MARGARET BAIRD
‘Keep the cameras rolling,’ I said. ‘Even if we run over time, we stay on air. We need to catch this.’
MARK
Blinking through the lights, I saw that the diners near the back had got to their feet. Soon the whole place was standing, clapping. I glanced across at Jade, uncertain as to whether we should be joining in or taking a bow.
She was nodding her head like a puppet. She muttered to me, ‘This is beyond weird, dude.’
JADE
Mark’s stage grin was yay-close to being a grimace of panic. Wiki looked as if he were about to wet himself.
The applause slowly died. Eva Johansson released Trix. Dabbing her eyes, while still looking lovingly at her darling long-lost daughter, she spoke into the microphone.
‘Trixie, darling,’ she said.
‘Trix, Mum,’ Trix interrupted. ‘You call me Trix. Remember?’
‘Trix.’ Eva looked to the audience, then back at her daughter. ‘What can I say? So, so much has happened and I –’ Briefly she was lost for words – ‘Darling, did you hear that I’m now the Share Celebrity Mother of the Year?’
EDDISON VOGEL
I had to get to her before she committed career suicide. I told the security guard standing between me and the stage that I was Eva’s publicist but he seemed to be deaf.
WIKI
When Trix’s mum mentioned being the Share Celebrity Mother of the Year, the audience started applauding and then, as if the same thought – what a very strange thing to mention at this moment – had occurred to each of them at the same time, they stopped.
In the silence, she opened and closed her mouth without any words coming out. Then she managed, ‘There are several people I must thank for helping me win this prestigious award.’
There were mutterings in the audience. Her daughter had just returned from being kidnapped and she still wanted to make a speech – about herself?
Trix tapped her mother’s arm. Her mother kept talking. Trix gently took the microphone from her hand, smiled at her mother, then at us. She faced the audience, suddenly looking small in the middle of the stage.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said.
There was laughter. Some people clapped. Trix remained quiet until total silence had returned to the room.
‘I think I owe you all an explanation,’ she said.
JADE
Trix’s big moment. The four of us stepped back from the front of the stage. We watched – and wondered.
Here’s the truth: Trix was not as different from her mom as she liked to think. The cameras, the lights, all those eyes on her made her cooler, more confident, bigger even, than she ever was in everyday life.
I’ll admit it. Trix Bell could be a royal pain in the butt sometimes but none of us could have done what she did that night.
WIKI
She did this dramatic pause, looking around the big ballroom.
‘For the past few weeks you’ve been asking who kidnapped me,’ she said. ‘The answer is . . . I did.’
This time the audience didn’t applaud.
‘With my brave and brilliant friends, I kidnapped myself.’ She turned to where we stood. For some reason, almost as if we were about to be presented with prizes, we were standing in a line with parade-ground neatness.
I smiled modestly, but when I looked through the lights I realized that no one was smiling back. Suddenly the air seemed rather cold.
‘You’ll want to know why.’ Trix wandered to the far side of the stage and stood in front of the big illuminated photograph of the little African boy, staring wide-eyed at the camera. ‘For him.’
She walked back to the centre of the stage. She had them now. ‘And for millions and millions of children like him who have had their childhoods stolen and who may not even live to be adults. A few weeks ago, at my school, I discovered that people are good at giving money when there are celebrities involved – but, when there’s no publicity, they don’t care. I decided to do something that would raise money. So I got myself kidnapped.’
PETE BELL
I’ve never known a silence like it. As Trix – this kid, my kid – spoke quietly into the microphone, the mood in the ballroom seemed to change minute by minute. Surprise. Relief. Shock. Disapproval. Then, as Trix started talking about African children, everyone was with her.
After an evening of celebrity caring, this was the real thing.
STEPHEN FRY
Frankly I was startled at the way the event had gone. Normally these occasions are run with the brutal efficiency of one of Mr Mussolini’s trains, but now the script had been completely abandoned.
‘Let her talk,’ the producer kept saying into my earpiece. ‘This is good, Stephen.’
It was a strange and oddly touching occasion.
SIR RICHARD BRANSON
Personally, I found it all very moving. There is nothing more important in my view than kids. I mean, without kids, where would we be? They are literally the future.
I’m not ashamed to say that my eyes filled with tears as Trixie talked about Africa. I was proud to be on the same stage as her.
EVA JOHANSSON
Very nice, darling. Lovely speech. Great to have you back.
But when was she going to mention my award?
WIKI
Where had all this stuff come from? I’ll bet we were all thinking the same thing.
The last time we had heard Trix talking to an audience about Africa had been in what now felt like another lifetime, at the Cathcart Charity Challenge. She had seemed preachy, annoyingly bossy. Now she was different. She sounded humble and talked to us as if each of us knew the right thing to do and just needed to be reminded of our better selves.
I looked down the line of faces at Mark, Jade and Holly and I could see that, as Trix spoke, they had forgotten how tired they were, how hungry, how strange it was to be standing on a stage in front of hundreds of people in smart evening clothes. There was even – I swear I’m not inventing this – a tear in Mark’s eye.
It was as if she had been thinking about this moment ever since the idea for The Vanish had occurred to her, as if everything that had happened to us had made her more certain about what she believed in.
‘Yesterday we decided that we had gone far enough.’ She shrugged and, for a second or two, seemed lost for words. ‘We met someone who, although she’s only twelve, is the bravest person I’ve ever met. Her name is Jaz and she lives –’ Trix hesitated – ‘She lives everywhere and nowhere. She lives on the street because she has no home.’
‘You’ve probably walked past her as you’ve come out of a restaurant or gone for a taxi. She’s part of city life – the part we prefer not to see, not to think about too much.’
I wondered where Jaz was now. At some police station, probably.
‘So here is what I want to do,’ said Trix. She sniffed in that way that she did when she had made up her mind to do something. ‘I’m hoping that the money that was raised for me, for the Show Us You Care fund, can be divided between the village of Mwanduna in Mali and charities for homeless children like Jaz. I don’t know how this can be done but you do, don’t you? You’re grown-ups. We’ve done our best. Now, please, it’s your turn.’
And with that, Trix handed the microphone back to her mother and walked back to us. As she walked towards us through the crashing applause, we noticed that there were tears in her eyes. Holly and Jade hugged her. I caught Mark’s eye. There was no way we were going to miss this moment. We joined the group hug.
Stephen Fry stepped forward as Sir Richard Branson guided Eva Johansson to the far side of the stage.
From what I could hear, Stephen Fry was telling viewers that the show was over. ‘We have stayed on air to report on quite the best news that the Share Awards could bring you,’ he said. ‘Trixie Bell is back. And we hope that the fund set up in her name will go to help the hungry and the homeless.’
He turned to us. ‘Thank you, Trix. Thank you, Tr
ix’s gang.’ He faced the camera once more. ‘Our gratitude to our celebrity audience. And, above all, thank you all for showing us that you care.’
JADE
As soon as we went off-air, it was mayhem. Trix’s mum was in bits. Her dad came up on stage. There was a police guy trying to fight his way through. The little guy Eddison Vogel was dancing around in front of the stage like a mad film director.
Some instinct made the five of us close together into a circle like some wacko little football team before a game. Hands tugged at our shoulders. Adult voices called out our names.
But through the craziness, above the noise, I heard Trix’s voice.
‘We did it,’ she was saying over and over again. ‘We did it.’
WIKI
Within minutes of the end of the awards the five of us, with Trix’s mother and father and Mrs de Vriess, Holly’s mum, were being taken by police officers through the back corridors of the Grosvenor House. Outside, waiting for us, were three police cars. Mark and I were put in the first one, Holly, her mother and Jade in the second, while Trix, her parents and the detective – I recognized him from his appearances on the news as Barry Cartwright – were in the third.
It was getting really late by the time we reached the brightly lit police station. We were gathered in one room and Barry Cartwright talked to us all. He looked different without his dark glasses on.
He told us that he was, of course, delighted to find that we were safe. He was glad that we had handed ourselves in, although the police had been aware of what had happened and had been about to make their move. ‘This is a case of what we call self-kidnapping,’ he said. He would be calling the parents who were not already here. In the meantime he would be taking statements from us all.
‘Now?’ said Mrs de Vriess. ‘Couldn’t it wait?’
‘I should remind you,’ said the detective in his best serious-policeman voice, ‘that at this point in time we are talking about a criminal investigation.’
‘No.’ It was Trix’s father, Pete, who spoke up. ‘These children are exhausted. They need a night’s sleep before you speak to them.’
Cartwright smiled coldly. ‘Mr Bell, they may be children but they have evaded capture for the past three weeks. At the very least, they are guilty of wasting police time. If we let them go—’
‘They’ll be with responsible adults,’ said Pete Bell. ‘Unless you are laying criminal charges, they should be released into our care. And if you are arresting them, the media should be told.’
‘The media?’ Barry Cartwright seemed to wince.
‘It won’t look good,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Not after Trix’s speech. In fact, it could look pretty bad. How exactly will you explain it to the press?’
As the detective hesitated, looking over his notes as if they contained the answer to this question, I saw a little smile flicker across Trix’s face. It had taken time but at last her dad had come though.
Cartwright seemed to have reached a decision. ‘You’ll all be here by ten a.m. tomorrow morning. Is that understood?’
He turned to the woman police officer who stood beside him. ‘Julie, contact the other parents,’ he said.
JADE
Problemo. My parents were seriously absent. Brad and George were either still in police custody or had just been released. Either way, they were not exactly the flavour of the month with the boys in blue.
I noticed that Holly was looking at me, smiling.
‘I think Jade’s parents are abroad,’ she said, then turned to her mother. ‘Would it be all right if she stayed with us?’
‘Of course,’ said Mrs de Vriess. ‘It’s always a pleasure having Jade to stay.’
Cartwright cleared his throat and frowned.
‘Is that OK, sir?’ said Jade, turning on the charm as only she could do.
The detective nodded briskly.
WIKI
Barry Cartwright stood up and looked at his watch like a busy detective who still had several important cases to solve before he went to bed. ‘I’ll see you all in the morning,’ he said, looking at the adults and ignoring us. He hurried out of the room.
‘What a night,’ said Pete Bell. He glanced up at his ex-wife. ‘D’you need a lift anywhere?’
‘I have a car waiting for us,’ said Trix’s mother.
‘Actually –’ Trix spoke in a low, firm voice – ‘I think I’d like to stay with Dad.’
A cold smile settled on Eva Johansson’s face. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you would prefer.’
The parents moved towards the door and we were about to follow them when the same thought must have occurred to all of us at more or less the same time.
MARK
This was it. We had been together, through everything the world could throw at us, and now were going our separate ways. A spell had been broken.
For a moment we stood there under the bright strip lighting of the interview room, uncertain as to what to say.
Jade took a deep breath, and seemed to be about to come out with one of her wisecracks, but then just breathed out. Even she was lost for words.
WIKI
We felt like kids again. We were back in the land of parents, embarrassed, out of place. Each of us knew that we would never be as close again as we had been for those weeks when it was us against the world.
Trix broke the silence.
‘See you, gang.’ She kissed Mark on the cheek, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, then me. There was a muddle of farewell embraces as the parents looked on, smiling.
Then they left, leaving Mark and me alone in the room.
‘All right, Wikster?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘All right.’
WIKI
My parents were not thrilled by what had happened.
Some things never change.
Forget The Vanish, being on the run, escaping from a smiling psycho. Don’t even consider the hundreds and thousands of pounds that had been raised for African children.
I had lied to my mum and dad. That was all that mattered. For days after I returned home, they went about the place with that heavy look of disappointment that must be taught at parent school. Now and then I tried to talk about the memories that were going round and round in my head. I told them about Trix – how she had wanted to change the world. I talked about Godfather Gideon and the birds and animals I saw and learned about at his farm in the Welsh mountains, about Brad and George, about Jaz.
The more I revealed about what had happened, the more worried they looked. They have always had this big thing about trust. Now I may have thought I had done something good, but they had no doubt what had happened. They had been betrayed by their only son.
I hid the catapult under my mattress.
HOLLY
Wiki rang several times over the first few days, as if he was trying to hold on to something that was slipping away. He said that sometimes it felt as if The Vanish had never happened, that we had each slipped back into our old life without anything really changing. He was wrong, of course.
It was just that some of the effects of what we had done turned up in the strangest of places.
My mother was unusually thoughtful the day after the Share Awards. Yes, she was interested in what I could now tell her about our lives on the run. Of course she was impressed by how I had managed to smuggle the gang into the Grosvenor House. She laughed when I put on my Eva Johansson voice for her.
But Mum has never been good at hiding her feelings. Something was bugging her.
‘I want to help.’
She made this announcement that evening in the kitchen. Jade and I were laying the kitchen table and she was at the cooker, her back to us.
‘Help, Mum?’ I said.
‘Yes.’ She was nodding her head as if she had made an important life decision. ‘You children managed so much and you’re only fourteen. And what do I do?’
Tricky one, that. Mum raises money for charity now and then
but has not actually had a job since I was born.
‘You look after the house,’ I said. ‘You keep the family together.’
‘Families are tough, Mrs de Vriess,’ said Jade. ‘Believe me.’
‘That’s the first thing,’ said my mother. ‘I’m going to sort out the whole question of where you’re staying, Jade.’
‘Whoa there.’ Jade held up both hands. Although a smile was on her face, there was a coldness in her eyes. ‘I’m nobody’s good cause, right. I’ll get in touch with my brothers. This is a Hart-family situation. We’ll figure it out ourselves.’
‘She’s right, Mum,’ I said.
‘Well, what about that little homeless girl then? I’m going to help her – whatever you say.’
She was talking about Jaz.
JADE
Mrs de Vriess is one of those scary, no-nonsense Englishwomen who treat everything the same. Organizing a coffee morning, managing a company, being Prime Minister – they’re all just jobs to be done.
Before I could point out that she and Jaz belong to such different universes that even thinking of them in the same thought made my head ache, she started to plan. The next day, it was decided, I would take Holly and her mom to Jaz’s little home in the park.
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