The Secrets of Ice Cream Success (10 page)

Carlo was standing next to the
giant ice cream mixers, a larger, refrigerated version of the food
mixer Randy had at home and the place the ingredients of Leodoni’s
ice cream went to get to know each other.

‘
No problem,
Mr Leodoni.’ said Lumsden who was able to peer into the massive vat
without help.

‘
I want them
disinfected to within an inch of their lives. No trace, no trace at
all, is to be left of any of the previous stock or a particular
part of its ingredients that may or mat not be left.’

‘
SssssssCertainly, Mr Carlo, Ssssssir.’ Lumsden
agreed.

All the ingredients were
purchased, packaging ready to be filled and staff raring to go
despite the good-natured but generally disruptive assistance of the
gang. But Carlo was still extremely nervous, not surprising given
that he alone knew the special and highly illegal ingredient once
used by his father in a number of Leodoni’s products. An ingredient
that Carlo was at pains to make sure was completely absent from the
factory. He had checked every inch of the huge building himself to
make sure everywhere was clear before watching all the new
ingredients being loaded into storage.

So that was that… production
would start that very day and Carlo knew he should be feeling
excited.

‘
It’s the
party!’ Abi had suggested earlier on seeing his sullen face.
‘You’re just nervous because it’s your first date with
Vicky.’

‘
Carlo’s got a
date!’ Norton had sung before a stare from Abi stopped
him.

Abi was probably right, the
party had been weighing on his mind ever since his abortive
conversation with Vicky on the phone. What should he wear? What
should he say? Will Norton embarrass him? The questions seemed
endless and there appeared to be no answers. Even Abi seemed to be
running out of useful advice. ‘I hang around with you scruffy boys
all the time! How should I know what you should wear!’ she finally
answered as Carlo’s anxiety got the better of him.

Carlo left Lumsden happily
whistling as he cleaned the mixer and slowly walked towards the
back of the factory, dragging his feet, his shoe laces trailing
behind him, the very definition of “glum”. Up near the offices
Carlo heard Lucy Lightfoot finally lose patience with Norton who
had being throwing an unending stream of questions her way all
morning, none regarding work, being more in the region of her
favourite thunderbot, favourite film and favourite ice cream
flavour.

‘
But that last
question was about work!’ Norton protested as he was physically
shooed from Lucy’s office.

‘
No it
wasn’t!’ Lucy shouted back, slamming her door behind
her.

Sensing that Norton was likely
to come and find him to complain at length about this indignity,
Carlo looked for the nearest exit and quickly dashed through the
door and down the stairs leading to his Father’s old study. He
skipped inside but left the door slightly ajar and listened for
sounds of pursuit from above, but after a minute it became clear
that he had made a clean getaway when he heard a blast of tinny
music followed by an annoyed shout from Randy demanding Norton get
away from the ice cream vans.

Carlo shut the door behind him
and sloped off to the corner to sit behind his father’s desk. He
still felt odd whenever he came into the room but had begun to feel
that whatever had caused his illness after they first found the
study was probably not an after effect of “ghostly doings” as Ben
had taken to calling the incident.

Happy to have a few minutes
respite from the chaos above and his role as Junior Managing
Director, which he now understood to be mainly preventing Norton
and Ben causing too much disorder, Carlo absently opened his
father’s diary which had remained on the desk un-read. Flicking
through he found it was split into three distinct sections. The
first few pages were filled with sketches and notes, the next
section seemed to be a brief history of the company written by his
father around the time he took over from Carlo’s Grandfather.
Finally, fully half of the large notebook was made up of more
normal dated entries, his father’s diary.

Skimming through the first
pages it became obvious that Grandfather Armando was indeed a bit
of an inventor, as Newton had guessed, with all manner of ice cream
related innovations sketched with diagrams for their construction.
Each plan seemed to have been torn out of a previous notebook and
glued in place into the diary where Armando’s tiny, neat and rather
excitable notes regarding each contraption were latterly joined by
the bolder hand of Luigi in bright red explaining succinctly why
the schemes would not work, most times ending each summary with an
exclamation along the lines of “…Madness! Utter Madness!” or “What
was he thinking?!”

Carlo smiled as he flicked
through the pages, recognising his Father’s tone of voice in his
written admonishments, wondering if he would ever have said so much
to Grandfather Armando directly.

Surprisingly the last sketched
schematic changed the pattern with the planned device getting a
seemingly positive reaction from Luigi. “It just might work!” he
had written underneath the drawing of an item Carlo recognised. He
glanced up from the table and looked at the chrome ice cream
dispenser on the wall. He made a mental note not to tell the others
that it actually did work and hurriedly turned the page. He felt he
should probably read the written history of the company his father
had taken the time to compose, especially as he was now the owner,
but as he flicked through he felt compelled to move straight to the
diary; his father’s diary.

Obviously he knew diaries were
private and there was a brief internal debate as he went to turn to
the first page regarding the nature of privacy and the rights of
the Dead to have it. Curiosity won the day and Carlo opened the
first page, which abruptly caused the entire diary to slam
shut!

Carlo’s body tensed
immediately, rigid through shock and fear, his right hand still
hanging in the air with the corner of the page he had been turning
still between his fingers having been ripped from the book.

Without moving his body he
swivelled his eyes to look around the room but could see nothing
out of place. Remaining still he breathed out as hard as he could
to check for condensation, but there was nothing to see. The hairs
on his arm were not stood on end and he could feel that the
temperature hadn’t dropped. His heart was still galloping around
his chest from the shock so he tried to force himself to relax a
little, lowering his arm, placing both hands gently on the table to
either side of the book and taking a few deep breaths.

From upstairs Carlo was
surprised to hear the muffled sounds of the factory going through
its final preparations for the grand re-opening, the mundane nature
of the sounds helping to calm his nerves a little. ‘Bloody hell!’
he sighed to himself with a slight shake of his head. He chuckled
and allowed himself an embarrassed smile, thankful that Norton
wasn’t around to see his shock, but as he reached out again and
touched the front cover of the book something caught his eye. With
his hand still on the diary he slowly turned to look at the large
clock on the far wall and much to his dismay saw all three hands
wildly spinning backwards. He let out an audible gasp and watched
with horror as the air he exhaled condensed as it left his
mouth.

The gang huddled around the
table in Luigi’s study staring down at the book. They had been
herded down to the study by Carlo once he had stopped running,
having shot up the stairs and out of the factory “Faster than that
time we smashed the window at the corner shop with your football
and the manager chased us down the street!” according to
Norton.

As before the group found
nothing out of the ordinary on their arrival in the study, so Carlo
insisted they inspect the diary. He glanced over his shoulder at
the clock behind him as the others gathered around the table and
was annoyed to see that it was hanging there rather smugly showing
the correct time and behaving in a very clock-like manner.

‘
Look… are you
suuuuuure?’ Norton asked, elongating the final word more than
necessary to emphasise his doubt. ‘I mean, really sure?’

‘
Yes! Alright?
Yes! Look at it! Don’t just stand there, look at the book!’ Carlo
moaned, gesticulating towards the diary.

Ben slowly moved his arm
towards the book and prodded it with his forefinger. Nothing
happened. Carlo let out a strangled yell of frustration.

‘
I’m not
making this up! IT HAPPENED!’ he shouted, more to himself than the
others.

Abi gently started to open the
book by its cover. ‘Carlo, I’m sure you think it happened, but look
it’s just a…’

The book slapped shut, lifting
itself of the table with the force of the movement. Norton screamed
and the four of them warily stepped away from the table.

‘
Oh my!’
Newton politely exclaimed registering as much shock as any of the
gang had ever heard from him, whilst Carlo jumped up and down
waving a triumphant hand in the air!

‘
Haha! See?
See? I told you!’

‘
What the hell
just happened?’ Abi shouted edging closer to the door. ‘No, don’t
touch it!’ she added as Ben moved towards the table.

Ben had a big grin on his face.
‘This is a trick, right?’ he asked Carlo as he reached out and
opened the book in the middle. Once again it slammed shut, nearly
catching his finger. ‘Or maybe not…’ he answered his own question,
taking two large steps back from the table. Carlo beamed in
vindication.

‘
So what now?’
Newton asked.

Carlo’s smile slowly slipped
from his face as the relief at being proven correct was replaced
with the rather uneasy knowledge that he was the owner of a haunted
notebook. ‘I don’t know. Is it the book? Or the room?’ He looked at
his friends in turn seeing his own apprehension reflected in their
faces. ‘Is it a ghost?’ he finished softly, as if not really
wanting to know the answer.

Newton’s rational mind, never
likely to be waylaid by flights of fancy for long, began to assert
itself once more as his fear was replaced by fascination. ‘Let’s
look at this logically.’ he said, pulling his glasses off and
wiping the lenses on his t-shirt. Ben groaned behind him, which
Newt ignored. ‘What do you know about the book, Carlo?’ he
continued.

Carlo told them all he had read
so far; the sketches and inventions (minus the small detail that
one of them worked), the history of the company and the diary
entries that he hadn’t yet read. ‘And that’s when it slammed shut.’
he finished.

‘
So you
haven’t read the entries yet?’ Newt asked,
‘Interesting.’

‘
Why?’ asked
Abi.

‘
Well, we
don’t know what sort of information is contained within. It might
have something to do with what’s going on here.’ Newt
answered.

‘
What? You’re
saying that the book has a mind of its own because Carlo’s Dad used
to write things like
“Tuesday
19
^th
:
Running low on Raspberry Ripple. Remember to pick up kids from
school”.
’ Norton asked.

‘
I think it’s
fair to say that Mr Leodoni used the diary as more than a “To-Do
List”. It’s a rather large book after all. There could be years of
his thoughts and recollections in there.’

‘
Recka-what?’
Ben asked pulling a face.

‘
Memories!’
What he saw and did. Look, when did the diary start,
Carlo?’

‘
Err, the
1970s sometime. I didn’t get a chance to see the exact date before
it tried to bite me.’

‘
So there
could be over twenty years of information in there and some of it
might explain what’s going on.’ Newt finished, feeling sure he had
made his point.

‘
Whoohoo! This
is fun!’ Norton shouted, having grown bored with the conversation
and started to continuously open the book up to watch it slap shut
each time. ‘Oww!’ he screeched on the fifth occasion having decided
to leave his fingers in the book to see how hard it
closed.

‘
Haha! Idiot!’
Ben laughed moving to help Norton pull his hand from the protesting
pages. ‘Hey, this
is
fun.’ he continued, taking over from Norton in watching the
book close itself every time it was opened.

‘
Stop
tormenting the poor thing!’ Abi said as the boys continued to play
with the book.

‘
What? Why?
It’s not a kitten. It’s not alive!’ Norton answered.

‘
How do you
know? It might be.’

‘
I think it’s
likely that something is acting on the book, rather than the book
acting of its own accord.’ Newton stepped in as the four of them
gathered around the table.

‘
There! See.
Newt agrees with me!’ said Norton. ‘Wait… what?’ he added having
not understood how.

‘
He said the
book isn’t alive.’ Ben translated.

‘
Oh, that’s a
shame. I haven’t been allowed a pet for ages.’ Norton continued,
absently opening the book to have it close again with a
thud.

Carlo watched as Abi, not one
to give up on a cause, started to complain about the book’s rights
to live without being tormented by sticky fingered oppressors and
as the bickering continued he began to feel the now familiar sense
of dread creep over him.