CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,51

the great god Helix I swear that I shall one day make love to the fine maiden Kerry Chang.’

James felt dumb laughing at his own silliness, but he was still sniggering when he carried his bags towards the lift five minutes later.

*

Dante had gone blond and Chloe had a few touches of grey and a new wardrobe of posh-mum clothes for the mission.

Chloe and the three teenagers did the half-day drive in the comfort of a Range Rover. James had a driving licence for the mission and despite Lauren protesting that he was a terrible driver who’d get them all killed, Chloe let James drive the last leg of the journey after a nice outdoor lunch at a gastro-pub just past Bristol.

Their home was a modern four-bed house a twenty-minute walk from the beach and the centre of Salcombe. The wealthy seaside town was chock full during the summer and the Security Services Emergency Relocation Bureau had paid a small fortune to rent the house and furnish it in a style that fitted in with their background story.

The family name was Raven. Chloe Raven, the divorced thirty-seven-year-old wife who’d moved away from London and an ex-husband who worked in the City. James was seventeen-year-old James Raven, a sixth-form student. Lauren Raven was James’ sister and in Year Eight. To avoid similarity with his birth identity Dante had become John Raven, and Lauren’s twin brother.

James was the biggest, so he helped carry Lauren and Chloe’s bags up to the first-floor bedrooms.

‘Your ladyship’s case,’ he said, when he saw Lauren lying on her bare mattress. She had a large room, with a balcony overlooking a landscaped garden.

‘Ta,’ Lauren grunted, scratching under her armpit.

‘You OK?’ James asked. ‘You’ve hardly said anything all day.’

‘I’m depressed,’ Lauren announced dramatically. James hadn’t seen his sister sulk like this since before their mum died.

‘You’ll sort it out with Rat,’ James said, trying to sound cheerful but not too cheerful. ‘You’ve had rows before.’

Lauren sat up sharply. ‘What makes you think I want to sort it out with him? He acted like a jealous dick.’

James grinned. ‘I’m not surprised, the way you were fawning over Dante.’

‘I so wasn’t,’ Lauren said indignantly. ‘You boys are all the same. You ogle girls, you have pictures of women with tits the size of footballs draped on your bedroom walls and then you accuse us of being sluts just because we speak to someone else.’

James was only trying to be nice and didn’t want to get involved with Lauren’s love life. ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’ll sort itself out one way or another.’

Lauren tutted and folded her arms across her chest as James backed out of the room. He saw Lauren’s other bag at the bottom of the stairs, but was buggered if he was carrying it up to her room if she was only going to shout at him.

‘Nice house, eh?’ Dante said, as he came into the hallway holding a cooler box filled with food for the kitchen. ‘You seen your bike, James? It doesn’t look too bad.’

‘Oh!’ James said excitedly. ‘I forgot, where is it?’

‘Garage,’ Dante said. ‘Chloe rolled the car in next to it.’

James rushed out the front door, passing Chloe who held a big carrier bag filled with wellies and umbrellas.

‘Can I give the bike a spin?’ James asked eagerly.

‘I was going to have a cup of tea and a biscuit,’ Chloe said. ‘Don’t you want anything?’

‘Just ten or fifteen minutes to get a feel for it,’ James begged.

‘Go on then,’ Chloe smiled. ‘Put your protective gear on and take things easy until you’re used to riding it.’

She broke out laughing as she walked into the house.

‘What’s funny?’ Dante asked.

‘You teenagers,’ Chloe explained. ‘One minute James is all cool and sophisticated, the next he’s beaming like a six-year-old on Christmas morning.’

‘James loves his bikes,’ Dante said, as he heard a little bike engine buzzing to life.

James had ridden a variety of motorbikes on a mission in America three years earlier. Terry Campbell had let him ride motorbikes around campus and over the past six days he’d had some intensive motorbike instruction on real roads. But this was the first time James had experienced the freedom of his own bike.

The 250cc Honda was a few years old and only had twenty-two horsepower, but powerful bikes are illegal for riders under twenty-one and the machine could still out-accelerate most cars and cruise comfortably at seventy-five miles an hour. What’s more, James had experienced larger bikes and in many