The Toymaster's Castle

Chapter Twenty-Two - A Long Weekend

The trouble, down south of the river, had carried on for a couple of nights, even after the power had come back on. Eventually, a few days of heavy rain had put out the last few fires and dampened down the enthusiasm of even the most hardened rioters.

We watched the news reports but Daniel had been right. Whilst they never told any out-and-out lies, they were definitely playing down just how serious everything was. You got a much better idea of what was really going on by just looking out of our window.

They did say that there had been some power cuts and suggested that terrorists had been blowing up electricity substations but I'm not sure whether I really believed it.

Of course, the place I felt safest was the Lighthouse. We spent a couple of weekends down there and, with Easter coming up, Daniel decided that we should take a longer break on the island... and, because there was some stuff he wanted to take with us, we would be going by car.

"Is George going to be doing the driving?" I asked.

"That's the plan. Why?"

"You might want to think about taking Susan along with us," I suggested.

He thought about that then nodded. "You're right!" he said and gave a little laugh. "Perversely enough, it might mean we have a little more time to ourselves."

So, ridiculously early on the Friday morning, he hauled me out of bed. I was still basically asleep so he pretty much had to carry me down to the car.

Luckily, the seats in the Limousine had already been set up so that they were basically beds. Daniel snuggled a blanket around me and, within two minutes, I was back asleep.

When I woke up, the sun was up and we were just crossing the big bridge into Wales. "Good timing!" Daniel said when he saw that I was awake. "It's nearly breakfast time."

Twenty minutes later, we were rolling up in front of a high-end country club. George stayed with the car 'to keep an eye on things' but Susan, who had been sitting at the front with him, came in with us.

After we had ordered our own breakfasts, I was a bit surprised when Daniel organised a bacon sandwich and a cup of coffee for George - I didn't think a place like that would do takeaways!

But, if the posh waiter person was surprised, it didn't show. "With pleasure sir," he replied as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

In fact, his sandwich appeared before our breakfast so Susan scooted out to deliver it. I half expected her to be breathless and giggly when she returned but it was obvious that nothing like that had gone on. I guess George takes his whole security guard thing much too seriously to let himself get distracted when he's on duty.

A couple of hours later, we drove into a pretty little village, right on the very tip of South Wales. It was built around a narrow harbour which had millions of boats tied up in neat rows. We had hired a motorboat for the weekend which was waiting for us by their jetty and George carefully reversed the limousine until it was right next to the boat.

Then he and Daniel hopped out but they told us two to stay in the car 'for security reasons'. I mean... I didn't say anything but it made me pretty curious!

And I worked out that, by moving across to the other side of the car, I could spy on them in the rear-view mirror. George was carrying some sort of cases down into the boat. There were about a dozen of them and, even though they were quite small, they must have been stupidly heavy because even he was struggling with them... and he's huge and really strong. Daniel wasn't even bothering trying to lift them.

These were followed by half a dozen larger trunks which must have been pretty heavy too - it took both men to shift them - and then there were loads of huge military style duffle bags. They must have been pretty light though because Daniel just threw them down to George, on the boat.