Dancing Jax

“But it’ll be huge!” Paul said. “Cameras and famous people. The email said so!”

Martin sighed. “You know,” he said. “The Internet is fantastic for stuff like eBay, but I think I preferred the world when it was simpler. When I was your age, the most new-fangled piece of kit we had was a pocket calculator and…”

“This isn’t the breast thing, is it?”

“Have I said this before?”

“You and your friends,” the boy recited wearily, “used to key in the number 5318008, then turn the calculator upside down and snigger.”

Martin chuckled. “Happy days,” he said.

“Ummm… whatever,” Paul muttered with a baffled grimace. He liked Martin, but sometimes he really did say some daft things for a forty-three-year-old maths teacher.

“Oh, go get your coat on,” the man told him. “I can watch the universe being saved again tomorrow night.”

Paul was already in the hallway zipping up his fleece.

“There’ll be no one else there, you know,” Martin said. “We’ll be stood there like two trainspotters without a station.”

In Felixstowe that evening, every young person under the age of twenty received that very same email. Afterwards, when the tragedy was being investigated, nobody could ever trace where it had originated.

The first part of the harrowing diversion was being created.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_5f639635-c4e8-5849-8492-4a9ab6c81f6b)

Where are the Exiled Prince’s sheep so rare, their fleeces of finest gold? Dead and dying from lack of care and frozen by the cold. Shun the Bad Shepherd, drive him from your sight. Where was he when the lambs did stumble and bleated in their plight?

EMMA TAYLOR THREW her hair straighteners across her bedroom and yelled an angry stream of filth. She had only finished half of her hair when they had sparked and smoke started to pour out of them.

“What do I look like?” she screamed at her reflection. “Britney Spears in meltdown mode!”

Stuffing her unfinished hair under a baseball cap, she stormed out of the house, without a word to her parents, and strode furiously down the street towards Ashleigh’s.

Taking out her mobile, she punched up her friend’s number aggressively and waited for her to pick up.

“What you gawking at?” she snapped at a group of teenage lads on bicycles, giving them the finger as she clomped by.

In her ear Ashleigh’s tinny voice answered. She was squealing with excitement.

“Ohhhh, myyyy God!” she cried. “You will not believe the email I just had!”

“I need to use your straighteners!” Emma demanded, ignoring her. “Life or death emergency. My crappy ones have exploded – thank you so much, Dad, you cheapskate. Nearly burned my eyebrows off! Seriously though – I was well terrified, no word of a lie.”

“Shut up and listen!” Ashleigh retorted and she read her the email about the flash mob.

Several minutes later Emma was sitting on her friend’s bed, frantically finishing off the other side of her hair while Ashleigh was trying to decide what jacket to wear. They had called Keeley, and discovered that she too had received the same email and arranged to meet her in fifteen minutes so they could go together.

“I bet the sly tart wasn’t going to tell us,” Emma said. “Bet she was going to go on her own.”

“She’d push anyone out of the way to get what she wants,” Ashleigh agreed, rifling through the wardrobe and pulling out possibles.

Emma grunted and peered around the room, making faces at what she considered to be minging tat.

“I love your room,” she lied.

“Can you believe it?” her friend blurted. “Something finally happening in this dead town! What if the celeb is a rock star or a footballer or someone off telly or films? What if we get papped? This could be the best night of my life! The start of something really big! Fame, Emma – proper fame!”

Emma looked at her own clothes. She hadn’t dressed for something so potentially glitzy. All she had anticipated was a typical Friday night hanging round on the beach outside a bar, cadging Breezers off the lads. She watched as Ashleigh selected her best leather jacket, a cheap copy of something Beyonce had worn once, and then started to apply her Saturday-Night-in-Ipswich face so she could pass for seventeen or eighteen.

“I’m not going in this,” Emma declared decisively. “I’m not gonna be the ugly one next to you and Keeley in your glad rags and prozzy paint that make you look better than you are. I’m going back home and changing.”

“You look fine!” Ashleigh commented, hardly looking.

“I don’t want to look ‘fine’!” Emma screeched back at her. “‘Fine’ isn’t going to get me in Hello, or a snog off a millionaire footballer so I can sell my story to the News of the bleedin’ World, is it?”

“You don’t have time to change. We’ve got to go if we’re gonna be there on time.”

“Then we’ll have to be late! I am NOT going like this! I haven’t even got my clubbing bra on!”

Ashleigh pouted her freshly glossed lips in the mirror. “I’m not waiting,” she said flatly. “There’s no way I’m missing a minute of this and Keeley won’t neither. These celebs don’t hang about. They do their appearance then jump back in their limos – it says so on Popbitch.”

“Fine!” Emma shrieked, flinging the word back at her. “Some mate you are! You go with Keeley and I’ll get a lift of my own. Selfish cow! And by the way, no amount of concealer is going to cover up those zits and you should’ve shaved your tache!”

She slammed the door and returned to her own house. The boys she had passed earlier jeered as they cycled by. They too had heard the news and were already heading to the Landguard Fort.

Emma sat in front of her small dressing table and worked quickly. She was about to phone around and beg a lift off someone when a text beeped in. It was an unknown and impossibly short number, but that fact was lost on her.

From: 7734

Get out of the house Emma!

The cops r coming 4 u!!!!!!

The girl swore, swept up her bag and coat and tore from the bedroom. Tottering down the road in her heels, she hurried as fast as she could and cut down the first turning to get off her street. She wondered if Ashleigh and Keeley had received similar texts. If this was about Sandra Dixon, the police would want to talk to them as well. She reached into her bag to call them. Then, remembering Ashleigh’s attitude, spitefully decided to let the girl find out for herself. It would be hilarious if a visit from the law caused Ashleigh to miss out on the biggest event to hit Felixstowe for years. Serve Keeley right as well.

Emma was so engrossed in relishing that thought that she didn’t notice the car crawling along the road beside her.

“Oi! Oi!” called a voice as a hand reached out and flicked up her short skirt.

Emma swerved aside and yelled abuse as she fell into a hedge.

Kevin Stipe was leaning out of the passenger window of an old Fiesta, snorting like a delirious pig. Behind him, two more lads she recognised from school were hooting on the back seat.

“Morons!” she bawled.

“Where you going on your own?” Kevin asked. “Where’s the rest of your posse?”

“Same place you’re heading I expect!” she replied.