Since Róisín's revenge doesn't seem to be
forthcoming, I thought I'd tempt fate a little more!
"Think! There are so many teachers on the CBB,
and a few nursery nurses and at least one nanny...goodness knows how many
parents too - we have to find them or Joey will..."
“work
herself into a real frenzy and be confined to bed for weeks” Róisín rolled
her eyes as she wandered aimlessly through Joey’s other children who were
still sleeping on the ground.
“… but surely that would be a good
thing?” Kate sounded confused “If she was confined to bed, then she’d be
out of our hair?”
“Poor innocent Kate!” Róisín laughed bitterly
“If Joey was confined to bed, then we’d have to go and visit her and try
to keep her quiet by looking at those interminable photograph albums. We
might even have to offer to take the spawn home with us, so that Joey gets
a complete rest” she shuddered at the thought.
“What are we going
to do?” Kate’s voice, rising in panic now and was becoming a match for
Mary-Lou’s, Róisín could hear her right across the campus - without the
aid of the mobile phone.
“You’d have to check Liss’ rules” she
replied, her suggestion doing nothing to calm her friend “but I think that this might constitute a CBB
emergency”
“You mean we’d have to get all the doctors in Ireland
to come and form a search party?” Kate screeched; her heart pounding
(although for a different reason now – she was definitely interested in
this suggestion!)
“No, no, no!” Róisín snapped unhappily “I mean
we’re have to activate the phone tree … we’re going to have to use the
bunker!” Róisín was distinctly unhappy at this prospect, she knew that due
to time zones and fact that peoples mobiles were always out of signal,
activating the phone tree might take all night; and all she wanted to do
was go and have some very unethical ‘fun’ with her strappingly handsome
patient, James!
One of the babies, by Róisín’s foot stirred,
making her jump. “You’ll have to activate the phone tree yourself” she
told Kate, “the rest of the kids are waking up and if we don’t get hold of
them, we’ll have lost them all!”
Returning to the group
surrounding the unconscious Joey, Róisín began to issue orders (rather
like she was a parade ground sergeant). “Liz, Mary-Lou, the babies are
waking up – we need to gather them up before something happens to them”
she forbore to mention that two were all ready missing, knowing that
Mary-Lou would insist on planning a search party. “Fatima …” she
continued, “you go and ask the Dean of the college, if there are some old
packing cases or tea-chests, or cardboard boxes lying around, we’ll
package the babies up in them and then, you Mary-Lou, can look after them
until Jack and Anna arrive from Switzerland. Eilidh, you stay here with
Joey and keep her sedated. Ring Jack and tell him what’s happened, everything that’s happened I mean” she
said with great emphasis, her eyebrows disappearing into her hair. “Tell
him to bring Anna to look after the children and then get on to Sir James
Talbot (he’s sure to be lurking around here somewhere) and get him over to
check Jo out, pronto!”
Mary-Lou looked like she was going to
protest, however Fatima glared her ‘teacher’ glare at her again, so she
subsided and the group scattered to do what Róisín had suggested.
Kate stood in the darkening grounds unsure of what to do. She knew
who she had to contact to operate
the bunker, but not how to do it!
She decided to ring Rosy-Jess and ask her, she was a sensible sort of
person she thought, she’d know what to do.
When the call
connected, she quickly explained the situation. “Only a few select people
are privileged enough to have the bunker operators number” Rosy-Jess
explained, “you have to ring all the CBBers and former Chaletians you can
think of, and ask them if they have her number, if they do … all well and
good, if they don’t, then you have to ask them to ring everyone they can
think of up too. The bunker is a very last resort and once this crisis is
over, its operator will change her phone number and the person who
contacted her will be removed from her list of contacts”
“Oh! I
see” said Kate, “I’m assuming you don’t have Mia’s number then? Will you
ring? …”
Rosy-Jess cut her off “No, sorry hun I don’t, and I can’t
ring anyone else because I’ve got no credit! Besides” she added “I’m going
out clubbing tonight!”
Unfortunately for Kate, the phone tree took
quite as long as Róisín had predicted; Kate, seeing nothing else for it,
sat down in the middle of the cricket pitch and waited.
One of the
CBBers Kate had contacted was KathrynW; Kathryn rang Frieda von Ahlen, who
called her sister Bernhilda von Eschenau who called the Robin, at her
convent in Canada. Robin got in touch with Gwensi Howell, who called
Elizabeth Arnett, who rang her old chum Betty Wynne-Davies, who called
that other bad-egg Thekla von Stift. After a wrong number put her in touch
with a rather startled polar bear in the artic circle, Thelka (who was
working as an exotic dancer in Spain) managed to contact Robbie Williams,
who got on to fellow CBBer Tiffany … and Tiffany, as luck would have it,
knew Mia’s number. Tiffany texted it to Kate and finally she call Mia and
tell her that the surveillance bunker was needed (although it was by this
time 4am)
Jennie meantime awoke feeling stiff, she must have
fallen asleep in her chair. Glancing at the monitors around her she
suddenly sat up so quickly that she spilled the cold tea, which was left
in her cup, all over her lap. Lights were flashing everywhere and a
conversation between someone called Kate and someone else called Mia kept
repeating, reverberating around the room; something about Mia activating
the bunker! Jennie looked around her, horrified, when she joined the CBB
she hadn’t bothered to read the fine print, and therefore didn’t know that
the bunker she’d found actually had a purpose! What was she to do now?
What would Mia say if she got to the bunker and found it, not only
occupied, but covered in dirty tea cups and lemon biscuit crumbs? She
tried in vain to remember where Mia came from, she must have seen it on
the CBB, would she have time to tidy up and sneak off before she arrived?
She began working as quickly as she could, however she still hadn’t
finished when Mia, dressed in full SWAT gear, burst through the door …
|
into posting what started out as a joke. Please join in and make bad
things happen to Kate! 
We would love to drag in some more CBBers as writers and characters!
Anyone else want a go? 
