The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection. Lauren Child

then her flouting of the camp dress code really got him marching up and down. His least favourite item was a T-shirt printed with the words: could you repeat that? I wasn’t actually listening.

      ‘Redfort, how many times have I told you about that T-shirt of yours?’

      ‘I’m sorry Sergeant Cooper, I haven’t been counting, but I can take a wild guess if it’s important to you.’

      Sergeant Cooper was keen to put Ruby ‘back in her box’ whenever he got the chance. He was under the misguided impression that this hard-nut approach would instill respect in the kid.

      He was wrong about that.

      One such time was when Ruby had done particularly badly in her free-dive training, free-diving being the art of swimming underwater unaided by any breathing apparatus. Ruby’s parents were big fans of free-diving; indeed, her father Brant had gone to Stanton University on a free-dive scholarship.

      In fact free-diving was how Ruby’s parents had met. Brant had been working with a famous Italian marine biologist, free- diving from his yacht off the coast of Italy. Sabina had been sailing single-handed round the Mediterranean and had bumped into Brant while underwater. She was pretty good at holding her breath too, championship good.

      As a result, there wasn’t a lot that Ruby didn’t know about breath-hold diving, but for the life of her she just couldn’t begin to contemplate holding her breath for a whole lot longer than seemed entirely sensible. It went against everything that was natural and sane. Dive down 220 feet without oxygen? No thank you. It was a claustrophobic’s nightmare. The free-dive training involved a lot of slow, rigorous preparation – years of it in fact. It was a difficult and dangerous technique to master and Ruby wasn’t about to risk her life for something that seemed so wrong. Diving to great depths with scuba gear: no problem. Diving with just snorkel and flippers: a breeze. But ask her to hold her breath for more than one minute and one second? No way was she gonna do that. She didn’t have the lung capacity, and this combined with the darkness at great depth made her feel claustrophobic.

      One Thursday she resurfaced just as Sergeant Cooper walked by. This chance encounter was not a good one.

      COOPER: ‘Well, well, well, look who it is, Agent Redfort coming up for air.’

      REDFORT: ‘Jeepers, I should have stayed down a few minutes longer.’

      COOPER: ‘I doubt that you are capable of that Redfort. I hear you can only make one minute, hardly a record.’

      REDFORT: ‘If I’d known I was going to be coming face to face with a giant sea cucumber when I next took a lungful, I might have put some effort in.’

      COOPER: ‘You don’t know what effort is Redfort. Now, Bradley Baker, he really could hold his breath. Seven minutes I heard. Years and years of hard work and training.’

      REDFORT: ‘No kidding. Were you standing there holding the towel?’

      COOPER: ‘It would have been a privilege to hand that young man his towel. You should take note: Baker also started his Spectrum duty as a kid – younger’n you an’ smarter’n you too.’

      REDFORT: ‘What? That’s meant to bug me?’

      But of course, it did bug her. This Bradley Baker guy bugged the life out of her. Of course, he had long since grown up, become the most versatile agent Spectrum ever trained, loved and admired by all – the youngest, smartest agent Spectrum had ever hired, and no one was going to let her forget it. To make matters worse Bradley Baker had tragically met his end, dying in a plane crash in the line of duty, and so had died a hero’s death. If Bradley Baker’s ghost didn’t haunt Ruby, then his legendary status certainly did.

      Of course, no one got away with speaking to Sergeant Cooper this way and Ruby found herself scrubbing all the latrines in the camp for the following three days. Kip Holbrook, who despite all the constant metaphorical hair-pulling was actually a nice guy, was kind enough to wade in and help her out. He didn’t exactly know why but he found himself liking this kid from Twinford.

      ‘Can I give you some advice Redfort?’ he asked in the middle of day three’s latrine scrubbing. ‘You might wanna learn to keep that mouth of yours shut, it gets you in some unsanitary situations.’

      ‘I can’t help saying what’s on my mind,’ replied Ruby, ‘it’s the way I am.’

      ‘Then buy yourself a pair of good rubber gloves because it looks like you’re going to be scrubbing latrines for many years to come,’ said Holbrook.

      Having endured two weeks of what she saw as Drill Sergeant Cooper’s poor attitude, Ruby wasn’t exactly grief-stricken when one day she swam up through the clear ocean water to see a sign.

      Well, to Ruby Redfort it was a sign: to the mere mortal it was just a donut on a plate sprinkled with candy numbers. The numbers she recognised without rearranging them: they were all digits that together and in the right order made up one long familiar number. Without any hesitation she crammed the donut into her mouth and made her way hurriedly to the bank of telephones outside the canteen.

      One of the phone booths had a half-drunk milkshake balanced on top of the phone and next to it a stack of coins. Ruby picked up the receiver and dialled the number. The phone was answered on the third ring.

      ‘Double Donut, Marla speaking.’

      ‘Hey Marla, it’s Ruby.’

      ‘Hang on, I’ll get him, he’s right here.’

      One minute twenty seconds later a man’s voice came on the line.

      ‘Hello.’

      ‘What took you?’ Ruby said.

      ‘Kid, can’t a person eat a donut in his favourite diner without getting harassed?’

      ‘I believe you wanted me to contact you,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Glad you can still read the signs,’ he said. ‘So how are the plankton?’

      ‘Oh, the plankton are OK, it’s the sea cucumbers I’m having trouble with.’

      ‘Sergeant Cooper?’

      ‘Uh huh.’

      ‘I gather he isn’t your biggest fan.’

      ‘I’m not too fond of him either.’

      ‘Well, this is your lucky day Redfort. Dive school is done with you and Twinford Junior High would like you back Monday at 8am pronto. So slip out of your flippers, you’re on a plane back to Twinford in… oh, seventeen minutes.’

      Ruby Redfort smiled, but before she hung up, she asked, ‘So Hitch, why didn’t you just leave a message with the camp co-ordinator, like a normal person? It’s not like you’ve gotta be covert about it; everyone knows you’re my sidekick.’

      ‘Kid, you can fool yourself that you have a sidekick, but you’ve got a long way to go before you’re going to fool me, LB or anyone else in Spectrum.’

      ‘OK man, I’m just kidding with you, I haven’t forgotten that you are Spectrum’s number one numero uno action agent – I was only asking. Why all the secrecy?’

      ‘Just keeping you sharp kid. Don’t want you getting sloppy.’

      Ruby smiled. Yep, that was Hitch all right, one royal pain in the behind.

       Chapter 4.

      The recurring dream

      THE DREAM HAD BEGUN IN THE USUAL WAY: Ruby alone, treading water in a bottomless ocean, an ethereal voice whispering to her, almost singing. She would turn this way and that, but she could never see ‘the thing’ until it was too late.

      Suddenly she would feel something grab her leg and she would spin down, down, down into the indigo depths. And the miniature man who appeared in the water just couldn’t save