Murray McDonald - Kidnap

An hour later, they phoned home and spoke to Rachel and Saki and just as they were about to hang up, Donald arrived home. They repeated everything they had already said and eventually hung up. Everyone was extremely happy with developments. Tom had some work to do on proposals and thought it best to knock them on the head before he started having homework to contend with. He said goodnight to Lela and headed back to his room.

Their first day at school had gone as smoothly as they could possibly have hoped for.

Reaper heard the ping which announced that a new message had arrived. He moved across to the PC and looked at his inbox. It was from Ling, she had been filing a report every night for the last week and each one read exactly the same, nothing to report. He was beginning to think the Ling card was not a master stroke afterall. Another message arrived and he opened it straight away. It was just an update from Leo, he had visited a couple of the camps, everything was going well.

Reaper returned to the note from Ling and clicked on it and immediately revised his thoughts. Ling may have been the best master stoke he had ever pulled. She may just save him and the world a lot of hassle. He called Pieter, one of his lieutenants, and told him to get Mozambique.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday had passed like a blur, the pace of their classes was intense, no sooner had they discussed a topic before they moved on to the next. The only way to learn the subject was in their own time. How Lela was able to do her training with Saki as well as all the classwork, amazed Tom. He was knackered, it seemed he was permanently tired and was not the only one. Every one of their friends was the same, classwork, homework, dinner, homework, bed. They all hoped it was just the first week and they would get into a rhythm.

Etiquette was their last class on Friday and class 1H was looking forward to what they expected to be a bit of a laugh and light relief at the end of what had been a very hard week. Tristan had been the only one to have looked up the detail of the lesson and told them all at lunch that it was a Miss something or other, he couldn’t remember exactly her name but it was Scandinavian and he was very excited.

Their Accounts teacher had been called away at 3.15 and had decided to let them go early rather than wait for him to come back. They had therefore arrived early for their last class and Tristan was still going on about the young Scandinavian teacher.

“She’s going to be really hot, afterall most Scandinavian women are you know,” he said as they took their seats in the very strange classroom. It had a huge dining table at the front instead of a blackboard.

“Exactly how many Scandinavians do you base that assumption on?” asked Tom.

Tristan thought for a second.

“100 % of the Scandinavian women I know are hot!” he said triumphantly.

Zach had seen him look across the room.

“That would be one, Madeleine,” he said.

Nobody argued however, every one of the boys in the class fancied Princess Madeleine from Sweden, bar one, Ahmad, who only had eyes for Lela.

The girls had begun to look around interested at the conversation and how it would develop. The boys went quiet, blushed and hoped the teacher would arrive soon.

The door opened and a tray full of bananas entered the room. All that could be seen were the teacher’s legs, her body and face were obscured by a huge quantity of bananas.

“Nice legs,” whispered Tristan.

The bananas were laid down on the large table and the face revealed. Lela, Tom and Chen froze.

“Oh God,” whispered Tristan sitting back into his seat. “That face would give you nightmares and look at the moustache!”

Tom kicked him.

“Anderson wouldn’t be the Scandinavian name would it?”

“Yeah, why, do you see her?” he asked not realising she had arrived.

“Yes,” Tom winced, bat ears would have heard every word. Etiquette had just become the worst class of the week and they would start every week for the rest of the year spending the whole week dreading it.

“You boy, Tristan isn’t it?” Ms Anderson barked, pointing at Tristan.

“Yes Miss,” answered Tristan cheerily.

“It’s not Miss, it’s Ms. Come here!” she commanded.

Tom couldn’t look, Tristan walked down to the front of the class blissfully unaware of the superhuman hearing capabilities of Mr Sakamoto’s private secretary and part time Etiquette teacher. It was like watching a lamb to the slaughter.

“Did you wish to share your conversation with the rest of the class?” she asked acidly as Tristan reached the front.

Tristan suddenly realised he was in trouble and stood silent.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Ms Anderson and I will be teaching you proper Etiquette. Mr Kennedy, would you be so kind as to join us up here?”

Tom stood up and walked slowly to the front and joined Tristan.

“Gentlemen, although I use that term loosely, would you like to repeat your conversation to the class?”

Both shook their heads vigorously.

“So what have we learned today, gentlemen?”

“It’s impolite to whisper,” offered Tom.

“Excellent, did anyone else in the room not know that?” she asked the class.

No hands went up.

“It seems everybody else knew that. Gentlemen, perhaps you both require some remedial help to catch up with the rest of your colleagues,” she said smiling at them both.

Both shook their heads.

“Now, now, there’s no need to be bashful gentlemen, nobody thinks less of you. However it would be unfair to burden the rest of the class with your inadequacies to date. Lunch every Sunday will begin your remedial work and we’ll see how quickly you can catch up,” she smiled and placed her thumb and forefinger together and opened and closed them, just like how you would use a pair of tweezers thought Tom.

“But…” both Tristan and Tom began to respond but were met by a hand and stare that suggested it may get worse with any further talk.

They walked back to their seats with Sunday lunch to look forward to.

“Now ladies and gentlemen, we will begin our lessons with how to eat a banana…”

Half the class began to laugh but the look from Ms Anderson cut the laughter instantly.

“Could you all please join me at the table?”

The next hour was spent learning how to eat a banana with a knife and fork, receiving a copy of Debrett’s and the biggest homework task to date. They had to memorise the correct form of address for hundreds of titles. Etiquette was now officially the worst class on the timetable and Tom and Tristan were going to have it twice a week.

“So what are we going to do tonight?” asked Lela as they walked back to their block.

Tom and Tristan were still on a downer, Sunday with hairy lip, neither could think of anything worse. They had tried but so far, nothing came close, even Ahmad’s suggestion of cleaning the army base toilets with a toothbrush had received a positive nod from both.

“Whatever,” responded Tom shrugging his shoulders.

“How about ten pin bowling?” suggested Mingmei.

“Excellent idea,” replied the girls.

Tom, Tristan and Ahmad groaned.

“What’s wrong with bowling?” asked Chen.

“You’ll see,” replied Tom. “Wait a minute, there’s Zach, he’s American. I’ll bet he’s a good bowler.” Tom ran across and invited Zach for a game, he was hoping he’d even things up a little. They might even beat the girls for a change.

Four hours later, a humiliated boys team made their way to bed, Tom and Tristan had rounded off a terrible day with a crushing defeat. Zach and Chen were both hopeless. Zach it transpired had never bowled before in his life and neither had Chen. At least Oleg had bowled before and managed to maintain an almost acceptable score line.