What would happen after that remained a mystery. One thing was for certain: it would be embarrassing.
HOLLY
The next day we drove through London to Waterloo. After a bit of driving around, Jade stopped us at a patch of scrubland, a dog’s-toilet sort of place. This was the ‘park’ where Jaz made her home.
It was agreed that Jade and I would go and see her first. Sometimes my mother can be a bit overpowering.
Jade led me into some bushes in the corner of the park. There, in a clearing, was a camp made of bits of plastic sheeting, scraps of canvas and torn blankets. Jade peered under a bush where an old mattress and some dirty old clothes seemed to have been discarded.
JADE
The kid looked smaller and younger than I remembered. Something had scraped her cheek since I had last seen her.
‘Hey, Jaz.’ As I touched her shoulder, she sprang up, eyes wide, swearing. She relaxed when she recognized me.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ She lay back on her mattress. ‘You made it then.’
After I had introduced her to Holly, Jaz told us what had happened that night after her little fire dance. The police had kept her overnight. The following morning, a welfare person had come to collect her. At the first traffic light Jaz was out of there and back into the city jungle.
I told her what had happened at the Share Awards. She was famous. The police would be looking for her. And social workers. And about a million journalists.
She looked scared.
Then I told her about our idea.
WIKI
Some stories have a happy ending.
Jaz was persuaded by Jade and Holly to stay with them. Over the next few days, Holly’s mother went into action, talking to the police, to social services, studying the legal position.
It was agreed that Jaz would stay in a private hostel, with the fees being paid by Holly’s parents. At weekends, she would stay with the de Vriess family. In the meantime, the police would be looking for her family back in Scotland.
They found her mother living in a one-bedroom flat with four children under the age of ten. Jaz had been right. She was no longer welcome home. There were two many mouths to feed. The lass had always been good at looking after herself, her mother said.
There was no alternative. Jaz would have to stay in care unless someone agreed to adopt her.
JADE
Official: we are now inhabitants of the Planet of the Weird.
Three months after The Vanish gang turned itself in, our unofficial sixth member left her hostel forever.
Are you ready for this? Let me introduce to you Jaz de Vriess, Holly’s foster sister.
MR ‘GRIFFO’ GRIFFITHS
I always say that at Cathcart College caring is part of the curriculum. Although as headmaster I disapproved of the methods used by our pupils Beatrix ‘Trix’ Johansson-Bell, William Church, Mark Bliss, Jade Hart and Holly de Vriess, I was first to recognize that their ‘adventure’ had done much to raise awareness of world poverty.
Now it was our turn. When Mrs de Vriess contacted me about finding a place for a homeless child who she had fostered, I was pleased to be able to help.
We would, I informed her, be delighted to welcome Miss Jasmine de Vriess as a new pupil at Cathcart College.
MARK
At first, when Wiki told me the news, I thought it was one of his rare jokes.
Jaz at Cathcart? The brain reeled at the thought.
But it was true. Holly had a new sister and the sister would be in the Cathcart junior school. She would probably have a tough time at first – but then I would make sure that her pretty tough friends in the senior school would look after her.
When I had got back home, I had spoken several times to Godfather Gideon. He was not in the state of mental meltdown which I had expected, and talked more about our stay with him than the unfortunate way it had ended. He asked after Wiki and made me promise that the two of us would return to Hill Farm in the future.
No worries, Gid. Wiki the country boy would not have to be asked twice.
I had also been to see my father for a week in Dubai. He took me out to dinner and talked about how much money he was making. We scuba-dived and drove through the desert. Something had changed between us, or maybe I was seeing more clearly these days.
The longer I was out there, the more I had looked forward to getting back to school.
JADE
I was hanging out with my brothers whenever I could. The Jaz project had taken over at Holly’s house and, for all their general lameness, I was missing George and Brad.
You know what? They treated me differently. I was no longer a servant, a chick who did the cleaning and cooking for them. We began to talk about Mom, and Mr Hart, our former father, back in Vegas. It was as if all the crazy stuff that had happened to us – Wiki with his catapult, Trix pretending to be a boy, the mad psycho turning up at the club – had been a wake-up call. It had brought us together in some weird way.
They had decided, maybe just in time, that this was not how they wanted to live their lives.
George emailed our dad and told him about the whole Vanish thing.
And here was another surprise. Straight after he had read about what had happened, in news stories online, Mr Hart invited the three of us to spend Christmas in Vegas. It was time for his two families to meet, was the way he put it.
There must have been other conversations, because George had decided that he was heading back to the States. There was a job in the casino business with his name (or, officially, Dad’s name) on it.
And Brad? Get this. He did something he had never done before: he got a job. A friend of his had set up a business importing vintage sports cars from abroad. The guy needed a salesman.
Pinch me. I think I’m dreaming.
THE SMILER
What about me, eh? Eh?
After I was taken into custody, I realized I was facing a jail sentence. You can’t stab a man’s hand with a broken bottle without the law taking a bit of an interest, you just can’t. Even I knew that.
But yet again, fortune smiled on the Smiler.
The American whose hand I had decorated with a broken bottle said he wanted to move on. He had had dealings with the police in the past. He never wanted to see the inside of a courtroom again. He would not be pressing charges against me. What a gentleman.
But my problems weren’t over. The police knew all about me. They had a pretty good idea that my hobby in Wales was robbing post offices.
It was time for a career change.
EDDISON VOGEL
There is an old saying: nature abhors a vacuum. Put simply, it means that in life something empty tends to get filled up one way or another.
Fame is like that.
After that marvellous evening at the Share Awards, it was clear that, in publicity terms, we were faced with an entirely new situation. Trixie was no longer tragic but was a charity hero, a poster girl for all that is good and lovely among our teenagers.
We could run with that. There would a publicity-fest, and I was ready to do the circuit with my new star Trix Johansson-Bell and her supporting cast – Eva, the Share Celebrity Mother of the Year, and the other runaway kids (I could see a future for the little American, Jade Hart). I might even be able to do something with the father. The public love an ex-drunk who has been to hell and back.
What did I get? Disappointment. A kick in the teeth. Trix refused all interviews, the ungrateful little minx. None of the other children was interested either. Eva flew back to Hollywood. It was simply beyond reason.
I knew there was publicity gold in this story. It was just a question of mining it.
THE SMILER
A man called Eddison Vogel phoned me. He said he was looking for a new angle on the Tragic Trixie caper. Was I free to talk?
‘Eddie,’ I said, ‘it would be a pleasure.’
We met for tea at the Ritz, which was something of a first for me, I have to admit.
We got to talking. I gave him his new angle – and then some.
EDDISON VOGEL
It was a story that had it all – a harsh childhood, a heartbreaking teenage incident which left our hero scarred for life, a downward spiral into violence, crime and imprisonment. Finally, redemption and hope, thanks to an idealistic young girl called Trixie Johansson-Bell.
The moving, terrifying and ultimately uplifting story of Charlie ‘the Smiler’ Prendergast. It was a tale for our times.
I could hear the distant sound of cash-tills ringing.
THE SMILER
All I had to do was sit down and yak into a tape recorder for a week or so. Then someone would turn it into a book which would go out under my name.
I’d be famous and get paid rather more than I earned in a medium-sized bank robbery.
Talk about easy pickings.
EDDISON VOGEL
Charlie is a natural. Everybody loves a rough diamond. He is made for the media.
Trust me. This time next year, Keep Smiling Through – The Memoirs of Charlie Prendergast will be top of the bestseller charts and its author will be a star.
THE SMILER
Every cloud, eh?
WIKI
When we were into the final countdown before the start of the autumn term, I had had a call from Trix. She wanted to see me.
I told her I was grounded.
She seemed shocked but, with my mother hovering in the background, it was a bad time to explain.
I said something about our seeing one another at school in a few days’ time.
‘It can’t wait, Wiki,’ she said. ‘Give me your address.’
Early the next morning, a Saturday, she was there, on my doorstep.
I invited her in. My parents were in our small sitting room, my father reading a newspaper, my mother updating her diary at her desk in the corner.
They stood and shook hands with Trix, managing to convey disapproval even as they were being really polite.
‘We’ve heard all about you,’ my mother said.
‘Yes.’ My father smiled gravely. ‘Quite a song and dance you led us all.’
‘We raised over a million pounds,’ said Trix. ‘A lot of African children are less hungry than they would have been. It saved lives, our song and dance.’
‘So the ends justify the means,’ said my mother.
Something in their manner sparked into life the anger in Trix that was never far away.
‘I think you should be proud of your son,’ she said. ‘It’s easy to stand by and let injustice happen. To read about starvation and misery –’ She nodded at the newspaper in my father’s hand – ‘say, “What a terrible thing,” and go back to your comfortable life. To make a difference, you have to take chances. He was the bravest of all of us. He was always the one who stood up for what was right, who did the honourable thing, quietly and without making a fuss. None of what happened could have happened without him.’
Before my parents could reply, Trix turned to me. ‘Is there somewhere we could talk, Wik?’ she asked. ‘Just you and me?’
MRS GLORIA CHURCH
She was impressive, that young girl. I had expected something altogether different. Her certainty, her confidence that she was right, was contagious, to tell you the truth. It made us think again.
We sat in silence while the children talked upstairs in William’s room.
‘Perhaps,’ my husband said eventually, ‘we’ve been a little hasty.’
WIKI
We sat on the bed in my room.
‘Heavy-duty parents,’ Trix said.
‘They’re all right,’ I said. ‘It’s just the way they are. Thanks for all that stuff downstairs.’
‘I decided not to tell them about the catapult.’
‘Good thinking.’
I asked her if she was looking forward to the term starting in a few days’ time.
‘That’s why I called you.’ She gave one of her decisive little sniffs. ‘I’m not going back to Cathcart.’
‘You’re changing schools?’
‘I’m changing more than that, Wik.’
And so it came out. Pete Bell had applied for a job as a foreign correspondent in South Africa. He was flying out next week to start work, and Trix was going with him. Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she told me that she had found an orphanage where she would be able to help look after the children in her school holidays and help teach them.
‘Wow,’ I said at one point. ‘Exit the Trixter.’
‘That’s something else. In South Africa, I shall be living under the name of Erica Jane Bell. I’m starting a new life under a new name.’
‘Erica Jane?’ I was about to tell her that frankly there was no way that Erica Jane suited her, but I saved my breath. Trix/Trixie/Erica had never been one for second thoughts. ‘It seems kind of drastic,’ I said. ‘Are you sure this what you want?’
‘I’ll write.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe you can come and stay some time – give the children some of that Wiki knowledge.’
‘I’ll miss the old Trix.’
‘You’ll prefer the new Erica Jane. I promise.’
Every week, without fail, an email arrives for me at Cathcart from Erica Jane Bell. She tells me about what she calls her ‘new family’ at the Arms of Hope Children’s Home. She has written to Griffo Griffiths, suggesting that Cathcart might develop some kind of link with the orphanage. She is raising money for the children out there. No one out there, she says, knows about her past, about The Vanish, about her life as Trix.
I email back with the latest news from Cathcart. Jaz de Vriess is the new hero of the junior school. Jade is talking about living in America with her father. Holly has been organizing a new Catwalk Challenge. Mark (this was a tough one for her to take in) has spent his holidays working in a sports academy for underprivileged kids. Gideon has invited me to stay in the summer.
These days, The Vanish seems to belong to a different reality. Sometimes, alone in my cubicle, I go over in my mind the things that happened to us. Now and then I take the ash catapult out of the suitcase under my bed. I hold it in one hand and pull back the rubber sling, trying to recreate what it felt like, up in the Welsh mountains, when I took aim at a man’s head like some tribesman in a South American jungle.
Then I start thinking about the Trixter. Perhaps somewhere, thousands of miles away, under an African sky, she too is remembering what the five of us did when we were free and on the run during that strange last summer of Little Trixie Bell.
Terence Blacker is the author of many novels for young readers, including The Transfer, ParentSwap and the award-winning Boy2Girl. He plays the guitar and writes songs, and lives in a house in the Norfolk countryside, which he converted from a goose hatchery.
Praise for Terence Blacker
Missing, Believed Crazy:
‘Entertaining and cleverly constructed, it’s enjoyable for the way the narratives of the five distinct and characterful protagonists are interwoven, and for its subtly mounting tension’ Sunday Times
‘Blacker cleverly caters to children’s appetites for celebrity culture while allowing them to discover the sour taste for themselves’ Sunday Telegraph
Boy2Girl:
‘This fast-paced story is a roller coaster of hilarious incidents’ Mail on Sunday
‘Hugely funny, then painfully affecting . . . offers genuine insights amongst the laughter’ Guardian
The Angel Factory:
‘A gripping and dramatic adventure involving high technology, deception, intrigue and even murder. Terence Blacker’s direct style makes the sinister project at the heart of The Angel Factory seem disturbingly possible’ Guardian
‘Well written and pacy, this is a story that just has to be finished’ Independent
Also by Terence Blacker from
Macmillan Children’s Books
Boy2Girl
ParentSwap
The Angel Factory
The Transfer
Fo
r younger readers
You Have Ghost Mail
To Valerie Christie, a superb librarian
First published 2009 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2010 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-330-53299-0 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-53298-3 EPUB
Copyright © Terence Blacker 2009
The right of Terence Blacker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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