running the length of one wall.
He tracked the ringing phone to a handbag – the one his mother had taken to Warrender Prep the previous afternoon. He pulled it out and glanced at the display: Fahim calling.
It was odd that his mum wouldn’t take her phone. It seemed even odder when he noticed her purse, her house and car keys and the wallet in which she kept her credit cards.
Fahim realised his father was lying to him. How could his mother have run off to stay at a spa with a bloody mouth, no car keys and no credit card with which to pay the bill?
Had his father done something horrible – like killed her, or hurt her so badly that she was in hospital somewhere? Fear welled up until Fahim felt like he had a table tennis ball lodged in his throat. He raced back to his bedroom, then lay on his bed, digging his fingers into a pillow as his whole body trembled.
Fahim was terrified about whatever had happened to his mum, but he was also angry with her: she’d told him the whole aeroplane thing was a misunderstanding, but then he’d overheard her threatening to go to the cops. She’d lied, his father had lied and Fahim hated being trapped in a situation he couldn’t understand or control.
‘Why can’t I just have normal parents?’ he moaned to himself.
He racked his aching head, searching for a plan. His mum always told him to stay out of the fighting, but what if she needed his help? What if she really was dead, or if she was scared and didn’t come back for weeks or months?
Hassam might have been remorsefully boiling eggs and offering presents this morning, but his mood would swing back eventually. Without Fahim’s mum to defend him, another beating and a one-way ticket to Abu Dhabi was just a matter of time.
Fahim rolled off his bed and kept his mobile in his shaking hand as he stepped across to his PC. Windows was on standby, so it took seconds to bring up Google on his web browser. The number had scrolled across the screen on all the TV news bulletins about the air crash, but he couldn’t remember it, so typed plane crash hotline and clicked the grey search button.
The first link brought up a picture of a telephone and a giant freephone number in the centre of the screen. He slid his phone open, peeked between the doors to make sure nobody was coming up the stairs, then dialled as he walked back to the bed.
It rang several times before a recorded message came on, telling him that the hotline was receiving an unprecedented number of calls and that an operator would be with him as soon as possible.
As a string quartet blared in his right ear, Fahim wondered if he was doing the right thing. If his mother was dead he really had to speak to someone. But what if she was alive? She was opposed to whatever it was his father had done, but she clearly knew all about it and what if that made her an accessory? What if his mum ended up being sent to prison because he’d grassed to the police?
The music in his ear stopped.
‘Anglo-Irish incident hotline, Detective Love speaking. How may I help?’
What kind of person grasses up their own mother? Fahim thought, before stuttering into the phone.
‘I…I don’t know for sure, but I think my dad…I think …’
The telephone operator spoke soothingly. ‘Why don’t you calm down and start from the beginning?’
‘No … It’s just a prank, I’m sorry,’ Fahim stammered, before sliding his phone shut, throwing it on the bed and staring at it like it had burned his hand.
His face was red and he dripped with sweat, but whatever his father had done, he didn’t want to risk betraying his mum.
17. MAC
Thirteen days later
Getting invited to the mission preparation building on CHERUB campus usually meant you were being offered a job. Lauren had walked the gently curving corridors many times and always with the same mixture of excitement and anxiety. This Monday morning was different, because she’d been invited by Dr McAfferty and felt awkward about seeing him.
‘Can I come in?’ Lauren asked, poking her head into Dennis King’s office.
King was one of CHERUB’s two senior mission controllers. His post warranted one of the large offices at opposite ends of the building, but his job involved organising all the routine missions, such as security checks or