Sophie Storme

By John Hosken

Sophie Storme is a girl who can change the weather. An ancestor was accused of being a witch. When Sophie is angry and when in danger.. WAIT FOR WEATHER! In the mystic Celtic land of Cornwall, Sophie with her friend Julie and their brilliant dog Sherlock face many dangers from smugglers, wreckers and a mad lord with a castle possessed of a deep dungeon. Sophie Storme's talent with REAL STORMS saves the girls WHEN DREADFUL THREATS LOOM! But brave Sherlock proves to be the real hero!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456775971

John Hosken

John Hosken rose to national newspapers from his native Cornwall, where SOPHIE STORME is set. He became a senior news correspondent (Industry, then Air and Transport) with BBC Radio. He was the frequent sole commentator at great state occasions in London for both national and international (World Service) broadcasting including The State Opening of Parliament, Royal Weddings and The Remembrance Day Service at the Cenotaph. He achieved his own light-hearted high-audience programme 'Late Night Friday' on BBC Radio 2. He has had published two children's books "Meet Mr Majimpsey" and "Threlfont Wood". He is a member of MENSA and writes for MENSA Magazine. To help him survive, he enjoys long distance running and his best marathon time is comfortably under three hours. John Hosken is married and lives in Essex county countryside, near London. He has three grown-up children.

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER I

I AM BORN

CHAPTER 2

CARNELLOW COTTAGE

CHAPTER 3

THE CLIFFS AT NIGHT

CHAPTER 4

THE PHANTOM OF THE CARNELLOW MINE

CHAPTER 5

THE NUTTY BARON

CHAPTER 6

THE ISLAND CASTLE

CHAPTER 7

THE WRECKERS ARMS

CHAPTER 8

THE RUINED COTTAGE

CHAPTER 9

A DAY ON THE BEACH

CHAPTER 10

IGOR THE TERRIBLE

CHAPTER 11

RESURGAM

CHAPTER 12

A VET CALLS

CHAPTER 13

DUNGEONS AND TREASURE

CHAPTER 14

A HINT OF HABOOBS

CHAPTER 15

GOLDEN DETECTIVE WORK

CHAPTER 16

A PAINTING COMES TO LIFE

CHAPTER 17

A DAY WITHOUT PARENTS

CHAPTER 18

BEHIND THE FIREPLACE

CHAPTER 19

CAPTURE AT POLTROON CASTLE

CHAPTER 20

LORD POLTROON’S SECRET

CHAPTER 21

IGOR THWARTS ESCAPE

CHAPTER 22

UNDER FIRE

CHAPTER 23

THE SAN SEBASTIAN SAILS

CHAPTER 24

AFTER WRECKERS’ MOON

PROLOGUE

Sophie Storme strode confidently into my fifteenth-floor office at Rejectum Books with a large file under her arm. My first impression of Sophie was that she had a determined jaw, rather too prominent for the average taste, a firm mouth, the most enormous aquamarine eyes and a pony tail which she swished as a capataz ranchero flourishes his bullwhip.

For days afterwards my mouth was inclined to twitch and my eyeballs to swivel. Sophie can have that effect on even the strongest.

Before I could ask myself how this monster got up to my office, she spoke.

What Miss Millstone do you know about toads?

I collected my thoughts swiftly and found myself toying with my paper knife, as though in self-defence.

Very little, I snapped. And, young lady, I must ask you to leave immediately. Myra Millstone is a busy woman.

And so I was. Goodness knew how many manuscripts I had to return to aspiring authors each week, some of them without even return postage enclosed. Authors! If it were not for authors my job would be much easier.

You’re not busy, scoffed Sophie , sitting down without so much as a May I?

Look at the state of your desk. An absolute rubbish tip. Busy people, my father always says, keep clear desks. I happen to agree with him.

Do you indeed? Well let me tell you this my girl…

I am not your girl. And please don’t interrupt. I have very little time to make my case from the look on your face. It’s like a thunder cloud, cumulonimbus at the very least.

You really must leave at once, I insisted, taking control of the situation as I had done many a time with such as that Rawlings woman and the Richard Adams’s of this world. I pride myself I would undoubtedly have shown Kenneth Grahame the door. Talking rats, indeed. I have never heard of such unattractive nonsense. I know the business, you see.

How did you get in here anyway?

Oh that. The girl was contemptuously dismissive. Let’s start at the beginning shall we? My name is Sophie Storme. I’m fourteen. How old are you? An oldish thirty I’d guess. And you haven’t even asked me why I’m here. Well, I’ll tell you. I have written a book which you can’t possibly refuse.

They all say that, I said. It’s about toads I presume?

Of course not. My first question was to test your knowledge of alternative meteorology. Others may follow.

Just tell me how you managed to get in here, Sophie whatever your name is, I hissed, so that I can alert our security officers for the future. And you: get lost!

I came in through the fog. Sophie began to unfold her file.

F-oggg? Sophie was now completely impossible. It’s mid-July. The clouds have not been so clear since… since The Battle of Britain and they say the heatwave is going to last at least another week. What fog?

A Sophie Storme fog. I created an immediate-area radiation fog. Clear skies are ideal for it fortunately. And no-one saw me enter the Rejectum building with it covering me.

Radiation… Sophie Storme fog. No-one saw you? My voice was weak. The Sophie Storme syndrome had had its way with me.

There was a bit of a panic in the lift after I managed to bring my radiation fog in with me. Sophie almost smiled. The others thought the lift must be on fire. I just counted the floors and got out when we reached the fifteenth. I expect they calmed down then. You haven’t heard any muffled screaming from the direction of the lifts lately have you? I thought not. Anyway, I’m here.

So I see, I muttered, not quite grasping that here was a girl who could create her own personal radiation fog, whatever that might be. But then, I comfort myself in hindsight, who would have believed such a thing?

My father is Norman Storme. I was hearing Sophie’s concise voice as though from a distance. You probably see him on television broadcasting the weather forecasts. He’s known to his colleagues as Stormin’ Norman. He ought to have changed his name by deed poll, if you ask me. Not very inspired is it?

No. Not very.

Neither are his weather forecasts if you ask me . Sophie was continuing to spread her folios on my desk.

Please don’t do that," I almost pleaded.

I help him out from time to time, Sophie went on. He’s so fond of his cricket. Remember that Headingly test when the English team was losing to East Timor Colts? Dad was very upset, poor man. So I got a draw with ‘rain stopped play’. I think I overdid it a bit with the hurricane and the pavilion blowing over. Don’t you?

I remembered the incident only too well. FREAK HURRICANE, the headlines had shouted. EAST TIMOR OPENING BATSMEN MISSING.

Now tidy up your papers Sophie, I advised through my teeth, the paper knife balanced in my good right hand, and scram.

That first encounter with Sophie Storme had been a traumatic experience.

I took what is kindly termed gardening leave as I contemplated my future and changed publishing houses. I tried throughout those three months to convince myself it was a co-incidence that when I wanted the weather dry to mow my lawns, it rained. When I needed rain to encourage my more exotic plants, the sun blazed down.

That’s English weather for you, I comforted myself.

Yet, and I hesitate to state this for obvious reasons, neighbours kept telling me what a steady summer it was and how their gardens were stable and thriving.

A co-incidence? Am I paranoid? Don’t ask me. I have joined my new publishing house only to discover that Sophie Storme’s book is to be our hottest-selling line come the spring.

Of course, I had confidence in it all along.

So, with gritted teeth, it falls to me to present Sophie Storme’s story in her own words. The girl who can change the weather indeed! I feel the twitches coming on again.

I believe I shall have to take more gardening leave. But first, horror of horrors, I have to take Sophie Storme, ridiculous name, out to lunch.

Signed: Myra Millstone.

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CHAPTER I

I AM BORN

It was October the thirty-first, the night witches fly, when I was born. I was held upside-down by a midwife who smacked my bottom. How indelicate. I opened my lungs and howled. Wouldn’t you? I am Sophie Storme the Younger. The Younger because our family folklore has it that in dim and distant times there was another Sophie who could make strange things happen with weather. The story goes that she was done under an old law about witchcraft. But they let her off for lack of proof.

I have the report about my moment of birth only second-hand of course. Even my memory doesn’t stretch back that far. Father filled me in on the gory details. He keeps a diary. Goodness knows why. It must be a boring life being a weather forecaster. He also records the weather, probably because he is so often wrong with his forecasts on television and must try to do better next time. His records at my time of birth reveal that there was a thunder clap when I first, head-first, saw light. The rain stopped immediately and as a peaceful dawn broke over an eastern sky the birds sang in the garden. I think it was very nice of them.

I have to rely on my father’s notes for further details of my early days. I did not cry at night when I needed attention. No, indeed! Hail would hammer on the window panes. And if that were not enough to wake up my parents, lightning would flash and thunder would rumble, trembling the foundations of our house in Plymouth.

It’s strange, Rachel dearest, dad said to mum. It’s almost as though Sophie ‘controls’ the weather. Such a good baby. She never cries.

My mother laughed at such a notion. By the way, her maiden name was Frost, quite common in Devon. But just imagine two such meteorological surnames in one family! Mum used to joke that when people read their wedding announcement in the Western Morning News headlined STORME-FROST they must have thought it was a weather report.

You will find the first memory of my own interesting, as you will everything else about my book. I was three. I did not keep a diary at that time but when I was given one as part of my Christmas pillow case at the age of six (it was a British Meteorological Society diary which dad had clearly been sent as a freebe at work) my first entry was probably very much like dad’s own; but not half as boring one suspects.

April 1st. Rain at first, clearing later. Overnight, poor old Cornwall copped it again! My friend Julie, who’s eight to-day (lucky thing), is having a barbecue party, a bit risky in Plymouth in April dad says. But weather should be OK by afternoon.

You see, even my first diary entry was about the weather.

But to return to my very earliest recall at the age of three.

My hamster Thor had escaped his cage. In innocent childhood I believed we had called him Thaw because we had bought him in February at the melting of snow. It was some years before I realised that his name had been Thor, named after the Scandinavian god of thunder and the weather. It comes to much the same thing.

Anyway Thor (or Thaw, as I prefer to remember him) was good at climbing walls. I spotted him on the curtain rail in the far north-east corner of our drawing room, a place blighted by lack of sunlight and therefore ideal for a hamster on the run. Small though I was, I dragged the table over to that corner, placed a chair upon the table, planted five heavy books on the chair and climbed up.

Thor. I pronounced it with a final ‘aw’, Give yourself up to Sophie or she will have you shot.

I didn’t realise, at that tender age, that Scandinavian gods of thunder, etcetera, do not hand themselves over lightly to their captors.

Thor scampered across the curtain rail and I, teetering on five books perched on a chair balanced on a table top and reaching to clasp my dear hamster to me, caused the chair to topple. You can see why it became my first memory.

Not only did I break a nice cut-glass bowl which had been part of the wedding spoils of the STORME-FROST nuptial vows. I also broke my right forearm. Even worse Thor, obviously alarmed by the sound of breaking glass and snapping bone, lost his grip on the curtain rail and fell to the floor with a sinister and squishy plop. We buried Thor in the garden. Too young to die and not, after all, an immortal god. The Scandinavians really should take more care about the calibre of gods they choose.

A sudden wind arose as I placed the brave hamster in its noble coffin (it was a shoe box actually) and lowered him into his last resting place by the back drain. Heavy rain-bearing stratus, driven by the sudden wind, scudded low over the grave. A darkness fell upon the land; along our road anyway.

Then it rained and we all, mum dad and chief mourner with her arm in plaster, got soaked as we ran indoors.

I looked out of the kitchen window as the rain cleared as quickly as it had come. I’m so glad it rained when we buried Thor (with an ‘aw’). It seemed so fitting; though these days I might have managed the occasional rumble of thunder. Even a display of lightning. But advanced in my meteorological art as I now am, I can’t guarantee a thing. Some of my weather changes have proved disastrous, as you will see. Just like meteorology itself, changing the weather is not an exact science.

My friend Julie’s April 1st birthday barbecue party is a good example of what I mean. Dad had forecast the clouds moving north-easterly by noon. They didn’t. Surprise surprise. At two o’clock, with Julie’s eighth birthday celebrations due to begin in an hour, it was still pouring.

Don’t worry, said father mysteriously tapping the barometer in our hall, pressure is rising nicely.

Although only six-and-a-half at the time, I had my doubts. That barometer is a useless ornament (like all other barometers if you seek my view); another of the STORME-FROST wedding gifts and doubtless the idea of a sarcastic colleague.

It doesn’t look like it, I said gloomily, my chin in my hands as I watched the raindrops holding a watery Olympics down the window pane. It looks as though it’s going to rain forever. I do wish it would stop.

And ten minutes later it did. I was most gratified. But the clouds refused to move north-easterly. It was ten-tenths cover as we meteorologists call it, from horizon to horizon. As we got into the car I glowered at the clouds and the stratus glowered back. I was so hoping Julie Carter’s party would have good weather. She’s my best friend and treated me as an equal although I was only six then. Her mum and mine were teachers at the same school, though Julie’s was headmistress.

Her dad isn’t on television like mine. But I hope he doesn’t get things as wrong as mine does. Because Percival Carter is a doctor, who gives the impression he could wipe out the Black Death single-handed if ever it came to Plymouth. I rather wished he’d been called out to a patient as we arrived. But there’s no hope of doctors leaving their surgeries these days except to go home, mum says.

And I was somewhat dreading meeting the other party goers. They would all be elderly and sophisticated, between the ages of eight and twelve.

How would I cope, even with the utterly brill present I had saved up for? I clutched it, wrapped unfortunately in Christmas paper because it was all I could afford, in the back seat of our car.

More forebodings crept upon me as I thought: Is a stuffed giraffe the correct gift for the daughter of a teacher and a doctor, a girl two whole years older than I am? A stuffed giraffe began to seem inadequate. Perhaps dad might drive over a very large pothole which would swallow us up. As is so often the case in life, my hopes were unjustified.

Julie’s house did not need to advertise a party with boring balloons tied to a gate, though there were some. There was a blue-and-white striped tent covering the front lawn. I could not have been more excited had they provided a bouncy castle, of which I was particularly fond when six.

The blue and white striped tent was half a tent really, leaning to the front of the house so that you could walk out of the front door and straight into its cool canvas-smelling interior. There was a posh barbecue spitting fat and supervised by Doctor Percival Carter, who looked completely ridiculous in a tall chef’s hat and a blue and white apron to match the tent.

Norman! Rachel! And dear little Sophie, he cried whilst laying down a spatula as though it were an instrument in an operating theatre. I see you managed to get the rain to stop, Norman.

Well actually it was Sophie who wished it away, wasn’t it Sophie?

‘Dear little Sophie’ duly took credit with a modest blush. Julie, hearing her first guests arrive, burst into the tent. She’s very pretty I think, in a plumpish sort of way. She should not wear jeans however. We hugged and I handed her my present.

Goodness, she said turning it over in her hands. Whatever can it be?

Since the wrapping paper outlined four legs and a very long neck with a horned head at the top the question seemed odd.

It’s a giraffe," I said. And held my breath.

The giraffe emerged from its Christmas-wrapped cocoon. Had my savings been in vain? Julie held it up, laughed, danced with it and declared it was the best present she’d received all day.

It’s fab! I shall call him Necky and he’ll stand on my bed forever. Look dad, what do you think of Necky?

The good doctor made little of my gracious and well-received gift.

Just make sure your puppy doesn’t get his teeth into it, he advised.

Oh yes, said Julie. I got a puppy for my birthday. Sophie you must come and see him at once. He’s adorable."

And so he was. As I held the snuffling little ball of long-haired dachshund, how could I possibly even guess how important he was to prove in our adventures?

He’s a true pedigree with a name as long as your arm, Julie said proudly. But he’s so clever and searching every corner for things to discover that I’m going to call him Sherlock. After the famous detective you know.

Sherlock’s a nice name, I said. Hello Sherlock.

Sherlock looked up at me with candid boot-button eyes. How many times would he do that in years to come when danger threatened? Brave Sherlock.

It was a very good party. The chops were fatty but the beefburgers were delicious and there were no stupid games. Instead we danced to top-of-the-pops music and talked our heads off. I quite forgot I was the youngest person there, although one of Suzie’s distant cousins, a snootily-spoken boy called Igor, of all things, was rather condescending. He was wearing a baseball cap onto which a Plymouth College badge had been sewn, undoubtedly to impress people with his advanced age and superior education. His generally smart appearance was spoiled by the biggest pair of brown leather rubber-soled boots I had ever seen.

Sophie Storme, he said during a gap in the music. We see your father on television. We don’t think he’s very good but I expect you do.

He’s better than any of the others, I said, defending him hotly. And we’re going to live in London one day so that he can be on national television.

Igor was not impressed. Storme, he said. We always have a good laugh at that:: a weatherman called Storme. I bet he changed it from Smith or something to get on in his job.

He did not, I fumed. There was a Storme at the Battle of Waterloo and Cecil Storme was Court Lamplighter to William IV.

I suppose he lit the lamps with bolts of lightning? chuckled Igor, laughing at his own joke.

I can’t see anything wrong with having famous people in the family, I said. Yours must be absolutely packed with stars. It was an early attempt at sarcasm but I could see that it had struck home.

‘‘We don’t need anybody famous in our family, said Igor after a pause. "I have a great uncle who’s a lord and my father is an airline pilot. He told me this morning that it would clear up this afternoon and then become sunny by evening. I bet it will too. My dad is never wrong."

I bit my lower lip with frustration and swished my pony tail angrily. Unfortunately, it was obvious through the white bits of the tent that the weather was brightening by the minute.

The music began again and Igor drifted off to dance with no-one in particular, the thick soles of his boots stomping about as gracefully as two pile drivers on a building site. As for me, I was extremely cross. But soon I began to feel happier. It grew quite dark in the birthday tent and within minutes the rain was hammering on the canvas so noisily it almost drowned the music.

That’ll teach toffee-nosed Igor and his Mr. Biggles, I murmured. What we could do with now is some thunder and lightning. Nothing dramatic; the odd flash and roll will do.

My pony tail swished. Immediately, a clap of thunder directly overhead shook the tent and made the other girls squeak with terrified delight. The writhing dancers were suddenly lit up spasmodically, the way you see them at discos on television. I was too young to realise it then, but the thunder had been unusual to say the least. It had preceded the lightning and not followed it. Lightning always comes first; simply because light travels faster than sound. So this was an uncanny storm.

Igor, his boasts about his father’s forecasting prowess forgotten, was first to the entrance of the tent to admire the fireworks in the sky. Lightning flickered again.

Come on everybody. Don’t be such scaredies, he cried boldly. My father says the odds against being struck by lightning are millions to one.

The rain pelted, recoiling like bullets off the garden path, the lightning crackled and thunder rolled. It’s moving away, dad said. A most unusual thunder storm, I have to add; with the thunder coming before the lightning… and no such storms charted. It’s almost magical.

Magical, is it? said Doctor Percival Carter. Got it wrong again have we, Stormin’ Norman? And everybody laughed, Igor I fancied loudest of all. I was furious. My pony tail tossed in contempt, almost by itself.

And then it happened.

Z-z-z-z-i-p-p!! A crackling noise like atmospherics on the radio and a shaft of lightning descended.

My, that was close, gasped Doctor Carter.

Indeed it was. Exceedingly close by any standards. Igor’s baseball cap flew off and his hair shot into sparkling spikes. There was a nasty smell of burning flesh and rubber as steam (or perhaps smoke, it was so difficult to tell from where I was standing) began to puff from the tops of Igor’s boots. For a moment he stood shivering like a forest tree about to topple. And then topple he did, dead straight. Onto his face, his fall broken by the sodden lawn.

There followed a moment of silence followed by panicky screams.

Stand back everyone. It was dad’s voice. Quick Percy, give me hand. Let’s get him inside.

As the two men lifted the ashen boy into the tent and laid him on his back, Mrs. Carter rushed into the hall to phone for an ambulance. It was now Doctor Carter’s turn to take charge as father looked up from a kneeling position and ordered,

Into the house all of you. Go on. Right now. There’s nothing to see. You too Sophie .

But I was too petrified to move. It was all so horrible. I half believed, no that was even more horrible, that with my spiteful thoughts and angrily swishing pony tail perhaps I was the cause of the tragedy. Foolish girl.

I watched Julie’s dad get to work on Igor, who was lying very still. No-one seemed to notice me. Each was intent on his task and I was very small and quiet. Julie’s dad tore open Igor’s shirt, felt the heart, pummelled the pale bony chest, felt the heart again.

By the time the ambulance men arrived Igor was sitting up holding his head in his hands complaining of a headache and asking for his baseball cap.

Go and fetch his cap Sophie , dad said. It’s probably on the lawn. Hey, I thought I told you to go indoors. Well, it’s too late to bother about that now. Go on. The rain has stopped.

And so it had. I handed the cap to Igor as the ambulance men lifted him up on a stretcher. He smiled a wan smile and thanked me. A very different Igor.

One of the paramedics put a blanket over the boy, so that his remarkable boots stuck out at the bottom.

Shall I go in the ambulance with him? asked Julie’s dad.

"I think that