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Story continues from Friday:

“Ooh, a hot date!” said Simon Butler who had unfortunately been standing within earshot.  His friends laughed.  Luke and Joe, who had learned from experience that Butler was best ignored, got onto the bus.  They ascended to the top deck and managed to get the seat in front of the stairs where no one could sit behind them.  Luke took the concert tickets out of his bag.

“They got these printed pretty quick considerin’ she on’y died this mornin’,” he observed.

“They’d already organised the concert,” said Joe, “Janet’s in the Swing Band and they’ve been practising for weeks.”

“But the tickets say ‘in aid of Cancer Research UK’.”

“Yeah, I know, they’d already planned to do it for them, before she died.”

“Oh,” said Luke, and he put the tickets back in his bag.  “It’s a shame about Mrs King.  I wonder why Isabel and Tania don’t want us to sell the tickets.”

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” said Joe.

“Yeah,” agreed Luke.  “D’you wanna come with me to check on Curly an’ Squirt?”

****

Tania and Isabel were in the top set for just about everything.  Luke and Joe were not.  For that reason, though they went to the same school, they rarely bumped into each other unless they made a point of doing so.  On Wednesday lunchtime they met, as agreed, on the old tennis courts.  No one played tennis on the old tennis courts.  There were no nets; the tarmac was cracked and most of the court lines had worn away.  A rusty ride-on lawn mower, awaiting repair, was parked at one end, and two wooden benches, damaged by vandals, laid on their backs at the other.  There were rumours that the courts were going to be renovated but, until they were, they made an ideal meeting place.

“We can’t sell the tickets and we can’t do the mufti day,” said Isabel.

“Why not?” Luke asked again.

“Look at this,” she said, passing him a small piece of paper, concertina folded to the size of a library card.

“What is it?” he asked as he opened it.

“Look at it,” she told him.

One side had a red border and was titled

PLEASE BOYCOTT THESE CHARITIES UNTIL THEY STOP FUNDING ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS:

The other side was bordered in green and titled

THESE CHARITIES DON’T CONDUCT OR FUND ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS:

Under both headings were long lists of medical charities in tiny writing.  Cancer Research UK was on the red list.

“Where did you get this?” asked Luke.

“From your friend Kris, with the stall, who we met in Belton.”

“She gave you this?”

“They had loads of them on the stall, I just took one.”

“Did you get us all one?”

“No, sorry, I …”

“Anyway,” Tania interrupted, “what are we going to do about it?”

Luke frowned.  “What are they doin’ to the animals?  Testin’ drugs on ’em?”

“Sometimes,” said Isabel, “but first they give them a disease so that they can try to cure them of it.”

“And sometimes,” added Tania, “they make them eat or inhale things that cause cancer and then cut them up to see what it did to their bodies.”

The boys were sickened.

“Cancer Research UK does that?” asked Joe.

“Well these are the kind of things that happen all the time with cancer research.  We’re not sure exactly what CRUK itself does,” Tania admitted.

“But it does do these kind of things,” said Isabel, “because they’re on the list of charities that do.”

Luke’s jaw tensed and his eyes narrowed.  “If we’re gonna stop the school givin’ ’em money we need to know exactly what CRUK does, so we can tell everybody.”

“Agreed,” said Isabel.  “You should all come to my house after school so we can do some research.”

“Oh, I can’t tonight,” said Tania regretfully, “it’s my grandma’s birthday and we’re doing a party for her.  What about tomorrow night?”

“No, it’s got to be tonight.  We’ve got to get this info out tomorrow ’cause Mufti Day’s the day after.”

“Aren’t we already too late?” asked Joe, “they’ve put ‘in aid of CRUK’ on the concert tickets.”

“Well, there can’t be that many sold yet, and the concert’s not for another month so they’ll have time to re-print them.  Or if they won’t do that they could send a note home telling everyone the money’s going to help cancer research in the UK, not Cancer Research UK.  They should be able to sort something out if we tell them about it early enough,” Isabel explained.

“Well I can’t come tonight either, I’m busy,” said Joe without elaborating.

“Just you and me then Luke?” said Isabel hopefully.

“I can’t come to yours after school,” said Luke, “coz I’ve got to check on Curly an’ Squirt.  But I can do some research at my own house.”

“Okay,” said Isabel, “we’ll find out as much as we can about CRUK tonight and then I’ll email the teachers first thing in the morning.  I’ll use my Society email address to keep it anonymous.”

“Who are you going to email?” asked Tania.

“I’ll write to the school email address,” said Isabel, “and put FAO THE TEACHERS in the subject bar.”

“That’ll just go to the school secretary,” said Joe, “and if she doesn’t forward it to the teachers they won’t see it.”

“D’you know any of the teachers’ email addresses?” asked Tania.

Isabel detected a flaw in her plan.  “Blast. No I don’t.”

“Oh well,” said Tania, “you’ll just have to use the intranet.”

****

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Story continues tomorrow, but if you don’t want to wait you can read it here now 😀

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