Alice-Miranda was trying to pay attention to the show, but her mind was racing. Sunny and Coco performed a highwire act together, garnering whoops and applause from around the arena. When Alice-Miranda looked back across the row, she breathed a sigh of relief to see a thin man sitting beside Benny Choo. Mrs Fang and Felicity were next, then Caprice and Susannah. Alice-Miranda was trying not to make it obvious, but she was desperate to see if the two men had acknowledged one another at all.
Cherry was standing in the wings, offstage. Alice-Miranda caught her eye and nodded, and Cherry bowed her head.
In the darkness, the stage was quickly reconfigured yet again, this time with a giant trampoline in the centre. As the lights came up, stilt-walkers bounced around the stage, their antics growing more and more extravagant as they leapt higher and higher, kicking their legs and executing perfect splits.
Ambrosia gasped. ‘Is that Jacinta?’
Lawrence peered at the stage and laughed. ‘You know what? I think it is.’ He shovelled another handful of popcorn into his mouth.
Millie turned around and nodded. ‘It’s her, all right.’
‘Oh my goodness, that daughter will be the death of me.’ Ambrosia’s heart was in her throat as Jacinta bounded across the stage, although, really, she couldn’t have been more proud.
Moments later, the stilt-walkers were bouncing over the trampoline, then on the next round they tumbled and twirled. As Jacinta approached the apparatus, a huge cheer went up from her friends. She sprang up high and turned two backwards somersaults before nailing a perfect landing. The crowd went even wilder.
‘Go Jacinta!’ Lucas shouted, louder than everyone else.
Alice-Miranda peered into the darkness at the rear of the stage and thought she saw Rou’s face. She wondered what the woman was up to and hoped it didn’t have anything to do with that odd comment she’d made when Alice-Miranda was getting her bandaid the day before.
As the stilt-walkers exited the stage, Winnie sped into the arena on her red bicycle – her perfect French roll neatly in place as she raced faster and faster. Then she lay back on the bike. Lionel Wong and his sons catapulted over her, from one side of the stage to the other. Meanwhile, Cherry and Lucille joined her on their bicycles, but this time they were riding while spinning plates with both hands.
Alice-Miranda looked over at Rou in the wings. The old woman clutched at her head as a strange look came over Lucille’s face, almost as if she were waiting for something to happen. And then it did. Several of the towering sticks Cherry was spinning plates on top of, collapsed. Out of the shadows a figure in black tumbled at speed across the floor. She dived for the plates, catching them all just millimetres from the ground.
‘What are you doing, you stupid woman?’ Lucille hissed.
‘The sale is off. I tried to tell you that before but you would not listen,’ Rou shouted back. It was just fortunate that most of the audience couldn’t hear them above the music and applause.
But Benny Choo had. ‘What’s this?’ he muttered to himself.
‘What were you trying to do?’ Winnie demanded, glaring at Lucille. ‘We will discuss this later.’
Rou darted from the stage, not forgetting to take a bow as she left. Rapturous applause filled the arena once again, with people shouting for more.
Lucille glowered at Lionel, who was standing centre stage, giving them all the secret signal to abandon their tricks and come together. ‘This is not what we rehearsed,’ she murmured.
A long table was pushed onto the stage, set with plates and bowls and teacups too.
‘What’s this, Ye Ye?’ Coco asked loudly. Her question garnered hoots of laughter from the audience.
‘Ah, granddaughter, does this remind you of anything?’ the man asked, his voice echoing around the arena.
Coco looked at the table. ‘Home,’ she said.
The audience laughed again. It was a fun change of pace for a show that had, until now, proceeded at breakneck speed. Alice-Miranda wondered if Coco and the others had been let in on the secret, but from Lucille’s reaction it didn’t seem likely.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Lionel said, ‘as you know, Eternity boasts some of the world’s best acrobats. We are always trying to improve our skills and take things to new heights, and after thirty years, we are going to perform our most thrilling act ever – something that we do at home most nights.’
He held up one of the cups for the crowd to see.
‘Ordinary crockery. Oh dear!’ He tugged at his beard and grinned. ‘I think this might actually be my wife’s china.’
The audience laughed again.
‘It had better not be, husband,’ Winnie said, playing along. ‘What will we use for our breakfast tomorrow?’
A man in the audience guffawed loudly, which set off the rest of the crowd.
‘It would be no fun at all just juggling our everyday tea set, so we had a special delivery from the museum today. My good friend Mr Weng Jun has given me something very special to add to our collection,’ Lionel said.
He looked at Benny Choo in the front row and at the man he assumed to be Elon Fang beside him, but both remained stony-faced.
‘Among these pretty cups is a priceless antiquity that is over five hundred years old, dating back to the Ming Dynasty. Here, I will show you which one it is.’ One of the cameras that was set up to catch all the action on the stage zoomed in on the relic. The image of the tiny wine cup decorated with chickens was projected onto two giant screens. ‘We will prove beyond doubt that we are the best jugglers on the planet. If we break this cup, we will be bankrupt – out of business. So, family, please keep an eye on the prize,’ Lionel boomed.
The audience gasped.
Figgy held his breath. ‘What are they thinking?’
Millie frowned. ‘That’s crazy.’
Alice-Miranda felt Benny Choo tense up beside her. She peered around him and noticed that Mr Fang was tugging at his tie as if he were choking.
The Wongs started tossing the cups and plates and cutlery at each other with lightning speed. Coco juggled six cups, then flicked them effortlessly to Sunny, while his mother and aunty spun plates and the men threw knives and forks at each other. Sunny threw the cups higher and higher until it looked as if the boy miscued completely and sent one crashing to the ground.
‘Oh no,’ Lionel shouted, clutching his cheeks. ‘I hope that was a fake, Sunny, or we are done for.’
The audience held their breath as the boy picked up the broken pieces and showed them to his grandfather. The camera zoomed in on it.
‘Oooooh,’ Lionel let out a longwinded gasp. ‘We Wongs are lucky tonight, but next time be more careful.’ The old man pretended to give the boy a kick in the bottom, which brought howls of laughter from the crowd.
‘I think we should make this more difficult,’ Winnie said, and an identical set of crockery was wheeled in from the side of the stage.
Winnie threw them like missiles across the table and the family launched into action once again. The crowd was mesmerised. When another cup crashed to the ground, Elon Fang jumped up from his seat.
‘Stop! Stop!’ he cried, running towards the stage. ‘You must stop this madness at once! Give that to me.’
Felicity’s jaw dropped. She had never seen her father act like this before, nor move so fast. Her father did everything at a glacial pace – as opposed to her mother, who was always moving at full speed. ‘What on earth is Baba doing?’ she said, turning to her mother.
Barbie Fang was so mortified it looked as if she’d been snap-frozen.
But the Wongs did not stop.
Alice-Miranda glanced at the man beside her. Benny was shifting in his seat at such a rate she was sure he was about to make a run for it. Having learned a thing or two in the past few days, the tiny girl shouted to Cherry, then grabbed his briefcase and hurled it towards the woman. Cherry leapt from her seat and caught it with one hand.
‘What are you doing?’ the man screamed.
‘Open the case!’ Lionel boomed. ‘I think we should sign our contracts now.’
‘What?’ Lucille glared at the side of stage. ‘Just wait until I get my hands on Rou. She has ruined all my plans.’
‘But …’ Benny Choo’s eyes were bulging out of his head.
Elon Fang looked at Benny. ‘What have you done?’
Cherry tried to pop the locks but there was a combination dial.
‘What’s the number, Mr Choo?’ Alice-Miranda demanded.
The man was shaking like a leaf in the wind. ‘I am not telling you that. It’s my private business in there.’
Meanwhile, Elon Fang was still trying to intercept the cups and managed to get in the way with one deflecting off his hand and crashing to the floor. ‘No!’ he cried, pulling at his hair in horror. He ran to pick up the pieces, quickly identifying it as a fake and throwing the remnants back down.
Alice-Miranda looked over to the wings and gasped. Standing beside a woman in a striking fuchsia-coloured suit was Summer Tan. She gave the girl a wave and Summer waved back. All this time, Cherry rolled the dials on the case in vain. But Deng Rou had a better idea. The old woman scurried onto the stage, whipped a hairpin from her bun and within seconds the locks sprang open. Cherry lifted the two cups from the case, turned them over in her hand and held them above her head.
‘No!’ Elon Fang screamed. ‘They’re mine!’
‘Look out, Cherry!’ Alice-Miranda shouted as he rushed towards the woman.
Summer hurtled from the wings, flipping and twirling across the stage. Elon Fang connected with Cherry, tackling the woman to the ground. The cups flew out of her hands and up into the air.
The audience drew a huge breath, but Summer caught the first cup in her right hand and the second under her chin. Then she executed a knockout kick, which saw Elon Fang stagger left and right before he fell into the arms of a woman in a charcoal pants-suit. Agent Cheng whipped out her handcuffs and forced him to the floor.
‘Give me my cups,’ the man wailed. ‘With these last three, my collection is finally complete.’ Elon Fang might have been physically onstage, but from the strange look in his eyes, he wasn’t really there at all.
Agent Cheng shook her head. ‘No, Mr Fang, your collection will never be complete.’
Alice-Miranda turned around just in time to see Benny Choo trying to make his getaway up the aisle. She leapt to her feet. ‘Stop that man!’ she shouted, pointing at Benny.
September Sykes blanched as the sweaty fellow lumbered up the stairs towards her. She stuck her foot into the aisle, and for a second the man was blinded by the light reflecting off her shiny platform shoes. He reeled, shielding his eyes, before losing his balance and stumbling backwards. The entire audience watched as Benny Choo rolled down the aisle like a glistening beach ball. Lawrence Ridley clambered over several seats, puffing and blowing, before he threw himself on Benny’s back, pinning the man to the floor. He might have gained a few pounds, but he could still remember some of the moves from his superhero role as Vector.
‘What are you doing, Ridley?’ Benny shouted.
‘I don’t know what you’ve been up to, old chap,’ Lawrence grunted, ‘but if my niece says that you need to be stopped, then stopped you will be. Anyway, consider this payback for what your bodyguards did to me in Hong Kong.’
‘Arrest him,’ Agent Cheng ordered her colleagues who appeared from all over the theatre, helping Lawrence to his feet before handcuffing Benny.
The entire crowd was silent, watching the show unfold in front of them. Miss Grimm and the rest of the adults in their group were utterly gobsmacked. Although they were still unaware of the gravity of the situation, it was clear something big had just gone down.
Lionel Wong looked at the woman onstage. ‘Agent Cheng, would you like to explain what just happened here tonight?’
‘Well, Mr Wong, I think all anyone needs to know is that, after many years of trying, we have finally netted ourselves a whale.’ She pointed at Elon Fang, then looked up into the audience at Benny Choo, who was standing shamefaced. ‘Or perhaps two.’
Figgy and Rufus looked at each other. ‘This is better than a movie,’ Rufus gasped.
The audience began to clap, slowly at first, but soon they were on their feet cheering and shouting.
Lionel bowed. ‘I think we should give our guests one final show stopper.’ The old man nodded at his family. ‘Miss Tan, we would be honoured if you would join us.’
The applause reached a crescendo as a waterfall of fireworks cascaded down the back of the stage.
‘Places, everyone,’ Lionel called out, clapping his hands.
The Wongs quickly assembled and went on to perform the greatest sequence of tricks by three generations of a family, plus one very special guest, that the world had ever seen.
Elon Fang was taken into custody and charged with receiving the stolen cups. When the authorities executed a search warrant on his mansion they found tens of millions of yuan of black-market antiquities lining the walls of his secret museum. His wife pleaded ignorance to the whole affair, and as there was nothing to link her to any of his shady dealings, escaped their censure. Felicity was annoyed that her father had humiliated her in public, but his absence didn’t change her life at all. He’d barely been there in the first place. Anyway, she was now busier than ever. After seeing the exploits of Coco and Jacinta, Felicity had decided to add acrobatics to her weekly schedule of activities.
Elon Fang is currently enjoying an extended stay in a prison north of Beijing. His collection of antiquities, many of which had been stolen from museums around the world, have since been returned to their rightful owners.
It is a slight understatement to say that Benny Choo had made some seriously bad errors of judgement. He’d been in way over his head at The Blue Whale Casino, owing Elon Fang a fortune beyond anything available to him. This debt had prompted his attempts to sell Beluga Studios. Upon learning that Benny had purchased the Circus of Golden Destiny, Elon Fang had come up with an outrageous plan. Unfortunately, Benny hadn’t thought it too crazy either, having made The Lobster movies years ago and knowing a bit about burglaries. He thought that if he was successful in bringing Elon Fang the last remaining Ming Dynasty chicken cups to complete a collection he’d been obsessing over for years, it would clear his debt. Benny was not a malicious man, just a stupid one. His love for card games far outstripped any ability he had. He managed to cut himself a reduced sentence in exchange for testifying against Elon Fang.
Fuchsia Lee suddenly found herself elevated to a management position. Although she was ultimately part of his undoing, Benny realised her exceptional skills and put her in charge of the running of his business ventures until he served out his sentence.
Summer Tan faced no charges for her part in the Shanghai robbery. On the contrary, the museum extended an invitation for her to come on board as a consultant security specialist. They reasoned that there was no one better for the job than the person who had managed to pull off, without any detection, the biggest daylight robbery China had ever seen.
Lucille Wong found herself in serious trouble with her mother-in-law for sabotaging the show. Winnie gave her extra duties for twelve months, which included volunteering her for the weekly cleaning of the communal bathroom. For once in her life, Lucille seemed genuinely remorseful. She’d realised that her actions had risked the wellbeing of others and carried out her punishment gladly.
Cherry felt sorry for her sister-in-law and called a family meeting. Ultimately, it was decided that if indoor plumbing was the answer to Lucille’s bad moods, then indoor plumbing they would have.
Deng Rou’s sneaky ways had almost ruined their reputation but, having saved the day, all was forgiven. Well, almost. Winnie is still hoping she retires soon.
The Wongs continued with their show and for a while it looked as if their plans for the school would have to be put permanently on hold. But as the Chinese government had been after Elon Fang
for years, there had been a large reward for his conviction. It was to be divided between Cherry Wong, Fuchsia Lee and young Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones. Fuchsia couldn’t believe her luck and immediately invested her share of the bounty in real estate. Cherry handed her cheque straight to her in-laws and, with Alice-Miranda promptly donating her funds too, the fate of their school was assured.
September Sykes decided that the trip hadn’t been so bad after all. Sep and Sloane were proud of their mother for helping to catch Benny. Sloane even agreed to go home for the next term break, whether she had a better offer or not.
The first Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale–Fayle–Bright-Star exchange was declared a huge success. The children can’t wait for the return visit of their friends. That is, all except Caprice, who has vowed that there’s no way she’s hosting a girl as awful and spoilt and mean as Felicity Fang. Figgy’s already warned the kids they’d better leave the goldfish at home.
Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale Academy for Proper Young Ladies staff
Miss Ophelia Grimm
Headmistress
Aldous Grump
Miss Grimm’s husband
Mrs Louella Derby
Personal secretary to the headmistress
Miss Livinia Reedy
English teacher
Mr Josiah Plumpton
Science teacher
Howie (Mrs Howard)
Housemistress of Grimthorpe House
Miss Benitha Wall
PE teacher
Mrs Doreen Smith
Cook
Charlie Weatherly (Mr Charles)
Gardener
Petunia Clarkson
Housemistress of Caledonia Manor
Fudge
Much-loved cavoodle puppy
Alice-Miranda in China Page 20
