campus and sells crack to the red-shirts.’
‘We have it on good authority that Zara Asker doesn’t like you, Norman,’ Kyle said. ‘Mac kept saving your bacon, but his days are over. When Lauren tells that disciplinary panel the truth, you know you’re going to be out on your arse.’
‘Especially now you’ve upset me,’ Lauren added. ‘I might even be tempted to exaggerate.’
‘You can’t do this!’ Large spluttered, sending his breakfast bowl and a couple of remote controls flying as he booted the coffee table up in the air.
The noise made Lauren jump, but she kept herself together and faked a grin. ‘Oh dear, now you’ve gone and spilled milk on the carpet.’
‘And just to make sure that you’re not reinstated, we’re going to send a petition around campus. Agents will refuse to go on missions if you are,’ Kyle added.
This was news to Lauren, mainly because Kyle had only thought up the idea two seconds earlier.
‘And we’ve already told Meryl Spencer that you tried to blackmail me,’ Lauren said. ‘Zara doesn’t know yet, but I wouldn’t expect a Christmas card from the Askers this year.’
Mr Large was going so red that Lauren was frightened he’d keel over with another heart attack.
‘CHERUB has been my whole life,’ Large bellowed. ‘I’m a training instructor, that’s what I am.’
‘No,’ Lauren corrected. ‘What you are is an arsehole.’
Kyle couldn’t help giggling as Mr Large stepped towards Lauren. She was a quarter of his age and a third of his size, but she didn’t flinch.
‘You’ve wrecked my life, Lauren Adams,’ Large shouted. ‘You put my back out when you hit me with the spade and knocked me into that ditch. I hardly ever drank until I found out that it helped relieve the pain. And it was the drink that made me put on weight, which gave me the heart attack, and to top it all off you now want to hammer the nail into my career—’
‘Don’t blame me,’ Lauren screamed back. ‘I only hit you because you were making Bethany dig a grave when she was in agony with her back. It all sounds a lot like poetic justice to me.’
‘Come on Lauren,’ Kyle said, as he stepped out of the armchair. ‘We’ve said everything we came here to say. It’s up to him whether he resigns now or lets himself and his daughter be humiliated.’
But as Lauren tried to step around Mr Large and leave, he placed a hand on her shoulder and pushed her backwards across the sofa.
Lauren tried knocking him away with a two-footed kick, but Large was enormous and his stomach felt like concrete. Her legs buckled under his weight as he leaned forward and grabbed her cheeks, squishing her lips out of shape.
Kyle wrapped his arms around Large’s waist and tried dragging him off, but Large launched a powerful kick that sent him clattering backwards into a drinks cabinet.
‘Your fancy moves won’t work on me,’ Large grinned, as he pushed down hard, squeezing Lauren’s head against the sofa cushion. ‘Remember, I’m the guy that taught ’em to you.’
Lauren looked towards Kyle, hoping that he’d be able to find a weapon or something, but the kick had winded him and he was crumpled against the wall, clutching his stomach.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ Lauren croaked.
‘I guess I won’t,’ Mr Large agreed. ‘I guess I’ll have to resign. We’ll move somewhere near where my partner works and I’ll make sure it’s far enough from campus that your perverted brother can’t touch Hayley. But here’s the good part: just so that you never forget me, I’m gonna head next door and wring Meatball’s neck.’
Lauren broke into a coughing fit as Large let go and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
‘We’ve got to stop him, Kyle,’ Lauren screamed. ‘He’s gonna kill Meatball.’
As the two injured cherubs stumbled into the hallway, Large ran across the driveway and made the Asker’s front door shudder as he shoulder-charged it.
Kyle reached the inside of Large’s front door a second later, but it didn’t move when he turned the handle.
‘He must have put the deadlock on. We’ll have to go out the back.’
As they scrambled towards the rear of the unfamiliar house, Large’s second kick knocked the Askers’ front door off its hinges. He shouted, ‘I’ll show you Lauren Adams,’ as the burglar alarm erupted.
Kyle made it out of the back door and sprinted across Large’s garden towards the driveway.
‘You’ve got to bite him, Meatball,’ Lauren shouted desperately as she charged after Kyle.