Missing, Believed Crazy Read online

  It is possible that I told Trix that no way was I going to change these plans.

  She informed me that was not a problem. She had decided to go to a summer camp instead. She had other friends there, she said. It was just a question of my paying the fees.

  I agreed, of course. It was expensive, sure, but if my daughter was looked after while I was in America, no price was too high. We have always been quite a generous family.

  WIKI

  Then Trix started on me. What were my plans for the summer holidays? Had my family booked their air tickets to somewhere warm?

  I told her that my parents didn’t need to buy air tickets to where we were going – a week’s camping holiday in Cornwall.

  She looked surprised. In her world, everyone went abroad in August. Then she cheered up.

  ‘That’s great,’ she said. ‘It’ll be easy to cancel, right?’

  I made the call.

  MRS GLORIA CHURCH

  When William rang towards the end of the summer term to say that he would be staying with his new friend Trix Johansson-Bell for the first part of the holidays, we were naturally disappointed. At the same time we were glad that at last he was making friends among his peers.

  He works hard, our William, and we knew it was not easy for him settling in at a smart private school. After the disappointment of the Uniform Rustication, we believed that he was doing something to put his life in order.

  WIKI

  Like a general planning her campaign, Trix turned her attention to Jade and Holly.

  JADE

  My #!!?*$%!* vacation!

  When Trix said, ‘Well, the first thing we’ve got to do is blank Italy,’ I freaked.

  I had been looking forward to that vacation for months! Trix and I had been going to stay with Holly’s parents at their totally awesome villa with a swimming pool and a media room and a veranda and loads of Italian servants. Now suddenly Trix was out of the picture.

  HOLLY

  That was just the start. Trix’s next idea was that a few days after what she now called ‘The Vanish’, Jade and I would fly back to England, too upset to enjoy our holiday. Then after ‘V Day’, the ‘gang’ (I promise you she was talking like this) would gather for the next phase.

  I’ll admit it. We humoured her. There were so many holes in the little boat that Trix was trying to sail that it was obviously never even going to get out of the harbour.

  It was a shame that she wasn’t going to be in Italy, but, between you and me, all that save-the-world stuff was beginning to get on our nerves.

  There’s a time and a place for worrying about kids dying in Africa and summer holidays lying by a pool in Tuscany isn’t it.

  Sure, Trix. We’ll go with the whole self-kidnap thing. That’s what friends are for. We won’t even talk about it when everything goes belly up. As it surely will.

  Won’t it?

  WIKI

  From the start, Trix was determined that no adults were going to be involved but it began to look as if not even she was going to get away with that. Er, transport? Er, maybe even a house for us to stay in?

  The first candidate was Trix’s real father, Peter Bell. He was some kind of journalist who had fallen on hard times. He sounded wild enough to go along with the kidnap idea but he turned out to have one serious disadvantage. He was always drunk.

  I was no use, because my parents and their friends are about the most law-abiding people you could ever meet.

  Then Jade’s two brothers were briefly in the frame.

  JADE

  I don’t talk about my brothers. It’s complicated. Understand this if nothing else about my two big bros: the less you know about them, the better it is for you. The situation’s mega complicated.

  That’s kind of what I told Trix.

  MARK

  It was bugging me. I don’t like mysteries. I noticed that the four of them – Trix, Holly, Jade and Wiki Church – were spending more time together. They ate lunch at the same table, hung out in each other’s rooms. One day I heard mention of something called ‘V Day’. What on earth was that all about? Some kind of girlie Valentine’s Day thing? I wasn’t jealous or anything but I was kind of interested. If there was an adventure coming down the track, I wanted to jump on it.

  I decided to push a bit to see what happened.

  One lunch I noticed Church in the dining-room queue. I took my place behind him.

  ‘All right, Willie?’ I said.

  ‘I prefer William,’ he said, blinking in that annoying way of his.

  ‘Off to see your girlfriends, are you?’

  He looked away, saying nothing.

  ‘Who’s your favourite? Jade’s a bit tall for you, I’d say.’

  ‘They’re just friends,’ he muttered, blink-blink, sniff-sniff.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Like a little gang, are you? A posse?’

  He had reached the front of the queue and was helping himself to food.

  ‘The trouble with gangs is that you’ve got to have secrets, isn’t it, Willie?’

  ‘William.’

  ‘If you’re planning a – well, say for the sake of argument, a kidnap, it’s really important that no one else knows about it.’

  I had his attention now. He even forgot to blink for a couple of seconds.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he said.

  I winked. ‘I think you know what I’m talking about.’

  He moved away so fast that his plate was only half full.

  ‘You forgot your potatoes, Willie,’ I called after him.

  HOLLY

  Wiki came back to the table. He looked as if he was about to puke.

  He sat down without a word and, staring down at his plate, he said, ‘Mark Bliss knows about The Vanish. Someone must have told him.’

  I looked up and Bliss was watching us. He was sitting alone at a table on the far side of the dining room. He put a finger to his lips and smiled.

  As in: Shh.

  WIKI

  I had a bit of a problem with Mark Bliss. The problem was that I hated him.

  He had the Cathcart look, the Cathcart face, the Cathcart walk, the Cathcart hairstyle, the Cathcart drawl. He played cricket. He had a lot of friends. Some of the girls (the airheads, admittedly) actually thought he was cool.

  Mark made everything look easy. He was born to go to Cathcart. You could see his future in his face, the way he moved through the world. Respectable exam results would lead to a posh university and then a job in big business. Even at fourteen, Mark was on his way.

  So when we discovered that somehow or other Mark knew of our plan, three of us assumed that the jig was up before we had even started.

  The odd one out was Trix.

  MARK

  I was primed. I was ready to have some serious fun.

  But moments after Church had passed on the news that their little plan was just about to become the best joke of that week, something surprising happened.

  Trix Johansson-Bell, the mad fashion-show organizer, stood up and headed in my direction.

  This, I thought, could be interesting.

  She sat down and put her sharp little elbows on my table. Then she smiled.

  Whoa. It was a surprise, that smile. It kind of disarmed me, to tell the truth.

  ‘Hey, Mark,’ she said.

  ‘How you going?’ I said, a bit uneasily.

  ‘So.’ The smile was even brighter. ‘Who was it who told you?’

  I shrugged and said nothing.

  ‘It has to be Holly or Jade. It wasn’t Wiki and it wasn’t me. No one else knows.’

  I glanced across at the two girls in question. They were not my favourite people in the year. The American Jade thought she was some kind of teen beauty queen, and Holly behaved like she knew the answer to life. The idea that either of them might be a friend was a serious repbuster.

  ‘What makes you think someone told me?’ I said. ‘They didn’t, as it happens.’

  Trix frowned. I c
ould tell that she was going to get the truth out of me somehow.

  ‘Have you still got my lighter?’ I asked. ‘You’ve had your little bonfire after all.’

  ‘You followed us.’

  ‘I wanted my lighter.’

  ‘You heard everything we said.’

  It was my turn to smile. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Were you alone?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘What about Parkinson?’

  ‘I told you. I was alone.’

  ‘Have you told anyone else?’

  I laughed. ‘Why on earth would I want to talk about a bunch of weirdos talking about a plan that is totally and utterly demented?’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  Trix drummed the table with the fingers of her left hand. She seemed to reach a decision.

  ‘We need one more person.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, almost talking to herself. ‘This is very, very good. It could work out perfectly. You’d be a great member of the team.’

  ‘Trix, forget it. I don’t even like “the team”. I mean, why should I help you? People get into trouble for this kind of thing.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘This kind of thing is what can save lives, Mark – thousands of children’s lives in Africa. You saw what happened at the fashion show. You were part of it. People don’t care – and we’ve got to make them care.’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you? I don’t care about caring. Strange as it may sound to you, I’ve kind of reached the conclusion that Africa is NMP – not my problem.’

  ‘That’s the real Mark Bliss speaking, is it?’ The disappointment in her voice got to me in a way I couldn’t quite understand at the time.

  ‘I don’t see anybody else around.’

  ‘Because I heard that Mark Bliss was up for anything.’ She gave me the look again, straight in the eyes. ‘That’s what I heard, Mark.’

  Then she added in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘What are your plans for the summer holidays?’

  ‘I’m going away with my family at the end of the holidays for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Great.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Trix,’ I said, ‘I haven’t agreed to anything.’

  The sunny smile was back. She reached into her pocket and chucked my lighter on to the table. Then – this I could not believe – she actually winked at me. She stood there for a moment, as if expecting me to say something else.

  ‘All right,’ I said, just to get rid of her. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  She laughed. ‘You already have,’ she said.

  WIKI

  I felt sick. When Trix came sauntering back to the table, I was wondering how she had managed to get Bliss to agree to keep a secret. It occurred to me that – even better – she had discovered that he had no real clue as to what was going on.

  But no.

  She sat down, looked around the table and said these fateful words: ‘He’s in.’

  ‘What?’ After a stunned few seconds, I managed to speak. ‘Who’s in?’

  ‘Mark Bliss. He followed us in the park and heard the plan. He’s perfect.’ Trix actually seemed surprised that we seemed so shocked. ‘No one will suspect him and he’ll have contacts.’

  ‘But . . . but . . .’ Unusually, Jade seemed lost for words.

  ‘But what?’ asked Trix.

  ‘But . . . he’s Mark Bliss!’ Jade blurted out.

  An irritating smile had settled on Trix’s face. ‘Mark’s not as bad as he likes to make out.’

  ‘And he agreed?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Virtually,’ said Trix. ‘He was kind of iffy to start with. But he’ll come round. Trust me.’

  HOLLY

  Trust her? She had to be out of her tiny mind. If you lined up all the people in the Remove who are unreliable, unlikely to help others, un-almost anything you care to mention, standing at the front of the queue, smirking, a lock of hair covering one eye, hands in pockets, would be Mark Bliss.

  We told her all this. We reminded her that it had been Mark ‘Mr Cool’ Bliss who had started the food fight at the fashion show. We invited her to look at his stupid face as he grinned at us from across the room.

  Waste of breath.

  JADE

  It was official. Trix was seriously nuts. I should have pulled out there and then.

  But it was all becoming so out-of-this-world strange that I was kind of keen on sticking around to see what would happen next.

  Innocent curiosity. That was what did for me in the end.

  HOLLY

  Five minutes into the madness and I had heard quite enough. I told her she was out of her tiny mind to think that I would do anything – like, anything – with Mark Bliss, and left them there at the table.

  I waited for Jade at the door. It took five seconds for her to push back her chair and storm off too.

  ‘I’m so out of this,’ she said as she swept past me.

  ‘Me too,’ I said, following her. ‘Let’s leave it to Trix, Wiki and Mark – the dream team.’

  We both laughed.

  MARK

  Mark Bliss is not a natural joiner of gangs – particularly when the gang has got girls and a nerdy black kid as its other members. If Mark Bliss wants to do charity, he does it by giving coins to a dosser in the street.

  It’s just the way I am.

  So I was kind of surprised to find that I started doing what Trix Johansson-Bell had asked me to do. I did think about it. I began to see ways that it – The Vanish or whatever we were calling it – might work.

  I even began to think of the people I’d have to deal with – a girl suffering from a bad attack of idealism, a geek with glasses, a bouncy lacrosse type and a very stupid American beanpole – as a sort of gang.

  Maybe Trix had some kind of African hoodoo on her side, because suddenly Mark Bliss was interested.

  MISS FOTHERGILL

  Teenage girls are surprisingly resilient. Life can deal them the most fearsome knocks, but they pick themselves up and are soon back to their old selves.

  As the end of term approached, the smile was back on Trix’s face. She seemed to have found some new friends – little William Church and Mark Bliss, neither of whom seemed quite her type.

  She seemed less interested in her citizenship lessons, even when we were talking about problems in the Third World.

  After one lesson, as the rest of the class were leaving, I mentioned that I had been surprised that she had had so little to say about a subject that had once meant so much to her.

  She gave me an odd little smile which, when I thought about it later, seemed somehow less friendly than I might have wished.

  ‘I guess I’ve moved on,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided that direct action is the thing.’

  Direct action? At the time I did wonder vaguely what she was talking about.

  MARK

  I still don’t know how it happened but somehow, without my even agreeing, I was in. The Trixter, as I now called her, has the kind of willpower that’s like a supernatural force.

  The day after our meeting in the canteen, I called by her house. When I knocked on the door and breezed in, she was sitting at her desk. She glanced over her shoulder, as if she was expecting to see me.

  I slumped down on the bed and looked around. Staring at me from every wall were the big dark eyes of starving African kids.

  ‘Hey, cool posters,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ She wrote something on the pad in front of her. ‘I like them.’

  ‘So this is what it’s all for, The Vanish?’

  She held up her hand. In all Cathcart houses, there is no such thing as privacy. The rooms are cubicles with thin board walls.

  ‘I wasn’t going to say anything,’ I said in a low voice. ‘I’m not stupid, you know.’

  ‘I know you’re not.’ She put down her pen. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  She’s a fast walker, the Trixter. At the time, as
she strode around the cricket pitch like someone who’s late for a bus, I thought she was playing me some kind of mind game, forcing me to keep up with her. For a while, I walked at my pace, hoping that, like any normal person, she would slow down.

  Not the Trixter. If anything, she sped up. I actually had to run to catch up with her.

  She told me, striding along, how the plan was going to work. She said that it was all that she thought about. She was going to prove to the world that being kind was not just a question of looking after people like yourself.

  ‘Why now?’ I asked, tagging along behind her like some kind of dog. ‘Why not wait until you’re older?’

  ‘The whole point is that we’re fourteen,’ she said. ‘We can change things. It’s our world. It’s our future. They think we’re just kids, so we’ll show them. This is what kids can do.’

  Then she stopped, as if something had just occurred to her. ‘We need a car and somewhere to stay.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ I laughed. ‘Easy-peasy.’

  ‘Our hideout has got to be out of the way – no near neighbours. All we need is someone who’ll let us do what we want.’

  She was off again, walking like a wind-up doll with a turbo engine.

  ‘You’ll know an adult like that,’ she said. ‘I just know it.’