Meryl restrained the man lunging at her by grabbing his hand. As his thumb crunched, she wrenched his arm behind his back, then deliberately tripped him up and sent him sprawling towards the giant who’d accused her of looking like a man.
‘I suggest you leave,’ she said tautly.
‘That’s not a nice way to speak to a gentleman,’ the giant said, as he reached around to grab Meryl’s bum and suggestively flicked his tongue in and out.
All her life, Meryl had put up with blokes calling her butch and making jokes about how often she shaved, or how she probably had testicles. She used her powerful physique to give the giant an explosive shove. He stumbled back and lost his footing as he tripped on a kerb stone.
‘Try touching me again and see what you get,’ Meryl shouted.
The other four men looked warily at Meryl as they started backing up towards the car park.
‘Lesbian,’ the giant shouted.
‘If all men were like you I would be,’ Meryl yelled back.
Meryl sounded a touch upset and the eleven cherubs stifled their laughter as she turned towards the teenager with the clipboard. He looked shaken up.
‘You OK?’ she asked.
The kid shook his head. ‘I hate this job. You wouldn’t believe the crap I put up with for minimum wage. I wish I’d got the job at McDonald’s, you get so much less hassle there.’
‘Drunk blokes are all dickheads,’ Kerry said sympathetically.
The teenager shook his head. ‘Hen parties are even worse. Half a dozen women saying that you’re a nice boy and trying to pinch your bum. They’re complete animals.’
James and Kyle couldn’t help giggling.
‘Anyway,’ the teenager said as he looked down at his clipboard. ‘You lot aren’t due on for another twenty minutes, but I owe you one for getting rid of that bunch of idiots, so you might as well grab some gloves and helmets and use their slot to have a couple of extra races.’
*
The dune buggies were less than two metres long. They only had small motorbike engines mounted behind the driver, but their open chassis and aluminium roll cage weighed less than fifty kilos, enabling them to accelerate from dead still to their 30kph top speed in less than three seconds. With rock-hard suspension, tiny steering wheels and seats less than fifteen centimetres off the ground it felt much faster.
‘This is awesome,’ James grinned, flipping up his visor as he stepped out of his buggy and used one of the cloths standing on the edge of the course to wipe his helmet.
Like everyone else, Kerry was wet and covered in mud. ‘I’m freezing,’ she groaned, as she bounced on tiptoes and tucked her hands under her armpits.
James looked concerned. ‘Don’t you like it?’
‘It’s ace,’ Kerry grinned. ‘But next time I reckon we’ll do it for someone who has their birthday in the summer.’
Meryl and all the others were getting out of their buggies and coming towards them. The course was divided into three sections. The first was a muddy paddock with a few little bumps where you drove around in circles getting a feel for the buggies. The second section, which the CHERUB group had just completed, was a time trial on a winding course. It started off easy, but ended up with three large jumps that landed you in deep water if you didn’t take them at full speed.
‘OK everyone,’ the skinny teen said, adopting a slightly formal tone. ‘Results of the time trial for the Spencer party. In third place, with a time of seven minutes and sixteen seconds, car number eight, James Adams.’
A few cherubs clapped, but they all had thickly padded driving gloves on, so it didn’t make a lot of noise.
‘In second place, seven minutes fifteen and a half seconds, car number three, Meryl Spencer.’
‘In your face, kiddywinks,’ Meryl screamed.
‘And our winner – with a time of six minutes and thirty-six seconds that wouldn’t shame some of our regular visitors – Bethany Parker.’ James tutted as the teen presented Bethany with a plastic trophy that looked like it cost about fifteen pence to make.
‘Champion of the world,’ Bethany yelled, as Gabrielle snapped her picture with a camera phone.
‘Drop dead you stupid cow,’ James mumbled.
Kerry and Mo were standing closest to James and couldn’t help laughing. ‘You love her really,’ Mo whispered.
‘OK,’ the teen with the clipboard shouted. ‘I’m gonna open the gate and I want you to drive through to the competition track. You normally get ten laps, but we’ve got some time in hand, so I’ll let you have fifteen.
‘In this race you’ll be in direct competition with each other. Anyone who is overly aggressive will be red-flagged by the marshals and must pull into the pits. Any questions … ? OK then, get back in your buggies and make sure that your safety belts are fastened securely.’
The noise was deafening as the twelve buggies drove down a narrow alleyway. They had to wait a couple of minutes while the stewards wheeled off a broken-down buggy from the previous race and straightened up the tyre walls.
The twelve drivers were lined up on the grid in the order that they’d finished the time trial. The floodlit course was built into a hillside and dozens of daily races had turned it into a mud pit. James lined up in third, with Meryl and Bethany in front and Kerry alongside him.
He turned to Kerry and shouted over the drone of the engines. ‘Gonna kick your arse, girlfriend.’
Kerry turned and flicked James off. ‘Don’t think I’ll let you win, just ’cos it’s your birthday.’
James revved as the three red lights came on and slotted the transmission into drive the second they went out. But he felt a sharp jolt as Kyle – who must have started before the lights went out – rammed into his back.
The shunt actually gave James momentum and he got ahead of Kerry. Unfortunately, Bethany’s buggy was driving its wheels into the mud and he was about to smash into it. He snapped his steering wheel left to avoid the collision, but in the process he swerved into Kerry’s path and sandwiched her against the red-and-white-striped kerb.
A couple of cars swept past James on the outside as he tangled with Kerry, but he had the racing line into the tight first corner and came out with only Meryl Spencer ahead of him.
For the next two corners, James raced a couple of metres behind Meryl’s rear light. He fought to see through the mud spraying off her back tyres, while Kerry, Bruce and Bethany’s headlights blazed in his rear-view mirror.
James’ adrenalin level surged as he spotted Meryl going into a corner too fast. Her back end jiggled out – and while it didn’t look dramatic, she lost a lot of momentum. James and the three cars on his tail eased past her on the next straight.
James was thrilled at being in the lead, but a gentle bend gave him his first glimpse of the maddest part of the course. The back straight was four buggies wide, but it ran from top to bottom of the hill, starting off almost vertical before flattening out at the bottom as it tapered into a straight with two steep ramps.
The buggy was out of control on the steepest part of the slope and James found the steering wheel slipping through his hands as he battled to keep going.
With gloomy lighting and an uneven surface, there was an element of luck in going down the hill. While James hit a bump, Bruce got a better run over on the right-hand side and managed to glide past Kerry and take the lead off James.
But Bruce’s extra speed was his downfall. As the slope straightened out and the track narrowed to lead into the ramps, his buggy aquaplaned into the tyre wall and spun the width of the track, missing James by centimetres, before crashing into the tyre wall facing backwards. By the time Bruce had found space to turn back the right way, he’d dropped to last place.
Kerry and James were side by side as they flew over the two jumps, but in their anxiety to stay ahead they entered the final corner of the circuit too fast. Both buggies skidded out wide, enabling Bethany to power-slide through on the inside. She led by more than ten metres as they crossed th
e finish line for the first time.
James tried to get back at Bethany, but she was too talented. While James skidded and occasionally touched the tyre wall, Bethany seemed able to judge her speed and braking perfectly edged further into the distance with every corner.
By the end of lap eleven, Bethany was out of sight. James and Kerry were still battling for second, with Meryl, Kyle, Mo and Lauren bunched up twenty metres behind, waiting to pounce on any kind of mistake. Michael had spun and was about fifty metres behind the pack, while Gabrielle and Rat were hopeless and had both been lapped by everyone except Bruce, who’d embedded his car in the tyre wall during a reckless attempt to fight his way back to the front of the field.
With two laps remaining, James caught a nose full of fumes as he turned on to the finishing straight. He was delighted to see Bethany standing in a smoky pit lane, furiously undoing the buckle on her helmet.
Perfect, James thought to himself, as he skimmed past Gabrielle on the outside to lap her for the second time. His fingers ached from clutching the steering wheel. As he turned into the first corner, he had to slam his brakes to avoid ploughing into Lauren, who’d been allowed through on the inside by Rat.
James was furious with Rat for showing Lauren such blatant favouritism, but he shut it out of his mind because he was now sandwiched tight between Lauren and Kerry. He was delighted when he saw Lauren mess up the line into the third corner and retook the lead, with Kerry right up behind him.
After the gentle curve, James found himself bouncing down the steep back straight, with Kerry coming out of his slipstream and pulling up alongside him. They stayed side by side as they got nearer to the bottom, where the course narrowed for the first ramp.
James was on the racing line and smiling inside his helmet because Kerry would have to brake and drop in behind him unless she wanted to plough into the tyre wall.
But she didn’t back off. With less than twenty metres to the jump, Kerry pulled up wheel to wheel with James and turned in to nudge him aside. If James gave way, they’d both make it over the jump, but Kerry would have had the best line for the second jump and the final corner. He’d effectively be handing Kerry the lead into the final lap and that wasn’t going to happen.
At the last second, Kerry realised that she’d got it wrong. She hit her brake and steered left, but it was too late and she slammed into tyres at the point where the course tapered, clipping the rear of James’ buggy as she did so.
As Kerry disappeared amidst the tyres, James felt his back end slide out as he hit the front of the mud ramp. The change in direction had a dramatic effect on his speed, and instead of skimming over the puddle on the opposite side, his buggy careered off the edge of the ramp and landed on its side atop a pile of tyres. He came to an unceremonious halt, crashing into a foam barrier that had been erected to stop flying buggies from rolling clean over the tyre wall and hitting the trees on the other side.
James’ engine cut automatically when his buggy tipped over, but insult was added to injury as Lauren’s buggy and the three behind it skimmed over the ramp and sprayed him with muddy water as they nosedived into the puddle beyond it. Once the first batch of buggies was past, James hurriedly unbuckled his seatbelt, before rolling over the slippery tyres and dropping down into the mulch on the opposite side.
‘Why didn’t you move over, you idiot?’ Kerry yelled, as she jumped off the tyre wall and angrily flipped up her visor.
‘I had the racing line,’ James said, as he fought with his helmet buckle.
‘But you must have known I’d crash into the tyres.’
James grinned. ‘How’s that my problem?’
‘Pig,’ Kerry yelled, as she hurled her helmet at James. ‘I thought you loved me. If you loved me, you’d have let me win.’
James started to laugh as he tugged off his helmet and unzipped his foam neck brace. ‘Love is one thing, buggy racing is another.’
Kerry put her hands on her hips and scowled at him. ‘Wipe that smile off before I thump you.’
‘You gonna make me?’ James stepped closer to Kerry.
‘You know, even with your hair all wild and mud all over your clothes, you’re still sexy.’
Kerry tried keeping up her scowl, but she couldn’t help smiling at the compliment. ‘You’re lucky it’s your birthday.’
‘Knew you couldn’t stay mad for long,’ James said, as he leaned forwards and gave Kerry a kiss.
16. ROOMS
CHERUB’s hotel points had stretched to the Lake Lodge, a luxurious hotel, sports club and spa built inside a converted country manor house. Meryl stood at the desk in an opulent reception area, with an ornate ceiling, tapestries hanging on the wall and a man in a penguin suit playing a grand piano.
The guests were mostly middle-aged and elderly couples, heading into the restaurant in evening gowns and smart suits. They all looked surprised when they noticed the eleven muddy youngsters standing by the revolving door in their socks.
As the receptionist tapped her keyboard, swiped Meryl’s credit card and offered her a long form to fill in with the names of all the kids on it, the lanky hotel manager raised the counter flap and swept up alongside her. ‘Geraldine, perhaps you can give this party their room keys now and Miss Spencer can come downstairs and complete the formalities when they’ve cleaned up. The young guests are dripping on the carpet.’
The manager rapidly programmed sets of room keys and handed each one to a pair of kids.
‘And one room is supposed to be a suite,’ Meryl said. ‘It was part of the offer when you booked more than five rooms.’
As the birthday boy, James got the suite and was seriously impressed. It was four times the size of his room on campus, with a king-sized four-poster bed, a separate living-room with a giant TV hanging on the wall, a real fire and a steaming plunge pool outside on the balcony.
He took his second shower of the day, then put on a hotel robe and slippers before calling Kerry on her mobile.
‘Hey, sweetcakes. This room is the dogs, what’s yours like?’
‘Pretty snazzy,’ Kerry said. ‘Not as fancy as your suite though, I bet.’
James picked a couple of grapes out of the crystal fruit bowl beside his bed. ‘The only thing is, the porter was supposed to be bringing my bag up. He hasn’t left it with you, has he?’
‘We had it brought to Lauren’s room,’ Kerry explained. ‘I’m waiting for Gabrielle to finish doing her hair, then we’re all heading your way.’
‘Can’t I come and get my clothes?’
‘You can wait,’ Kerry said stiffly and James immediately twigged why.
‘Oooh, am I getting presents?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
James crashed out on his massive bed and smiled as he brushed his cheek on the soft hotel robe. The buggy racing had been superb and now he was all clean and relaxed in this incredible hotel room. It was exactly what he needed after the last few weeks. The only downer was that his nose wasn’t fully healed yet and it always seemed to ache when he came in out of the cold.
Meryl was first to knock, dressed in her hotel robe and trailed by a room service trolley stacked with chocolate biscuits and insulated jugs of coffee and hot cocoa.
James was warming his fingers on a mug when his ten companions arrived en masse. Lauren – who had her race winner’s rosette pinned on her hotel robe – was wheeling a snazzy Samsonite case, which she placed on James’ bed before giving him a kiss.
‘Happy birthday, bruv.’
‘Is this my bag?’ James asked, slightly confused.
‘It is now,’ Meryl nodded, as the kids poured out cups of coffee and cocoa. ‘Compliments of CHERUB. You’ve only got that tatty backpack you use on training exercises and I thought you could do with something decent when you go on short missions.’
‘If I’m ever allowed on another mission,’ James sighed, as he leaned over and unzipped the bag.
‘Of course you’ll go on more missions,’ Meryl grinne
d, ‘The investigation will be over in no time.’
James was slightly stunned as he flipped back the lid. He’d expected to find a present on top of his stuff, but he didn’t recognise a single thing inside the case.
‘Whoah,’ James gasped, as he pulled out a bag of expensive-looking gents’ toiletries, complete with a fancy shaving brush and mirror. ‘Body Shop toiletries and Paul Smith eau de toilette, very chic.’
‘I know you don’t shave yet,’ Kyle grinned. ‘But it won’t be long.’
‘Cheers.’ James began removing a neatly pressed white shirt and a pair of chinos. They were pretty nice, although they weren’t the kind of things he’d usually wear.
‘Us girls got together and decided that you needed a makeover,’ Lauren explained.
‘And we’re going down to the restaurant for a meal later,’ Kerry added. ‘We didn’t want you lowering the tone by sitting there in an Arsenal shirt and a pair of Nikes like you usually do.’
‘Thanks,’ James said with a grin, as he took out some new pairs of socks, a striped silk tie, a couple of Gap T-shirts, a pair of lairy swimming shorts and a pack of Calvin Klein briefs. None of the items were hugely expensive, but it made him feel good because all his friends had clearly got together and planned out the best way of making his birthday celebration special.
‘I know you wear boxers, but I think you’ve got the right kind of body for those,’ Kerry explained, as James inspected the briefs.
‘You can come over to my room in them any time,’ Kyle offered.
‘I’m sure I will, Kyle,’ James said, shaking his head as Bethany and Lauren made eww noises. He wasn’t quite sure if the noises were because Kyle was gay or at the thought of him in a pair of CK briefs.
The last items in the bag were a pair of shoes and a 2007 Manchester United album.
‘They’re your shoes,’ Kerry explained, ‘but we gave them a polish.’
‘The first they’ve ever had, judging by the state of them,’ Gabrielle added.
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