Read Jody Richards and The Secret Potion Online
Authors: Tony Flood
THE SECRET POTION
By
Tony Flood
Contents
The Secret Potion published in 2011 by
GA&P ePublishing
Digital Edition Converted and Distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © Tony Flood
The right of Tony Flood to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Prologue
THUD, THUD, THUD. The sound of the door knocker woke Jody Richards from her night-time slumbers – and signalled that the police had arrived.
The sleepy 10-year-old girl sat up in bed with a jolt and glanced at her alarm clock – it was 9.25pm.
She listened from her bedroom as her mother Marjorie let two police officers into their smart semi-detached home in up-market Bromley before taking them into the spacious lounge where her father Herbert was sitting waiting.
Jody tiptoed downstairs into the hall and peered round the slightly opened lounge door as her parents exchanged pleasantries with the senior officer, Detective Inspector Ron Slater.
Slater, a tall man in his thirties whose expressionless, pockmarked face matched his dour character, reported that there was still no trace of Jody’s missing elder brother James.
“But it’s been weeks now since we reported him missing,” Herbert protested. “Surely someone must have seen him.”
“Unfortunately not,” replied the other policeman, DC Colin Browning, adjusting the designer glasses on his prominent nose.
“But on the law of averages, someone must know something,” snapped Herbert. As an accountant, Jody’s father knew all about odds.
“Nobody has answered our appeals, sir,” said Slater. “James’s disappearance has been covered in the Press and on television, and our colleagues have made house-to-house inquiries but they have produced nothing. Are you sure you and Mrs. Richards can think of no place he might have gone? Or any reason why he might have run away? Perhaps there was something he was unhappy about?”
Jody wondered if the conversation had been cut short as an uncomfortable silence followed.
The suggestion that James had ‘run away’ and the inference that the Richards were perhaps in some way responsible was not picked up by Marjorie, a tubby women approaching her 40th birthday whose pleasant, freckled features were tense with worry.
Apart from her Women’s Institute activities and her passion for clothes shopping, Marjorie’s whole life was dedicated to her family. And Jody suspected that her mother was too shattered by James’s disappearance to fully take in what was being said.
But the jibe was not lost on Herbert. “James was not unhappy and he has not run away, officer,” he insisted, his anger and frustration telling in his voice.
“So you say, sir,” the policeman replied. “But your daughter Jody told us James had confided in her that he wanted to go on an adventure holiday a few days before he disappeared. That suggests he may have run away.”
Jody could see her father begin to perspire and wipe his receding hairline. “We’ve already told you repeatedly, officer, we haven’t a clue where James is,” Herbert stressed. “But after being missing for three weeks, it’s obvious that he has not run away. He’s been abducted.”
“Yes,” added Mrs. Richards. “Somebody must have kidnapped him.”
“Usually, in such cases, a kidnapper would have demanded a ransom by now,” said the pockmarked detective. “If he was abducted, I’m afraid money might not have been the motive.”
“Please find him,” pleaded a distraught Marjorie, bursting into tears.
Jody had heard enough. She was more convinced than ever that something dreadful had happened to her brother.
The determined single-minded girl, whose Tomboyish behaviour caused her parents to shorten her full name of Joanne to Jo until she opted for Jody, believed it was time for her to take some form of action.
Should she go into the lounge and give the police details of the dream she had about James the previous night? And the visions she saw in her dream of a strange, mysterious land where he had gone?
No, they would scoff at her, just like her father had when she told her parents that she was old enough to take up ski-ing and bungee jumping.
At that moment Jody resolved that she would find James herself and end her mother’s grief.
First, she would go back to bed and see if she could return to her amazingly vivid dream.
It had been a lovely dream – revealing some dazzlingly beautiful sights and inhabitants – until she spotted a bad tempered man called Mr. Toby who frightened her so much she woke up shaking.
But her main memory was of a magical kingdom and a giant sign saying ‘Welcome to Tamila’.
If she could dream about Tamila again she might even be able to find a way to follow her brother to this intriguing far off island.
Chapter One
SPLOSH! Jody’s sandals and feet became soaked as she squelched her way through the wet undergrowth in the eerie, mysterious woods while the rain beat down on her.
Her search for her missing brother James had somehow transported Jody from her cosy, warm little bedroom in peaceful Bromley, overlooking the Kent countryside, to the magical island of Tamila, amid exotic plants; rivers clean enough to drink from, and a blaze of colour.
Here trees and bushes were red and pink instead of the usual shades of green. They were every possible shape and size, some harmful and others harmless – matched in equal measures by the good and evil practised by the wizards, witches, pixies, goblins and fairies Jody had fleetingly seen in her dream.
There were no buildings in sight yet and she was starting to panic because she had no idea whether she was going in the right direction.
Even though it was clear daylight, the impulsive 10-year-old had got herself lost amongst a forest of towering trees and bushes with large pink leaves.
‘Just how did I get here?’ Jody wondered. ‘Did I dream myself here? But it can’t be a dream – this is all so very real.’ Certainly it seemed a bigger and more exciting adventure than those she had embarked upon previously in her young life.
Bigger than getting lost on the school journey to the Isle of Wight. And far more exciting than any of the ‘dares’ she had accepted from her school friends Gabrielle, Antonia and Grace – such as knocking a boy’s hat off with a snowball or treading on a weighing machine being used by a bossy female teacher to make the women’s weight appear to increase by an extra stone!
A sudden shower of rain left Jody’s dress drenched because the rain drops – all bright red – were ten times as big as any she had ever seen before!
Quickening her pace, a relieved Jody eventually found herself in a clearing in which there was a large cottage. It’s thatched roof and grey stone walls were rather grim and uninviting – in marked contrast to the brightly-painted cottages in the village nearby which she could now see in the far distance.
But Jody was so wet that she did not think twice about knocking on the large oak door, painted a more up-beat yellow.
After a few seconds it was thrown open and, to her horror, standing before her was the frightening figure of an overweight Mr. Hugo Toby, dressed in a black robe and resting on a walking stick
“What do you want?” boomed the nasty man, rubbing his pot-belly, which flopped over his belt, as he looked down at her with mean, uncaring, penetrating eyes under black, bushy eyebrows. He was unfortunate enough to also have a very long nose, but his chosen additions – wide side-burns and a small black beard – did nothing to improve his appearance.