Elspeth Hart and the Perilous Voyage

Prologue

If you met Elspeth Hart, dear reader, you wouldn’t think there was anything unusual about her. In fact, you would think she was quite ordinary. Elspeth was ten years old. She was a bit shorter than you are and a bit shyer than you are. She had long dark hair that never looked neat, no matter how much she brushed it.

But Elspeth Hart’s world was
most
unusual. She had just escaped from two kidnappers called Miss Crabb and Gladys Goulash, who had been keeping her captive in the dreadful Pandora Pants School for Show-offs.

Why had Miss Crabb and Gladys Goulash kidnapped Elspeth, I hear you ask? Well, Elspeth’s parents owned a little sweet shop and they had come up with a marvellous secret recipe for the most delicious toffee sauce in the world. Now Miss Crabb was a mean, greedy woman and she wanted to get her hands on this recipe. She wanted it more than anything, dear reader. She wanted it more than you might want a day off school or a big plate of chips for your dinner. Miss Crabb was convinced she could make millions selling the Extra-special 
Sticky Toffee Sauce.

But Miss Crabb hadn’t managed to get hold of Elspeth’s family recipe, because Elspeth had kept it safe. And Elspeth had even come up with a clever plan to run away, leaving Miss Crabb and her sidekick Gladys Goulash to be locked up in jail.

Elspeth had made it all the way from the Pandora Pants School for Show-offs back to her home, which was a little flat above her parents’ sweet shop. But when she got there, she found the shop and the flat dark and empty. There was no sign of Elspeth’s parents, only a note explaining that they had gone searching for her. The note said Elspeth should go straight to the police, but just before she reached the police station, she spotted a newspaper and read some very bad news indeed…

1

The Awful Newspaper Headline

Elspeth stared at the newspaper headline in horror.

“Miss Crabb and Gladys Goulash have escaped!” she said. She whirled around and started sprinting back towards her house. Elspeth knew that the first thing Miss Crabb and Gladys Goulash would do was come looking for her parents’ precious
Extra-special Sticky Toffee Sauce recipe.

Elspeth burst through the gate and raced up the steps to her front door, fumbling for her key. She shoved the key in the lock, threw open the door and rushed inside.

And then it hit her. A dreadful and familiar smell.

“Oh no,” Elspeth said under her breath. “No, no, no!”

There was only one person in the world who smelled that bad – Gladys Goulash, who hated washing and only had a bath once a year. As Elspeth ran into the living room, she discovered a trail of destruction – muddy footprints, upturned chairs, books scattered on the floor. It had to be the work of Miss Crabb.

Elspeth Hart paused. Where had she left the precious recipe? Her mind went blank
for a second, then it came to her. She had put it on the mantelpiece. Elspeth ran over and looked around wildly.

Hart’s Extra-special Sticky Toffee Sauce Recipe, the one her parents had tried so hard to protect … was gone.

Miss Crabb and Gladys Goulash had got what they wanted at last.

“How could I have been so
stupid
?” Elspeth cried. “I should never have let the recipe out of my sight!” The recipe was so top secret that her parents had made up a special code for the ingredients. Her mum and dad had gone to all that trouble to keep the recipe safe and now that it was gone, Elspeth felt quite lost and awfully guilty.

Elspeth gazed down at the scribbles on her trainers, feeling miserable. She trudged through the flat, looking at the chaos Miss Crabb and Gladys Goulash had caused. The kitchen window had been smashed and it looked like they’d used a ladder to climb up and get inside. In Elspeth’s room, the sheets on her bed were messed up, and her parents’
bedroom had been turned upside down. Miss Crabb and Gladys Goulash had raided the cupboards and ransacked the bathroom. They had been
everywhere
.

Elspeth stared at the mess and bit by bit, she didn’t feel so sad. She felt very, very vexed. I imagine you know, dear reader, that when someone does something horrible to you, you might feel sad at first. But then you might feel angry. And Elspeth was angry now.

“Right,” she said out loud. “If you two reckon you can get away with stealing my mum and dad’s top-secret recipe, you’re wrong.”

Elspeth went back into the kitchen, moving slowly this time, hunting for clues.

On the windowsill she spotted something. It was the same newspaper
Elspeth had seen earlier, with the headline about Crabb and Goulash’s escape, but now it was lying open at an article about a fancy cruise ship. And it had notes scrawled all over it in Miss Crabb’s handwriting.

Miss Crabb and Gladys Goulash had been in such a rush that they had left something
very
interesting behind.

Elspeth’s eyes widened as she read.

She looked up from the newspaper.

“So you’re heading to America? And you think nobody will catch you, Miss Crabb?” Elspeth muttered. “Think again. I’m getting that recipe back.”

The article said that the cruise ship was leaving on Thursday. Elspeth Hart had ONE DAY.