CHERUB: Guardian Angel by Robert Muchamore

crunching mound of discarded inkjet printers, food mixers and LCD screens.
    ‘Nice move with the toaster,’ he told Grace, smiling warily as they scrambled down the unstable mound looking for a quick way out of the recycling yard. ‘But if we get caught after you whacked a cop we are in so much trouble.’

11. HORMONES
    ‘Hellloooooo!’ Tamara Aramov said. ‘Good to see you, Ethan, and it’s Natasha, isn’t it?’
    ‘Natalka,’ Natalka corrected, as she eyed the petite smiling woman who was Andre’s mother and had been Leonid Aramov’s second wife.
    While Leonid was still legally married to a third wife, who’d returned to live in China, his second wife Tamara had never left the Kremlin. She remained close to Leonid, more for Andre’s sake than out of any lingering affection for her thuggish ex-husband.
    ‘Leonid says excellent things about your mother,’ Tamara told Natalka. ‘One of his best pilots.’
    As Natalka found herself hunting for something to say, Andre came out of the living-room wearing pyjama bottoms and a Mighty Ducks hockey shirt.
    ‘Oh, hi,’ he said, marginally surprised by Ethan, who he invited regularly but who rarely visited, but utterly shocked to see Natalka. ‘What do you guys want?’
    ‘Bored,’ Natalka admitted, as she came through the door of Leonid’s apartment. ‘Ethan said you had a heap of Wii games.’
    Andre’s face lit up, but then he looked awkwardly at his mum. ‘We were kind of watching a movie.’
    ‘ The Jungle Book ,’ Tamara added. ‘His favourite!’
    Andre was ten, but often seemed younger. ‘Mum!’ he said, embarrassed. ‘It’s not my favourite.’
    Normally Natalka would have ripped into Andre, but they needed to get into Leonid’s room so she shrugged and said, ‘Cool movie. Baloo cracks me up.’
    ‘Why don’t you all come in?’ Tamara said. ‘I can make some hot chocolate. If you want to play games we can finish our movie another time.’
    They walked down a short hallway, past Leonid Aramov’s living-room and into the titchy space that Andre had as a bedroom. It was slightly wider than his single bed. The end wall was stacked with shelves of video games and there was an obscenely large telly screwed to the wall.
    ‘I’m getting rid of this,’ Andre said, embarrassed again as he flung a Ben 10 duvet cover off his bed.
    ‘Probably best, before you start having chicks over,’ Natalka said, unable to resist teasing. ‘So where are the gorillas?’
    ‘Boris and Alex went out with my dad,’ Andre explained. ‘Partying with some new Chinese girls.’
    Natalka shuddered. These ‘new’ girls were part of a regular trade bussed in from the rural provinces of western China. They’d spend a few days in a dormitory close to the airfield, before being flown off to Europe or America with false passports.
    Most had left China with the promise of well-paid factory jobs, but would end up being forced into prostitution. And while Andre was remarkably innocent, Ethan and Natalka knew that his older brothers’ idea of a party with vulnerable young girls wouldn’t be the kind that involved cake and candles.
    ‘So they won’t be back for a while,’ Ethan said. ‘Have you got that boxing game? The mad one where you’re all in those kind of wheelchair things and you get power ups and end up with massive boxing gloves?’
    ‘Wii Sports,’ Andre said. ‘It’s really old. I’ve got way better games than that.’
    ‘Pick something where I don’t have to remember what eight different buttons do,’ Natalka said, instinctively knowing that being a hot girl in the company of two younger boys gave her the right to be bossy.
    ‘I need a piss before we start,’ Ethan said.
    As Ethan headed back into the hall, Natalka stood in the doorway and kept watch. Leonid Aramov might have been a billionaire, but his apartment was still just four sets of officers’ quarters knocked into one, and he was certainly no aficionado of interior design, with