Jane Blonde: Spy in the Sky

by Jill Marshall

  In the same instant and with the same motion, both women smoothed down their hair and stalked with fake politeness into the Spylab.

  ‘After you, Jean . . .’

  ‘No, no, you first, Rosie.’

  Suddenly Janey knew exactly what she must look like when she got caught doing something she shouldn’t. ‘You’ll wake Jamie up,’ she said, trying to buy G-Mamma some time. She’d obviously arrived back at the very same moment that her mum had been about to operate the Satispy to retrieve Boz.

  ‘Oh, of course.’ Jean had the grace to look very shamefaced, but then her eyes narrowed. ‘But what . . . what are you doing here, Janey?’

  ‘Oh, well, I heard all the kerfuffle from next door and thought I’d better come and see what was going on.’ More lies, she thought guiltily.

  Her mother checked her over suspiciously. ‘You’re in your SPIsuit.’

  ‘I just had time to Wow. I thought you might be an enemy!’

  Just then a deep voice called out from the SPIV around Jean’s neck, ‘Will somebody Satispy me home, please?’

  At that there was an ungainly grapple for the remote control; Jean reached it first, pressing the red button triumphantly. By the time Boz materialized in front of them, he was faced with two red-faced angry spies, each trying to stare the other down.

  ‘I’ve always been your Satispy operator,’ repeated G-Mamma, even before Boz’s hair had time to reattach itself. ‘Always.’

  Janey’s father recovered himself as quickly as possible. ‘Ah, well, Jean was right here, so it just seemed simpler to ask—’

  ‘But I would have been right here if you hadn’t packed me of to Garage Gaga-land.’

  ‘That’s true. Not that I packed you off to . . . but you are always right here for me, G-Mamma, and that means a huge amount to me.’

  ‘And to me!’ piped up Janey, concerned for her SPI:KE. G-Mamma had folded her arms across her great bosom and was quivering with fury.

  Gina Bellarina put her hand on G-Mamma’s arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is all so exciting to me, I get a bit carried away.’

  Although Janey’s mum sounded completely sincere, G-Mamma shook off her hand as if it was a leech. ‘I wish you would be,’ she said, her chin wobbling madly as she fought back tears. ‘Carried away, I mean. Completely away. Nothing’s been the same since you remembered your spy life. Nothing!’ Trying to stop herself crying again, she spun around towards the SPIral staircase. ‘If you do ever think of anything you need me for, I’ll be in my GARAGE. Or . . . better yet, down under at Dubbo Seven. At least there the sheep like me.’ And with a great gargling sniff, she disappeared.

  Janey glared at her parents. ‘Aren’t you going after her?’ she said quietly.

  Her mother shook her head. ‘Even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to say the right thing.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘I will. I can see I’ve not handled things very well. But before that . . .’ He patted Janey on the shoulder. ‘You were right. The Sol’s Lols headquarters has been damaged.’

  ‘Damaged?’ echoed Janey, incredulous. ‘Completely blown apart, don’t you mean?’ Then she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to have seen it. ‘Er . . . at least, that’s what I thought they were hinting at on that news programme,’ she added hastily.

  ‘No, it’s repairable,’ said her father. ‘Most of it is glass and stuff that can be replaced. And nobody was hurt, which is the most important thing.’

  Janey was nothing short of baffled. His entire main Spylab had disappeared into a great big hole. Yet her father seemed to be implying that there were just a few broken windows.

  ‘Good job, Blonde, alerting us to this. Gina and I are going to go and check out the other Spylabs, starting with Solfari Lands, just to make sure they’re OK. In the meantime, keep an eye on the news and on James, will you?’

  Jean nodded at Janey to press the button on the remote control; after a slight pause she pushed it and waved to her disintegrating parents.

  *

  There was no point protesting. For some reason she and G-Mamma were being excluded from the plans for SPI. Janey could hardly believe it, but her spying gut reactions had taken over now and she felt calm and capable. She and G-Mamma would work as a team and sort this thing out.

  Though there was one new team member who still needed initiating . . .

  As soon as the last particle of her father had disappeared she padded across the Spylab, silent in her Fleet-feet, and headed downstairs to James’s room. ‘It’s me,’ she hissed into the darkness.

  James sat up, the duvet dropping from his shoulders. Janey laughed. He was wearing his pyjama top, but there was a deep V of gleaming black and white visible on his chest. ‘You love being a spy so much you’re sleeping in your SPIsuit?’

  James grinned and shrugged.

  ‘Me too,’ said Janey, pointing down at her silvery legs.

  For about an hour they chatted in a rather onesided conversation, since James could only answer Janey in signs and mimes. They agreed, however, that their father was behaving strangely, and that he should be letting them investigate more. Agent Sable was desperate to go on his first mission. There was nothing more they could do tonight though, and to her surprise Janey snuggled down at the end of James’s bed and fell sound asleep.

  It was breakfast time before the two of them met up with their parents again. Both Boz and Jean were acting very nonchalant.

  ‘How was Solfari Lands?’ said Janey, helping herself to cereal.

  ‘Fine,’ said her father brightly, although his voice sounded a little thick, as if he had a cold coming on.

  ‘So . . . what about the other Spylabs?’ continued Janey as her mother smiled at James and spread peanut butter on his toast. ‘And have you discovered who was behind the bombing of Sol’s Lols?’

  ‘Let’s worry about all that later, shall we?’ said Jean. ‘Concentrate on breakfast.’

  ‘But how many other Spylabs—’

  ‘Not now, Janey,’ said her father firmly.

  It was all she could do not to glare at him. Thank goodness for G-Mamma, she thought, biting her RaisinBix savagely. She couldn’t wait to debrief. And she was taking James with her. They couldn’t make him into a Spylet and then refuse to let him do anything. ‘Let’s play football,’ she said to James, but she winked broadly at him, and moments later they were heading off across the garden.

  G-Mamma was stepping out of the Wower when they arrived. ‘Just de-Wowed,’ she told them. ‘I had a busy night after I got back.’

  Janey was just relieved to see her there. ‘I was worried you might actually have gone to Dubbo Seven.’

  ‘No, that was a small bending of the truth, my little Spiblings – that’s SPI siblings to you. I took the spy-tube from the underground at the bottom of the road – did you know Bozzy-babe has set it up on the planetary circuit? – and the first stop was Florida.’

  ‘To visit NASA,’ said Janey with a nod.

  ‘Correct. But . . .’ G-Mamma leaned in, her round face burning with a massive secret so that Janey thought she rather resembled a Jammy Dodger, ‘it wasn’t there!’

  James gulped audibly, and Janey could quite understand why. ‘What wasn’t there? Cape Canaveral?’

  ‘Well, obviously, Jane the brain, it might have been on the news if the whole of the space centre had disappeared. No,’ said G-Mamma, ‘the Spylab. The one Copernicus was using. It’s gone.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  G-Mamma leaned in still further. ‘I think it was blown up too. There was this big pile of rubble, with loads of scaffolding around the outside holding up the rest of the building.’

  ‘Just like at Sol’s Lols,’ said Janey.

  When she glanced at her new little brother Janey noticed that he looked close to tears. She raised her eyebrows at him, and in response he curved his hand into a large letter. ‘C. Big C. Oh.’ Janey suddenly understood the cause of his concern.

  ‘Jamie’s worried
that Copernicus has escaped from Cape Canaveral.’ When they’d last seen him, their squid-shaped arch-enemy had been in stasis, suspended in a shower-like tank that kept him barely alive.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Able Sable. Oooo.’ G-Mamma’s eyes gleamed. ‘Don’t be afraid, Able Sable. Don’t hide yourself beneath the table. It’s gonna be fine, oh Spylet mine . . . Oh, all right, I’ll stop,’ she said, catching Janey’s warning look. ‘It really is fine though. Old One-eyed Squinty Squid is still in his tank, right where we left him.’

  So if Copernicus was still safely out of the way, who was going round blowing up Spylabs? And where would they strike next? ‘Mum and Dad told me they had been to Solfari Lands, but I don’t trust anything they say these days.’

  ‘They did go. Oop! I mean, I expect they did.’ G-Mamma looked a bit shifty.

  ‘How do you know where Mum and Dad were?’

  ‘Just guessed,’ said G-Mamma, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘G-Mamma . . .’

  ‘Oh, OK, keep your gauntlet on.’ G-Mamma looked around, spotted Trouble curled up on the bed in the corner and whistled to him. ‘I’m a spy, aren’t I? Have to keep up with what’s going on.’

  Trouble jumped up on to the bench top and G-Mamma pointed to the Spycat’s collar. It had changed. Instead of being decorated with metal studs, there were now four silvery eyes, complete with false eyelashes, spread out along its length. As Janey looked, one of them blinked, rotated and fixed itself on the body appearing behind them in the Spylab. Instantly the image projected itself on to G-Mamma’s huge SPIV screen.

  Janey could hardly believe what she was seeing as another of the eyes swivelled towards her, and her stunned face appeared briefly on the SPIV before her. ‘What is that?’

  ‘I’m calling it a Cat’s Eye Collar.’ G-Mamma shoved Trouble off the bench and out of sight as Boz’s ears came into view on the screen. ‘My latest invention! And I know it works because Trouble went on a little mission of his own, and spied your parents going into Solfari Lands.’

  ‘Er . . . Clever.’ Janey shuddered in disgust as Trouble preened in his newest accessory, rubbing against her leg. ‘Yes, Twubs, you look . . . er . . . gorgeous. We’ve come to debrief

  ‘Decode, debrief, de-Wow, oh yeah,’ rapped G-Mamma nodding. ‘But quite honestly, I don’t know what else we can say at the moment. Someone’s blowing up Spylabs. We just have to get to them first.’

  ‘The RAF?’

  G-Mamma shook her head. ‘Why would the Royal Air Force be involved?’

  ‘They chased us though.’

  ‘I think they were just upset we stole their jet. Oh!’ G-Mamma’s eyes sparkled as she scrolled through news items on the computer. ‘Look.’

  And she rapped gently as Janey read the news report on the mysterious theft and loss of a damaged fighter jet:

  ‘We stole their jet,

  They were very upset,

  Now we’ve dropped it in the moat

  And that REALLY got their goat . . .’

  The news item looked very serious. The RAF were talking about possible terrorist attacks – and whether this was linked to the explosions at Sol’s Lols and at NASA.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Janey. ‘We’d better be a bit more careful from now on. It’s not like we can get SPI to cover for us, as Dad didn’t know we were there.’

  G-Mamma checked the surveillance camera on the fridge door. ‘Speak of the devil! Daddy’s here. Crikey, what’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He must have hurt his back,’ said Janey, peering over G-Mamma’s shoulder. ‘He’s been looking a bit hunched over like that for a few days.’

  ‘Well, any more and he’ll be able to ring the bells at Notre Dame,’ said G-Mamma with a sneer. ‘Greetings, dear leader!’ she said with false brightness as Boz opened the door.

  He smiled at her and nodded hello. ‘Come on, kids,’ he said, pointing back at the house. ‘Time to de-Wow. Your mum wants to take you out shopping.’

  Janey rolled her eyes at G-Mamma. Shopping?! When one by one the Spylabs were being taken out by a mysterious new enemy? She sighed. It was almost as if her spy life was disappearing. As if, in fact, her parents wanted it to.

  It wasn’t all bad though, because, much to his disgust, Alfie needed uniform too. In a low voice Janey filled him in on recent events. He was incensed that he hadn’t got to fly in a fighter jet, but completely bewildered when Janey described how cross her mum and dad had been.

  ‘Is that all?’ Alfie shook his head in wonderment. ‘You’re wayyy too sensitive. Mum says stuff like that to me all the time.’

  ‘But mine doesn’t,’ said Janey, trying to ignore her dull reflection in a shop window as they passed. She sighed. ‘Maybe you’re right. I’m just not used to it.’

  Alfie tapped the side of his nose. ‘Trust your Uncle Alfie. I know lots about crabby parents. Just forget about it.’

  There was more to it than that, she felt, but she would keep her concerns to herself. ‘So what do boys have to wear at Everdene?’ she said, changing the subject to their new secondary school.

  Alfie fumbled in his pocket for the uniform list. ‘Erm, trousers and pullover in a shade of snotty green, shirt and tie in puke green. Tie in both colours – stripes of snot and stripes of puke.’

  Janey giggled. ‘I think that’s bottle green and pale lime. We’ve got dark green skirts for the winter, and dresses for the summer in lime.’

  ‘You’ll look disgusting,’ said Alfie pleasantly, pushing through the door of Seacrest and Argents. ‘Well, here we are. They’ll have your uniform here too, Jamie. Nice normal navy blue. See how kind my mum is.’

  As headmistress of Winton Primary, Mrs Halliday had done a good job of choosing a neutral uniform. Janey could pass down her jumpers to her little brother, but he was going to need trousers and shorts in place of her skirts and pinafores. James looked around, expectantly.

  ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ said Janey, whispering directly into her little brother’s ear. ‘At night this becomes a store for secret agents; we can get all our SPI-buys in here.’

  James’s eyes grew round, and he watched carefully as someone went into a changing cubicle. When they came out looking exactly the same his disappointment was obvious. ‘Only at night,’ repeated Janey.

  By night, when the extra letters dropped away from the Seacrest and Argents shop sign to become ‘Secret Agents’, the store became a cornucopia of wonderful gadgets and spy outfits, from the tiniest spy rings and rocket hairslides to an eight-seater Back-boat. Right at that moment, however, it looked like an ordinary high-street department store, with ‘Back to School!’ posters plastered all over the walls.

  The whole shopping experience was very ordinary too, the only highlight being when Alfie stepped miserably out of a changing room wearing a jumper with enormous dangly sleeves.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Mrs Halliday.

  ‘Mu-um! I look like an ape – oh, sorry, James. No offence. But look, the sleeves droop down to my knees!’

  But his mother was already hauling it over his head and dropping it into her shopping basket. ‘Room to grow, Alfie. I’m not buying you a new jumper every few months.’

  ‘But, Mum, I . . .’

  At which point Mrs Halliday snapped, ‘That’s enough!’ and Alfie shot Janey an ‘I told you so’ expression.

  Trying not to laugh at her friend’s misery, Janey wandered over to the back wall to look at the shoes. They were endlessly sensible – brown and black with boring buckles and laces. G-Mamma would hate them, thought Janey. She sighed, staring out the window. Suddenly, to her amazement, there was G-Mamma, in a side street outside, looking left and right, right and left, then taking to her heels and running like a maniac towards the high street and out of view.

  Immediately Janey climbed up on the middle shelf of shoes so that she could see further. G-Mamma’s quivering back was disappearing into the distance, chasing something – a large bird? An enormous turkey! The biggest one from t
he allotment! Trouble was in hot pursuit, streaking along the pavement, swerving between shoppers’ feet like a heat-seeking missile. As Janey stared, stunned, she distinctly saw one of the cat’s eyes on his collar swivel in her direction for a moment, and then spin away to look at something else.

  But wait – Trouble was being chased too! Something was buzzing after him . . . Was that a swarm of bees? With a whistling sound that Janey could hear even through the window, one of the small objects shot past her and after the cat, followed by another, then another, like a fistful of darts. Birds!

  As Janey watched, open-mouthed, worried that Trouble was in trouble, one of the birds flew round in a circle, coming up at the rear of the flock, then angled itself in a different direction. Not after Trouble. After Janey. Before she could react, the bird had opened its mouth; not cheeping but croaking, rasping, it flung itself straight at her face . . .

  It hit the window with a smack-crack, then tumbled to the ground, but not before Janey had managed to see that the bird had been aiming to tear her face off. It looked like a sparrow. It flew like a sparrow. But this thing had teeth! Needle-sharp racks of teeth, like a tiny flying shark.

  Then she remembered a cricket stump with feathers on the end. Was this the SParrow that her SPI:KE had been working on? ‘Oh, G-Mamma,’ she groaned. ‘What are you up to now?’

  ‘What is she up to?’ said a voice behind her.

  Janey jumped, almost tumbling from the shelf of shoes. ‘Mum! You frightened me.’

  ‘You frightened me, disappearing out of Winter Woollens and climbing halfway up a wall. Get down, please.’ Janey’s mother gave her a look. ‘What’s going on?’

  Janey took a deep breath. How she’d longed to be able to do this – tell her mum everything, share all her spying adventures, live their spy life together . . . and yet she held back. She didn’t want to say anything that might possibly get G-Mamma into trouble. Instead she held up a particularly revolting brown sandal. ‘Just . . . I was wondering what G-Mamma’s up to at the moment, because she might have time to do something with these hideous shoes. Maybe put them through the Wower.’