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Eddie, adoringly.
    ‘All right then,’ said Frankie, finishing off his breakfast. ‘Let’s go!’

    As Alphonsine parked her motorbike in a quiet side road, Frankie pulled off his helmet and looked up at the towering toy palace that dwarfed the street and the surrounding
village. Frankie felt a knot tightening in his stomach.
    ‘No time to be wasting!’ said Alphonsine, clapping her hands together. ‘Colette will keep watch out.’ The poodle sat up to attention and flicked her beady eyes from side
to side. ‘I will rummage in ze bins – and Frankie, you can sneak about, eyes agoggle, looking for ways in. We meet back here in ten minutes. Find out what you can.’
    Frankie crouched behind a skip and checked out the back of the building. As he searched for a way in, he noticed how much the back of Marvella Brand’s Happyland differed from the front.
While the shop front was a fantastical dream castle topped with fluttering flags, the back was an imposing block of glass and steel bristling with swivelling satellite dishes. And while the front
of the store was guarded by a smiley pair of red-cheeked toy soldiers, the back was patrolled by dozens of unblinking security cameras tracking back and forth across the car park. Frankie could not
see a single chink in the cold, smooth wall that towered over him. His best bet, he thought, would be to scale the fire escape at the side. From there, he would be able to peer in through the
windows.
    Frankie pulled up his hood to shield his face from the roving mechanical eyes and made a dash for the bottom of the stairway. His heart was pounding like a locomotive as he cupped his hands
around his face and peered through the ground-floor window. Through the smoky glass, Frankie made out a series of flickering television monitors displaying images from security cameras inside the
store. He felt a sudden jolt of sadness as he recognised his classmates on the monitors. There was Dave and Charlie playing in the Super-Spy section. And there was Joseph and Alice trying out the
rocket-propelled rollerskates. The images changed and Frankie recognised Neet. She was standing on her own by the Mechanimals, quietly looking through some accessories. Frankie sighed. He still
wished he could join them, but there wasn’t much time and he needed to do some proper snooping.
    He kept moving up the stairs. The blinds of the first and second floors were shut tight, blocking his view. As he pressed his face against the glass of the third-floor window he began to wonder
whether he should turn back and look for another way. But no, this time he was in luck. The window stood ajar and the blinds were tilted slightly, allowing Frankie to see through a narrow crack. On
the other side of the glass was an enormous office. People in smart suits swarmed about like ants in a nest, shouting down their phones or tapping furiously at keyboards. Frankie could make out a
few words here and there over the general hubbub. ‘I want this done yesterday!’ yelled a man with a face like a beetroot.
    ‘Failure is not an option!’ shouted another.
    Frankie pulled away from the window as a woman with a tightly-scraped bun glided dangerously close. She was speaking to a younger, bewildered-looking colleague. ‘They may be
children,’ she sneered, ‘but they are also customers. Don’t forget that.’ She then led her colleague over to a wall covered with charts and diagrams and pointed to one that
appeared to show a cross-section of a child’s brain. Printed above it was a single question: ‘
What do children want?
’ Frankie felt confused. It all seemed so different
from the magical world of Marvella’s. Where were the smiling faces and merry tunes? He wanted to get the jiminy out of there. But there was one more floor to see.
    Frankie took a deep breath and climbed the final flight of stairs right to the top of the building. It was a long way up and he was starting to feel slightly queasy. As he neared