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Chapter 14

Inside the office, Julian had been offered the spare seat and was sitting down in front of the professor as he rambled on. In fact the man hadn’t said anything in the least bit interesting or related to the project that he was working on. All he’d asked Julian was how much he knew from his uncle.

“Well this project,” Doaty said eventually, taking off his spectacles and cleaning them vigorously on his coat. “I suspect your uncle won’t mind me telling you a little, but it’s about creating lots of heat and energy without effecting the environment. The environment is becoming a key issue; though I’m not sure how much it matters should the United States and the USSR decide to blow us all up with their nuclear weapons.”

Julian listened carefully. His uncle had been involved in something similar once before and one of his colleague’s daughter had been under threat of being kidnapped[1].  Doaty rambled on.

“Now you see Kirrin, this experiment is supposed to be top secret. No one was supposed to know we were working on it. But somehow the secret is out and my papers have been stolen. And of course your uncle has had someone try and get into his house. The police informed me this morning that you discovered a page of my equations on the beach yesterday morning,” Doaty said finally seeming to get to the point. “I wanted to thank you and ask you a very misplaced favour.”

“Of course professor,” Julian said, leaning forward slightly, interested in what the old man had to say. He was a rather nice old fool really, Julian reasoned, just a bit of a genius that’s all and if his uncle was anything to go by then it was certainly enough to make anyone a little strange.

“As your reputation seems to be flourishing here, I was wondering if you could do me a very simple favour and just keep an eye out for anything strange,” Doaty said simply. “It would be a great help to know that someone is doing some covert observation.”

Julian raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure that he had heard correctly.

“Professor, I’m not entirely sure that that is a good idea,” Julian said slowly. “I mean surely they have police officers for that sort of thing?”

Doaty dismissed this suggestion with a wave of his hand and a ‘phff’ noise.

“Your uncle in fact suggested I asked you this,” Doaty said carefully. “Of course he thinks highly of you. And with all this business going on, along with that those two English men disappearing over the summer, one is entitled to take steps one finds appropriate, Kirrin,” Doaty said raising an eyebrow.  Julian looked carefully at his professor. He felt that he was asking too much of him.

“Sir, I’m not sure I that I am the best person for the job. I’m only an amateur really, whatever my uncle has said to you. I really don’t think I’d do a good job sir,” Julian said honestly. He watched the professor’s face as he told him this.

Professor Doaty eyed Julian up as he spoke, his face looking less than amused. He sighed eventually and nodded.

“I suspect you are right young man,” Professor Doaty said waving Julian away. “Such a shame however, your uncle assured me you were quite gifted in that area!”

“My uncle is not wrong sir, but I think it may be a bad idea for me to dabble in something so big and out of my depth,” Julian said firmly. Sally’s words were still ringing in his head from yesterday as well which was why he was reluctant to agree to his professors words, even though he was very nearly doing what the professor wanted him to do in the first place.

The professor made a non-committal noise at Julian’s words.

“Yes yes, yes,” he said a moment later, waving his hand at Julian as if to tell him to leave. “Mind you do keep an eye out however Kirrin. Against my better judgement, I suggest you inform the police if you see or hear anything suspicious,” Doaty said now a little more like his old self. He began muttering to himself.

“I wonder who really is looking after this project. No one seems to care any more,” Doaty glanced up at Julian and realised that he hadn’t dismissed the lad.

“All right boy, off you go,” Doaty waved Julian out of the room with the flap of his hand rather like Quentin Kirrin did when he wanted people out of the way.

Julian got out of his seat and headed out of the door to the tune of Doaty muttering to himself;

“Well the minster concerned certainly doesn’t seem to care; I mean who’ll look after Sahara. I swear all this has just proved that until you have a breakthrough you’re chicken feed…”

Julian closed the door thankfully and leant on it for a second. He looked up and down the corridor and spotted no one around. That meant that either David hadn’t made it up here for whatever reason or had already headed back down to the library. He sighed a little, and pushed away from the door. He swung himself down the corridor and headed down the stairs on his way down to the library.

David waited a few heartbeats before trying to follow Julian out of the building and back to the library like they had agreed earlier. With the girls in the corridor below, keeping an eye on the stair cases, they would run straight into Julian about now. David was just about to follow when he heard the door at the other end of the corridor open and quick footsteps head towards Doaty’s door.

David only just had time to dive back behind the curtain as the person drew nearer. David took a chance to peek through the gap between the curtain and the wall to see the back of the person opposite Doaty’s door.

There was a sharp knock from the person and then the face looked over both shoulders as if expecting to see people crowding around the door. David swallowed in excitement when he recognised as Anthony. David kept very still and barely dared to breath. He watched Anthony carefully in the half a minute it took Doaty to yell ‘come in’ to the boy. Anthony had something in his hand that was carefully being shoved in his pocket. David could just about make out the annoyed note in his professor’s voice.

Anthony stepped inside and closed the door firmly behind him. David’s heart thumped uncomfortably in his chest, as he considered his next move. The others were expecting him down in the library now, but this was interesting. David knew that if he went back to the others with nothing to report but to simply say that Anthony had gone into Doaty’s office after Julian, well that was nothing exciting and Julian would certainly tell him that he should have tried to hear what was going on.

David was no fool, but he certainly was beginning to realise that you had to have a certain kind of mind to have these sorts of adventures.

He made up his mind a second later, having decided that he wanted to take charge of this. The others could wait for him a little longer.  He slipped out from behind the curtain and moved to stand next to Doaty’s door as if he was waiting for the professor.

He leant on the wall as close to the crack in the door as he dared for fear of being seen. In the back of his mind he had an excuse for seeing Doaty if he got caught when Anthony headed out of the office, but he hoped he wouldn’t need it.

David strained his ears to pick up anything, while his thumping heart made it difficult for him to pick up anything that was being said in the office.

A couple of minutes later, David was about to give up as he couldn’t hear a thing from the people inside the room, when there was a scraping of chairs and movement towards the door. Before he fled back to his hiding place, David heard Anthony’s voice say;

“I can assure you, they have not left the country yet, Sir, but it is possible they will do in the next few days,” in a thick Russian accent. David watched from behind the curtain, hoping his breathing wouldn’t give him away. He didn’t hear Doaty’s answer as he shut the door behind Anthony, but David observed that a change in Anthony. His class mate suddenly seemed to fill more of the corridor and was no longer trying to look like he wanted to disappear. The look on his face told David that something was up.

He waited, leaning back against the wall of the alcove waiting for a minute to make sure Anthony had a head start on him, before pulling himself together enough to slip once more from his hiding place and head on down to the library at full speed.

He slipped into the library and through the dusty bookshelves trying not to make too much noise. When he reached the place he and Julian had left their bags, he saw that Julian, Sally and Darrell were sitting in their usual seats. As he barrelled in and flung himself into a chair, holding up a hand to ask for a moment to regain his composure and his breath, they looked up at him, confused expressions on their faces.

“Where on earth have you been?” Julian and Darrell asked at the same time. Darrell added; “we thought you’d been abducted.”

David gave her a sarcastic smile before shaking his head.

“No, not abducted, but I couldn’t duck out of my hiding place after you’d gone Ju, because Anthony turned up and went in to see Doaty. I didn’t like to leave without at least trying to find out what was going on,” he admitted quietly.

Julian perked up at David’s words. “Did you hear any of what was said?” he asked David, his face becoming a lot more alert.

“Only one little thing before they opened the door to leave,” David admitted carefully. “They were talking very quietly so when they were sitting at the desk, I couldn’t hear a blasted thing,” he explained, pushing his floppy fringe out of his eyes.

“What did you hear?” Julian asked, getting excited and forgetting himself.

“Steady on now,” Sally said laying a hand on Julian’s arm, as Darrell continued;

“Not here,” she breathed meaningfully. “Lord knows who’s listening! Let’s go back to our room and you can fill us in there, David.”

“That’s if Julian can wait that long!” David teased his friend.

Julian grinned ruefully and began to collect up his belongings. “I think I might be able to contain myself long enough to go somewhere where we’re not going to be overheard,” he said softly as he pulled his blazer on. The others laughed at him, leaping into action in a way they were beginning to recognise. They collected their things and headed straight up to the girls’ room, David not once giving away what he had heard until they reached Darrell and Sally’s room.

Once they were settled, the girls perched on their respective beds and David and Julian sitting once more in the girls’ desk chairs.

“Before we start, do we want tea?” Darrell asked determined to be the proper hostess. Sally smiled at her friend. Sally, for all her grumbling about Julian’s adventure seeking was beginning to enjoy the atmosphere of adventure, and had almost completely forgotten the common manners in asking guests if they would care for a drink.

The boys declined, both eager to relay their stories to each other and the girls.

“Ju, you’d better go first,” David said simply when they looked at each other as if to ask who was going to tell their story first.  Julian nodded; it made sense for him to go first.

Julian explained how Doaty’s attitude was different when they were in his study and then moved on to what he had asked him to do. There was a bit of a stunned silence as Julian added;

“…I didn’t accept of course. I mean me doing some sleuthing off my own back is neither here nor there, and certainly with anything interesting that happens will be passed on to the right people, but there was something odd about the way he was asking me.”

“Jolly good thing you didn’t accept I say,” Sally said after a minute. “I can’t see that having been a very good idea, can you? I mean he doesn’t have the right to ask you, a student, to stick your neck out for him. As you said, on your own initiative is fine enough because you deal with the consequences but there’s something funny about that…”

“It definitely was your wisest move to turn it down, Ju,” Darrell agreed while David nodded along in support.

“That’s what I thought!” Julian agreed, leaning forward in his chair. He sighed a little and added; “Then he said something about who’ll look after Sahara because the minster who was supposed to be looking after it didn’t seem to care until you’d made a breakthrough.”

“Well Sahara was the project they were working on wasn’t it? Your uncle and Doaty,” Sally said curling up on her bed and leaning against the wall. “So that’s not unsurprising that he’s worried about it, but the minster not caring? I would have thought that a scientific project that’s clearly important would spark more interest from a minister in charge.”

“Not necessarily,” David said with a shrug. “I mean it depends on what else is going on and how important the project is in the scheme of things.”

“Well either way, until they make a breakthrough I don’t think Doaty and my uncle are getting a lot of support, especially since they lost the papers. The scheme could be abandoned all together I suppose to stop whoever’s stolen it selling it on,” Julian said simply.

“Even after pouring all that money into a project?” Darrell asked sitting back against her pillows.

“Well yes, haven’t you ever heard of projects losing funding at the last minute?” David asked raising an eyebrow. “Funding and support can be pulled at any moment if the project is not going the way investors want, or isn’t getting results quickly enough. “

“All right, all right, enough of this talk,” Sally said as Darrell was about to retort. “I’d like to know what happened to David now, if no one minds. Let’s see if the two halves of this case make more sense than on their own.”

“Yes, come on David,” Julian said softly. “What did you see and hear, old chap?”

Methodically, and carefully so as not to miss out a thing, David told his friends about what he had observed outside Doaty’s office when he had taken up his station after meeting the girls in the hallway.

“Well there was no one outside the office when you went in, and I found a nice little alcove, behind that thick curtain just down from Doaty’s office. If you’re coming at if from the backstairs, it’s a little further up the corridor on your left,” David explained, trying to give them an idea of where he had been hiding.

“No one came up to the office when you were in there at all. No one even walked past. If I’m honest I was beginning to label you crazy, but I digress. When you came out of the office and headed downstairs, I was giving you a couple of moments head start just in case anyone like myself had been hiding or Doaty raced after you or something, but from the other end of the corridor, I heard the door open and knew that I couldn’t move.” David stopped and looked around at his friends.

“I don’t think I’m telling this in nearly the right way. It all feels rather jumbled now, I must admit,” he said honestly.

“Go on David!” Darrell urged flapping her hands at him to continue his story. He looked around and noticed that Julian was lapping every detail up, adding it to the story in his head.

“Well as I said someone was heading down the corridor after you’d left, Ju, so I had to stay where I was. So there I was, watching through a gap in the curtains, as this person stopped outside Doaty’s door, knocked and waited to enter,” David explained. “Anyway he looked over his shoulder, and it was Anthony. He was stuffing some papers in his pocket before Doaty opened the door.  When he went in I went to over to the door to listen and couldn’t hear a thing until they were headed back out. He can’t have been in there more than five minutes. As they approached, and there’s me, my ear glued to the crack in the door, I heard them speaking. Anthony said something like ‘I can assure you, they haven’t left the country yet but probably will in the next few days’, before I had to run back to my hiding place. They didn’t say anything else, but Anthony left. I waited a few moments and headed back down to the library was I was already late for meeting you all.” He finished his story bashfully, as if trying to justify not waiting longer outside their professor’s door.

Julian clapped him on the shoulder as he whistled in surprise.

“Well, David, we’ll make a detective out of you yet! What a stroke of luck you being there to see all that. I wish we could know what the whole conversation was about,” Julian said almost wistfully.

“I must say though, it doesn’t go with your story Julian,” Sally said pursing her lips. “I mean, it rather sounds like Anthony and Doaty are in something together and it rather feels like they’re trying to get the papers out of the country. However when you consider your side of the story, Doaty doesn’t seem like that at all.”

“Unless he was trying to put you off the scent,” Darrell said triumphantly. “Maybe he and Anthony manufactured the theft of  the papers, and Doaty, having received information about your past from your uncle, tries to put you on a different track to divert suspicion away from himself, but fails because he doesn’t realise that you’ve asked David to keep an eye on the door, and spots Anthony heading in after you’ve left.”

“There’s an awful lot of theory in that, Darrell,” Julian said, sitting back in his chair and pondering the suggestion.

“Yes, but all we’ve got so far is theory anyway, Julian,” Darrell said, seriously. “I mean, it is all very well saying that we’re getting somewhere, but are we really?”

“We?” Julian asked, surprised.

“Yes, we,” Sally affirmed. “You hardly expected to be in this alone did you? I mean you’ve brought us this far. Maybe it’s time we worked more as  group and you let us in a bit more, Julian, because right now you seem to think you’re working alone. Did you consider that we might like to help? I know you’re used to bossing people around who are younger than you, and related of course, and I certainly won’t stand for bossiness, but I… we… well I can’t speak for the others, want to help.”

“Me too!” Darrell added with a smile.

“Make that three,” David said with a grin. He leant forward and patted Julian on the shoulder, forgetting that it was his injured one.

“Steady!” Julian said moving away from David, wincing at the heavy pats. David grinned a little at his friend.

“Sorry Ju, completely slipped my mind,” David said with a grin. Julian grinned ruefully at his friend as he rolled his shoulder a little, wincing as it moved.

“Anyway, back to the point,” Sally insisted after a moment. “We want to help Ju.”

Julian considered this; he was tempted to say that she hadn’t been so keen to help yesterday.

“All right, but you can’t really help more than you are doing, I mean we’re hardly about to leap into action,” he mused.

“Oh we can’t  leap into action, hmm,” David said sarcastically. “What have I just told you? That Anthony said that the papers would be leaving the country in the next few days.”

“Well yes, but what chance have we got of finding them before then?” Darrell asked with a sigh. “I mean it’s a big town and a big university, we don’t know which student it might be, or even when the papers might leave. We don’t even really know what we’re looking for!” she added.

“Well can we be certain that Anthony’s behind it all?” Sally asked sitting forward a little. “I mean are we definitely sure it is the Russian instead of someone else?”

“Who else could it be though?” Darrell asked, frowning as she tried to think.

“I wish it could be Ainsworth,” David said glumly. “I’m surprised we haven’t seen him poncing about like he usually does today.”

“I don’t think he ponces around,” Sally said meekly.  Julian sniffed loudly at that remark.

“He’s the son of a minister; of course he ponces about!” David insisted. “Just because you sort of think he’s ok really, doesn’t necessarily make him a nice person!”

“I don’t see what you think is wrong with him,” Sally said honestly. “Darrell, please tell me you agree with me on this?”

“Well, Sally, I don’t really. Yesterday in the coffee shop after you two had left, he rather gave me the creeps, didn’t he David?” Darrell asked David, clearly searching for support.

“He certainly did,” David said in agreement. “Sorry Sally, looks like you’re on your own with this one.”

Sally frowned at them all before saying; “But my point still stands, are we sure that it’s definitely all Anthony and not someone else?”

They all considered this, but there seemed to be no one else who fitted the bill.

“No, I would say that Pilkington is our only lead,” Julian said eventually, sitting back in Sally’s desk chair and stretching his legs a little.

“I still wish it could be Ainsworth,” David muttered under his breath. “At least then I’d have a reason to give him a good punch up in that smarmy face of his!”

“David!” Sally and Darrell said, a little shocked, though Darrell was grinning.

“What a horrid thing to want to do!” Sally said.

“Well, he gets on my nerves. Pilkington doesn’t so much, but I guess I’m just biased,” David said with a shrug.

“Well if you can prove that it was Ainsworth not Pilkington, then be my guest, but everything points to Pilkington,” Julian said, almost apologetically. Like David, Julian rather liked Anthony. He was nice, in a quiet strange way. He always knew where an experiment had gone wrong and wasn’t above helping them with their calculations if they were working together and got stuck.

The three boys may have been lab partners but that didn’t mean they were required to speak to each other, and most labs, apart from some monosyllable direction, were conducted in silence anyway.

David sighed and sat back, his hands behind his head.

“I don’t think it’s likely, do you?” he asked Julian with a raised eyebrow. “Anyway, captain, what’s the plan now?”

“Watching Anthony as much as possible I suppose, making sure that those papers don’t get passed over to whomever it is that’s collecting them,” Julian said with a shrug.  He wasn’t sure what else to suggest.

“How are the four of us supposed to watch him when an entire police force can’t?” Darrell asked practically.

“We can because we’re only following one person, the police don’t know who they’re looking for,” Julian said sensibly.

“There’s just one thing I do want to ask,” Sally said, raising a finger before Julian could continue with his plans. “Why aren’t we telling the police?”

“Do you think they’d listen to our conclusion?” Julian asked, raising an eyebrow. “I mean what we do have is rather difficult to prove,” he added simply.

“Right, so we’re doing a job that could be dangerous, that we’re not getting paid for and that we’re certainly not qualified to tackle, and we’re not going to tell the people who might be able to do something because we’re not even sure ourselves that we’ve reached the right conclusion,” Sally said, summing up what people were thinking.

“In  a nut shell,” Julian said awkwardly. “Obviously when you put it that way it does sound rather silly.”

“Just a bit,” Sally said doubtfully, but then she smiled a little. “However you have been doing this for a long time, I suppose you have a point. I mean I don’t fancy being laughed at by some policemen who are barking up the wrong tree.”

Everyone looked a little shocked; this was indeed a complete U-turn for Sally after yesterday’s flare up.

“Well,” Darrell said after a moment, slapping her thigh. “Sally has a point.”

“I suppose she does,” David agreed. “Also we had just agreed to stand by Julian on this one,” he said with a wink at his friend. Julian chuckled and slapped David on the shoulder with his good arm.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Sally asked, standing up and straightening her skirt. “Anthony could have sent the papers off already if we’re not careful.”

“I don’t think he’d risk sending them until it was dark,” David said, getting out of his chair.

“Well it’s pretty dark outside already,” Darrell said, looking over her shoulder and out of the window.

“Yes but it’s not night-time, and anyone would see any suspicious activity down on the beaches,” David insisted. Julian just sat in his chair and was smiling broadly.

“What is the matter with you?” David asked, hauling Julian none too gently up out of the chair. “You’re grinning like a Cheshire cat at us.”

“Steady old chap,” Julian protested, as he was hauled out of the chair by his good hand.  “I was just enjoying the debate that you were having. It’s nice to know that we’re all on the same page now.”

“Well what do you suggest then?” Darrell asked, folding her arms as Julian hoisted his bag up onto his shoulder.

“Well its possible someone might come to the coast to collect the papers, risky though as they might be seen…” Julian said.

Sally cut him off; “What do you mean they might be seen? There are no houses near enough to the beaches to see anything from, a few guest houses up by the golf course and some cottages more or less behind the castle lower down the coast. You could signal from the castle or the cathedral ruins and no one inland would see you. I doubt you could even see anything from St Salvator’s.”

“He may post them of course,” Julian said pointedly to Sally. “That was really what I was getting at.”

“He wouldn’t be allowed to post things straight to Russia,” Sally said, triumphantly.

“No, but you can post to a neutral country or somewhere that an agent can pick it up from. Like Portugal, Spain, Italy, Switzerland even? That wouldn’t get checked. He’d be very thick if he tried to post it straight through to Russia, and from what we’ve seen, Pilkington isn’t thick,” Julian finished.

“So the best thing we can do is watch him,” Julian continued a moment later when they’d had chance to take this in. “We can’t very well second guess him when we don’t have any indicators to point us in the right direction.”

“I still wish it was Ainsworth,” David muttered a second later. Julian sighed and fixed him with a sideways look.

“I know I know,” David said, shaking his head. “Everything points to Pilkington, but there’s something about Ainsworth that doesn’t sit right.”

“You’re telling me,” Darrell said, rolling her eyes. “That man gives me the creeps….”

“All right, all right! We’ve heard this all before,” Sally said, impatiently. “Let’s go and find ourselves a Russian.”

“I wish it was going to be as simple as that,” Julian said with a sigh. “We’re going to need to watch him, follow him even, and not give the game away.”

“If he’s half as clever as you say he is, though, he probably knows that we’re going to be following him already,” Sally said glumly. Darrell gave her a sharp nudge.

“I don’t think we should let the girls trail him on their own,” David said after a moment of silence. “If he knows or not, I think we should split up and work that way. I mean we’re not going to be able to follow him all the time. We might as well spilt up into pairs with regular swap overs.”

“Why aren’t we allowed to go on our own?” Darrell asked suddenly annoyed. “We’d do just as good a job as you boys if we were on our own. Better in fact I should think!”

“Simmer down will you,” David said as Julian tried not to grin. “All I meant was that  this could get dangerous and I would prefer it if one of us was with one of you while we follow Pilkington,” he tried to explain.

“Still! I think it’s jolly awful of you to assume that we can’t look after ourselves. I swear in the books and films it’s usually the boys who get into trouble more!” Darrell said with a huff.

“And boys tend to make more mistakes,” Sally added slyly.

“As much as this conversation is entertaining and could take us all day, I do think we need to move on,” Julian said, leaning forward in his chair. He winked at David as he continued to speak.

“I also think that what David was trying to say was that we are likely, as boys, to get into far less trouble if you lovely ladies were to split up and accompany each of us during our little spying sessions,” Julian said, with a smile on his face. Darrell and Sally looked at each other with significant smiles on their faces as David sat back in his chair and rolled his eyes.

“Of course we will,” Darrell said sweetly.

“We can certainly split up and help you boys to make the right decisions,” Sally added, just as sweetly.

“Glad to hear it,” Julian said with a smile. He frowned for a second. “First thing to do I suspect should be to find Pilkington,” he said.

“And how do you suggest we do that?” Sally asked, raising an eyebrow at him as she spoke.

“Easily enough,” Julian said, a wide smile appearing on his face. “We’ve got a lecture with him this afternoon.”

“Smart arse,” Darrell grumbled at him. Julian smiled brightly as David chuckled.

“So what are we supposed to do while you’re in this lecture then?” Sally asked folding her arms.

“Well I don’t suggest sitting outside our lab and waiting for Pilkington to do a runner,” David said, sarcastically.

“No,” Julian agreed, quickly and in all seriousness. “I suggest that you come and ‘meet’ us at the end of our lecture and we can split up there and then and follow him wherever he may go.”

There was a general air of agreement to this suggestion.

“I think we should decide who will be going with whom now however,” Sally said, after a moment. “We shouldn’t meet up and then spend ten minutes squabbling about whose going with whom, we might lose him in that time, and we don’t want that,” she finished triumphantly.

“I suppose she’s right,” David said, glancing at Julian. Julian shrugged at nodded.

“Good idea,” he said, with a smile at Sally. She smiled back in such a way that caused Darrell to say;

“I’ll come with you, Ju, and Sally can go with David.”

David looked at Darrell in amazement and Sally didn’t look too chuffed at the idea. Darrell fixed Sally with a firm look.

“If you go with Julian, you’ll end up arguing so much that you’ll lose Pilkington. Then where would we be?” Darrell said, logically. David had to turn away from Julian and Sally as he tried to hide the smirk that was spreading across his face.

Julian shrugged a little. “Makes sense,” he said, with a smile. He looked at David, wondering why his friend wasn’t looking at any of them, and then he glanced at his watch.

“We better get going, David,” he said, with a sigh. “We’ve got a lecture in ten minutes.”

“What do you suggest that we do while you’re in lectures anyway?” Sally asked, regaining the use of her tongue.

Julian considered this and he and David gathered their things.

“Well you could always go and have a look around the cost for anywhere where someone could signal out to sea without being seen,” he suggested, half-teasing and half-serious.

“Whatever grabs your fancy, Sally,” he added with a chuckle. “I’ll leave it up to you.”

Julian managed to slip out of the door before Sally could find anything to throw at him. The gym shoe hit the back of the door as he closed it behind him with a snap. Laughing, David got up and headed after him.

“Open the door, Ju, it’s me,” he muttered, wrenching the door out of Julian’s hand as he spoke. Sally aimed the other shoe at the door, but wise to that trick, Julian had already fled laughing down the corridor. Sally dropped the shoe reluctantly and grinned sheepishly at Darrell and David. David grinned at her before heading out of the door, saying;

“See you later girls!”