Freax and Rejex. Robin Jarvis

did the nice TV lady go?” the seven-year-old asked when she saw Jody looking at her.

      “As far away as she can if she’s got any sense, which isn’t very likely,” Jody replied.

      “She said she was going to take us with her,” the little girl said, staring down at her feet. “I don’t like it here.”

      Jody pitied her. This new life must be so much worse for the very young ones. If she couldn’t understand what was going on, how could they?

      “Open your bag,” she said. “Let’s get you some fresh togs out. Then come with me to the bathroom and we’ll clean you up. How does that sound?”

      Christina’s answering grin was the widest she’d ever seen and they made a game of searching through the little girl’s bag to see what had been packed for her.

      “We should have them two beds upstairs,” Charm interrupted them, addressing Jody, hands on hips. “We’re like the oldest in here, innit? I’m gonna kick them kids out. What do you say?”

      “You’re orange,” Christina told her.

      Jody’s nostrils widened as she suppressed a laugh. “I’m fine where I am,” she replied. “It’s only for two nights. Let those girls enjoy themselves for a change. They must have a miserable time of it back home.”

      “I want to sleep up there,” Charm insisted. “And I’m gonna. Them kids’ve gotta shift. If you won’t help then I’ll do it on me own, makes no difference. But don’t expect to kip up there when I’ve sorted it.”

      Jody squared up to her. Although she was a year younger than this painted gargoyle, she knew she was stronger and wasn’t afraid to smack the lipgloss clear off her face.

      “You leave them alone,” she said forcefully. “They got there first, so the penthouse is theirs. If you try to evict them, I’ll drag you down the stairs by your extensions so fast, you’ll slide out of your tan like a snake sloughing its skin. You got that?”

      Charm glowered at her. Jody half expected her to throw a tantrum.

      “Come away, child,” Mrs Benedict interjected, shooting Jody a scolding glance and drawing her daughter back to where the pink suitcases were waiting. “Don’t you mingle with the likes of that common sort. Naught but a lowly two at the most, I’ll wager, if she ever makes it to the castle, which I doubt. What a surly face. I’ve seen prettier sights round the backs of cows and what comes out of them. We don’t want her kind in Mooncaster. A proper dirty aberrant and no mistake.”

      Jody snorted. That was the most fun she’d had in months and she promised herself a weekend of Barbie baiting.

      “I know what her flavour is,” Charm told her mother in a deliberately loud voice. “Old cabbage and sprouts!”

      Christina stuck her tongue out at her. Then the seven-year-old’s attention was arrested by a strange circular object, fixed high on the wall. She pointed to it and asked Jody, “What’s that?”

      In the boys’ cabin that had been fitted with seven beds, Marcus was looking at an identical device and wondering the very same thing. It resembled an old-fashioned radio from the 1930s, being made of brown Bakelite, with a central dial and a brass grill. But it was too large and didn’t match the rest of the interior decor. He dragged a chair over from the TV corner and stood on it for a closer inspection.

      “It’s bust,” he announced to anyone listening. “These knobs down the side don’t do anything and the needle doesn’t go round the dial. It’s just for show. It’s junk.”

      A slightly younger boy gazed up at it. “Maybe it’s just a speaker?” he suggested. “To wake us up in the morning and tell us when to go for breakfast and make announcements.”

      Marcus looked down at him. The boy wore what he could only describe as “geek goggles” and was going through the first flush of puberty, if his crop of zits was anything to go by.

      Back in the pre-Jax days, Marcus wouldn’t have even noticed the likes of him. His posse consisted only of the cool kids, at the top of the school food chain. It was a pity that Alasdair dude hadn’t been put in this cabin as well. He didn’t seem so bad. If he was here, they both could have avoided talking to dweebs like this.

      “There’s no wires connecting it to anything,” he said, jumping off the chair. “And why the phoney dial?”

      “Was only an idea.”

      “So who’re you, know-all?”

      The boy hesitated. He’d got out of the habit of speaking to people who weren’t possessed by the book and was now always on his guard.

      “Er… Spencer,” he said with some awkwardness.

      “Herr Spencer?” Marcus scoffed. “You German?”

      “No, just Spencer.”

      Marcus punched him playfully on the shoulder.

      “OK, Herr Spenzer,” he laughed. “You zee any pretty Fräuleins, you zend them to Marcus, ja?”

      “I’m not German,” Spencer reiterated, rubbing his shoulder. “I’m from Southport.”

      “Just teasing ya!” he said, flicking the boy’s spectacles so they sat at an angle on his face. “Take a joke.”

      Spencer backed away, adjusting his glasses, and returned to his bed. He sat there protecting his bag, in case Marcus thought it would be funny to run off with it.

      The older boy groaned. What a useless bunch of kids he’d been lumbered with. Every one of them could win a misery guts contest in ugly town.

      “Oh, lighten up, the lot of you!” he called out. “This has got to be better than what you left behind at home, hasn’t it?”

      Five sullen faces stared back at him. He rolled his eyes and knocked his knuckles on his temple.

      “Hopeless!” he uttered. “Bloody hopeless. Right, I’m going to grab a shower. I’ve a feeling I’m going to get lucky, not that any of you can possibly understand what that means. If you need a wazz, go now while I get my towel. Just a wazz though; if you want to drop a log, tough – you’ll have to wait till I’m done.”

      He went up the stairs to the mezzanine. At least he’d had the sense to be first up here and take ownership of one of those beds. He wouldn’t have to sleep down there, which would be an airless pit of sweaty socks, bad breath and BO by tomorrow morning. Herr Spenzer’s zits probably glowed in the dark too.

      At the top of the stairs Marcus stopped. The other bed up here had been taken by the black lad from the other coach. He was reclining on the covers with his earphones in, puffing away on a cigarette. The grey smoke had gathered in a ghostly canopy overhead.

      Marcus scowled. “Hey, dude,” he said. “You wanna take that outside? I don’t want me or my stuff to stink.”

      Nike boy’s eyes opened and appraised him slowly, up and down. Marcus folded his arms so he could push the biceps out a bit more. He wasn’t going to be intimidated. Still, that lad was stocky, not gym-toned but naturally brick-wall solid.

      “You just call me ‘dude’?”

      “Take your cancer sticks outside, man,” Marcus told him.

      “You don’t get to tell me what to do, white boy.”

      “Oi, don’t start that!”

      The lad rose from the bed and Marcus saw he was a good bit taller than himself. He stood his ground as the other approached, the cigarette hanging on his lip.

      “I will start what the hell I want,” he said as he came closer. “Who is you to lay down rules in here? Lab rats don’t get to say what’s what. You’re in the same experiment as the rest of us. If you don’t like my nicotine then you better go find somewhere else