‘Mmm,’ said Dr Boogaloo, scribbling in his notebook, trying not to appear alarmed. But no laughter was definitely a case for alarm! No laughter was serious! Dr Boogaloo hadn’t heard of a case of no laughter since the 1950s and back then people barely laughed, anyway. And it was always adults.
Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember a single case of a child with No Laughing Syndrome in all his years of musical cures. It was simply unheard of for children not to laugh. Even starving, homeless orphan children! Their laughter had been heard bouncing and echoing off the walls of their empty tummies as they laughed like madmen at their own terrible misfortune.
Dr Boogaloo got up and pulled down a giant red book from a long shelf lined with giant red books. Printed on the front in big gold lettering were the words:
He looked up ‘Laughter’ in the index. There was an entry on page 308,704:
NO LAUGHING SYNDROME
Also known as No Chuckling, Giggling or
Chortling Syndrome
* No Laughers are very difficult to treat, particularly when left without laughter for long periods of time. Not considered serious in adults – who don’t laugh very much, anyway – but critical in children.
External Causes of No Laughing Syndrome
* A condition afflicting 0.00000000000000000000000000000067% of people. Often occurs before a war or an environmental disaster of a grand scale. Like canaries in a coalmine, the No Laughers feel vibrational irregularities unfelt by your average Laugher. In 1887, before the catastrophic floods in China, there was an epidemic of No Laughing Syndrome across the world, with 2089 cases recorded. If cause of no laughing is external, it will not be an isolated case and super-sensitive people everywhere will be suffering from No Laughing Syndrome.
Internal Causes of No Laughing Syndrome
* Many and varied and almost impossible to pinpoint. Usually related to conditions of the heart or soul.
Treatment
* Sometimes responsive to string and wind instruments – particularly brass and woodwinds combined with percussion and obscure African rhythms.
Dr Boogaloo looked up from his book of cures. ‘I’ll have to run a few tests,’ he said. Dr Boogaloo suspected Blue’s mother’s sense of humour was not quite as brilliant as she thought it was. In fact, the Doctor’s first impression was that she was perhaps a little cold and uncaring. Not at all like most mothers.
‘Can you bring Blue back tomorrow and leave her with us for the day?’ asked Dr Boogaloo. ‘I’ll get my wife, Bessie, to take her to the Snorkel Porkel Crumpety Worpel Laughter Clinic for testing.’
‘I’m flying to Europe tonight to collect the most beautiful white lamp,’ said Blue’s mother. ‘I’ll arrange for my chauffeur, Melvin, to bring her in.’
‘Excellent,’ said Dr Boogaloo. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow then, Blue.’
CHAPTER 3
Blue
Melvin drove Blue and her mother home. Blue was relieved her visit to the Doctor was over. She had been nervous all morning about going. How she hated people finding out she couldn’t laugh. She felt deeply ashamed. Surely not being able to laugh was the very worst thing in the world. Blue thought she’d rather not be able to see or hear or talk or walk! Anything would be better than not being able to laugh. What sort of a person can’t laugh?
Blue lived with her mother and father in a gleaming white mansion. It was so huge and so white, children in the neighbourhood had taken to calling it the ‘Iceberg House’ and, rather unkindly, Blue the ‘Ice Princess’.
Melvin pulled up at the mansion.
‘Bye, Mum,’ said Blue. She leaned in to give her mother a kiss.
Blue’s mother leaned back, flinching, her eyes scrunched, lips inside out. ‘Sorry, darling, you know kissing messes up my lippy.’ Her mother made three ‘mwah’ noises in Blue’s general direction. ‘The cleaners are here. Your maths coach arrives at five. Airport please, Melvin.’
Blue got out of the car.
‘Thanks, Melvin. Have a great trip, Mum,’ she said, waving and trying her best to look happy. Blue knew how irritating her mother found it having such a misery guts for a daughter. ‘I hope the white lamp is as lovely as it looks online.’
But Blue’s mother didn’t hear. She had already closed the window of the family’s white stretch limousine and instructed Melvin to hotfoot it to the airport, even though her plane didn’t leave till later that night.
‘Lord! Here’s hoping they have some funny movies on the plane,’ Blue’s mother said. ‘I need a laugh almost as much as I need a glass of bubbles. Honestly, Melvin, whatever you do, don’t have children, they ruin your life.’
Melvin was almost eighty. He had nine children and twenty-three grandchildren, all of whom he loved to bits. Indeed, their pictures were stuck all over the dashboard. A kind of mobile family photo album. Melvin had nicknames for every one of his grandchildren. There was Cheese Ball, Cookie Dough, Lamp Chop and Little Pea. Blue always asked Melvin how Lamp Chop was doing at school, or how Little Pea was going with her dancing lessons, or if Cheese Ball had mastered any new magic tricks. She was that sort of girl. Thoughtful. And always interested in other people. Melvin, proud as punch, loved nothing more than reporting back to Blue what all twenty-three of his grandchildren had been up to that week. But Blue’s mother had never noticed Melvin’s photos. In the ten long years he’d been the family’s chauffeur, she’d never even been interested enough to ask him a single question about himself or his family.
Blue’s house really was enormous. Her mother had a thing for ‘en suites’, which is a terribly posh word for bathroom. All up, there were nineteen en suites. Or ‘onsweees’, as her mother would say in her