‘How far?’
‘Ten-minute drive,’ Kerry said. ‘Can you control yourself for that long?’
‘Just about,’ James said, pretending to sulk.
But Kerry didn’t twig that he was only pretending and panicked slightly, thinking he was upset because she didn’t reciprocate his I love you.
‘I love you too,’ Kerry said. ‘And I booked that room because you’re not the only one who couldn’t wait until we got back to campus this evening.’
‘All right!’ James said enthusiastically, as he spun around looking for the exit. ‘Why are we standing here?’
Kerry took James’ hand luggage and they started to walk with a huge wheelie bag trundling behind. James put his hand up the back of Kerry’s skirt again, but she shoved it away.
‘Everyone can see my arse when you do that,’ Kerry said irritably as they neared a set of automatic doors which led to the car park. ‘You’re an embarrassment!’
‘You’re easily embarrassed, aren’t you?’ James teased. He stopped walking and turned back so that he faced the huge and crowded arrivals hall.
‘James what are you doing?’ Kerry asked.
‘This is my girlfriend Kerry Chang,’ James shouted at the top of his voice. ‘She’s got a great arse, and I hope you’ve all enjoyed looking at it. Now I’m gonna take her to a hotel room and have a damned good sha—’
Before James could finish, Kerry had her hand clamped over his mouth.
‘I’ll murder you!’ Kerry said, as James howled with laughter.
Kerry dug her hand under James’ ribs and tickled until he collapsed on to his knees.
‘I love her!’ James shouted, as over a hundred people stood gawping and Kerry burned red with embarrassment.
They both ended up flat on the airport floor, laughing helplessly as an airport security officer loomed over them.
‘Act your ages,’ the yellow-jacketed woman said. ‘You’re blocking everyone’s way out.’
James pointed at Kerry. ‘It was her,’ he said mischievously. ‘She started it.’
The officer didn’t see the funny side and tapped a finger against her walkie-talkie. ‘If you’ve got a problem you can explain it to the airport police.’
James and Kerry had tears in their eyes as they headed through the automatic doors leading towards the car park.
*
They’d arranged to meet Lauren outside East Finchley underground station at two, but James and Kerry couldn’t prise themselves apart. They held on in the hotel for as long as they could and ended up being forty minutes late.
‘Traffic was awful,’ James lied, as he stepped out of the silver Mercedes that Kerry had taken from campus and gave Lauren a kiss. ‘You’ve grown a couple of centimetres since I last saw you.’
‘And you’ve got chunkier,’ Lauren noted.
‘Booze and parties,’ James explained.
‘Cuddlier is the word I’d use,’ Kerry smiled.
‘I’ve actually lost a bit now I’ve gone back to weight training and running,’ James said. ‘But when I first arrived at Stanford it was craziness every single night.’
The trio drove to the nearest Pizza Express and caught up over a late lunch.
‘How was your first term at Stanford?’ Lauren asked.
‘They call them quarters, not terms,’ James explained. ‘The campus is quite like CHERUB, except you have to share a room and there’s ten thousand people on the campus, instead of a few hundred. The work’s pretty hard. I’ve never struggled with maths or physics before, but everyone in my classes has brains spilling out their ears.’
‘What about your exams?’ Kerry asked, as she bit a bruschetta.
‘You don’t take proper exams until the end of second quarter in March,’ James explained. ‘But you get continuous assessment. I’ve had all As and Bs, except you have to take at least one arts course in your first year. I picked Russian because I already speak the language, but you have to read Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, which is basically a six-hundred-page novel where absolutely bugger all happens.’
‘So you said it’s lots of parties and stuff?’
James nodded. ‘It’s wild. I mean, if you want you can go to a party every night. But you have to learn to balance it or you’d end up wrecked at every lecture.’
Kerry felt uncomfortable at the thought of all this revelry. She didn’t doubt that James loved her, but he was also a randy git and she couldn’t help wondering if he’d stayed faithful during four months living in a college crawling with eighteen-year-old girls.
‘I’ve put in my application for Stanford now,’ Kerry said. ‘Meryl says it should go through on the nod.’
‘Cool,’ James grinned. The waitress arrived with two pizzas and a lasagne for Kerry. ‘So how’s everyone on campus?’
‘Pretty quiet actually,’ Lauren said. ‘Loads of people are off on missions. Rat’s in Australia with Andy. Bethany got back with Bruce, but it only lasted three weeks. Jake Parker’s been suspended from missions after he got Ronan drunk and dared him to take a crap in the campus fountain.’
‘Kevin got his navy shirt,’ Kerry added.
James smiled. ‘That’s cool, Kevin’s a great kid. Who got my old room?’
‘Some new grey shirt called James Watkinson,’ Kerry said, as she blew on a steaming fork-load of lasagne. ‘Pretty quiet, keeps himself to himself mostly.’
‘It’s weird,’ Lauren added. ‘Jake and Kevin used to be the youngest grey shirts. But now people like you and Shakeel are retired there’s a new group who are even younger.’
‘You forgot to tell him about the big huge enormous campus sex scandal,’ Kerry said cheerfully.
‘Oh god!’ Lauren laughed. ‘Meatball is a daddy. The couple who moved into Mr Large’s old house have a little poodle and Meatball had his way with her.’
Everyone laughed until Kerry remembered something. ‘And Joshua Asker said I have to tell you that he’s a good swimmer now and that you have to go to the pool with him so that he can show you.’
‘I saw my dad,’ Lauren said.
Lauren dropped this in casually, but James almost choked. ‘You saw Uncle Ron? How did he find out where you are?’
‘He wrote a letter to Islington council, which was forwarded on to CHERUB campus. He’s eligible for parole early in the new year. He wanted a character reference for his parole application, saying that he was in contact with his daughter and that I thought his release would be beneficial to me. Apparently having close family can help sway a parole hearing.’
James shook his head with contempt. ‘I hope you told him to shove that idea right up his hairy crack.’
Lauren looked awkward. ‘I went to see him. He’s had treatment for cancer, he looks really thin and I think he’s been beaten up a few times in prison. I said I’d write the reference, on condition that he didn’t hassle me when he got out.’
James put his head in his hands. ‘How could you?’ he gasped. ‘Ron used to hit both of us. He treated Mum like dirt and you grassed him up after he punched you so hard that you ended up with two huge black eyes.’
‘I know,’ Lauren said, with uncharacteristic meekness. ‘But all that’s ancient history and no matter what Ron did, he’s still my dad.’
James shook his head in disgust, but didn’t say any more. His return from college for Christmas was supposed to be a happy occasion, besides which Lauren was stubborn so he wouldn’t win the argument if he pushed it.
‘Have you thought any more about seeing your dad?’ Kerry asked.
James nodded, then waited to finish his mouthful before continuing. ‘It was freaky. On the first day of my course they gave everyone a list of textbooks we’d need. So I’m sitting in my room at Stanford, ordering all these books off amazon.com. And I see that one of the maths books is co-written by Professor James Duncan. My laptop almost fell off my bed and Chris my roommate is like What’s up with you? And I’m like, I think I just discovered that one of my maths te
xtbooks was written by my dad.
‘It felt like a sign or something. Especially when I’d just arrived at college and was feeling a bit homesick. So I dug up my dad’s e-mail and sent him a message. I got a reply a few days later and we’ve been e-mailing back and forth ever since.’
Lauren smiled. ‘So you’re going to meet him?’
‘Yeah,’ James nodded. ‘And I’ve got a little half-sister Megan who’s nearly four. And a baby brother called Albert - named after Albert Einstein apparently.’
‘When will you visit?’ Kerry asked.
James shrugged. ‘We didn’t set a date because I didn’t know what was going on with everyone else. But I’ve got three weeks before I fly back to the States.’
‘How will you explain your years at CHERUB?’ Lauren asked.
‘I’ve just used my standard background story, telling my dad that I grew up in a succession of foster homes after Mum died,’ James explained. ‘We worked the whole thing out before I left campus.’
Kerry smiled. ‘So did your dad give you the answers to the questions in his textbook?’
‘No,’ James laughed. ‘But he did help me once when I got totally stuffed on a maths assignment. He seems like a nice guy. I’m really looking forward to going up there and saying hello.’
‘So what else have you been up to in California?’ Lauren asked. ‘What’s your roommate like?’
‘You thought he was gay at one time, didn’t you?’ Kerry asked.
‘Until I came back to my room and found him bonking away at this giant hippo. Oh Chris, oh Chris, that’s so goooooood!’
Lauren and Kerry both laughed, and James felt good being back with them and having so much stuff to catch up on.
*
An hour later, Kerry stopped the silver Mercedes at the bottom of a grassy hill. She stayed a few metres behind as James squelched through the long grass, holding flowers in one arm and with the other around Lauren’s shoulders.
Britain is a small country and Londoners are buried six to a grave, with a half-metre between headstones restricted to a maximum height of forty centimetres. They stopped by a lozenge made from pinkish marble, with the gold-leaf inscription already starting to peel:
Gwendoline Choke
May 1966 - September 2003
Sadly missed by James & Lauren
At the bottom of the stone was an engraved image of a cartoonish angel standing in front of a rainbow and blowing a bugle.
‘I can’t believe I picked that tacky bloody design,’ Lauren said, shaking her head as she looked at the stone.
‘You were only nine,’ James said. ‘If it was my choice, she probably would have ended up with the Arsenal crest.’
Lauren took a backpack off her shoulder and pulled out a bottle of soapy water and a sponge to clean the stone. James pulled a couple of weeds out of the ground before pressing the earth under his foot and laying out a bunch of sunflowers.
A bitter wind caught the cellophane James had peeled from around the flowers and he bumped into Kerry as they both tried to catch it. But it whipped high into the air and embedded itself out of reach in a nearby tree. When James got back he saw that Lauren had tears streaming down her face.
‘Hey,’ James said soothingly, as he went down on one knee. ‘What’s the matter? You don’t usually get this upset.’
‘I really miss her,’ Lauren sniffed. ‘And I missed you when you were in America.’
‘I missed you,’ James said gently.
‘I’ll probably go off to university in a few years,’ Lauren explained. ‘We’ll live in different towns, maybe even different countries. I’ll never just be able to go downstairs to your room and say hello, or come and see what you’re up to when I’m bored.’
‘Life’s always sad when you look backwards,’ James said, as his eyes teared over. ‘When I think about Mum. Or when I realise that I’ll never go on another training exercise, or see some of the friends I’ve made on my missions. But that’s how life goes. Things have to move on.’
‘I never met your mum,’ Kerry said, handing over a tissue as Lauren stood up. ‘But I bet she’d be really proud if she saw you both now.’
James smiled and pulled both Lauren and Kerry into a tight hug. ‘You’re my two best girls,’ he said. ‘We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us. Now let’s get back to the car. I’ve got used to California and I’m freezing my balls off up here.’
EPILOGUE
The following updates were written shortly before the publication of this book in September 2010.
RALPH ‘THE FÜHRER’ DONNINGTON stood trial at the Old Bailey in London charged with weapons-smuggling offences and resisting arrest. He received a prison sentence of sixteen years. Fellow defendant DIRTY DAVE was sentenced to eleven years.
The vicious gang war between Brigands MC and the Vengeful Bastards continues to rage. In mid-2009 the UK Brigands upped the ante by recruiting more than two hundred members of subordinate gangs such as the Monster Bunch in a process known as ‘patching over’. The Vengeful Bastards have also patched over more than a dozen gangs.
On the positive side, police believe that the arrest of Ralph Donnington brought an end to the Brigands’ weapons-smuggling operations and has significantly reduced the number of illegal weapons entering the UK.
ALISON and KAM LEE’s Surf Club restaurant burned down under suspicious circumstances in November 2009. Police believe that it was a revenge attack, ordered by the Führer.
AIZAT RAKYAT’s grandmother died in 2007 after which his younger sister WATI was taken in by friends living on the mainland who’d originally lived in Aizat’s village.
Aizat was released from prison in Malaysia in October 2009. He completed a high-school education while in a young offenders’ prison. Following his release he received a grant from Guilt Trips and now attends university in northern Malaysia.
His village on Langkawi island has now been developed as a luxury timeshare resort, linked to the adjoining Regency Plaza Hotel. A compensation case brought by villagers and funded by Guilt Trips was dismissed by a Malaysian judge on the grounds that the villagers had no legal entitlement to the land on which they had lived for generations.
HELENA BAYLISS continues to work as the global head of Guilt Trips. The organisation now has offices in eight countries and more than twenty full-time staff. She also writes articles on environmental and tourism issues for newspapers all over the world, and regularly appears as a pundit on British television.
In early 2010, Helena successfully appealed against her ban from Malaysia. She plans to travel to Malaysia in 2011, giving her son Aizat Jr a chance to meet his father.
Journalist HUGH VERHOEVEN’s story on Tan Abdullah received limited media coverage in the UK. However, the story was a sensation in Malaysia and the bribery scandal was a factor in the collapse of the Malaysian government a few months later.
Verhoeven has returned to retirement and is currently working on a volume of memoirs about his career as a TV journalist.
Following the death of TAN ABDULLAH, a bitter fight erupted between JUNE LING, Abdullah’s two previous wives and his nine children over an estimated $4.4 billion fortune. The disputes are expected to drag on for several years, spanning courts in Malaysia, Thailand and the United States.
After living briefly in New York with their stepmother, TJ and SUZIE returned to Malaysia to live with their biological mother.
Tan’s oldest son is still governor of Langkawi island, and despite his father’s controversial suicide he remains hotly tipped to some day become prime minister of Malaysia.
Following investigations in Malaysia and the UK, a slightly smaller £4.7 billion arms deal between the two countries was brokered by DAVID SECOMBE and signed in April 2010.
Following his arrest inside the Leith Hotel, KYLE BLUEMAN was briefly held at a central London police station and released without charge.
He is now in his final year studying law at Cambridge University and hopes to become a bar
rister. He continues to do volunteer work for Guilt Trips in his spare time.
MEATBALL has been banned from the next-door neighbour’s garden. Lauren adamantly refuses to let anyone have him neutered. Three of his mongrel children live in the junior block on campus.
DANA SMITH dropped out of her London art college. She works part-time in an art gallery owned by her Ugandan boyfriend.
DANTE WELSH attended the Old Bailey to see the sentencing of Ralph Donnington and was delighted to see the lengthy sentence handed down. The ex-girlfriend of a Brigand came forward shortly afterwards stating that she was willing to testify that both she and her former husband had been involved in a clean-up operation that followed the 2003 murder of Dante’s parents and two older siblings.
The murder trial is expected to take place in 2011 and Dante will be the star witness. If the Führer is convicted of the quadruple murder, he can expect to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Dante’s younger sister HOLLY WELSH is expected to begin CHERUB basic training in 2012.
BETHANY PARKER was expelled from CHERUB after campus security discovered that she was engaged in a relationship with a boy she’d met during a mission two years earlier. This was regarded as a severe breach of security regulations.
She now lives near to CHERUB campus, lodging with the mission controller Maureen Evans.
Following the award of navy shirts, KEVIN SUMNER and JAKE PARKER are both fourteen and regarded as part of the latest generation of outstanding CHERUB agents. Jake occasionally visits his sister Bethany, but they still don’t get on.
BRUCE NORRIS spent most of his last year at CHERUB on a mission in the United States. He plans to study journalism and photography at university after taking a year off to travel the world with identical twins CALLUM and CONNOR REILLY.
Bruce also has a long-term goal to bulk up and become an Ultimate Fighting champion.