19: Baboon

Three of the CHERUB handlers shut the party down, confiscated all of the illicit booze and sent everyone to bed once they'd tidied up. George was in a great mood, though, and as he lay in bed, he reflected that this might have been his best birthday ever.

Rather than mounting a full-scale enquiry into what had happened, Zara merely made an announcement that everyone who'd been at the party would be running fifty punishment laps. She had a list of names, which George guessed was probably compiled by Yeboah and the handlers who'd been out of bed in the middle of the night, and in the usual way, there were one or two people who had miraculously got away with it.

George shook off his hangover with a leisurely breakfast. Since it was Sunday and nobody had lessons, there was a collective plan to go down to the athletics track that morning and try to get the first fifteen or so laps out of the way before Sunday lunch. Running laps was a lot easier with other people, so George nipped up to his room and changed into shorts and trainers, meeting a crowd of other seventh-floor Cherubs in the lift and going with them to the track.

"Hi George," Bianca said when she spotted him, waving him over. He smiled and waved back, jogging gently over to where she was standing with Letty and Jemima.

"Don't jog, you need to conserve your energy," Letty reminded him. "Plus, my head is absolutely killing me, so keep the noise down."

"I'm just warming up," George said, doing some stretches to prove his point. "No Kimberley?"

"Somehow she got away with it," Bianca smiled. "I think she went to bed when everything started kicking off."

"Sensible," George said. Although a fifty laps wasn't especially difficult, especially spread out over a week, it left your legs tired and combat practice was always more challenging when you were already tired. Not to mention that you had to waste your evenings after lessons.

"Beatrice is outside Zara's office," Jemima told him. "Do you reckon she's getting kicked out?"

George shrugged. "Hard to say. She's done reckless stuff like this before, so maybe Zara's finally had enough."

"Nobody's been kicked out of Cherub since that girl Bethany," Letty said. "Zara doesn't like doing it."

"Beatrice has always been like this, though," Jemima pointed out. "It's not like it's a surprise."

"Speculating isn't gonna get us anywhere," George said, noticing some others starting to get onto the track and start running. "Might as well get some laps ticked off."

"Wait, George," Bianca said, hanging back as Letty and Jemima jogged away. "Do you want to hang out this afternoon?"

They'd hung out loads of times, but for some reason after last night George felt awkward about it. "Um, yeah," he said. "Do you have something in mind?"

Bianca shrugged. "I thought maybe you'd have an idea."

"I'll think while we run," George told her. "I normally do my best thinking on my feet."

Even though they were technically being punished, George managed to get two seats on a minibus that was going into the local town that afternoon. There was a cheesy-looking spy movie showing at the cinema and George reckoned it would be fun, then they could grab something to eat afterwards.

"Sorry," George said, jogging across the car park to where the minibus was impatiently waiting. "Got stuck in a queue to clean my plate up in the cafeteria," he told the driver, a recently-retired Cherub who was spending her last few months on campus. Bianca was sitting towards the back and George sat down gratefully next to her, getting a quick kiss on the cheek.

"Nightmare," he said, shaking his head. "I wanted to go up and see Beatrice and find out what had happened but some moron got into a row about gravy splattering on his trousers."

"Letty texted me, apparently Beatrice is having a four-month mission suspension and fifty laps, the same as the rest of us," Bianca told him, lurching in her seat slightly as the minibus pulled away. "And don't tell me it was your gravy splattered on his trousers."

George shook his head. "Luckily no, it wasn't mine for a change," he grinned. "Tough for Beatrice, though, four months is ages and you're always at the front of the queue for toilet-cleaning duty, too."

The movie was just exactly as bad as George had expected, but neither of them minded because George sat with his arm around Bianca while she rested her head on his shoulder. He spent the first hour of the film trying to work up the courage to try kissing her again, and then the final twenty minutes snogging her when he finally realised she was up for it. When it was over, they emerged into the lobby, blinking a little, Bianca sucking the remains of her Diet Coke through a straw noisily.

"What's next?" she asked as she tossed it into a bin.

"Something to eat?" George suggested, and as they walked out towards the street, Bianca reached out and took hold of his hand. Her hand was cold and slightly damp from holding the drink, but George didn't say anything.

The best place to eat in the town near campus was this Mexican place called Pimia's, which had moved in when the tired-looking steakhouse had closed a few years earlier. George had been twice before; once for Letty's birthday the previous year, and once when the whole group had been out bowling and Rex had demanded they stop and get chimichangas. It felt different, though, going in with just Bianca, and George felt self-conscious as a tired-looking middle-aged woman with grey roots showing in her light brown hair showed them to a table near the window.

"I don't think I've been here before," Bianca noted as she hung her handbag on the edge of the chair and looked out at the rows of cars in the dimly-lit car park. George put his coat on the back of his chair and sat down, trying to cover up his awkward feelings by staring at the menu and trying to remember how much cash he had in his wallet in case Bianca expected him to pay for everything.

"You alright?" Bianca asked after a few minutes, when George was still staring down at the menu.

"Um, yeah, sorry," George said, glancing up.

Bianca looked nervously at him so he tried to make himself smile. "I just need to relax a bit," he told her, and she smiled back.

They didn't say much else as they ordered food and Bianca looked out of the window again, making George feel awkward again. It was so much easier in the dark cinema where they didn't have to talk.

"My legs ache from the laps earlier," George finally blurted out, Bianca looking around at him. "Not sure I warmed up properly."

"You were the one showing off with all those stretches," Bianca grinned. "How did you manage to mess that up?"

George managed a laugh. "Not sure," he said, but then they lapsed into silence again until the waiter arrived and covered the table in plates. George was relieved to have food as a distraction and chomped his way through spicy chicken enchiladas.

"How old were you when you came to campus?" Bianca eventually asked him while he was wiping his mouth with a napkin.

"Nine," George told her. "How about you?"

"Ten," Bianca said. "I went straight into a blue shirt to get ready for basic training. For a few weeks I was so jealous of the kids who got to wear a red shirt."

George smiled. "It feels like an age ago," he reminisced, thinking back to sharing a room with Rex in the junior block.

"All the red shirt kids I knew had been on campus for ages and seemed like they knew everything," Bianca told him. "I had only been in the UK for six weeks when I started basic training, so everything was so strange."

"Must have been a big shock," George nodded. "Plus basic is so brutal, you go from being a carefree kid to ten-mile hikes with a pack full of rocks practically overnight."

Bianca laughed. "Back in Australia I'd had a Barbie doll which had a safari outfit, so on those hikes I used to pretend I was her, exploring the jungle or something."

"That's quite cute, actually," George said, smiling and Bianca blushed a little.

"Actually that was where I got that dumb nickname," Bianca went on.

"The baboon thing?" George asked. "I didn't even know about that until recently."

Bianca nodded, picking up her glass of iced water and sipping it, then crunching through a broken ice cube. "I really loved animals when I was little, I used to go mad for trips to the zoo and my room was covered in pictures of lions and flamingos and stuff. But after my parents died, I started having these nightmares about them, where the animals would always die and I couldn't do anything. They went away when I started on campus, but sometimes after a really tough day during basic they would come back and apparently I was shouting about a baboon in the middle of the night."

George tried not to laugh, but Bianca put him at ease by smiling. "I mean, it's pretty funny when you think about it, and during basic you'll grab hold of literally anything that makes it easier to get up in the morning. The baboon thing stuck and even Kazakov used to call me it."

"Baboons," George repeated. "Why baboons?"

"No idea," Bianca shrugged. "It would never have stuck if my brain had decided to dream about giraffes that night."

"Dreams are weird," George agreed. "After my mission in Africa a few years ago, I got this recurring nightmare where I'd be doing something normal, like sitting in a lesson or doing karate, then suddenly the building would collapse and I'd be buried alive where I couldn't breathe. I hated those nightmares so much, it made me feel like such an idiot when I woke up, but the campus psychiatrist really helped."

Bianca seemed really pleased that George had opened up about this and she gently prodded his foot under the table with hers. "Crappy stuff happens to all of us," she commiserated.

"Anyway," George announced, shaking off the melancholy mood. "What do you fancy for dessert? The ice cream here is really good, I could probably eat a huge bowl of it."

"I think everyone could eat a huge bowl of ice cream if they had to," Bianca giggled. "You're nothing special."

Things got easier from there and by the time George had put a pile of notes onto the plastic tray the waiter brought them for the bill and Bianca had drawn a big smiley face on the receipt, he was having a good time and wished they had longer before the minibus picked them up. Back outside in the cold, Bianca rubbed her mittens together as they walked to the pickup point and George wished he'd brought a hat.

"My ears always get cold," he said, covering them with his hands for a second. "I really don't know why I always seem to forget that."

"Aw, your poor ears," Bianca said, darting in front of him and covering his ears with her mittens. "Is that better?"

George pretended he couldn't hear her. "What? I've suddenly gone deaf," he said, and she giggled. Actually the woollen material of the mittens made his ears itch, and just before he was going to say something Bianca let go anyway.

"You're such an idiot, George," Bianca said, and George gave her an offended look.

"Hey," he complained, and she grabbed his arm, pulling him closer to her and walking next to him with her arms around his.

"That's why I like you," Bianca said. "An amazing idiot."

George laughed. "Not sure why I like you right now," he told her.