‘Hey, we didn’t ask you to come here,’ said Joshua, starting to look angry. ‘We did our best to stop you when we arranged for your ShobGobbles to be put to sleep.’

‘Speaking of which, I hope that didn’t hurt our lovely ShobGobbles,’ said Shimlara. ‘That was a pretty mean thing to do to poor defenceless animals!’

‘It’s perfectly safe, and anyway, we thought you were coming to kill my sister!’ Joshua slammed his fist on the table. ‘We thought you were scary creatures from another planet!’

‘Oh, we can be scary,’ said Sean, looking fierce, although the blob of tomato sauce on his nose spoiled the effect.

‘Who is Katie?’ interrupted Serena.

Nicola explained the whole story to Serena and Joshua.

When she’d finished, Serena and Joshua were shaking their heads.

‘Every time I think Enrico couldn’t get any more evil, he does,’ said Joshua. ‘And you say he’s planning to burn all your tongues like he did to Silent Fred? How did you find that out?’

‘I read his mind,’ explained Shimlara. ‘I’m from Globagaskar. We can read minds there.’

‘Oh sure!’ said Joshua. ‘You can read minds. What am I thinking right now?’

He crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

Shimlara looked at him and Nicola saw her cheeks go pink.

‘You’re ummm . . .’

‘I knew you couldn’t do it!’

Shimlara looked down at her lap with a little half-smile. She said, ‘You’re wondering if all the girls on Globagaskar are as pretty as me.’

Sean guffawed and Joshua’s face turned scarlet. ‘How did you do that? Don’t do that again! I won’t be able to think anything private!’

‘I only read your mind because you asked me to,’ said Shimlara. ‘I won’t do it again. It’s bad manners to read people’s minds.’ Nicola had never seen her look so flustered.

‘So anyway,’ said Nicola, deciding it was a good time to change the subject. ‘On our way here we met an interesting old man named Horatio. He told us about a clause in Shobble’s Constitution that says if you get enough people to sign a petition the length of a rainbow, the Commander-in-Chief has to resign.’

‘Really?’ Serena looked interested, but then her face dropped. ‘All Enrico would have to do is get his Thugs to tear up the petition.’

‘Horatio also told us that Enrico used to have all these phobias when he was a boy,’ said Nicola. ‘I was thinking maybe we could use those phobias in some way.’

‘He was frightened of the colour yellow, music, buttons and peanut butter sticking to the roof of his mouth,’ said Tyler, counting them off on his fingers.

‘That was when he was a little boy. He might have grown out of those phobias by now,’ said Greta.