Jane Blonde: Twice the Spylet Read online

  ‘That . . . that’s not me.’ Janey stared again as G-Mamma wound back the tape and the Janey-like figure appeared again in the Spylab, earlier in the day this time. On the film, a slightly blurry Trouble trotted over and rubbed himself around the legs of the imposter. ‘I swear, G-Mamma, that is not me. I know it looks like me, but it really isn’t.’

  But if it wasn’t her, who was it? Janey saw G-Mamma’s eyes narrow as they went through the options. Judging by the Fleet-feet, it might be one Spylet disguised as another, which could be dangerous. Or, thought Janey breathlessly, maybe her father had once again Crystal-Clarified himself, and this time he’d come back as Janey herself. ‘G-Mamma, do you think it’s—’

  ‘. . . time young Halo was going? Yes, I do.’ G-Mamma shot Janey a warning glance across the room. ‘Halo, tell your mother that something’s afoot. I’m going to give Janey a USSR. She might want to do the same for you.’

  Alfie nodded, aware that something unsaid had passed between his friend and her SPI:KE, but too polite and well trained to comment. ‘Right. I’ll just rescue my SPI-cycle from the holly bush, and I’ll get back straight away. Call me later, Janey?’

  Janey nodded briefly. Her stomach was still churning from the sight of herself on the plasma screen and the thought that it might be her dad. As soon as Alfie had left, she spun round to face G-Mamma. ‘What if my dad’s Crystal-Clarified himself again?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said G-Mamma. ‘If the other Janey was your father, he would have told one of us by now.’

  Janey thought about it. That was probably true. Last time her father had reappeared as someone else he’d tried to keep it a secret, but because of that Janey had thought he was an enemy until it was almost too late. ‘OK . . . so who do you think the other me is?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ G-Mamma spun the fridge around and fiddled with one of the pipes at the back. ‘If you didn’t have cast-iron alibis I’d have said that you’d been brain-wiped and it actually was you but you didn’t know what you were doing. That would be highly dangerous, Zany Janey. Whoever brain-wipes you could send you after any of our SPI secrets. Alternatively, you might have a doppelganger – a double, considered to be very bad luck. An omen of death, in fact. Some enemy might have found your double somewhere and employed her to infiltrate Solomon’s Polificational Investigations. If that’s the case, they won’t risk having two of you around for too long. Your life could be in danger, Blonde. I’ve got a baaaad feeling. Here, take this.’

  She’d removed a small segment of pipe from the back of the fridge. It was solid, closed off at either end with a tiny combination lock. G-Mamma spun the minuscule dial with her eyebrow tweezers, and one of the ends popped open. With a flourish, she tipped the contents of the little safe on to Janey’s palm, and Janey gasped as she recognized it. It was a diamond ring, very similar to the one Abe had given her mother a few weeks earlier.

  ‘It’s a spy ring!’ she cried, slipping it on to the middle finger of her left hand.

  ‘Yes, a USSR – Undetectable Spy-Shield Raiser. You spin the diamond, and an electromagnetic force field will spring up around you like an invisible tent. Very expensive, very experimental and very very shiny.’ G-Mamma was practically salivating as she looked at Janey’s hand. ‘You got spy-bling, Blondette! Use it carefully – like, for instance, when you go to bed tonight. We need to make sure nobody’s messing with your brain.’

  ‘I’d better get going right now,’ said Janey. ‘Mum will be wondering what’s happened to me and Alfie.’

  G-Mamma nodded, a worried expression furrowing her brow as Janey left the lab. But it turned out that Jean Brown was not wondering about Janey at all. In fact, she was enjoying the fact that she could read the entire paper from front to back, including all the small ads, while her daughter sat in the armchair opposite her, reading quietly . . .

  . . . just as Janey saw a few minutes later when she opened the lounge door to find herself already there, looking right back at her with her own grey eyes.

  twice as nice

  Fortunately the door swung back against the sofa where Janey’s mum was sitting, and Jean didn’t see the two versions of her daughter, one calm and quiet in the armchair, the other dribbling with disbelief in the doorway.

  Naturally though, Mrs Brown was intrigued about who might have opened the door when both she and Janey were sitting there, in the same room. As she heard her mum lever herself off the sofa, Janey threw herself back up the stairs and hovered in the shadows on the landing.

  ‘Must have been a draught,’ she heard her mother say. ‘I’d better start thinking about supper soon,’ she went on. ‘I think I’ll make lasagne.’

  ‘Mmmmmm, yummmm!’ squeaked another voice. Now she was absolutely certain that the other Janey was an imposter – nothing Jean Brown cooked herself was ever going to be “yummmm’.

  There was the strong possibility that Jean was in danger, so Janey prepared to creep downstairs, lure the other Janey out of the lounge without subjecting her mother to a sudden bout of double vision and take on the imposter. As she trod on the top step, however, the lounge door closed. Peeking down the stairs, she saw her double put a finger to her lips to stop Janey from calling out and then tiptoe up the stairs towards her.

  Janey opened her bedroom door and allowed the doppelganger to walk straight by her. Coming into such close proximity gave her goosebumps and, reminded of what G-Mamma had said about bad omens, she flipped over the diamond in her ring and felt the slightest of tingles journey down her body as the force field enveloped her from head to foot.

  Janey’s double plonked herself on the bed, looking up at Janey with rather wide, scared eyes. ‘Hello,’ she said tentatively.

  ‘Never mind “hello”!’ Janey was pacing the room, too worried and upset to bother with niceties. ‘Who are you, why do you look exactly like me and what are you doing here?’

  Biting her lower lip, the girl looked awkwardly at her feet. Janey was shocked to notice that there were tears in her eyes. Since she’d started using Ultra-gogs, Janey herself hardly ever felt the sudden need to cry that she often used to experience. ‘I’m sorry,’ said the girl. ‘I just wanted a bit of alone time with her. She’s so special, isn’t she? I just sat and watched her read the newspaper. It was amazing!’

  Janey sat down abruptly at her desk. This was seriously weird. The girl sounded pretty wimpy, and she’d found it fascinating watching her mother read? ‘You’ve been watching me too, haven’t you, and checking in with G-Mamma. What’s going on? And don’t try anything funny – I only need to smack the wall above the fireplace and G-Mamma and Trouble will be in here like a shot.’

  ‘No, I won’t try anything funny. I’m sorry if I’ve scared you, hanging around a bit secretively like that,’ said the girl, looking anxious. ‘I just wanted a bit of time to get used to you. It’s been a bit of surprise to me, finding out all about you.’

  Janey’s eyes sharpened. ‘Finding out what about me exactly?’

  ‘Well,’ started the girl, trying to gather her thoughts, ‘it’s difficult to know how to say this. Dad had a bit of trouble telling me too. And you’re so much more . . . forceful than I am. Why don’t I just say what he said? Yes. That’s what I’ll do.’ She took a deep breath and pinched the top of her nose, just as Janey used to do to get control of her emotions. ‘‘‘Chloe,” my dad said, just yesterday, “it’s about time you found out about the rest of your family. You’ve grown up just with me. You’ve never known your mother, and you’ve always imagined she’s dead.”’

  ‘That’s like . . .’

  Janey stopped herself. She had been about to say that she had never known her father and imagined him dead until she found out the truth and became a spy. She looked closely at Chloe and saw understanding in her eyes.

  ‘That’s right, Janey,’ she said. ‘Just like you, only the opposite way round. You see, this family was split into halves. On one side, there was me and Dad. And on the other side was you – y
ou and . . . and Mum.’

  Janey’s breathing grew shallow. ‘What are you saying? What do you mean?’

  ‘Sorry, how do I say this? Well, I’m your twin, Janey,’ said Chloe.

  Janey grabbed on to the edge of the desk. This was madness. She didn’t have a twin – what was this strange mirror image talking about? ‘That’s not right. I can’t have. Mum couldn’t have had two babies without realizing . . .’ She felt sick, shaking her head back and forth like a dog with a toy.

  ‘I know it sounds unbelievable, Janey.’ Chloe got up from the bed and came over to the desk, taking Janey’s hands into her own identical ones. ‘I had trouble believing it at first. But you know it’s possible. Our father made himself disappear to save his family, but on the night we were born he brain-wiped Mum – and took me away to live with him on the other side of the world. He left you here for Mum to bring up, so she never realized that she had been a super-SPI, or that she actually had two babies: you and me.’ She squeezed Janey’s fingers gently. ‘You found Dad a while ago, and now you’ve got me too. A sister!’

  Janey stared into Chloe’s glassy grey eyes and felt her own welling up in sympathy. This was too much! It couldn’t be right, could it? Although, as Chloe had said, she hadn’t known anything about her past and her family until G-Mamma had turned up to begin her spy education just before her father had reappeared. At the thought of her father, a fierce gripe of jealousy soured her insides.

  ‘So you . . . you’ve grown up with my . . . with Dad? Where?’

  Chloe gave a little smile. ‘New Zealand mainly, on some remote farms. It was pretty lonely. He wasn’t around all that much, as you can imagine. You know what he’s like for going undercover! But now he’s planning on leaving the spy world, setting up a business and getting his family back together. He got in touch with you, didn’t he? We’ve just moved to the first home we’ve ever lived in openly, on a sheep farm in Australia.’

  ‘Australia!’ Of course. Not just south. Really far south – right down in the southern hemisphere. That’s what her dad had been trying to tell her in the espadrille ‘directions’. Which must mean that the espadrilles were a gadget, a gadget that would take her to him. She looked at Chloe. ‘You don’t have an accent.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ Chloe frowned. ‘You see, mostly I grew up around Dad. He doesn’t have one, so I don’t.’

  ‘But he must have been away a lot on his missions . . .’

  Chloe’s clammy hands slipped out of Janey’s. ‘Yeah, and I had a lot of nannies. I thought he was away lecturing or something. You know what Dad’s like, Janey. Loves us so much, but needs to keep up with his spy work too. And look what he’s done to do it! Told you he’s dead, told me my mum’s dead, pretended to be someone else . . .’

  Janey knew Chloe was right. Her father had made her believe that he was dead. He had brain-wiped her mum. He’d invented a whole new persona for himself in the guise of his own brother, Solomon Brown. It all sounded impossible, which was why it made absolute sense that he would have separated his daughters for safety. Perhaps . . . perhaps it really was true. Chloe looked almost exactly like her, and she knew all their family background. Janey had a twin! A twin who had grown up with her beloved father. She couldn’t help but feel envious, but then she supposed that Chloe was equally green-eyed about her growing up with their mother.

  Suddenly she thought of something. ‘When did you find out about Dad being . . . you know?’

  ‘Only when he gave it all up,’ said Chloe with a sigh. ‘I’m quite sad really. I cry about it often. I’ll never get to be a Spylet myself. Not like you, Janey.’

  That explained why Chloe was so much quieter than Janey, more like Janey herself had been not too long ago, before she was exposed to a few death-defying missions, a mad SPI:Kid Educator with a rapping fixation, and a bunch of friends and family who knew all about the spying world. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for Chloe. Maybe it was time to introduce her properly – as her . . . Janey could hardly bring herself to think it might be true . . . as her sister.

  ‘Come on,’ she said with a sudden smile, jumping up and prodding the wall above her fireplace at the ten-past-two position. With her hands behind her back so that Chloe couldn’t see, she spun the diamond in the USSR to remove the protective force field. She wouldn’t be needing it now. ‘Let’s go and tell G-Mamma.’

  In the Spylab, Janey announced her arrival to G-Mamma by shouting, ‘Ta da!’ then helped Chloe to her feet. G-Mamma’s mouth dropped so far open that a half-chewed raspberry-ripple chocolate fell out on to the worktop. ‘Oh my life, it’s double trouble!’ she said hoarsely. ‘Janey, what’s . . . which of you is Janey? Holy Twinoly! If I stood you on the mantelpiece, you’d be like bookends. What’s going on?’

  Janey grinned, pulling her sister forward. ‘I’m Janey. There’s not much to tell us apart, is there? Chloe’s hair might be a couple of shades darker, but that’s about it.’

  ‘And Chloe is . . . ?’ said G-Mamma, fumbling behind her for her pearl-encrusted Ultra-gogs.

  ‘My, err, twin.’

  Chloe nodded, shrugged, chewed her lip and smiled all at the same time, as G-Mamma’s eyes bulged. ‘Well, for sure, that look is pure Down and Brown. But your twin? How?’

  Janey repeated everything that Chloe had told her while her sister patted Trouble’s head and gazed at G-Mamma with solemn, slightly watery grey eyes. G-Mamma listened intently, looking like a parrot on a perch, with her head on one side and her Ultra-gogs balanced on the end of her nose.

  ‘Well, that is some story,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m going to have to come up with a cracker of a rap to cover that one. And meanwhile, young Chloe, you’d better stay with me until we hear more from your father about how he proposes to set up this little family reunion. Can’t imagine how he plans to tell Jean she had two babies, not one.’

  Janey looked at Chloe. ‘That’s true! Mum will go into complete shock! We can’t both go down for supper in a couple of minutes as if it’s perfectly normal!’

  ‘No! I’m sorry! I didn’t think.’ Her sister looked very perplexed and suddenly slightly green. Her pale skin was damp, and strands of mousy-brown hair stuck to her head. ‘Is it supper already?’ she said faintly. ‘It’s dark so much earlier here. I feel . . . I think I’m going to be sick.’

  With that, she sprinted for the top of the spiral staircase that just peeked above the floor of the Spylab, making her way to G-Mamma’s toilet with her hand clapped over her mouth and lank hair trailing behind her. Janey watched helplessly for a moment. Chloe probably wanted some privacy. When she hadn’t reappeared in a few minutes, however, Janey took off after her, with G-Mamma and Trouble streaming behind her like the tail of a kite.

  ‘Chloe!’ she shouted as she powered down the stairs. ‘Are you OK? Ow!’

  As she reached the bottom step, Janey’s foot made contact with a small slick of something slimy and slippery; she skidded straight off the staircase and landed in a heap in the downstairs hallway, with G-Mamma and Trouble just managing to stop themselves from falling right on top of her.

  ‘My ankle!’ groaned Janey. ‘Yuck! She didn’t make it to the bathroom in time – I just slipped in sick. Gross!’

  G-Mamma squatted down to peer at the offending substance. ‘It’s very clear for sick. And it smells funny too.’

  ‘Sick always smells funny.’

  ‘No, sick smells disgusting, and this doesn’t.’

  Janey struggled painfully to her feet. ‘Never mind the vomit analysis; let’s check on Chloe! Can you help me? I can’t walk properly.’

  With Janey leaning heavily on G-Mamma, they staggered into the bathroom, but Chloe wasn’t there. ‘Kitchen,’ Janey said and hobbled across to a room boasting another huge American-style fridge and no fewer than three microwave ovens, but no Chloe. G-Mamma parked Janey at a worktop covered in empty pizza boxes and trotted around the ground floor, opening doors and calling out Chloe’s name.

  ‘I think you
might as well get in the Wower and cure that ankle-with-a-rankle,’ she said, returning to Janey’s side a few moments later. ‘Your sister’s skedaddled.’

  It certainly appeared to be the case. There was no sign of Chloe apart from the small pool of goo on the bottom of the spiral staircase. Janey sighed. This is what life was like for spies – full of surprises, new meetings and sudden departures.

  ‘Where, do you think?’

  G-Mamma shrugged. ‘Darned if I know, Blondey-Blonde. Maybe she fell down the toilet. She is a teensy leetle bit of a drippette.’

  ‘G-Mamma, that’s not nice. That’s my . . . my sister you’re talking about.’ And she’s just like I used to be, thought Janey with a wince.

  ‘I know, I know. And boy, I’d like to SPI:KE that skinny twinny.’

  Janey frowned. Her sister would never be SPI:KED, as she was never going to be allowed to be a Spylet. And that was all the more reason why Jane Blonde had to stick up for her. Somehow she had to find Chloe.

  spinny twinny

  Next morning Janey was at the kitchen table, daubing paint and glitter glue on a hard-boiled egg. Her mum sat opposite, tongue out in concentration as she etched a beautiful daisy on to her own egg with fine silver leaf.

  ‘Do one on the other side, Mum. Like twins,’ suggested Janey. She peeked slyly under her lashes to see if there was any kind of reaction.

  ‘Oh, I think that would be too much, don’t you?’ said her mother, painting in a fine green stem. ‘Less is more, that’s what I say. Twins would be such a handful. Look at Uncle James with Edie and Fen – two of everything all the time.’

  They were interrupted by a knock at the door; her mother came back into the kitchen with another parcel from her father, and this time it was addressed to Jean too.