Sleuth on Skates (20 page)

But no.

“Are you ready for school?”

“Mother! I cannot go to school today!”

“And why not, pray?”

“Because I've had a close brush with death and bandits! I've saved everyone's Internet privacy! I've made one of the country's biggest companies collapse!”

But I was pushed into the Smurfmobile like any other schoolgirl! Me, Sesame Seade, Cambridge's number one supersleuth! But then I remembered that school meant I could tell
everyone my story, and I calmed down.

“Are you super furious, Mummy?”

“Why would I be?”

“Because College has lost all the Cooperture money.”

“Well,” Mum laughed, “I'm sure we'll get much more in compensation when the trial takes place.”

More money. More money. Even more money.

“Can I have a pocket money rise?”

“No.”

“Ten little pounds a week!”

“No.”

“Nine, then.”

“No.”

“Seven? Six and a half?”

“Six and a half, at your next birthday.”

“But that's in six months!”

“It'll give you time to get used to the idea of having such a fortune at your disposal.”

Later when I came back home I found an electric guitar on my bed.

My parents are sometimes cool.

And you know what, it doesn't matter that I didn't get the Order of the British Empire or the Nobel Prize for Peace. Supersleuths don't need that. All they need is the satisfaction of having done a good job, which I had, with the added thrill of having used strange ways of going from one place to another, which I had. It was a bit awkward because suddenly everyone at school wanted their pictures taken with me on their very cool phones, but you get used to the popularity. And then it all died out anyway when Suzanne Windermere got her new sparkly pink braces.

“Sophie, you have a visitor,” said Dad, making it sound like an ogre was trying to force his way into my room.

“Oh, hi, Jeremy!”

“Hi, Sesame. May I come in?”

“Sure, if you don't smash up the place like
you did in your own room.”

He sat on the end of my bed. “Yeah, about the Cooperture thing, I just wanted to say . . .”

“That you're very sorry, and that money made you mad. I know.”

“No, that's not what I wanted to say.”

“Really? What did you want to say?”

“I wanted to say that you're a mentalist, you absolute idiot—throwing yourself out of a window like that! Promise me you'll never do it again!”

“All right. You can always buy me a helicopter with your next bribe.”

He went raspberry red. “OK, thanks for not telling anyone, Sesame. I, er, I really appreciate it. It wasn't like me to say yes to those guys. So, thank you, and, well, I guess—I'm sorry, and all that.”

I replied, “You are forgiven, my child, as my dad says to everyone. Though he didn't say it to me when I skated into that ugly jade lion in the living-room.”

“Right. I have another thing to ask you. The
University's letting Jenna come back despite the whole affair, but she's not going to work for
UniGossip
any more. I'm the new Editorin-Chief. And I'd like you to be in our team of investigators. Now that we know you're both a super sleuth and an incorruptible one.”

He whispered that, of course, because Mum and Dad downstairs would probably not approve.

“Oh, Jeremy, that would be the most beauteous thing ever! I can't wait! Wow, I have a job—that's just—it's just—”

“All right, don't be too loud. You won't be credited in the mag, of course, but if I call you and ask you to go spy on someone . . .”

“Who're you gonna call? Sesame Seade!'” I sang.

“Doesn't fit. Anyway. I'll try not to send you on missions that are too dangerous. . . .”

“I can deal with danger!”

“It'll also mean not being seen, and not boasting when you do manage to find something.”

“Say no more! As long as I can help the community, I will. It is my mission. My burden. My responsibility.”

We shook hands and shared a Battenberg cake to seal our professional relationship. Peter Mortimer nicked Jeremy's slice before he could eat it, which annoyed Jeremy a little, but he should have known better and wolfed it all down before the feline could.

“Right,” I said. “When do I start?”

“Well,” Jeremy replied, “as it happens, I just got a phone call this morning, and apparently, strange noises have been heard in the cellars of Clare College. . . .”

I've never written an acknowledgments page before, but so many people have indirectly contributed to Sesame that this time I can't keep up the pretense that I've done it all on my own.

Christ's College has been my home for the past seven years. Much like Sesame, I've grown up there. A very special thank-you to Don and Tod, the Porters, who did much more than lend their names, and to the Master, Professor Frank Kelly, who thinks Sesame should focus a little bit more on her science homework!

Thank you so, so much to my very precious book-lover friends, Anna, Lauren and Erin, who've been adorable to me over the past two years of doubts, joys and worries since I started to write in English. My mum's also been doing that for the past twenty years since I started to write in French. Merci Maman.

Professors Maria Nikolajeva and Morag Styles have been the fairy godmothers of my
graduate life. They taught me everything I know about children's literature and never worried that I was writing books alongside my PhD thesis.

Kirsty McLachlan is the loveliest agent imaginable, and the calmest in two times of crisis: no publishers, and then too many. Her advice and suggestions are always spot-on. As for my editor, Ellen Holgate, I couldn't have asked for a more enthusiastic, creative and witty friend to work with.

Finally, Simon, I wrote most of this book to the tune of your virtuosic piano-playing. You were one of the first to read it. I will always have so much tenderness for our years together.