CHERUB: The Sleepwalker - Robert Muchamore Page 0,38

night. We both see the red mist and shoot off like fireworks, don’t we?’

Fahim resented his father’s attempt to shift blame on to him, but he swallowed his indignation and forced a weak smile. ‘We should both learn to hold our breath and count to ten,’ he said.

Hassam roared with laughter and gave the big toe poking from the duvet a friendly squeeze. ‘You and I can go into town. Remember that leather jacket you saw? And wasn’t there some radio-controlled car you were after? I bet it would run well on the big patio out back.’

‘My head’s killing me.’

‘Not today, obviously,’ Hassam said. ‘But tomorrow … Actually I have a meeting, but definitely the weekend.’

Fahim turned to straighten his pillows, giving his father a glimpse of red where his shoulder had bled in the night.

‘I’ll get Sylvia to put fresh sheets on,’ Hassam said, his tone firming slightly. ‘If she asks tell her you had a nosebleed. OK, sport?’

Fahim almost choked on his egg. His father only ever called him sport when he was papering over cracks.

‘I guess,’ Fahim said. The blood had made his father feel guilty and he decided it was a good time to ask a bold question. ‘What about my school? I don’t want to live in the Middle East.’

Hassam raised an eyebrow and was clearly a touch irritated, but his words came softly. ‘Your mother and I don’t agree on this, but I won’t force you to go abroad if you don’t want to.’

‘Thank you,’ Fahim said.

‘Your friend from before you went to Warrender Prep. The one who came here to play sometimes in the holidays. I forget his name.’

‘Louis.’

‘Yes,’ Hassam smiled. ‘Louis just moved to Burleigh Arts and Media. Maybe we can get you in there and we’ll see how things go.’

Fahim had never wanted to go to Warrender Prep, with its compulsory sport on a Saturday and outrageous amounts of homework. He broke into a genuine smile at the idea of going back to an ordinary school with his closest friend.

‘Really?’ Fahim said, but he immediately felt cross with himself for letting his father see that he could be bought off.

‘Burleigh got a decent OFSTED report. I’ll give them a call later this morning and ask about admissions.’

*

Lauren wasn’t sure why she’d been summoned to the chairwoman’s office, so it was a relief when Zara opened her office door with a smile.

‘Come in, Lauren,’ she said. ‘Take a pew.’

The office was fitted with modern furniture. An LCD picture frame had pride of place on Zara’s glass-topped desk, running a slideshow of Ewart, Joshua and Tiffany.

‘Did you enjoy the training exercise last night?’

Lauren shrugged as she rolled her chair closer to the desk. ‘I wouldn’t exactly describe getting dragged out of bed at midnight and being handcuffed and thrown out in the cold as my idea of fun. I guess it went OK though, but I’ve got a couple of little burns on my legs.’

Zara smiled. ‘We vary all our training programmes to ensure the element of surprise, but last night’s exercise was designed from scratch by Mr Kazakov. Overall I think it worked well, although it sounds like the balance of power tilted too heavily towards the red and white shirts.’

Lauren nodded. ‘You can’t run across the open part of campus with quad bikes chasing after you. You haven’t got a chance. Maybe if you kept the golf buggies working or something.’

‘I think Mr Pike has already decided that if we run a similar exercise again we’ll ban the use of powered vehicles and issue bicycles instead. It’s fairer; it cuts down the risk of accidents and the chances of a three-thousand-pound quad bike ending up at the bottom of the lake.’

‘That’s my brother’s fault,’ Lauren laughed. ‘I didn’t much like having to duff up the red shirts either. I mean, some of them were only eight and Siobhan burst into tears on me. It was horrible.’

‘Interesting point,’ Zara said, as she jotted it down on a notepad. ‘I’ll pass that along, although all of the red shirts were volunteers and they were all told they could go back to bed whenever they chose. They knew it would be a challenging night going up against black shirts, and the red shirts I’ve spoken to seem to have enjoyed themselves, despite a few cuts and bruises.

‘Anyway Lauren, I appreciate your feedback on the exercise, but the outstanding thing that came out of last night was your performance. You were the youngest on your