or barley and had never once helped out, even when Rory was called up to serve in the army. (Phil hadn’t been called up because he had flat feet, a fact that only served to prove to him that he must be the luckiest man alive.) Phil had been trying for weeks to get Mrs Green to sell the farm. He was desperate. To explain why I’m going to have to let you in on a secret that not a single other person in the story knows.

Phil was a gambler.

He liked nothing more than to dress in a smart suit and walk into a casino as though he were a very rich man with a lot of money to spend. In fact, he only had one suit, which, unbeknownst to him, had stopped being smart quite a number of years previously. Added to which he was very, very bad at gambling and nearly always lost every penny he had. Like a lot of bad gamblers he always went back, always believed that he would one day win millions and purchase the sky-blue Bentley he had once seen in an advertisement and never stopped desiring.

If Phil had kept his gambling habit to small places in little towns he would probably not be in the mess he was in. But he’d taken the plunge and gone to London one night and only walked into one of the East End’s most notorious gambling establishments, a velvet-clad dive called Ruby’s, which belonged to a congenitally vicious gangster named Mr Biggles. Mr Biggles had been very successful at evading the law but hadn’t entirely managed to evade the army yet. When the call to fight had come, he made a big exit, orchestrating a heroic departure in full uniform at St Pancras railway station, waved off by his weeping family and dozens of fellow gangsters (all secretly thrilled he was going somewhere dangerous), got on to the train and then promptly slipped off it just before Folkestone, where a small plane was waiting to take him to Switzerland. There he spent the rest of the war investing his money in chocolate rabbits and getting unreasonably fat. This was all very unfair on Ruby Biggles, who, astonished by her husband’s bravery (which had not heretofore been apparent), genuinely believed he was off fighting the enemy. But she took to gangsterhood like a fish to water and firmly upheld her husband’s core principles. They were as follows:

1. Never try to reason with people. Threaten them instead.

2. Never make a threat you don’t intend to follow through.

3. Try to make your threats as creative and original as possible. Then they’ll really stick in people’s minds.

4. Only trust Mr Topsey and Mr Turvey.

This last rule referred to Mr Biggles’s henchmen, Vaughn Topsey and Shaun Turvey. They were both actually fighting in the war and their places in the organisation had been filled by their daughters, Deirdre and Evelyn. Deirdre Topsey and Evelyn Turvey were both charming in every respect except one: they both really, really liked hurting people. They were the perfect sidekicks for Ruby Biggles, who always liked to have everything pleasant about her and insisted that any violence be conducted in locations as far from her person as possible. It wasn’t that she was kind or anything; she just didn’t like mess.

g

g

The Diary 10

Glory be. The piglets have triumphed. They’ve galloped down a dappled track, stopped by the apples, started to eat them and got covered by the veil, and they’ve done it FOUR times perfectly! Then they ran down a sun-drenched hill chased by the children. It’s a miracle, in short. David Brown, our Line Producer (see Glossary) is looking all pink he’s so happy. ‘I can’t believe it!’ he keeps saying. ‘They did it! They did it four times!’ Line producers are always very relieved when things go well because they tend to be the first person to get shouted at when things aren’t going well.

Later: I’m sitting in a field doing a bit of pig-calming. Turns out they’re exhausted by all that acting. Baby pig slept in my arms for a full half-hour. Bit whiffy. But very sweet. Anyway, back to Misses Topsey and Turvey and Phil.

g

g

The Story 10

So there was Phil, down in the posh casino pretending he’s got money. He took out his pretend pigskin wallet and slapped a five-pound note down on the table. The people around the club looked at him doubtfully. He seemed down at