhere near as interesting as stamps.”

Something was tugging at the corner of my brain like a squirrel at an obstinate acorn. But it flew out of my head straight away, because in the crowd I spotted something much more significant. Or should that be someone. I nudged Pym’s shoulder and nodded my head. She turned slightly in that direction and then gave me the thumbs up. We had spotted Lucas Quest, and it was time to put our plan into action.