how Fahim was doing and run back to catch up with Bethany and Rat, but she became engrossed as Fahim wobbled and perspired through a test that didn’t even involve breaking into a run. It didn’t look good.
When Nurse Beckett stopped the treadmill, Fahim ripped off the mask and wiped his sweaty face on his orange CHERUB T-shirt. Lauren could tell that he’d already been through most of the recruitment tests. A bloodshot eye suggested a painful encounter with an experienced opponent in the dojo, there was chicken blood on his shorts, and he had a seriously grazed knee, most likely from mistiming the zip-wire jump at the end of the height obstacle.
‘Hello Lauren,’ Nurse Beckett said, as she pushed her way through the rubber strips and looked at her clipboard. ‘You’re not due for a test, are you? I’ve only got one orange shirt scheduled for this morning.’
‘Not until December,’ Lauren said, shuddering at the thought. ‘I came to see how Fahim was doing. Dr Kessler was busy, so he told me to take a look for myself.’
Nurse Beckett stepped out of the doorway and showed Lauren the clipboard with the assessment data from all of Fahim’s tests. The document ran to a dozen A4 sides, each with boxes on which the person making the assessment had stuck coloured dots.
‘Just like traffic lights,’ Beckett explained. ‘Green for a pass, amber for borderline, red for a failure.’
‘Oh,’ Lauren gasped, as she saw that more than a quarter of the dots were red. ‘Is it even worth carrying on?’
The nurse nodded. ‘It’s nowhere near as bad as it looks. Nobody ever gets all amber and green. His academic scores are up to snuff and he has good Arabic and some Urdu. Both are very desirable skills for a cherub in the present political climate.’
‘So how many more red dots can Fahim get away with?’
‘You’re only disqualified if you get a double red dot.’
‘How would he get that?’
The nurse paused for a second, thinking of a way to explain. ‘You can see here that I gave Fahim a red because of poor endurance, but his potential fitness is good so he’ll get amber in most other categories. There’s no fixed pass/fail score. Zara Asker will make the ultimate decision as to whether his score is high enough to be accepted. I’d only give him a double red if I discovered something like a heart problem, or a postural or skeletal defect that would lead to serious difficulty during basic training.’
‘And so far he hasn’t got any?’ Lauren asked.
Nurse Beckett shook her head and smiled. ‘We don’t torture you kids for the fun of it, you know. If someone gets a double red, that’s the end of the recruitment process.’
Lauren crossed her fingers on both hands and held them in the air. ‘I’d better get going or I won’t get anything to eat before my next lesson. I’m not allowed to talk to Fahim while he’s wearing the orange shirt, so can you tell him that I wished him luck?’
‘Of course,’ Beckett smiled. ‘He’s under a lot of pressure, so I’m sure it will cheer him up.’
As the nurse headed back between the rubber strips, Lauren thought of something. ‘Just a sec,’ she yelped.
‘What?’
‘You know you said that if Fahim doesn’t fail anything the ultimate judgement comes down to Zara? Do you reckon it might help his case if I tried to corner her and put in a good word?’
The nurse looked uncertain. ‘You’re a black shirt, so I guess your opinion counts for something. I certainly couldn’t see it doing any harm.’
‘Right,’ Lauren said, as she picked her muddy trainers off the floor. ‘I’ll give it a go.’
‘Love the socks by the way,’ Nurse Beckett said, as she disappeared back into the examination room.
37. PAINT
James and Kerry still faced their punishments for the unnecessarily violent assault on Danny. By Tuesday James had run his fifty laps and done six out of twenty hours’ decorating duty. Kerry’s punishment of three hundred laps and a hundred hours’ decorating was more daunting and would eat up all of her spare time for five or six weeks.
The junior block was a converted Victorian school that had been CHERUB’s headquarters until the main building was constructed in the early 1970s. James and Kerry had both been over the campus height obstacle enough times for the three-storey scaffold to present no problems.
All the building’s rotting sash windows had recently been replaced with double-glazed plastic units. These didn’t need