A/N: Thanks for all those lovely reviews, I did enjoy building up the tension in the last two chapters. Hope I've not neglected the other characters too much, by the way. A disclaimer: I'm sure all the staff at Planet Hollywood are lovely but for the purpose of this story I'm giving one a mean streak. Finally, sorry about the Castiel reference, I couldn't resist it.
"Now you're sure you feel up to coming out, Ben? Remember we're going to be really careful with you and never let you be on your own now."
Lofty had made his decision.
"Please Mr Keogh, if I stay here in the hotel I might go to sleep and have bad dreams. If I go back to the parks we'll be doing stuff and that'll stop me thinking."
"Good lad. Now we've just time for Pirates before dinner, are you okay with going there again?"
A deep breath.
"Yes thanks Mr Keogh."
"Then off we go."
The dark passage down to the Pirates ride wasn't as scary with Mr Keogh's hand to hold. Lofty did shudder a little when he recalled the afternoon's terror, but he knew he had to make himself get over it. He wanted to come back to Disney one day. Supposing he and Robyn had kids (he wasn't quite sure how this worked) and he was too scared to take them?
As for the ride, it was brilliant. Sitting between Miss Freeman and Mr Keogh, Lofty was able to enjoy all the thrills of the ride.
He was even able to feel smug on Robyn's account when they passed the slave auction – though a little shiver still went down his spine thinking of slaves – when all the ladies who were to be sold were lined up and the pirates shouted "We wants the redhead!" He thought of himself when he was fourteen, asking Robyn if she'd marry him (an engagement wasn't enough, boys had to ask for marriage as well, Robyn had said.) How he could say in a jokey way "I wants the redhead."
He was surprised at how not scared he was after all. He didn't realise that fear can often bring a delayed reaction.
Miss Freeman insisted on buying a huge Jack Sparrow bath towel, she had the luggage allowance for it and she wanted to walk round in nothing but that later to try and get poor Connie to chill out and smile.
The kids had been warned not to fuss Lofty too much in case it was too much for him. They'd all wanted to ask him to sit next to them at the meal, but Mr Keogh had said too many requests could confuse him.
"He can sit between Mrs Beauchamp and myself."
Sample menus from Planet Hollywood had been downloaded and printed from the Internet, and everybody's choices had been phoned in beforehand.
When the group arrived, one of the waitresses, a little over zealous about food wastage, was very sharp with Lofty.
"You should not make us cook a meal for you and then decide you only wish for soup and ice cream. It is an unfair waste of food."
She muttered something under her breath in French about Lofty having 'probably been stuffing sweets all day.' Mrs Beauchamp had an excellent knowledge of French and faced her down, answering the woman in her own language:
"He has not been stuffing sweets, as you so impolitely put it. He was almost grabbed by a paedophile" – Mrs Beauchamp felt safe to say this in French – "And had to nearly scream his throat raw to get our attention. If you had spent more time reading the paper and less time polishing your own halo, Mademoiselle Castielle, you would have seen this."
The waitress, not being familiar with Supernatural, didn't recognise the reference to the famous trench-coated angel. Mr Keogh, who certainly did watch the programme and adored Castiel, gave one of his loud dry chuckles.
Miss Freeman fell in love with her line manager all over again.
"Celestine!"
The manager called the waitress over. She apologised profusely to him and to the party, but the manager still sent her to another table, and asked his most pleasant waiter, Pierre, to serve the Holby party."
The result was that the entire table received excellent service and as a joke, a plate of salad and chopped meats was put in front of 'Monsieur Snap' with the other starters, the amiable young waiter telling the others that they could share the platter with the crocodile. Pierre was allowed to cuddle Snap, which was immortalised in a photo, and even Ethan cheered. The platter was completely clean by the end of the evening and Pierre received a tip that made his smile even wider.
Ben seemed to be reasonably settled by the end of the evening.
"I want to be a pirate when I'm big" Ethan declared as they all walked back to the hotel.
"You'd have to make people walk the plank and drown them" Cal told him.
"I'd make all the men prisoners walk the plank but I'd keep all the lady prisoners as my wives."
"Waste not, want not" Mr Keogh said drily and amazingly Ms Chao went into a fit of giggles, that could have been a nervous reaction after the frightening day.
"I want to be a waiter and to do nice things for people at my tables", Max grinned.
Funnily enough it was Max, not Ben, who had the nightmare later. Max had realised just what a chance he had taken by slipping off on his own to buy the wallet. He imagined doing it again and being grabbed by a man, and awoke screaming. It almost broke Zoe's heart that she wasn't allowed to go in to him but Jeff, risking a reprimand about breaking the rules, came to tap at the girls' door and let Zoe know Max was having a big fat man hug from everybody.
Ben had been the first one to run over to comfort Max.
Meanwhile, poor Mrs Beauchamp was having a waking nightmare.
"Connie, sweetheart, please don't suffer like this. Everybody loses their temper now and then."
"Can you imagine the call I'd have been making to Ben's parents? 'I'm sorry, Mr and Mrs Chiltern, but your son's dead because I scared him so much earlier he was afraid to shout for help?' It could have happened, Rita, and all because I couldn't stop glugging stupid cocktails."
"Ben's alive and well, he's safe in that room two doors down with five crazy kids. Come on, sweetheart."
"I just want him to come right out and say he hates me, or to ask me why I snarled at him. Oh Rita…"
And the cool, poised Headmistress broke down weeping in her girlfriend's arms.
After a while, Rita thought it safe to say:
"Now come on, silly, have some of Auntie Rita's remedy."
"NOT if you're my bloody Auntie! Now go and put the light on and get yourself into that Jack Sparrow bath towel."
Rita knew Connie was putting a brave face on things, but she was happy to play along. Eventually they both collapsed into a good night's sleep.