‘All right. I’ve thought of a way. It’s completely insane, but I have to try.’
G-Mamma stared dumbly as Janey reached into her PE bag. Grabbing a melted plimsoll in each hand, she pressed them against the treacly ball of her PE shirt, before slinging the bag back over her shoulder. Then, sliding her fingers under the tattered cloth flaps on the top of each sticky rubber disc, she reached out a hand and touched the glass wall of the building.
It held. Stuck to the pane by one hand, Janey reached her other arm over her head and smacked the second disc on to the glass too. That stuck as well. As she pulled the first hand off and stretched it above the second, she swung her body up the glass so that her feet left the ground and she found herself hanging on to the side of the bank like a long, pale slug.
‘Yo! Go, Janey! Go, Janey!’ shouted G-Mamma from beneath her, making hideous hip gyrations like a sackful of cheerleaders.
Janey glanced at her, but quickly decided that if she was going to do this, she had better not look down. After a few more suck-and-pulls, she was on a level with the roof of the nearby church, about a quarter of the way up the bank building.
Wondering if it would be more dangerous or less to climb with her eyes closed, Janey forced herself to go on lifting one hand above the other, dragging her weight up behind her. After a few minutes the muscles in her arms were burning, and Janey had to bite her lip hard to stop herself from crying out. She continued to climb until she could no longer hear a single word of whatever G-Mamma was chanting from the ground. By now Janey could see into the roof gardens of the neighbouring buildings. She must be near the top. But she only had the strength to move each disc a few centimetres at a time. She was really straining now, slowing down dramatically . . .
But there it was again – her mother’s voice.
‘I won’t keep repeating myself. My husband is dead. Solomon Brown is his brother. But we are not in contact, and I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
A mean, rough voice hissed just above Janey’s head: whoever was holding her mother must be standing close to the edge of the roof. ‘And I suppose,’ said the voice, ‘you have nothing to do with his little enterprises?’
‘Nothing at all. Surprising though it may seem, I don’t know much about frozen food. But I do believe Sol always was a clever chap, so it doesn’t surprise me that he went into business.’
‘Do you think we’re fools?’ barked a second voice. ‘We are the Sinerlesse, not simpletons. It’s not business, it’s espionage! Spying! And you’re in on it with Brown. He’s already been betrayed by one of his so-called allies. We know he’s got a secret worth stealing, so you might as well tell us what you know. Because if you don’t you’ll be taking a flying jump any minute now, lady.’
Janey gasped, inching closer to the roof. She could tell her mother was really angry by the way she was using her posh telephone voice.
‘I am a cleaner and a part-time chiropodist’s receptionist! Unless you think anyone’s interested in spying on Mrs Phillips having her corns done, I suspect you have confused me with someone else!’
Peeping over the row of bricks edging the roof terrace, Janey stared in amazement. Her mother was tied to an executive leather chair with what looked like a string of fairy lights. Her neat white blouse was torn at the collar, while her sensible skirt was edging up her tan tights. She was trying to sit delicately, knees together, as the two men on either side of her spun the chair backwards and forwards to face each of them in turn.
A tall, thin man with a straggle of fair hair had his back to Janey, his shirt clinging damply to his skin so the cotton had turned almost black. He raised his hands at the shorter man, who was wearing a dark red jacket.
‘This is getting us nowhere. Maybe Solomon’s dememorized her or something. Let’s chuck her over.’
But the other man was not prepared to give up yet. In a jerky movement he swivelled the leather chair back towards him. ‘Look, perhaps I can help jog your memory. If you’re bluffing, you’ll be very sorry. The Sinerlesse Group does not appreciate time-wasters. And we always get what we want. Now maybe, just maybe, you’re not working for Solomon,’ he growled, ‘but what about the Spylet?’
‘Spylet?’ Janey’s mother asked incredulously. ‘Are you completely deranged? What is a Spylet?’
‘Oh, come on, you know what a Spylet is! You are making me very impatient, lady! Ariel demands to know. Did. Your. Spylet. Daughter. Decode. Solomon’s secret message?’
With every clipped word the man gave the fairy lights a little twist. The sharp glass centres were starting to prick into Mrs Brown’s flesh. But Janey’s mother was defiant.
‘Now just you leave my daughter out of this! Janey has enough to worry about already, growing up without a father and starting new schools and finding no friends. She does not need upsetting any further! Do you hear me?’
The short man’s shoulders rounded, straining his maroon jacket so far that the stitches down the back seam stretched to breaking point. Janey felt sure he was about to attack her mum. It was now or never. With a huge grunt she hoisted herself over the wall, rolling on to the roof behind him.
‘Mum! Look out!’
Ignoring her mother’s astounded expression, Janey shook off the suction pads and reached into her PE bag. The stocky man spun round and headed towards her. Janey shoved her fist at him, flinging a handful of shredded navy skirt, sticky with treacle, into his face so that he couldn’t see a thing. He ran to and fro, hollering and scrabbling wildly at his face.
‘My eyes! My eyes! What is this stuff?’
Janey pushed him away, towards an open skylight, and reached for the last remaining item in her bag as the tall, thin man loped across the roof towards her. She quickly made a ball of her sticky PE shirt and threw it at him. It stuck to the rooftop in front of his outstretched leg and, before he could stop his foot landing in it, the man found himself glued to the spot. He was unable to run, except in a half-circle with one foot stuck fast. He dropped to the ground, cursing wildly and trying to free his foot.
‘Quick, Mum!’ yelled Janey, yanking at the fairy lights. ‘Come on!’
Grabbing her mother’s hand, Janey pulled her through a door that stood in a little turret in the middle of the roof. They sped down one flight of stairs and found themselves in a corridor. And there, standing like a technicolour usherette with a broad smile on her face, was G-Mamma.
‘Come on! It’s fine to go down in the lift – they won’t be expecting that.’
Bewildered, Janey’s mum allowed herself to be dragged into the lift, stopping only to complain about how dirty and sticky Janey’s hands were. They plummeted towards the ground. As they shot through the sliding doors, Janey heard the ping of the bell: the Sinerlesse henchmen on the roof had freed themselves and were now on their way down.
But the men were too slow. As they hurtled out through the revolving door, Janey saw a low, sleek car parked in the courtyard. She glanced quickly at G-Mamma, who simply nodded and pointed a remote control towards it. After she had pushed her mother on to the back seat, Janey threw herself in and slammed the door shut. G-Mamma hurried to the driver’s seat, activated the central locking and sped away, just as the men shot out of the building and skittered on to the cobbles.
Once they were a safe distance away, G-Mamma started to shake with laughter. ‘Whoo! Check you out, SPI-girl! What a natural you are, Janey! A hot-shot, pot-shot Spylet! Oh, yes! Your first run-in with the Sinerlesse and you made mincemeat of them. Ha!’ She wiped tears away from her eyes. ‘Reminds you of the old days, doesn’t it, Gina?’
Janey’s mother shrugged herself into an upright position. ‘Enough! No more of this insane talk, please! I have no idea what you’re on about. I have never met you before in my life. And I would certainly remember if I had,’ she added, with a look of distaste at G-Mamma’s lurid outfit. ‘Please, just let us out here – we’ll get a taxi the rest of the way. To the police station.’
; G-Mamma’s face crumpled. ‘Oh, this is terrible, Gina! Gina Bellarina! Do you really not remember me? Or anything about your life before all this? Solomon’s sizzling sausages! I never thought he’d wipe everything from your memory banks! So that’s why you haven’t given Janey any Spylet training!’
Janey sighed. This had been the weirdest day of her life, and suddenly she felt incredibly tired. She longed to go home, eat beans on toast and sit with her mum watching something very boring on the television. Antiques Roadshow sounded good. ‘I told you, G-Mamma. I said you’d made a mistake. My mum is just plain Jean Brown. And I’m just plain old Janey Brown.’
Stamping a black wellington boot on the brake, G-Mamma screeched the car to a halt and turned to the pair in the back.
‘Oh no, you are not!’ she hissed. ‘There is nothing plain about either of you. And since you are severely uneducated, I’m going to have to be some amazing SPI:KE. Let me tell you something, Janey: your mother is Gina Bellarina, and she is the best there has ever been. Well, until now.’
Janey swallowed hard. ‘What do you mean, “until now”?’
‘Because until now,’ explained G-Mamma carefully, ‘it seems you really have been just plain old Janey Brown. But under my direction, honey, you are going to grow and grow. You will be what your parents have not allowed you to be. It’s in your past. And it’s in your future. There’s a whole new part of you just waiting to burst out. From now on, my dear godchild, you are Jane Blonde, Sensational Spylet. Welcome to our world.’
g-mamma tells all
Jean Brown sniffed. ‘Sugar?’
‘Four, please,’ replied G-Mamma, leaning against the work-surface so the mugs nearly disappeared under her billowing bosom. Janey’s mother pointedly moved the cups and nodded towards the chair next to Janey.
‘Why don’t you sit down? And after we’ve had a nice calming cup of tea, I can call the hospital for you, if you know which one you came from.’
Shaking her head, G-Mamma meandered across the kitchen and lowered herself on to a seat at the small breakfast table. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to have to do to get you to believe me, Gina baby!’ Her large mascaraed eyes looked close to tears.
Janey watched her mother’s expression harden as she slapped a mug of tea down before G-Mamma. ‘I don’t have time for this, Gee M . . . Gee . . . whatever your name is. Janey and I have both had a terrible day. Strange men come to my home telling me my brother has had an accident and is asking for me; then they string me up with Christmas decorations when I go to find him. These lunatics then try to convince me that they are some kind of super-villains and that my brother-in-law, who I’ve never even met, is involved in some kind of dodgy dealing to do with spies and goodness knows what. And then some mad woman dressed like a circus act forces my lovely only daughter to shinny up the side of an eight-storey building. In fact, what am I doing even talking to you? I’m calling the police . . .’
Janey loved her mum when she was like this. She was usually fairly quiet and unassuming, getting on with her jobs and caring for Janey in an unremarkable way, but she could turn on this icy logic to get her own way. Even the way Jean Brown was holding her mug of tea, while her other hand rested protectively on Janey’s shoulder, looked mildly threatening.
‘Now come on, Gina,’ interrupted G-Mamma. ‘What kind of story is that for the police? Fairy lights and supervillains! Even I think it sounds nuts.’
Janey couldn’t help admiring G-Mamma’s tactics. She obviously wasn’t perturbed by Mrs Brown’s threats to call the police, in much the same way as she had taken no notice when Janey’s mum had insisted on getting out of the car. G-Mamma had simply sped to the Brown’s front door with a taloned finger firmly on the central-locking button. She’d then invited herself in on the pretext of checking the house for unwanted visitors, loitering in Janey’s room and conducting an overlong search of its darkest recesses.
Slurping noisily at her tea, G-Mamma nodded towards Janey. ‘You just have to let me tell this poor child what she is and how I’m going to help her.’
‘And then you’ll go?’ asked Mrs Brown.
‘For the time being, yes.’
Janey’s mum sighed. ‘Well, I can’t believe I’m actually going along with this. At least do me the courtesy of making it short.’
With her chin in her hands, Janey looked from one adult to the other. She really just wanted to get on with her homework and feel normal again. But she had the oddest feeling that, after today, life would never be normal again. And tired as she was, Janey couldn’t help noticing a little lift in her stomach, as if her insides were smiling.
G-Mamma beamed cheerily. ‘So, Janey, let me tell you who your mother is, when she’s not pretending to be Mrs Suburbia, and who your dear, dear father was.’ She ignored Mrs Brown’s tuts and sighs. ‘Your mother is . . . was . . . Gina Bellarina. An international SPI. The best. The most beautiful. The sharpest knife in the drawer. She comes from a long line of female spies that is said to include Mata Hari herself.’
Janey tried not to look at her mother, who was making little circles near her temple with her index finger.
‘And what about my . . . my dad?’
‘What do you know about him, Janey?’ asked G-Mamma gently.
Swallowing hard, Janey looked down at the table. ‘His name was Boz Brown. He was a scientist, but he got killed in an explosion after an experiment went wrong, just before I was born. His friend Reggie Baron died too. I don’t know what Dad looked like – after the explosion his house burned down and all the family photos were destroyed. But I bet he was really, really handsome.’
G-Mamma’s eyes misted over and she stared with an odd mixture of disbelief and compassion at Janey’s mum. ‘He certainly was, child. Only the most handsome would do for Gina Bellarina. And the most brilliant. That was his real name, you know. Boris Brilliance Brown. Nearly every member of his family, right down from the wonderful Capability Brown, has been a creative genius of some kind – scientists, architects, writers, philosophers.’
‘Or really clever businessmen, like Uncle Solomon!’ exclaimed Janey.
‘Exactly, Blonde-girl,’ said G-Mamma with a smile. ‘I’ve never had the great pleasure of meeting your uncle face to face, but I do know he’s a genius. He heads up the Solomon’s Polificational Investigations network I mentioned before.’
‘Polificational?’ Janey asked.
‘Political, scientific and educational. All at once! He runs the SPI organization without ever revealing himself, so the SPIs who work for him aren’t in any more danger than necessary. He works on projects that only a handful of people in the government know about. And he’s kind and generous and gives ice lollies to hot children! Although the Sol’s Lols business is just a cover, of course.’
‘He’s never sent me ice lollies, but I have had some presents from him,’ agreed Janey.
G-Mamma’s eyes lit up. ‘Solomon has sent you things? Have you kept them? We’ll have to check them all out later. Bound to be a few SPI-buys in there!’ She saw Janey’s face screw up in confusion. ‘SPI-buys are gadgets, girly-girl. You’ll see.’
‘No, I’ll see!’ cut in Mrs Brown.
‘G-Mamma, tell me more about my dad,’ said Janey, glaring at her mum. She wasn’t going to lose this opportunity to talk to someone who had actually known her father.
‘Well, your uncle Solomon is brilliant, as I’ve said. But your father was perhaps even more brilliant. Solomon was so proud of his brother that he wanted to carry on his work after Boz died. Your dad was a great, great scientist. You knew that already. But he was much more besides. Like your mother here, he was a SPI. A mighty SPI. The best! The perfect match for Gina the Great.’
At this Jean Brown threw her hands in the air, still clutching her mug. Slops of cold tea splashed down her blouse. ‘This is insane. Stop it at once. I’m starting to throw drinks down myself, when what I actually want to do is throw them at you. I’m going to change my top, and when I’m back
down in one minute I want you out of here. And then I want to forget this whole ridiculous day.’
G-Mamma nodded resignedly. But the second Mrs Brown had left the room, she reached over and grabbed Janey’s hands. ‘She doesn’t believe it because her brain’s been fried!’
‘You really think her memory’s been wiped?’ gulped Janey.
‘Yep. Solomon did it himself. And I think I know why: to protect you, Janey. To give you a chance at a normal, happy life. That would never have happened if your mum had continued her SPI work. So Gina’s memory was meddled with – but I never knew until now that she’d been completely wiped.’
‘She does say she can’t remember much about my dad other than that she really loved him,’ said Janey quietly. ‘But I thought that was just an excuse so she didn’t have to talk about him. Maybe you’re right.’
‘I am, Janey. And know this, Jane Blonde: you are the daughter of two of the greatest SPIs the world has ever known. Your genes are Out Of Sight. Impeccable. We could only begin to imagine what the combination of Gina Bellarina and Boris Brilliance Brown could have produced. Well, we don’t need to imagine any more. Here you are. And here I am, at last. I’ve always been your godmother, Janey – watching from a distance to make sure nothing happened to you. And Sol’s Sticky Lols, your life’s been pretty dull so far, I have to say! But now things are hotting up, mighty all-righty. Solomon has made a discovery so huge that he’s not sure who he can trust. He has already been betrayed by someone inside his closest circle, which is exactly why the Sinerlesse Group are after him. The double-crosser tipped them off, told them that Solomon is hiding a big, big secret. They’ll do anything to get hold of it. They’re motivated by pure greed and evil, Janey, which makes them very dangerous indeed. You saw today what they’re capable of. Anyway, Solomon has had to go into hiding to protect what he knows, but just before he disappeared, he sent you a message – and he sent me here to be your SPI:KE.’
Jane Blonde: Sensational Spylet Page 3