A woman came on to the stage and, with some difficulty, managed to quieten down the conversation. She told us that the Share Awards would shortly be going out live. We should switch off our mobile phones. The award-winners should keep their thanks short. It was important that members of the audience, if they had to move, should do so while one of the little films were being shown.
The TV lights came on. Three huge photographs – of an old man sitting on a doorstep, of a woman in a wheelchair with a dog, and of a big-eyed African child – were lit up at the back of the stage. And then we were live, on air, on TV.
A large man with a face like a full moon appeared from the side of the stage. A wave of applause spread through the ballroom. I was just thinking that he looked a bit like Stephen Fry when he said, ‘Hello, I’m Stephen Fry.’
MISS FOTHERGILL
It was all rather marvellous. Ordinary people who had done something rather brave or generous were greeted on stage by a series of famous faces. Videos were shown of the award-winners at work. There was applause and laughter and one or two tears. Throughout it all, I wondered what poor Trix would make of it all – not just the glamour, but the strangeness of the brave, small lives being celebrated as if they were successful films or performances.
Once or twice I tried to catch Holly’s eye. She seemed surprisingly uninterested in the Share Awards – almost distracted. She kept looking at her watch as if she had an urgent appointment somewhere else.
Girls, honestly! You can never quite predict how they are going to behave.
HOLLY
The stars appeared on stage, one after another, to give out awards. There was a woman who had fostered about a million children, then a doctor who rescued a child from a cliff ledge, then someone who had campaigned for a hospital, then a teacher, then a kid in a wheelchair. Tears, cheers, hugs.
For me it was all background noise. Time crawled along like a slug on Valium. There was a clock on the wall behind Eva Johansson. I looked at it, then checked my watch. Neither seemed to be moving at all.
Then at last Stephen Fry announced the award for the Share World Poverty Campaigner of the Year. Eva would be next. It was nine forty.
My mouth was dry. I felt sick with fear.
‘I’m not feeling too good,’ I murmured to my mum.
‘Darling?’ She put on her concerned face. ‘Can you just hold on for a few minutes?’
A film about the well-known stand-up comedian and his work for poverty was on the screen. It was now or never.
‘I’ll be right back,’ I said and, before anyone could speak, I was off my seat and, looking neither to the left nor the right, I scurried towards the exit.
A security man opened the door and for a moment the strip lighting outside blinded me.
‘Is everything all right?’ A woman with a clipboard advanced towards me.
‘Fine,’ I said.
I kept walking.
WIKI
We were in a doorway some twenty metres from the line of policemen, who had relaxed now that the show had started. There were eight of them there, standing in a group, chatting.
Our eyes were fixed on the door beyond them. At any moment now, Jaz would be doing whatever she could to divert their attention. There would be seconds to slip past them to the door.
‘Two minutes to go,’ I murmured. ‘Everyone OK?’
‘As if,’ said Jade.
‘Ready as I’m ever going to be,’ Mark muttered.
I looked around for Trix. There was no sign of her. I walked away from the others and caught sight of a small figure standing in a side street some twenty metres from where we stood. Its head was down, as if it were examining something on the pavement.
‘Trix?’ I said the word out loud and began walking quickly towards her.
When I reached her, I put a hand on her shoulder. There was no reaction. ‘Are you all right, Trix? It’s time to go.’
She sniffed and looked up at me. Her eyes were dark and shining.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
She shook her head silently.
‘Hey, this is going to be nothing compared to what we’ve been through.’
She closed her eyes, not bothering to wipe away the tears which spilt on to her cheeks.
‘You can do it,’ I whispered. ‘Come on. You’re the Trixter.’
‘It’s over,’ she said.
‘Maybe we didn’t get the money but—’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ Her voice was so low that I had to lean towards her to catch what she was saying. ‘I was thinking of what we’ve been through together.’
I glanced back towards Mark and Jade. They were looking anxiously in my direction. Beside them, Jaz seemed to be doing weird little warm-up exercises.
‘Trix, let’s talk about this later,’ I said.
‘It’ll be finished then.’ She smiled sadly, as if she really had gone mad. ‘We’ll be back in the real, regular world.’
I looked at my watch. Nine forty-four.
‘It was great being free, wasn’t it?’ Trix looked into my eyes as if desperate to make me understand. ‘We were doing something. No school, no parents, just us. We took control. We changed things and then . . . things changed us. D’you remember that time when—’
There was a wild scream from behind us. We both looked round to see Jaz dancing crazily in the direction of the police, warbling as she went. She waved her carrier bag around like a magician about to do a trick.
‘Come on!’ I grabbed Trix by the T-shirt and we began running.
By the time we reached Jade and Mark, the police had noticed Jaz. There was a heavy litter bin just short of where they stood. She looked into it, her head almost disappearing. The police stopped talking and stared.
While scrabbling around, throwing newspapers and bits of litter over her shoulder, she reached into a pocket and took something out. Seconds later, the newspapers in the bin were alight.
‘Agh! Agh! Aaagghhh!’
Jaz staggered back, holding a blazing newspaper.
‘Her clothes!’ gasped Jade. ‘They’ll catch fire!’
The policemen were thinking the same thing. As one, they rushed over to the tiny, turning, screaming figure.
‘Time to go,’ I said.
Jade’s eyes were still on the burning figure. ‘What about—’
Trix grabbed her arm. ‘She’s OK!’
In single file, at a fast walk, we made our way past the police who were trying to restrain a hysterical Jaz.
We turned into Warwick Street. There was a small door marked ‘NO ENTRY’. Mark hammered on it with the heel of his hand. It opened.
Holly was there in her evening dress. ‘What kept you guys?’ she asked.
‘It’s a long story,’ I said.
JAZ
I’ve done the old fire-dance trick loads of times before. It’s no big deal, but it’s a show-stopper every time. As the busies tried to restrain me, I saw the guys slipping past us. But I kept on fighting right enough – just for fun.
EVA JOHANSSON
Eddison, who knows about these celebrity things, told me I had to look shocked and surprised when the announcement was made.
‘Remember that you’re not expecting anything, Eva,’ he said. ‘You’re just an ordinary mum doing her best in a terrible situation.’
The award before mine was handed over. Applause. Sir Richard Branson was invited on to the stage. My palms were sweaty. I could hardly breathe.
Shocked. Surprised. Not expecting anything. I am just an ordinary mum. That was all I had to remember.
SIR RICHARD BRANSON
There is nothing more important in my view than motherhood. I mean, without mothers where would we be? Literally, nowhere. I know that, at Virgin, some of the most dynamic people are the mums we have working for us. So for me, and for everyone working with me at Virgin, it was a great honour to be asked by Share, one of my very favourite charities, to present the Celebrity Mother of the Year Award to Eva J
ohansson.
HOLLY
Don’t get me wrong but they looked terrible. I had just spent an evening in the world of celebrities, where everyone is lovely and quite a lot of them are beautiful. But when Trix, Jade and the two boys came towards me, I thought I was about to be mugged by a gang of child beggars.
And they were kind of smelly too. Jade and Trix hugged me (My dress! Mind my hair!) and I caught a definite whiff of the streets from them.
But it was too late to worry about that.
‘Follow me,’ I said.
PETE BELL
If anything was going to send me back to the bottle, it was watching my ex-wife pretending to be surprised when Sir Richard Branson opened the golden envelope and read out her name.
For some reason, something Trix used to say suddenly came back to me at that moment.
Please, spare me.
EVA JOHANSSON
Oh. Ah. I don’t believe it. It can’t be true. Me? Me? ME???? But I’m just an ordinary mum! I’m confused. What should I do now? Go up on stage? Get an award? Me? Oh. Oh, this is all too much.
HOLLY
This was the bit that had worried me throughout the day. I had left the ballroom five minutes ago. Now I needed to get back in. Oh, and there were four street urchins behind me.
The woman with the clipboard was watching the TV pictures on a small monitor when she spotted us. She stood up, barring our way.
‘Could I go back in, please?’
‘We’re on air,’ she said. ‘Who are these people?’
‘They’re friends. They wanted to . . . watch how the programme was made.’
MARK
On the screen behind the woman, the camera was on a spotlit figure making her way slowly towards the stage. It was Trix’s mother.
‘We’ve got to get on now,’ I said loudly. ‘This is really, really urgent.’
The woman pressed a small earpiece she was wearing. ‘Security to ballroom entrance, please. We have intruders.’
Trix’s mother was on the stage, standing behind a longhaired guy with a beard. She seemed unable to speak.
Someone pushed between me and Wiki.
It was Trix. She took off her dark glasses. ‘My name is Trix. You know me as Trixie Bell,’ she said. ‘I demand to see my mother.’
The woman swallowed hard. I could see panic in her eyes. Then she stepped back. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you there,’ she said.
GEMMA MANN
It was her all right. I could have stopped her, maybe I should have stopped her, but in those seconds my instinct as a professional kicked in.
As the kids pushed their way through the door to the ballroom, I spoke to my producer.
‘Get a camera on the kids coming through the main entrance now,’ I said.
MARGARET BAIRD
I thought Gemma had gone quite mad. ‘Kids?’ I said. ‘What’s going on?’
‘It’s Trixie Bell,’ said Gemma. ‘The kidnapped girl. She’s back.’
I glanced at the monitors. Five small figures had appeared through the main door. One of them, a young girl, I recognized as having been on Eva Johansson’s table. The other four looked like something the cat had brought in.
‘Trixie?’ I said. ‘Tragic Trixie?’
I hung up before Gemma could answer. ‘Camera fifteen. The kids in the doorway. Close-up.’
The camera picked out the faces of what seemed to be five children. There was no doubt about it. The smallest kid, short-haired, with her dark glasses pushed back on her head, was the one and only Trixie Bell.
It was unplanned. It was unscripted. But it was going to be great TV.
EVA JOHANSSON
Sir Richard embraced me. He said, ‘We’re all very proud of you.’ I turned, my eyes welling with tears, to face the lights, the guests at the Share dinner, which included several major film stars, the millions of TV viewers, my public.
‘There is only one person who matters in all this,’ I managed to say. ‘And that . . . is my darling Trixie.’
There was applause from around the room.
I was about to continue when I became aware, as the clapping died down, of another sound – a sort of rustle of gasps and whispers from the far end of the room. I thought I heard a scream.
PETE BELL
Eva hesitated and suddenly I realized that she had lost her audience. People were looking away from the stage towards the back of the room. I glanced up at the nearest monitor screen to our table.
A spotlight had caught five small figures standing in front of the main door, and they were on camera. As they began to move forward, the symphony of surprise grew louder.
JADE
Whoa. Major scary moment. We had been thinking so hard about how to get into the Grosvenor House that none of us had known what was going to happen when we got there.
We walked in and there were tables as far as the eye could see. The stage where Trix’s mom was speaking was a long, long way ahead.
For a moment we froze, and it was then that a spotlight picked us out.
Someone – Mark, I think – said, ‘Now what?’
Did I say none of us knew? Wrong.
‘Here we go,’ said Trix loudly.
She began the long walk through the tables towards the stage.
EVA JOHANSSON
I had prepared a speech, thanking Eddison, Barry and his police colleagues, Trix’s friends. It was going to be very, very moving. But when I saw these people at the back of the room walking towards me and I noticed that the camera was not on me but them, I lost my concentration.
‘Is there something – ?’ I turned to Richard Branson. But he was staring at the monitor too.
PETE BELL
There was confusion on stage. Stephen Fry stepped up to a microphone. ‘I’m hearing through my earpiece that we have a surprise guest tonight.’ He peered into the darkness, shading his eyes from the lights.
The camera closed in on the five figures. I could see Holly there. There was one boy with long, floppy hair. Another, a black kid wearing spectacles, seemed to have some sort of catapult sticking out of the pocket of his jeans. There was a tall girl I recognized as Jade Hart.
And there, at the front, dark glasses pushed back on her head as if she were some cool tennis player or something, was Trix, my Trix.
I couldn’t help it. I started laughing.
EVA JOHANSSON
It was the nightmare scenario – that was what I thought at the time. This was my moment – the moment of Eva Johansson, the Share Celebrity Mother of the Year – and a group of scruffy children was destroying it. Not even Stephen Fry could think of something to say.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked. ‘Would someone please explain what . . . what . . . ?’
The children were approaching the stage. Through the dazzle of the lights I was able to see them more clearly. I noticed Holly first. Then, was that Jade there too?
I looked more closely at the small figure who was at the front of the group.
The microphone caught my sudden inhalation of breath.
‘Trix?’ I managed to say.
One after the other, the children climbed the steps on to the stage.
‘Trix!’ I repeated, and held my arms out to welcome her.
At first the applause was uncertain, but it built and built until it was deafening.
WIKI
As we reached the stage, the man standing behind a lectern on one side said, ‘Is this Little Trixie? By Jiminy, it is Little Trixie. Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you that not one whisper of this occurrence had reached us beforehand. This is truly spontaneous TV.’
He moved towards Trix, who was first on stage but, ignoring him, she kept walking towards her mother. For a moment they stood in front of one another and silence descended on the ballroom. Then, as if at a signal, they fell into each other’s arms. Like a mighty wave approaching the shore, applause filled the room, growing louder and louder.
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR BARRY CART
WRIGHT
There was little doubt about it. The missing girl was there, on the stage. I nodded to Julie. ‘Get the team here – fast!’
It is not often that a kidnap victim – an alleged kidnap victim – is found live on national television. I had to think on my feet. Whatever the reason for Little Trixie’s sudden magical reappearance, it was a police matter.
Cameras or no cameras, I needed to get on that stage.
EDDISON VOGEL
Some people can deal with situations. Some can’t. Eva belonged to the second category. I had no idea why Tragic Trixie was suddenly on the stage or how she got there. Frankly, it wasn’t my problem.
All I knew was that I had a client who was on live TV and, any moment now, was going to crash and burn big time. No way was I going to let that happen.
Missing, Believed Crazy Page 19