The Donut Diaries (13 page)

It had also involved quite a lot of preparation.

At 11.30, in Mr Khan’s chemistry lesson, I swallowed my pride, gritted my teeth and put up my hand.

‘What is it, Dermot?’

‘I need to go to the toilet, sir.’

‘You know you’re not permitted during lesson time. Just hold it in for another half an hour.’

‘I can’t sir. I’ve got terrible … terrible … diarrhoea.’

Appalled groans and sniggers from all around.

‘I’ve got a note, sir, from my dad.’

And I did.

That was the reason behind all that moaning in the bog yesterday. Mum and Dad got quite worried about it. They even said that I could take the day off school. So I got extra brownie
points
for saying no, I was determined to go to school unless I was quite literally Killed to Death by my diarrhoea.

NOTE TO SELF: DON’T MENTION BROWNIE POINTS WHEN YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT DIARRHOEA – IT JUST SOUNDS REALLY YUCKY.

But they gave me a note in case I was caught out in lesson time. I handed it to Mr Khan. I could see him search his memory banks for a suitable joke. He came up with:

‘OK, why do the Teletubbies all have to go to the toilet at the same time?’

No one answered. No one cared.

‘Because they’ve only got one Tinky Winky!’

No laugh.

‘So can I go, sir?’

Poor old Khan nodded, defeated again in his attempt to amuse the class.

I made my way to the bog – the same one I’d gone to when this whole nightmare had begun. I hid behind the door, and waited.

This was the plan: Spam was supposed to wait five minutes and then ask Mr Khan if he could go and check on me to make sure I was OK, as I looked so sick. So he’d be behind the Phantom and I’d be in front, and he’d be trapped like a rat in a … well, in a toilet.

The waiting part went well – I even got in some more practice at standing on one leg, just in case it was accepted as an event at the Olympics. With any luck it would be divided into weight categories, like boxing and weight-lifting, so I wouldn’t be up against a load of
skinny
people who would find it easy to stand on one leg more or less for ever.

And then I heard the soft tread of someone approaching down the corridor. This was it. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. It would be like when Sam Gamgee finally gets his hands on Gollum in the third part of
The Lord of the Rings
. Then I remembered that Gollum actually beat Sam in their fight, as he employed Evil Girlie Tactics such as biting, crafty little blighter that he was. The Brown Phantom was definitely evil and might well be girlie, which considerably increased the chance of him biting me. My experience of fighting with my sisters had taught me to fear the human bite, which is well known to have more germs in it than an average toilet or a dog’s bum, whichever is closer.

But it was too late to go back now.

The door opened.

I pounced.

I grappled.

I got up.

I spoke.

‘Sorry, Spam, I thought you were the Phantom.’

‘You didn’t have to bite me!’ moaned Spam.

‘It wasn’t a bite. Your hand just got accidentally trapped in my mouth. Don’t tell anyone, will you?’

‘No. But you owe me a packet of crisps and a Mars bar.’

‘Normal or king size?’

‘Normal will do.’

‘Deal.’

We shook on it.

We hung around for a few more minutes.

‘Don’t reckon the Phantom is going to show up,’ said Spam.

‘Me neither. We probably scared him off.’

We were on the stairs when Spam started to look thoughtful. He was definitely one of those people who let you know when they are doing some serious thinking by furrowing their brow, stroking their chin, etc. etc. He was a terrible poker player – partly because he had trouble hiding his thoughts, but also because he kept getting poker mixed up with Snap, which is a completely different game altogether.

‘Why did you decide to use the ground-floor bogs, Donut?’

‘Because that’s where the first attack occurred. While I was in the cubicle. And the Phantom would have followed me down there …’

‘But there’s no reason why the Phantom would have to use the same toilet that you were in. As long as you’re out of class, he could dump the, er,
dump
in any toilet. Like the one on the second floor …’

We looked at each other. And then we sprinted up the rest of the stairs and along the corridor. Spam beat me to the toilet and burst in, but I was right on his tail. And there, in the middle of the floor, was a four-inch poo: the calling card of the Brown Phantom. Of the scoundrel himself there was no sign.

‘Curse that evil super-villain!’ said Spam, a bit melodramatically, if you ask me.

‘At least we’ve discovered it,’ I said, looking on the bright side. ‘Get some bog roll and clean it up before anyone else sees it and points the brown finger of blame at me.’

‘What? Why me?’

‘Toss you for it?’ I said, getting my lucky 50p out of my pocket.

‘OK. Heads.’

I tossed.

‘Oh, bum!’ I said, and went to get a wad of bog roll.

NOTE TO SELF: FIND A NEW LUCKY COIN – THAT 50p IS USELESS.

But all was not lost. At lunch, I asked Renfrew about his mission. His job had been to slyly observe the class after I left, to see if anyone had acted suspiciously, particularly in a texty sort of way. He nodded, looked in both directions to make sure that no one was observing us, and
made
a sound. It was a sound both ominous and actually quite funny.

The sound he made was ‘
Pfumpf
.’

WE HAD ANOTHER
War Council at break. Not the full War Council, because that would have needed Jim and he wasn’t there. Renfrew was wearing his Sherlock Holmes hat, mainly, I think, to be annoying.

THERE WAS NO
opportunity today to ‘talk’ to Ludmilla. At morning break, Mr Fricker summoned me to his office. He put his finger to his lips, indicating that I should shut up. Then he put on a fan, which whirred like a Spitfire propeller.

‘Walls have ears …’ he said.

I shrugged. The whirring fan meant that we had to shout so that we could hear each other, which made it a bit futile really, given that
absolutely
anyone in the gym would be able to hear us. But I thought it probably wasn’t worth pointing this out to Fricker in case he put his Ninja Assassin hands on.

‘The clock is a-ticking, Millicent,’ he confided loudly. ‘I can’t keep them off your back much longer.’

‘I’m working on it. We have some leads …’

‘Leads are no use to me. I need something concrete to show to the Chief. What can you give me?’

‘Just this: the truth is a cruel mistress – she smiles with one hand and kicks your backside with the other.’

‘Millicent?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Get out.’

I told the gang about the clock ticking/sand-running-out business at lunch time. Lunch, by the way, was fish fingers. Sounds better than it was – you cut your fish finger in half, expecting to see something white and fishy in there, but what you actually saw was a fibrous mess exactly at the mid-point between grey and brown.

‘What kind of fish is browny-grey?’ said Spam, staring at his with a scientific detachment that I admired.

‘There’s a kind of fish called a grayling, I think …’ said Renfrew. ‘And if that mated with a brown trout …’

None of us had much appetite after thinking about
that
. Frankly, you’d be weird if you did.

Weirder, I mean, even than Spam, Renfrew, Corky and me.