Jane Blonde: Twice the Spylet

by Jill Marshall

  And it was only when she was very nearly home, close to daylight and Easter-egg hunts, that she realized something that made her very sad: not once had Abe mentioned her mother. Janey would have to do something about that. And soon.

  easter feaster

  G-Mamma seemed incredibly excited about her Easter eggs. As soon as Janey appeared at the top of the spiral staircase in the Spylab her SPI:KE jumped to her feet.

  ‘Happy Easter, Blonde!’ she cried. ‘Now, where’s that egg?’

  ‘G-Mamma, don’t you think I’ve had more important things to do?’

  ‘More important than supplying me with chocolate? I don’t think so!’ G-Mamma clapped her hands. ‘I’ve got an egg rap for you. Here goes!’

  ‘No . . .’ began Janey, but her godmother was already swaying to the beat being pumped out by the computer, while synchronized patterns waved madly across the screen. G-Mamma pointed dramatically at Janey.

  ‘Now don’t you make me beg

  For my choc-o-late egg

  Been waiting all this time

  For the choccy to be mine.

  Milk, white or plain,

  Yeah, to me it’s all the same.

  It’s yummy-yummy-yummy

  When it’s in G-Mamma’s tummy.’

  And with that she shook her belly at Janey, then beamed and opened her arms expectantly. Janey laughed. A mad-looking sheep was nothing next to G-Mamma. ‘I’ll have to go next door and get it for you in a minute. But first of all I’d better de—’

  ‘De-code, de-brief, de-Wow, oh yeah!’ chanted G-Mamma, walking like an Egyptian around her make-up bench. ‘Phew! I am in the ZONE, Janey baby.’

  Janey called out to G-Mamma over the Wower’s hum as the glistening droplets and sleek robotic hands turned Janey from Blonde to Brown, while still filling her with enough effervescent energy to survive yet another day on no sleep at all. ‘My dad’s not going to be a spy any more – he wants to sell the wool from those sheep. And that man who you saw in the SPIV is Bert, who’s helping him. Bert doesn’t know a thing about spying. Oh, and Chloe’s really good at cooking! But she can be a bit wimpy, and I feel a bit sorry for her really. Must be lonely out on Dubbo Seven with no friends around. I think Dad would like me there full-time, but the weird thing is –’ she stepped out of the Wower cubicle in black jeans and a pony-print T-shirt – ‘he never said anything about my mum. Maybe he’s scared she won’t be interested after he disappeared on her? Anyway, I can sort it out for them.’

  ‘Whoa there, Missy Matchmaker.’ G-Mamma held up a hand. ‘One step at a time. I’ve been writing down a list of the things to check out for you – Dubbo Seven, Bert the sheep man, the rabbity wool, and I think we should look into the sick gunk. Not that I’m concerned about anything, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t double-check these things . . .’

  ‘I didn’t bring any. Oh! Wait a minute.’ Janey looked around for the eSPIdrills. Trouble was sniffing at them suspiciously, no doubt puzzled by the strange new aroma emanating from the sandals. ‘Yes! I stopped near the gate to get some wool; there was some of the gunky stuff there, so now it’s on my shoe. There, under those bits of wool.’

  G-Mamma scraped some up with the end of her little fingernail. ‘I’ll analyse it. You better go and see mummy dearest – and get my egg . . .’

  Janey rolled her eyes at G-Mamma and smiled as she slid on her ASPIC through the tunnel to her room. She could hardly believe that it was Easter Sunday, after having already spent all of the same day in Dubbo. She felt like a time traveller. Hearing movement on the other side of her bedroom door, Janey jumped to her feet, whacked the tunnel activator to close the panel and stepped out on to the landing.

  ‘There you are!’ said her mum, hugging her tightly. ‘I thought you were never going to get up. It wasn’t so long ago that you used to wake me up at five thirty for your egg hunt.’

  ‘Crikey, did I? You must have had to lay the trail really early!’

  ‘Or the night before. Many a time in my dressing gown and wellies, stumbling around in the dark. I must have looked like the loony next door.’

  Janey gave her mother a kiss. ‘Is it ready now?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s a little different this year . . .’

  Janey followed her, puzzled. Normally she headed to the kitchen, and the trail would take her round the garden, up and down a few trees then back to the lounge where her ‘big’ egg would be waiting. This time, the first egg – one of the ones they’d boiled and painted together – was lying on the top stair. The next was two stairs below, with another two steps below that. She stepped carefully, picking up eggs as she went, until she reached the bottom of the staircase with five eggs balanced precariously across her interlinked hands. She was quite relieved that they were hard-boiled. The sixth and final egg had been painted by her mum; it was lying on the hall floor, a large purple arrow outlined in gold glitter, pointing to the lounge. Janey pushed open the lounge door carefully. There on the coffee table was an enormous box of Ferrero Rocher and a stack of banknotes.

  Her mother paused in the doorway behind her. ‘I’ve been thinking, Janey. You’re not a tiny girl any more. Soon you’ll be going to a different school and growing up, and maybe going off to college or university one day, and it’s my job to make that easy for you. So this is a special kind of egg. It’s called a nest egg.’

  ‘What’s a nest egg?’ said Janey, picking up the wad of cash. ‘I thought you were saving up to go on holiday.’

  ‘Never mind that.’ Jean smiled at her. ‘We can set you up with a bank account, and you can add to it whenever you get any birthday money or whatever, and then if you ever need it, you’ll have some money behind you.’ She looked at her daughter anxiously.

  Janey grinned, and gave her mum a gigantic hug. It was typical of Jean Brown to think how she could protect her daughter as far into the future as possible. And in his own way, her dad was doing the same, by not allowing himself or his family to get into dangerous situations. The sooner they could all be together again, the better. ‘It’s a fantastic egg,’ she said firmly. ‘And now I’m going to do some eggs – fried, with bacon.’ If Chloe could do it, Janey decided, then she could do it too.

  In the end she scrambled the eggs in the microwave, and her mum helped to grill the bacon, but it was still the first breakfast Janey had more or less cooked, and her mum looked at her proudly as they splashed brown sauce over their plates.

  ‘Happy Easter, Mum,’ said Janey.

  ‘Happy Easter, darling.’

  One day, Chloe, Janey and their parents would be able to sit down together somewhere and swap eggs and jokes and stories. With that in mind, Janey smiled secretively and ploughed through her breakfast.

  Later, Jean dropped her off at the Hallidays and disappeared to see how Abe ’n’ Jean’s Clean Machines was faring. Easter Sunday should be busy at the car wash.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Alfie, relieving Janey of his Chocolate Orange as soon as she got inside the house on the school grounds where he and Mrs Halliday lived. ‘I’ve not had nearly enough chocolate today.’

  Janey assumed he was being sarcastic, as he usually was. ‘I’ll have it back if you don’t want it!’

  ‘I’m serious! Janey’s here, Mum,’ yelled Alfie down the corridor into the kitchen. ‘We’re just going upstairs to eat some CHOCOLATE.’

  Mrs Halliday appeared at the kitchen door with a tea towel in her hand and a dusting of cocoa across one cheek. ‘Hello, Janey. Happy Easter. Now don’t go acting all hard-done-by, Alfie Halliday. I’m still making a chocolate Easter cake, like I always do. Perhaps you and Janey could manage a piece a bit later. Provided you don’t eat too much beforehand, of course,’ she added darkly.

  Janey grinned as she followed Alfie upstairs. ‘What is it with these mums?’ she whispered. ‘It’s hard to believe our parents are all superspies. Oh, sorry.’

  It wasn’t just their mothers who were superspies. Both their dads were too, only Janey’s was a g
ood spy while Alfie’s was evil overlord Copernicus. He’d only found that out during the last mission, and as usual his face closed up at the mention of parents. It was very hard to accept that his dad was the enemy, frozen and out of harm’s way in some secret location guarded by SPI agents, and Alfie clearly wasn’t happy talking – or even thinking – about the whole thing.

  She changed tack quickly. ‘Your room’s unusually tidy.’ Janey was used to having to pick her way across a quagmire of quietly rotting football gear, half-built model aeroplanes, piles of books and the odd pizza box.

  Alfie pulled a face. ‘I know. Disgusting, isn’t it? Everything put away and tidied up. Mum got a bit of a bee in her bonnet when I told her about your little visitor and insisted I clear everything away so I could tell if anyone’s been in here.’

  ‘And have they?’

  ‘Only Mum!’ Alfie rolled his eyes. ‘She’s become this demon cleaner. I’ve hardly got any clothes left to wear – as soon as they hit the floor, she scoops them up and puts them in the washing machine.’ Cracking open his Chocolate Orange, he handed Janey a segment and chose a large chunk for himself. ‘She’s even started taking my handkerchiefs.’

  Janey looked at him in surprise and suppressed a laugh. ‘I thought only old men used handkerchiefs. What’s wrong with tissues?’

  ‘You obviously haven’t seen what the Wower does to a tissue,’ scoffed Alfie. He wrestled opened the top drawer of his bedside cabinet, which bulged with enough pristine white silk material to stuff a pillow. ‘This is how they come out when you Wow them. They’re all kind of slippy; honestly, you can’t wipe your nose on them. It’s revolting. Anyway, I think Mum must have got sick of it, because now she’s taken to taking the tissues out of my pocket while I’m asleep.’

  Just as Alfie was proving his point by attempting, with no success, to wipe his chocolatey fingers on the glossy surface, Mrs Halliday called upstairs. ‘Alfie, Janey, I think you’d better come here.’

  ‘Probably wants me to wash up,’ said Alfie sulkily. He pointed at Janey. ‘If that’s it, you’re drying, OK?’

  ‘OK.’ It was probably worth it for a slice of Mrs Halliday’s chocolate cake.

  But when they got downstairs, Alfie’s mother was standing at the door under the stairs that led to their cellar Spylab. ‘We’ve had a message from your father, Janey. He seems to have sent it to everyone in the SPI group. But I think we need you to decipher it, Janey.’

  Janey raced down the steps and over to the computer, with Alfie and his mother close on her heels. The message, entitled ‘Happy Easter’, had been sent from the Sol’s Lol’s headquarters in Scotland, so it seemed genuine – but wasn’t her father in Australia?

  ‘That’s odd,’ she said.

  Janey double-clicked on the attachment and a little slide show began. The first image was a fluffy yellow chick, pecking at something invisible to begin with, then turning to face them directly and opening and closing its beak. The second was a list of zodiac signs, with Gemini, Libra and Aquarius highlighted. Next was a beaker and jug; the jug poured water into the beaker; once it got to the top, an arrow flashed on and off, pointing to the level of the water. Finally, a picture of a couple of steaming hot pies hanging from a long curved meat hook popped up, and as they watched, the image of the pies faded into nothingness.

  Janey clicked on the slide-show icon again and watched carefully as it progressed. ‘It’s a bit complicated. I need to write it down. I think the first word is BEAK. That’s what the bird’s showing us. I don’t understand the second one, but the third one, I guess, means FULL. And then that last one . . . pies going?’ She peered closely at the screen, and then wrote down her arm: BEAK? FULL and then a little picture of a pie.

  ‘Let’s have another look at that second slide,’ said Mrs Halliday. ‘They’re zodiac signs, aren’t they? I don’t know much about them, but just hang on.’ While Janey stared at her arm, Maisie Halliday typed ‘Gemini, Libra, Aquarius’ into the Google bar and waited a moment. ‘They’re all air signs,’ she said, reading from the screen. ‘I’ve no idea what that means, but that’s what they have in common.’

  ‘Great.’ Janey inked the word AIR between the two words on her arm and then flicked back to the final picture. ‘Ah! I’ve got it. I thought that was a sort of meat hook, but it’s not.’

  ‘What is it then?’ said Alfie a little crossly. He was never as quick as Janey at working these things out. But then, she had been trained in code-breaking from a very young age.

  ‘It’s an S.’ Janey scribed the letter S on to her arm and thought about it for just a moment. Then she nodded. ‘That’s it. BEAK. AIR. FULL. S – Pies fading away.’ Alfie and his mother looked at her expectantly. ‘It’s a warning. “Be careful. Spies disappearing”.’

  For a long moment the spy and the two Spylets looked at each other, almost as if they expected the others to fade away before their very eyes. Her father always warned them, somehow, when danger was imminent, but it looked as though they were all OK. She would have to get back to Dubbo Seven very soon though. Then Janey gasped. ‘We’re all right, but G-Mamma’s on her own. I’d better get home.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Mrs Halliday, veering off when she got to the hallway and reappearing with a large parcel in her hands. ‘Take your mother some cake. I don’t think we’ll have time to eat it.’

  ‘Mu-um,’ moaned Alfie.

  His mother poked him in the ribs. ‘Never mind the cake, Spylet. There’s danger about. Move!’

  spylet spirals

  Together they ran to the car and piled in, with only the slightest tussle for the driver’s seat as Alfie realized it was still full daylight and he couldn’t risk being seen at the wheel. They careered around corners until, just moments later, they pulled up outside Janey’s house. Piling out of the car with Janey in the lead, the three of them headed straight up G-Mamma’s path. Janey high-kicked the door down and they shot up the spiral staircase, pausing only briefly to jump across the gap that had appeared between the top of the spiral steps and G-Mamma’s Spylab floor. Janey glanced at it quickly and then bounded across the lab.

  ‘What the magic gadget are you doing?’ cried G-Mamma, leaping up so far that the top of her voluminous Easter bonnet nearly hit the ceiling.

  ‘G-Mamma, you’re here!’ Janey ran over and grabbed her SPI:KE’s hands in relief. ‘There’s an email from Dad.’

  ‘Greetings Halo, Baby Halo.’ G-Mamma waved at the Hallidays, ignoring Alfie’s snarl. ‘Yes, I saw the message. Didn’t understand what the bejeepers he’s talking about, of course.’

  ‘It means, “Be careful, spies disappearing.’’’ Janey turned to the computer and pointed to the slide show.

  ‘Ah,’ said G-Mamma, trying to look mysterious. It was very difficult in her milk-maid’s outfit. ‘It might say that, but it also says it came from Scotland.’

  ‘Yes, from Sol’s Lols,’ agreed Janey. ‘I know Abe’s in Australia, but I got there and back pretty quickly,’ she went on. ‘Maybe he’s travelling to and from Australia by Satispy or something? Or perhaps he has his own eSPIdrills.’

  ‘Those DMs,’ said G-Mamma with a gleam in her eye. ‘He’s got them working properly.’

  ‘Or maybe the message is fake,’ said Alfie. ‘Designed to make us all panic. Look what we did – legged it out of our house like it was going to explode. There could be evils all over it by now.’

  ‘Alfie’s right.’ Mrs Halliday was looking very thoughtful. ‘Janey, you should go to your father and find out why he sent this message. I’ll tell your mother you’re staying with us for a day or two when I take this cake round. Alfie, you go with Janey. Then G-Mamma and I can check things out around here.’

  ‘But how?’ Janey held up the eSPIdrills.

  ‘I am NOT wearing those,’ said Alfie.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to stay here then,’ said his mother.

  Janey, however, was thinking of what she had just had to do to get into the Spylab. ‘Han
g on. When Chloe left, she did it from the ground floor of G-Mamma’s house. And I’ve just had to jump off the steps because the spiral staircase seems to have shifted . . .’

  At this, G-Mamma and Maisie Halliday stared at each other. ‘Swirling steps, they’ve finished the design,’ said G-Mamma, sprinting over to the staircase.

  ‘And you’ve got one here. Of course!’ Mrs Halliday raised her hands. ‘Naturally the first people to use it would be his own two children. Come on, Spylets. You can take the stairs.’

  ‘We’re going to climb down steps to Australia?’ Alfie’s eyes bulged.

  ‘Are you sure it’s ready?’ said Mrs Halliday to G-Mamma. ‘They hadn’t had approval, as far as I’m aware.’

  G-Mamma shrugged. ‘Sol’s had them installed, so I think they’ll be OK. Janey, get in the Wower!’

  Bewildered, Janey skittered across the Spylab to the spy shower cubicle and slammed the door behind her. A minute later, Jane Blonde emerged in her silver Lycra, black Ultra-gogs and Girl-gauntlet. Clumsily, she pushed the USSR spy ring on to her left hand as Alfie went to Wow up into his denim-coloured SPIsuit, Boy-battler and slender metal Gogs.

  G-Mamma raced across the floor, strapped on Janey’s ASPIC with frantic speed and then, to Janey’s disgust, shoved a pea-sized object up the spylet’s nose. ‘Euw! G-Mamma!’

  ‘It’s a SPInal cord,’ said G-Mamma, tipping Janey’s head back and ensuring the gadget was wedged properly in place. ‘SPI Nostril-Activated Litmus. The string descends from your nose and analyses strange smells. I haven’t got anywhere with the sick gunk, but this might do the trick.’

  To Janey’s relief, once she’d got used to the sensation of having something lodged in her nostril, it wasn’t too uncomfortable. She and Alfie followed G-Mamma to the spiral staircase. ‘This is amazing,’ said the SPI:KE. ‘SPI must have planned this all along!’