The Jamie Drake Equation Read online

  “I’m a Love Missile Baby – and I shoot to thrill!”

  I quickly jam my fingers into my ears, trying to block out the worst of the sound. In the back, Charlie squeals with delight, whirling the inflatable guitar around her head again as the thunderous sound of Death Panda rings out.

  “The temperature is rising as I go for the kill.”

  The van lurches away from the pavement, the lollipop lady flattening herself against the school gates as twin guitars squeal from the speakers. Glancing back in the side mirror I can see her angrily shaking her stop sign before Granddad turns the corner and she disappears from view.

  Home for us is actually Granddad’s house. Before Dad was an astronaut, he was in the RAF and we just used to live on whichever air force base he was posted to. Mum and Dad never got round to buying a house – most of the time they just rented a studio for Mum where she could make her sculptures and stuff while we lived in family quarters.

  We moved a lot anyway as the planes Dad flew got bigger and bigger. I went to three different schools before I was eight years old as he learned how to fly helicopters, spy planes and fighter jets. Then Dad decided he wanted to become an astronaut and that was when we really started racking up the air miles.

  Most of his basic astronaut training took place in Germany and I had to go to an international school in Cologne. Then there was underwater training in Florida so that Dad could learn how to survive in an extreme environment, while I tried out the high-g rides at Disney World, before we headed to Moscow where Dad learned to spacewalk and I learned that I don’t really like Russian food. That was where Charlie popped out, so her birth certificate says she was born in Star City. This is the name of the place near Moscow where all the astronauts and their families live while they’re finishing their training. My birth certificate just says I was born in Swindon.

  So anyway, after Dad blasted off for the International Space Station, Mum brought me and Charlie back home to Britain and we moved in with Granddad Neil. I don’t know why we couldn’t get our own house, but Mum said that Granddad would help look after us while she got back to work. I told Mum I didn’t need any looking after, but we still moved into Granddad’s house. He bought it when he was big in the 80s and since Grandma left him and moved to the States with her new boyfriend, he’s been living there on his own. Now Mum’s turned her old attic bedroom into an art studio and is up there most of the time working on her new sculpture.

  She’s in the kitchen when we get home, though, drinking a cup of tea in her paint-smattered smock. Charlie runs towards her with a happy squeal, shrieking with delight as Mum scoops her up and spins her round in the air.

  “I’m a spaceman!” she cries.

  Mum rolls her eyes.

  “You mean a spacewoman,” Mum says as she brings Charlie back down to earth. “Don’t forget, girls can be astronauts too.”

  Then she gives me a smile as I shrug my rucksack off my shoulders and set this down on the kitchen table.

  “How was school?” she asks.

  “Fine,” I reply, pulling out my homework folder. “I’ve just got to revise for this maths test tomorrow.”

  From the back garden comes an ear-splitting squeal of feedback and my shoulders sag as I realise what this means. Even though Granddad’s rock star days are over, he still likes to go out to the barn to play his guitar. Very, very loudly. There goes my chance of revising in peace.

  Seeing the pained expression on my face, Mum quickly shakes her head.

  “Don’t start revising now,” she says, raising her voice as the sound of a crunching guitar chord rings out and Charlie starts dancing round the kitchen. “Why don’t you get some fresh air first? I’ll make sure Granddad finishes practising by six and you can pick us all up some fish and chips on your way back.”

  Mum pulls out a twenty-pound note and pushes it into my hand.

  Grateful for the chance to escape, I quickly shove it into my pocket along with my revision worksheet. As the deafening kerrang of another guitar chord shakes the kitchen window, I head for the door and the one place where I’m guaranteed some peace and quiet.

  4

  From up here on Beacon Hill you can see everything. The whole village is spread out below me like a Google Map. There’s Granddad’s house, the long back garden with the barn at the bottom backing on to the wild meadows. Luckily, I can’t hear his guitar playing from here. Then over there is my school, Austen Park Primary, its green playing fields surrounded by the new housing estate. The houses look like little boxes and with my finger and thumb I pinch and drag out the empty air, trying to zoom in to imagine what kind of family I’d find inside each one. I bet they wouldn’t have an annoying granddad like mine.

  The sun is starting to dip on the horizon, turning the sky a golden orange. I’ve got the revision worksheet spread out on my lap, the page of equations still looking impossible to me. Then I hear the roar of the fighter jet before I see it, the plane keeping low as it hugs the hills, heading back to the RAF base where the US fighter jets are stationed.

  I jump as my mobile suddenly rings. Fishing my phone out from my pocket, I look down at the caller display.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  There’s a two-second delay and then I hear my dad’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Hi, Jamie. I just phoned your mum and Charlie at home, but I couldn’t get hold of you, so I just wanted to check you were OK.”

  Dad’s kind of amazing. He’s not even on this planet, but he’s still making sure I’m all right.

  “Where are you, son?”

  “Up on Beacon Hill,” I say. “I just wanted a bit of peace and quiet for a while. Granddad’s practising his guitar again.”

  Dad laughs.

  “Beacon Hill’s probably the only place in Bramsfield where you can’t hear Neil’s guitar. I used to take your mum up there when we first started going out.”

  Mum and Dad both grew up in this village. They started going out when they were still at school and have been together ever since. All the newspapers say it’s so romantic.

  “There used to be an observatory up there at the top of the hill,” Dad continues. “Your mum and me would go in on their open evenings and look up at the stars. When I looked through the telescope, it seemed as though the moon was close enough to touch. I could even see the spot where Neil Armstrong took his first step. I think that’s what made me want to fly a spaceship, but I’m stuck here whizzing round in low Earth orbit instead. In fact, I’m heading over you right now, Jamie. Give us a wave.”

  I look up, my eyes scanning the horizon until I see the familiar glint of the ISS – a silver streak in the darkening sky. Dad showed me to how to spot this before he went up into space. It looks just like a fast-moving plane, but without any flashing lights and, because the ISS is so high up, it doesn’t make a sound. Dad promised me that whenever he was flying straight overhead, he’d always keep an eye out for me.

  “I can see you, Dad,” I say, lifting my hand to wave at this shooting star.

  “Me too, son,” he replies, his voice as clear in my ear as if he were sitting next to me and not four hundred kilometres above my head.

  There’s a moment of silence as I try to work out what to say next. When Dad’s at home I can talk to him about anything – all the funny things that happen at school, any problems I’ve got with my homework, what we’re going to do together at the weekend. Everything I’m thinking about and all my worries too.

  There’s so much I want to tell him now. How I wish he was home for my birthday, how living with Granddad is driving me mad and how I can’t stop worrying about his spacewalk on Friday. But when you’ve only got a few minutes to talk, it’s hard to fit everything in.

  Then I hear a long beeping tone in the background, like a phone that’s been left off the hook.

  “Are you still there, Dad?” I ask.

  I hear the echo of my own voice on the line and then Dad’s voice cuts back in.

  “
I’m going to have to go, Jamie. This is something I need to check out.”

  “Is everything OK?” I ask, panicking at the thought of anything going wrong up there. From meteor strikes to toxic leaks, Dad has explained to me all the different dangers he could face on the ISS. In an extreme emergency the astronauts have to take shelter in the Soyuz capsule that’s connected to the space station in case they need to make a quick escape.

  “No need to worry, son,” he replies. “It’s just a caution alert. Probably some computer system’s gone offline.”

  As he speaks, the beeping tone suddenly stops.

  “There you go,” he says. “Panic over. I just need to find out what this alert was about and then I can inform Mission Control. I’ll speak to you tomorrow on our family video call.”

  The ISS is dipping low on the horizon now, giving me one last glimpse before it disappears.

  “Bye, Jamie.”

  “Bye, Dad.”

  And then he’s gone, travelling around the world in a tin can at over 27,000 kilometres per hour.

  * * *

  I’m nearly out of breath by the time I reach the very top of Beacon Hill, my shadow lengthening as the last rays of the sun leach out of the sky. I can’t stop myself from shivering. I should’ve brought a jacket. Mum is probably expecting me back about now, but I don’t want to go home yet. I want to see the observatory that Dad mentioned first.

  If it was here when my dad was a teenager, then it must be well out of date by now. They put telescopes up into space nowadays so that astronomers can look further and further out into the universe. I glance up at the darkening sky, clouds now starting to appear on the horizon as daylight fades away. You wouldn’t be able to see much from here.

  Then I see it, half hidden behind a bank of trees, a squat red-brick building topped with a white, dome-shaped roof. The walls of the building are half covered in ivy and shrubs, making it blend in with the woodland that surrounds it, and as I get closer I can see coils of barbed wire sitting below the lip of the dome, its white paint peeling in places and mottled with a greenish tint. The observatory looks abandoned, the only clue to its former life the rectangular slit in the side of the dome, left open to the sky.

  I reach a rusting chain-link fence, the battered red-and-white sign that’s fixed to this warning:

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

  But less than a metre to the left I spot a gap between the fence post and a padlocked gate, the chain hanging so loose that it’s easy enough for me to squeeze through.

  Up close, the observatory looks even more derelict, its curved red-brick walls crumbling in places, the chunks of rubble almost lost among the weeds. It doesn’t look like anyone has been here for years. There are no windows and as I skirt round the edge of the building in search of a door, I wonder what might be left inside. Maybe the telescope is still working and I’ll be able to catch a close-up of Dad on his next orbit round in ninety minutes time. If I could just find a way in…

  Then I see something that stops me in my tracks. Silhouetted against the setting sun, it looks like a robot riding on top of a giant techno-spider. It’s nearly twice my height, its four metal legs extended and planted in the ground, while the satellite dish head is pointing to the stars. On its sleek white body I can see a bright blue logo:

  * L.O.G.S.

  Unlike the crumbling observatory, this looks like it’s just fallen off the back of a spaceship. I step closer, peering at the strange machine to try and work out exactly what it is.

  That’s when I feel the shotgun press between my shoulder blades.

  “Don’t move,” a woman’s voice growls. “Or I’ll let you have it.”

  5

  I walk slowly up the stairs that hug the curving wall, my eyes straining against the gloom that lurks inside the observatory. The concrete steps leading up to the next level are coated with pigeon droppings and I have to pick my path carefully to make sure I don’t slip. It’s cold in here, but despite the chill I can feel a bead of sweat sliding down my face as the barrel of the shotgun pressed into my back pushes me forward again.

  “Keep moving,” the woman tells me as we reach the top of the stairs. “In there.”

  Trying to keep down the taste of sick that’s bubbling up in my throat, I push open the door in front of me and step through into a huge dimly lit room. The floor is smeared with a thick layer of dust, but the circular walls are filled with banks of electronic equipment. There are rows of computers that look like they haven’t been upgraded since the 1980s, the chunky monitors and keyboards all covered in the same thick layer of dust. Multicoloured cables snake between tall grey cabinets, their insides crammed with reels and dials. An eerie silence hangs in the air, but it’s what I can see in the middle of the room that makes me catch my breath.

  Mounted on a towering base that stretches six metres high is a huge telescope. It looks like a space rocket, the long white tube as thick as a tree trunk and studded with rivets, gears and levers, pointing up at a forty-five degree angle. On one side of the tower, metal stairs spiral upwards to reach a chair that is mounted on a set of rails beside the bottom end of the telescope. And at the other end, the telescope lens looks out of the rectangular slit, the rusting dome still open to the stars that are starting to come out overhead.

  A prod in my back reminds me that I’ve not come here for a spot of stargazing.

  “Over there,” the woman says, pushing me towards a long desk that is set in front of one of the banks of defunct computers. “Empty your pockets.”

  I’ve not even seen her face, but with a shotgun shoved in my back I’m not in a position to argue.

  Reaching into my pockets, I empty them out onto the table in front of me: my house keys, a packet of Starmix, my revision worksheet and the twenty-pound note Mum gave me.

  “Everything,” she growls.

  With a trembling hand, I take out my mobile phone and lay this down next to the rest. There goes any chance of phoning the police. My brain starts to cycle through what will happen next – every possibility I imagine is even worse than the last. She’s probably some serial killer who roams abandoned buildings looking for kids to kill. Why didn’t I stay at home?

  I can feel the gun still pressing in to the small of my back, and from over my shoulder I glimpse the shape of a shadow leaning forward…

  I hear a click and almost jump out of my skin, waiting for my life to flash before my eyes. But instead of a shot, I see the lamp on the desk flicker into life.

  “Sit down,” she tells me, the strange shadow of her shotgun pointing to the chair on the other side of the desk.

  I sit down. The desk lamp is shining straight into my face, almost blinding me.

  “What are you doing sneaking round here?”

  I squint up at my questioner, trying to see past the blotches forming in front of my eyes. Instead of the crazed killer of my imagination, a middle-aged woman wearing a pink cardigan over a floral dress is standing there instead, her black hair twisted into braids. In her hands, she’s holding a telescope, its eyepiece pointing straight at me like the barrel of a gun.

  The realisation hits like a bullet. This is what she had pressed into my back all the time. I’ve been taken prisoner with a telescope.

  6

  “I thought you had a gun,” I protest, starting to get up out of the seat.

  “I’ve got a doctorate in astrophysics and a black belt in karate,” the woman replies, poking me hard in the chest with her telescope. “So sit down before I knock your block off.”

  Now it might not be as big as the one that’s pointing up out of the dome, but the end of this telescope still feels rather painful as she prods it into my chest. I sit back down.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks again, staring sternly at me.

  “My dad told me there used to be an observatory on Beacon Hill,” I tell her, glancing round nervously at the old computer equipment. “I thought I’d come an
d take a look myself. I thought this place was abandoned. I didn’t think anyone was still working here.”

  “It’s private property. Didn’t you see the sign?”

  “No,” I lie, suddenly remembering the warning about trespassers being prosecuted. “My dad said that this place used to be open to the public. I can see now that it’s all shut down, but what’s that weird robot thing you’ve got outside? The rest of this place is proper old, but that thing looks brand new.”

  The woman ignores my question, suspicion still shining in her eyes.

  “Who is your dad? Why’s he told you to come poking around here?”

  “He didn’t tell me to come poking around.” I start to pick my things up off the desk. “And now I know that this place is out of bounds, I’ll get out of your way.”

  “But who is he?” She snatches my mobile phone out of my hand. “I’ll call him up now to find out why he’s sent you to spy on me.”

  “He didn’t send me to spy on you,” I repeat, raising my voice in exasperation. “And you can’t phone my dad.”

  “Why not?” she says, peering intently at the mobile screen as she scrolls through the numbers in my contacts. “Scared I’m going to find out the truth?”

  “Because he’s in space,” I snap. “My dad’s Commander Dan Drake.”

  The woman stares at me for a second, her forehead creasing in a frown, and then she laughs out loud.

  “I knew I recognised your face from somewhere,” she replies. “You were in the newspaper with your dad – you and your mum and your little sister too – ‘The Space Family Drake’.”

  I wince as I remember the headline. Before Dad went into orbit, The Sunday Times did a story about our whole family, talking about Dad’s mission and how we felt about him going up into space. For the photograph the newspaper thought it would be a good idea if Charlie and me dressed up as aliens. Charlie loved it and kept on hitting Dad over the head with the lightsaber that the photographer gave her, but when you’re in Year Six it’s a bit embarrassing to have to wear pointy ears.