Jane Blonde: Twice the Spylet

by Jill Marshall

  ‘They’re weird.’ Janey held up a pair of shoes – light summery sandals made from pale blue cloth, with long cotton straps that crossed around the ankle and up the leg. They didn’t look at all practical for running in, or doing anything else in for that matter. She couldn’t imagine why her father, who knew better than anyone that spying could be physically challenging, would send something so impractical.

  ‘They’re not weird,’ said Jean, foraging around in the bottom of the box. ‘They’re espadrilles. Summer shoes. It’s probably a bit cold for them just at the moment, but you can put them away for a couple of months. Look, there’s even directions on how to put them on!’

  She held up a little piece of paper. It certainly was headed ‘Directions’, with a picture of the sandals beneath it, but apart from that all there was on the paper scrap was a diagram of a compass with the S circled in pencil. ‘Well, that’s not much use,’ said Jean Brown. ‘Never mind though. I used to have some when I was younger. It’s just like lacing up ballet shoes. It’s strange he didn’t send a note or anything.’

  Janey nodded. There wasn’t much she could say really. Jean wasn’t to know that Abe wished dearly to be with his family again but couldn’t risk putting them in danger. And anyway, he had sent a note, saying ‘Directions’, along with a southerly compass point. She just didn’t yet know what it meant.

  ‘I’ll just go and put them away,’ she said, replacing the lid on the box, ‘and then we can go and do those errands you wanted. My room’s all clean.’

  Her mother leaned over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. ‘Good girl. That sounds like a plan. Maybe we can go for lunch somewhere.’

  ‘Yeah, great,’ said Janey.

  She went quietly to her bedroom, wondering what the note meant. He was obviously somewhere south. But south of where? South London? South Pacific? It was a mystery. Bending down, Janey shuffled the box in beside its twin that held her SPI-buys, smiling at the two boxes of Dad-related goodies.

  It was only then that she noticed something.

  The hair that G-Mamma had stuck across the SPI-buys box just half an hour before was missing.

  Janey’s gut churned. Her spy instincts were suddenly all a-quiver, ready to alert her to danger. She’d just heard from her dad, only minutes ago. And already someone had been in her room – possibly trying to track down new information about Abe’s whereabouts. Whenever someone was looking for her father, the problems began. She would have to warn him somehow, get in touch and let him know that he might be in danger, that she and her mother and the other spies might also be at risk once again.

  And unable to help herself, Janey suddenly grinned. Maybe the Easter break was not going to be as dull as she had predicted. In fact, it could be quite the opposite. Jane Blonde’s next mission was about to begin.

  two-way mirrors

  ‘It’s gone! The hair on my box of SPI-buys has disappeared,’ cried Janey, scooting into the Spylab on her ASPIC.

  G-Mamma looked down at her, puzzled, from the cabinet in which she was stowing the talcum powder. ‘What, already?’

  Raising one eyebrow sceptically, G-Mamma headed back through the tunnel to Janey’s room. Janey popped through behind her, still crouching on the ASPIC. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘Gone! Isn’t it? Disappeared.’

  ‘Keep your hair on, Blonde-girl! Ha, get it? Keep your hair . . . oh, never mind.’ G-Mamma finished poking around under the bed and sat up, flushed but triumphant. ‘It’s not gone. It had fallen off on to the carpet next to your box of goodies. We’ll have to stick it harder next time. Here it is.’

  Janey peered at the hair, which lay across G-Mamma’s palm like overcooked pasta; shiny, limp and mushroom brown. ‘Oh. OK. I think I was getting a bit ahead of myself.’ She giggled. ‘Get it? A “head” of myself?’

  ‘Hey, I do the jokes,’ said G-Mamma sternly, ‘and the raps. You just do your spying, like a good little Spylet.’

  Janey smiled as she reached out a dampened finger to take the hair from G-Mamma. Pulling it closer to her face, she stopped abruptly. ‘Hang on, G-Mamma. This hair is darker than mine. Only a shade or two, but definitely darker.’

  G-Mamma peered at it. ‘I think it’s just dirt, honey-child. Maybe you didn’t vac under the bed quite as well as you should have done.’

  ‘Oh.’ It made sense to Janey. Twice now, they’d wet the hair with saliva, and hair certainly did get darker when it was wet. In between times, it had fallen into the dust ingrained into the carpet. Of course it was dirt. Janey gave herself a mental shake, checked that nothing in the box had been disturbed and slammed the lid home, laying the hair carefully across the join.

  ‘Can I go now?’ said G-Mamma, waving the espadrille directions that Janey had brought upstairs. ‘I want to run a few tests on this. And I’ve got croissants in the oven.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Janey. ‘I’m going out with Mum now anyway.’

  ‘Goody!’ G-Mamma’s voice got fainter as the metal panel at the Spylab end of the tunnel closed. ‘I’d like an egg as big as my head, filled with Quality Street, please. Oh yay, a rap!

  ‘An egg, choccy egg, as big as my head,

  With Quality Street, so good to eat.’

  G-Mamma rapped on around the lab, probably dancing. It sounded fun. Janey would have liked to join in, instead of trailing around after her mum buying Easter eggs, but she scampered down the stairs anyway. Sure enough, her mother was walking down the hallway, holding out Janey’s denim jacket. ‘It’s still a bit chilly,’ said Jean. ‘Put this on, and I’ll go and get the car warmed up.’

  Janey thought enviously of Abe. Somewhere south. Somewhere warm! She looked at her pale reflection in the hall mirror and wondered what it would be like to get a tan. Maybe her hair would lighten in the sun. She might look more like Jane Blonde all of the time! Her mirror image stared back at her, grey eyes fixed on her own as Janey reached up to touch the sore spot where G-Mamma had yanked out her hair. Thankfully, thought Janey, peering more closely at her reflection, her SPI:KE had only taken a couple of hairs, so she didn’t have a bald patch or anything. She grinned. Sometimes G-Mamma was quite barmy.

  Janey was still thinking this as she turned to the door, smiling to herself, when a chill rattled down her spine. She turned quickly back to the mirror. Her reflection gazed back at her earnestly. Janey smiled again, and the reflection smiled back. Wiggling her eyebrows, she was relieved to see Janey-in-the-mirror wiggle hers too. She must have been dreaming, but for a moment she could have sworn that when she was smiling at the mirror, the image in the smooth silvery surface had . . . had not smiled back. Even though her logic told her that it couldn’t be true, Janey’s spy nerve endings jangled ominously, and she breathed quickly all over the mirror as G-Mamma had just shown her. No marks. But if anyone messed with the mirror while she was out, she should be able to spot it when she got back.

  Janey jumped into the passenger seat. ‘Can I borrow your mobile, Mum?’ She wasn’t allowed her own, which was very funny when she thought about how many advanced gadgets she had in the Spylab next door. Jean handed it over as she drove off.

  ‘Alfie!’ said Janey into the mobile. ‘Can you come over later? I’ve . . . I’m getting you an Easter egg.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to bribe me,’ drawled her friend. ‘Mum’s got me polishing the SPI-buys, and I’d have done anything to get out of it. But since you’re offering, I’ll have a Chocolate Orange.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Come round after lunch.’

  She followed her mum into the shop. ‘Alfie’s coming over afterwards. His mum wants him out from under her feet.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’ One mention of Mrs Halliday was enough to persuade Jean Brown. She thought the headmistress was marvellous, little knowing that she had once been her colleague super-SPI Halo. ‘Which one would you like?’

  Janey thought about it for a moment, then walked over to the chiller section and pulled out a white carton of free-range eggs. ‘I’d like these. Yo
u know, like we used to do when I was little? I’ve got some glitter and glue and stuff. We could hard-boil them and decorate them tomorrow.’

  Jean Brown hugged her daughter. ‘You’re a very unusual girl, Janey Brown.’

  You have no idea, thought Janey as she squeezed back.

  An hour or so later, they pulled up at home. Alfie was just riding up the path on his bicycle, which looked ordinary enough but which Janey knew to be a SPI-cycle, capable of going at immense speeds and even up the sides of buildings. He jumped off neatly, smiling at Mrs Brown. ‘Just in time,’ he said.

  ‘You and your mother are so punctual, Alfie,’ said Jean Brown. ‘Must be a result of being such a good headmistress.’

  Or being a super-SPI, thought Janey as she and Alfie trooped into the house after her mother. ‘I’m going to give Alfie his egg now,’ she said to her mum.

  ‘Well, I’m going to have a nice bath and read the paper,’ said Jean, heading off up the stairs. Once Janey was sure the door was closed, she beckoned Alfie over to the mirror.

  ‘Couple of weird things,’ she hissed. ‘I put a hair over my SPI-buys box and it was like someone had moved it, although I did find it again, but it seemed . . . different. And then I was looking in this mirror and I’d swear . . . I’d swear my reflection didn’t do what I did.’

  Alfie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I smiled like this.’ She grinned at Alfie, and he took a step backwards.

  ‘Weird. Don’t think I’d smile back either.’

  Janey batted him on the arm. ‘Be serious!’

  Janey huffed all over the mirror, watching all the time as her reflection huffed back. There were no signs at all that the mirror might have been tampered with, but she blew again just to be sure. Suddenly Alfie appeared in the reflection too.

  ‘Don’t want to spoil your little steam-train impressions or anything,’ he said, tapping on the mirror, ‘but I think you’ve missed something. If there really was something weird about the reflection, then it must be something at the back of the mirror. Did you check to see if it’s a two-way one? There might be someone on the other side!’

  Janey smacked herself on the head. ‘Of course! I forgot. You put your fingernail against the surface, and if there’s a gap between your nail and the nail in the reflection, it’s a two-way mirror.’

  ‘Like that,’ said Alfie, nodding towards his fingernail, which didn’t meet its reflection. ‘What’s behind here then?’

  The two Spylets leaned forward, each reaching out a hand to take the mirror down from the wall and discover what was behind it. Just as they seized the edge, Janey looked at herself in the shining surface. Her grey eyes gazed back at her, perplexed, then suddenly turned away. Janey’s reflection spun sideways like a soldier on parade, so that Janey, very curiously, was suddenly looking straight on at her own profile. Then, in the next instant, Janey’s mirror image disappeared out of sight.

  double trouble

  ‘Argh!’ The mirror slipped through Janey’s fingers and fell back against the wall.

  ‘OK. Now I believe you,’ said Alfie. ‘Quick! This must back on to the ground floor of G-Mamma’s house.’ He wrenched the mirror off the wall; sure enough, behind it was a smoky window through which G-Mamma’s downstairs toilet could be seen, squat as a burping bullfrog.

  ‘Put that back or Mum will find it,’ squeaked Janey. ‘And come on!’

  They took off through the front door and along the path to G-Mamma’s house, peeking in at the windows as they ran. The ground floor of the house was a mystery to Janey. She had only ever seen the first floor, which was entirely taken up by Spylab, and the back of the house leading to the garden. Of course, it should have occurred to her that G-Mamma must have some normal rooms like a bedroom, bathroom and proper kitchen – definitely a kitchen, given how much G-Mamma loved to eat.

  Alfie shoved at the front door, but it was firmly locked and didn’t so much as shudder under his fist. ‘Thought so. G-Mamma must keep this locked when she’s up in the Spylab so she can’t be taken by surprise. There must be another way in.’

  ‘Ring the doorbell!’

  Alfie shook his head. ‘She’s got Puff Doodly on at a million decibels. She’ll never hear us. Let’s go the fireplace way.’

  ‘We can’t; Mum’s upstairs.’ Janey looked around. ‘Round the back?’

  ‘There’s no way through.’ Alfie kicked furiously at the wild overgrowth blocking the side path that would have taken them to the back garden.

  But Janey had spotted something. ‘Wait there.’

  In seconds, she had bolted back to her own front door and leaped on to the seat of Alfie’s SPI-cycle. She whizzed down her garden path and out on to the street, then turned in again at G-Mamma’s gate, giving herself enough distance to get a decent run-up. Seeing what she was doing, Alfie threw himself on to the back of the bike. ‘It’s broad daylight. Are you insane?’ he shouted. ‘OK, don’t answer that!’

  ‘It’s the only way. My reflection could be up to anything in there. We have to catch it, or at least warn G-Mamma. Hold on!’ And Janey kicked off with her left foot, stood up on the pedals and pounded the pedals around as fast as her legs could possibly go. The path was only short – in two seconds flat they had reached the front of the house.

  ‘Wheelie – now!’ screamed Alfie.

  With all the strength she could summon, Janey hauled the bike up so that it teetered on its back wheel. It lurched towards the wall, and Alfie grabbed on tightly to Janey’s waist as the back of his head plunged perilously close to the garden path. In less than a second, however, they were whipping up the side of G-Mamma’s house like mercury up a thermometer. Next second: up the slant of the roof. Now past the chimney and down the other side. Janey held on, fingers rigid with terror, as the bike quivered for a moment on the edge of the roof and the ground loomed below them as if they were bungee jumpers. But still she kept pedalling. One more second, and they were zooming down the bricks at the back of the house, just about taking in G-Mamma’s startled eyes through the blinds at the Spylab window, and then they were off across the garden, skidding past the azaleas and avoiding the apple tree only because Alfie stuck his foot down and swerved them around it.

  Janey took her feet off the pedals and they slowed to a clumsy halt just short of a bed of thistles. ‘We managed to avoid them, at least!’ she said thankfully, jumping off the SPI-cycle and looking around for signs of the intruder. There was not much to see, but over near the fence leading into the allotments that straddled the gully between her street and the next she spotted two faint muddy footprints.

  Alfie looked closely at them. ‘They hardly show. Like they were only wearing socks or something.’

  He’s right, thought Janey. There was no tread imprinted into the flower bed, just the vague outline of a pair of feet. The only information they could possibly glean from this print was that the person had quite small feet and was wearing something with very smooth soles. ‘Fleet-feet!’ said Janey suddenly. ‘That would explain why the two prints are side by side – whoever it was activated the foot jump to get over the fence.’

  ‘The feet are around the same size as yours,’ Alfie mused.

  As Janey compared her foot size to the prints, a window opened behind them. ‘Spylets,’ snorted G-Mamma, hardly able to contain her fury enough to keep her voice down to a whisper, ‘keep the noise down, hide that SPI-cycle and get your bike-alicious booties back up here!’

  ‘I think you’re in trouble,’ hissed Alfie as they made their way to the back door, opened by remote from the Spylab, and climbed the spiral staircase.

  ‘Fancied a little joyride, did you?’ said G-Mamma, pursing her orange lips until her whole mouth puckered like an aged tangerine. ‘Just after lunch on a public holiday. Now do we think that was a a) a bad idea? Or b) a really really bad idea?’

  From Alfie’s sheepish expression, Janey could see that she was going to get no help. ‘We had to, G-Mamma! We were loo
king in the hall mirror and my reflection turned around and walked off. Why’ve you got a two-way mirror in your downstairs loo? Anyway, we tried to find my reflection but it had disappeared . . . and so we had to SPI-cycle over the house to try to catch it!’

  G-Mamma looked from one Spylet to the other, her Mermaid-Magic dazzled eyes twinkling doubtfully. ‘Your reflection ran off ?’

  ‘I know it sounds weird,’ said Alfie finally. ‘Like Peter Pan and his shadow. But I saw it too, and there’s evidence of spy activity. Two-way mirrors, Fleet-feet prints, hairs going missing . . .’

  G-Mamma held up a hand. ‘OK, no need for elaborate excuses, Spylets! Like I told Janey ten minutes ago, if you haven’t got me an Easter egg, you just have to say.’

  ‘But I haven’t seen you for two hours,’ said Janey. ‘What do you mean, ten minutes ago?’

  G-Mamma picked something up from the counter. It was a small woolly hat, bobbly and badly knitted, and nowhere near big enough to fit over G-Mamma’s mass of curls. ‘This little tea cosy. It was very lovely of you to knit it for me and all, Blonde-girl, but you should have known it’s really not me stylee.’

  ‘You can’t knit, can you, Brown?’ said Alfie.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ agreed G-Mamma, poking a tapered silver nail through one of several holes in the hat.

  ‘No, he means I’ve never even learned to knit,’ said Janey. ‘And I wasn’t in here ten minutes ago. I’ve been out with Mum or downstairs with Alfie the whole time since I saw you in my bedroom this morning.’

  G-Mamma frowned, then pointed a remote control at the plasma screen dominating one end of the Spylab. ‘Then who, Zany Janey and Alfie, um, Ralfie, is this?’

  Janey stared at the screen, as Alfie seethed quietly about the ‘Alfie Ralfie’ thing. The screen blinked and fizzed as some video footage burst into life – film from a security camera on the front of G-Mamma’s Spylab fridge, judging by the angle from which it was taken: G-Mamma, moon-like and fleshy, extracting something from the fridge; G-Mamma at the computer, scanning the note from Abe; G-Mamma looking up in surprise as Janey walked in from the top of the spiral staircase, smiling awkwardly, wearing short khaki dungarees and a green tee-shirt, holding out the ragged scrap of knitting . . .