Read Online Robin Jarvis-Jax 01 Dancing Jax by Robin Jarvis - Free Book Online Page B

fiction and fantasy. She preferred real life, but was more than delighted to leave them to it, while she sat in front of Casualty or House with a glass of white wine. Martin could never understand why she watched those programmes. Didn’t she have enough of that at work? Carol would always nod, but added that she enjoyed laughing at the mistakes.
    Paul stood beside Martin and watched him pull the bubble wrap and newspaper out of the adapted cardboard box. He had found this for Martin. He had entered it as a special search in eBay and had been checking it for the past seven months, without success. Then, a few weeks ago, one had come up and now here it was.
    Martin tore the last piece of packing from it and turned the glass object in his hands so that it caught the light. It was a fresnel lens. Quite hard to come by nowadays, but essential if Martin was going to build the full-size Police Box he had always wanted. It would be nothing without the lamp on top.
    “Mum’ll go spare,” Paul chuckled.
    This was their big conspiracy. They had been keeping it a secret from her for ages, ever since they discovered a website giving instructions on how to build one. When they had moved in, Carol had consigned all of Martin’s ‘toys’ to the one room and not even the mugs or fridge magnets were allowed in the rest of the house. If so much as an X-Files coaster appeared anywhere, it was swiftly returned to the inner sanctum with a Post-it note attached, on which she’d drawn an exclamation mark.
    “We’ll just have to outvote her,” Martin said. “How good will one of these be in the garden?”
    “Most excellent!” Paul agreed.
    Martin rubbed his hands together gleefully then hid the lens inside an accommodating R2-D2.
    “She’ll come round,” he said hopefully. “We’ll get it started one weekend when she’s working and she won’t be able to stop us.”
    “What happened after school?” Paul asked. “I heard Mum talking on the phone.”
    “Good job you had your piano lesson and weren’t there,” Martin told him. “Two very nasty fights. The Head is furious.”
    “Wish I’d seen it,” the boy said, disappointed. Then he added, “She put too much salt in the lasagne again.”
    Martin returned downstairs and discovered that for himself. Back in his own room, Paul surveyed the beginnings of his own crazy collection. His shelves were already full of fantasy figures and graphic novels. He was glad his mum had found and teamed up with Martin.
    An email alert sounded from his computer and Paul hardly heard Carol shouting goodnight to him as she left for work. It was going to be a very busy, traumatic night in the hospital.
    Paul frowned at the email. He didn’t recognise the sender. It was just a number, 7734, but it didn’t appear to be an advert for Viagra or a phoney bank scam and there weren’t any dodgy attachments.
    “Tonight at Nine!” read the title.
    He opened it.
    Flash mob at the Landguard – tonight at nine. It’ll be a blast! Great sounds! Mystery A-list celeb! Bring your mates! Bring a bottle – or ten! Be a part of this awesome happening. It’s gonna be on the news. We’re going for a record!!!!!!!!!
    “Weird,” Paul said. He had no idea who would send him anything like that. It wasn’t any of his Facebook friends. Not even Anthony Maskel or Graeme Parker, his closest friends at school, would have sent him something like that. Usually they sent him links to daft things they’d found on YouTube.
    He thought about the Landguard for a moment. It was the huge old fortress down on the peninsula, dating back hundreds of years. It always struck him as strange that such a historic building should be slap bang next to the modern, industrial container port.
    Paul rushed downstairs to tell Martin. The man laughed. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in something like a flash mob and had looked forward to a quiet night of escapism in front of a DVD.
    “But it’ll be huge!” Paul said.