Unfortunately one of her rings rapped painfully against his knuckles.
Bloody hell,?James howled.
Lauren giggled. Eerves you right.?
T didn't mean to hurt you, James,?Zara said brusquely. But can't you at least try showing a little sensitivity towards other peoplet feelings??
9. CORBYN
Five days later, Zara and the kids got up early and packed all their stuff into a seven-seat people carrier. A tearful Joshua had to be pacified with the promise of presents before they set off towards Bristol in the south west of England.
Ten miles shy of the city itself, the sat-nav told Zara to pull off the motorway at the next junction and take the second exit from the roundabout. After drifting past a line of superstores and a housing estate that had spawned around the motorway, the land opened out into fields, with tall hedgerows blocking in the sides of the twisting A-road.
Kyle wound down his window to feel the benefit of the country air, only to close it seconds later as the car filled with a pungent blast of manure.
Bhew,?Lauren gasped, as she wafted her hand in front of her face. My eyes are watering. Thatt worse than having to use the bog after James.?
T think,?Zara said, as she ignored the sat-navt instruction to take a left, Tf we take the next road in, weEl still reach the village, but weEl get a glimpse of the Malarek laboratory on the way.?
Tt won't take much longer will it??James asked. T'll busting
for a piss.?
Two or three minutes,?Zara said. T can pull over if you're really desperate.?
James shook his head. TtEl hold for another ten minutes.?
Take the first safe opportunity and make a U-turn,?the sat-nav said in its politely synthesised voice.
Zara leaned across the dashboard and switched the navigation screen off. Sher visited the area while preparing for the mission and knew her way around.
This is the one,?she said, as she slowed up for a tight turn. The direction sign pointed towards the village of Corbyn Copse, , but as soon as they were around the bend a very uncountrylike sight came into view.
All the hedges had been replaced by tall concrete sections, topped with barbed wire and video cameras. Reflective yellow signs had been placed along the roadside by Avon police: No Stopping or Loitering, 10MPH SLOW and Drivers entering Malarek Research premises lock windows and doors NOW.
Zara obeyed the order to slow down, giving the kids a chance to view the carnage along the grass verge: tonnes of litter and sodden placards abandoned by protestors, whor also daubed thousands of slogans on the concrete walls.
As the car rounded a slight bend and approached the entrance, the road turned into abstract art, thickly layered with streaks of red, blue and yellow paint that protestors had aimed at vehicles entering or leaving the research facility.
James recognised the location from an archived Sky News report her watched in Zarat office. It had shown a battle between police, Malarek security guards and more than a hundred protestors, chanting, hurling objects at cars and trying to batter down the front gates. A few protesters did manage to force their way inside the laboratory compound and smashed more than a hundred windows before they were arrested.
But there wasn't much action on this particular Friday lunchtime. The scene outside the corrugated metal gate was subdued. Two police officers in yellow bibs stood guard and more sat around in a Portacabin across the road.
The protest was confined to an area marked out with crowd barriers fifty metres from the entrance. It consisted of three middle-aged women and an elderly man. They sat in deck chairs, eating sandwiches and sharing a flask of coffee, while their placards rested against the wall behind them. A banner painted on bed sheets had been tied to the policet metal barriers: HOOT TO STOP THE SUFFERING!
These protestors were some of the people Zara and the kids would be getting to know over the coming weeks, so she waved out of her window and gave a good blast on the horn. The four protestors smiled and waved back.
Zara picked up speed once they were past the entrance and another few hundred metres brought them to a miniature roundabout, with the white cottages at the edge of Corbyn Copse facing towards them.
As they pulled up, a Land Rover that had been following close behind cut on to the opposite carriageway and squealed to an aggressive halt alongside them. The driver looked twentyish and wore dirty blue overalls, suggesting a morning spent working on one of