Everyone got out and stretched and Mr Nicholls said they were all having tea and cake and it was his treat and please could we not make a big financial deal out of it as it was just tea, okay, and Mum raised her eyebrows like she was going to say something and then just muttered, ‘Thank you,’ but not with good grace.
They sat down in a café whose name was Ye Spotted Sowe Tea Shoppe, even though Tanzie would bet there were no tea shoppes in medieval times. She was pretty sure they didn’t even have tea then. Nobody else seemed to mind. Nicky got up to go to the loo. And Mr Nicholls and Mum were at the counter choosing what to eat so she clicked on Mr Nicholls’s phone and the first thing that came up was Nicky’s Facebook page. She waited for a minute because Nicky got really annoyed if people looked at his stuff, and then when she was sure he really was in the loo she made the screen go bigger so she could read it and then she went cold. The Fishers had posted messages and pictures of men doing rude things to other men all over Nicky’s timeline. They had called him GIMP and FAGBOY, and even though Tanzie didn’t know what the words meant she knew they were bad and she suddenly felt sick. She looked up and Mum was coming back holding a tray.
‘Tanzie! Be careful with Mr Nicholls’s phone!’
The phone had clattered onto the edge of the table. She didn’t want to touch it. She wondered if Nicky was crying in the loos. She would have done.
When she looked up Mum was staring at her. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
She sat down and pushed an orange cupcake on a plate across the table. Tanzie wasn’t hungry any more, even though it was covered with sprinkles.
‘Tanze. What’s wrong? Talk to me.’
She pushed the phone slowly across the wooden table with the tip of her finger, like it was going to burn her or something. Mum frowned, and then looked down at it. She clicked on it and stared. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said, after a minute.
Mr Nicholls sat down beside her. He had the biggest slice of chocolate cake Tanzie had ever seen. ‘Everyone happy?’ he said. He looked happy.
‘The little bastards,’ Mum said. And her eyes filled with tears.
‘What?’ Mr Nicholls had a mouthful of cake.
‘Is that like a prevert?’
Mum didn’t seem to hear her. She pushed the chair back with a massive screech and began striding towards the toilets.
‘That’s the Gents, madam,’ a woman called, as Mum pushed the door open.
‘I can read, thank you,’ Mum said, and she disappeared inside.
‘What? What’s going on now?’ Mr Nicholls struggled to swallow his mouthful. He glanced over at where Mum had gone. Then, when Tanzie didn’t say anything, he looked down at his phone and tapped it twice. He didn’t say anything, just kept staring. Then he moved the screen around like he was reading everything. Tanzie felt a bit weird. She wasn’t sure he should be looking at that.
‘Did … Is this something to do with what happened to your brother?’
She wanted to cry. She felt like the Fishers had ruined the nice day. She felt like they had followed them here, like they would never get away from them. She couldn’t speak.
‘Hey,’ he said, as a great big tear plopped down on the table. ‘Hey.’ He held out a paper napkin towards her and Tanzie wiped her eyes and when she couldn’t hide the sob that burst upwards he moved around the table and put an arm around her and pulled her in for a hug. He smelt of lemons and men. She hadn’t smelt that man smell since Dad left and it made her even sadder.
‘Hey. Don’t cry.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Nothing to be sorry for. I’d cry if someone did that to my sister. That’s – that’s …’ He clicked the phone off. ‘Sheez.’ He shook his head and blew out his cheeks. ‘Do they do that to him a lot?’
‘I don’t know.’ She sniffed. ‘He doesn’t say much any more.’
Mr Nicholls waited until she had stopped crying and then he moved back around the table and ordered a hot chocolate with marshmallows, chocolate shavings and extra cream. ‘Cures all known ills,’ he said, pushing it towards her. ‘Trust me. I know everything.’
And the weird thing was, it was actually true.
Tanzie had finished her chocolate and her cupcake by the time Mum and Nicky came out of the loos. Mum put on this bright smile, like nothing was wrong, and had her arm around Nicky’s shoulders, which actually looked a bit odd now he was half a head taller than her. He slid into the seat beside her at the table and stared at his cake like he wasn’t hungry. His face had gone back to how it was before they went away: like a shop dummy so you couldn’t see what he was thinking. Tanzie watched Mr Nicholls watching him and wondered if he was going to say anything about what was on his phone but he didn’t. She thought maybe he didn’t want Nicky to get embarrassed. Either way, the happy day, she thought sadly, was over.
And then Mum got up to check on Norman who was tied up outside and Mr Nicholls ordered a second cup of coffee and started stirring it slowly like he was thinking about something. And then he looked up at Nicky from under his eyebrows, and said quietly, ‘So. Nicky. You know anything about hacking?’
She got the feeling she wasn’t supposed to listen so she just stared really hard at the quadratic equations.
‘No,’ said Nicky.
Mr Nicholls leant forward over the table and lowered his voice. ‘Well, I think now might be a good time to start.’
When Mum came back, Mr Nicholls and Nicky had disappeared. ‘Where are they?’ she said, looking around the room.
‘They’ve gone to Mr Nicholls’s car. Mr Nicholls said they’re not to be disturbed.’ Tanzie sucked the end of her pencil.
Mum’s eyebrows shot somewhere into her hairline.
‘Mr Nicholls said you’d look like that. He said to tell you he’s sorting it out. The Facebook thing.’
‘He’s doing what? How?’
‘He said you’d say that too.’ She rubbed at a 2, which looked a bit too much like a 5 and blew away the rubbings. ‘He said to tell you to please give them twenty minutes and he’s ordered you another cup of tea and you should have some cake while you’re waiting. They’ll come back and fetch us when they’re finished. And also to tell you the chocolate cake is really good.’
Mum didn’t like it. Tanzie sat and finished her unit until she was happy with the answers, while Mum fidgeted and looked out of the window and made as if to speak, then closed her mouth again. She didn’t eat any chocolate cake. She just left the five pounds that Mr Nicholls had put on the table sitting there and Tanzie put her rubber on it because she was worried that when someone opened the door it would blow away.
Finally, just as the woman was sweeping up close enough to their table to send a silent message, the door opened, a little bell rang and Mr Nicholls walked in with Nicky. Nicky had his hands in his pocket and his hair over his eyes but there was a little smirk on his face.
Mum stood up and looked from one to the other. You could tell she really, really wanted to say something but she didn’t know what.
‘Did you try the chocolate cake?’ Mr Nicholls said. His face was all bland, like a game-show host’s.
‘No.’
‘Shame. It was really good. Thank you! Your cake is the best!’ he called to the woman, who went all smiley and twinkly even though she hadn’t looked at Mum like that. Then Mr Nicholls and Nicky went straight back out again, striding across the road like they’d been mates all their lives, leaving Tanzie and Mum to gather up their things and hurry out after them.
15.
Nicky
There was this article in the newspaper once, about a hairless baboon. Her skin wasn’t black all over, like you’d expect, but kind of mottled, pink and black. Her eyes were black-rimmed, like she had this really cool eyeliner on, and she had one long pink nipple and one black one, like a sort of simian, booby David Bowie.
But she was all on her own. It turns out baboons don’t like difference. And literally not one baboon was prepared to hang out with her. So she was photographed picture after picture, just out looking for food, all bare and vulnerable, without a single baboon mate. Because even though all the other baboons, like, knew she was still a baboon, their dislike of difference was stronger than any genetic urge they had to stick with her.
Nicky thought this one thing quite often: that there was nothing sadder than a lonely hairless baboon.
Obviously Mr Nicholls was about to give him a lecture on the dangers of social networking or say that he had to report it all to his teachers or the police or something. But he didn’t. He opened his car door, pulled out his laptop from the boot, plugged the power lead into a connector near his gearstick, and then plugged in a dongle so that they had broadband.
‘Right,’ he said, as Nicky eased himself into the passenger seat. ‘Tell me everything you know about this little charmer. Brothers, sisters, dates of birth, pets, address – whatever you’ve got.’
‘What?’
‘We need to work out his password. Come on – you must know something.’
They were sitting in the car park. Around them, people loaded shopping into their cars, strolled around in search of a nice pub or tea room. There was no graffiti here, no discarded shopping trolleys. This was the kind of place where they walked actual miles to return a shopping trolley. Nicky would have bet money they had one of those Best Kept Village signs too. A grey-haired woman loading her car beside them caught his eye and smiled. She actually smiled. Or maybe she smiled at Norman, whose big head was hanging over Nicky’s shoulder.
‘Nicky?’
‘Yeah. I’m thinking.’ He tried to clear his head. He reeled off everything he knew about Fisher. He went through his address, his sister’s name, his mum’s name. He actually knew his birthday as it was only three weeks previously and his dad had bought him one of those quad bikes and he’d smashed it up within a week.
Mr Nicholls kept tapping away. ‘Nope. Nope. Come on. There must be something else. What music does he like? What team does he support? Oh, look – he’s got a hotmail address. Great – we can put that in.’
Nicky told him everything he knew. Nothing worked. And then he had a sudden thought. ‘Tulisa. He’s got a thing about Tulisa. The singer.’
Mr Nicholls tapped away at his keyboard, then shook his head.
‘Try Tulisa’s Arse,’ Nicky said.
Mr Nicholls typed. ‘Nope.’
‘IShaggedTulisa. All one word.’
‘Nope.’
‘Tulisa Fisher.’
‘Mmm. Nope. Nice try, though.’
They sat there, thinking.
‘You could just try his name,’ said Nicky.
Mr Nicholls shook his head. ‘Nobody’s stupid enough to use their name as their password.’
Nicky looked at him. Mr Nicholls typed a few letters then stared at the screen. ‘Well what do you know?’ he said, and leant back in his seat. ‘You’re a natural.’
‘So what are you doing?’
‘We’re just going to have a little play with Jason Fisher’s Facebook page. Actually, I’m not going to do it. I’m … uh … I can’t really risk anything on my IP address right now. But I know someone who can.’ He dialled a number.
‘But won’t he know it’s down to me?’
‘How? We’re basically him right now. There’ll be nothing tracing this to you. He probably won’t even notice. Hang on. Jez? … Hey. It’s Ed … Yeah. Yeah, I’m just under the radar for a bit. I need you to do me a favour. It’ll take five minutes.’
Nicky listened as he told ‘Jez’ Jason Fisher’s password and email address. He said that Fisher had been ‘creating a few difficulties’ for a friend. He looked at Nicky sideways as he said this. ‘Just have a bit of fun with it, yeah? Read through his stuff. You’ll get the picture. I’d do it myself but I’ve got to keep my hands super-clean right now … Yeah … Yeah, I’ll explain when I see you. Appreciate it.’