Simon Packham was born in Brighton. During his time as an actor he was a blind fiddler on HMS Bounty, a murderous vicar, a dodgy witness on The Bill and a variety of servants including Omar Sharif’s personal footman and a coffin carrier for Dame Judi Dench.
He now writes fiction and lives in West Sussex with his wife, two children, a cat called Pax, and a number of hamsters.
comin 2 gt u was his first novel for children, and received great praise for its thrilling narrative, and exploration of cyber-bullying.
The Bex Factor hilariously questioned our fame-obsessed society’s love of reality TV.
Selective mutism and stand-up comedy disguised a poignant tale of friendship and grief in Silenced.
Firewallers is Simon’s fourth book for Piccadilly Press.
Find out more at www.simonpackham.com and read an interview on www.piccadillypress.co.uk
SIMON PACKHAM
PICCADILLY PRESS
For Ruth and Melissa
First published in Great Britain in 2013
by Piccadilly Press Ltd,
A Templar/Bonnier publishing company
Deepdene Lodge, Deepdene Avenue, Dorking, Surrey, RH5 4AT
www.piccadillypress.co.uk
Text copyright © Simon Packham, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
The right of Simon Packham to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 1 84812 307 6 (paperback)
ISBN: 978 1 84812 308 3 (ebook)
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK), Croydon, CR0 4YY
Cover design by Claire Bond
Cover photo © Getty
Contents
Part One
Work Experience
Things Can Only Get Better
DJs and Canapés
Angry Birds
Everyone Get the Picture?
Things Get Worse
Pee Break
Who Pays the Ferryman?
Part Two
Sloth Welcomes Careful Dawdlers
Goodbye to All That
Aquiescent Adolescents
We Need To Talk About Kevin
My Name Is Earl
Nature Dawdle
Stormy Weather
What Jessica Did Next
Firewallers
Girl Talk
A Very Respectable Cacophony
Hungry Like The Wolf
The Game
History Retweets Itself
Part Three
Mates, Dates and Eye-gouging
For God’s Sake, Just Kiss Me
Her Fearful Symmetry
The Bad Thing
Secrets and Lies
1984
Nature Dawdle (Part Two)
3G Or Not 3G
On the Beach
Brave New World
Part One
Whenever I think about it – and I’ve kind of been training myself not to – the first thing that pops into my head is the swoosh and swirl of the sea; like some gigantic cappuccino maker, it was the soundtrack to everything.
If that didn’t drive you mental, the salty air, which would have defeated even the latest anti-frizz serums (if commercial beauty products hadn’t been strictly forbidden, that is), made for a never-ending cycle of bad hair days.
And then, of course, there were the Firewallers.
Work Experience
But I suppose I should begin with work experience. And guess what? It sucked. There’s probably more than one person at St Thomas’s Community College who’d tell you it was all my own fault. As a certain Mr Colin Catchpole BA so humorously remarked, ‘There’s Greenwich Mean Time and then there’s Jess Hudson Time’. Maybe I did leave it to the last minute. Maybe the kids you’ll see opening their record GCSE results in the County Times next year had fixed their dream placements at the vets/law courts/mortuaries/ software development companies (delete as necessary) months ago. But it still wasn’t fair that I’d spent four whole days getting up at stupid o’clock and squeezing myself into a carriage full of sweaty commuters while Dad made feverish love to his latest laptop in the seat opposite, just because the only place that would take me at such short notice was his dumb bank.
Anyway, it was my last day, and I was congratulating myself on making it through until lunchtime without dropping dead of boredom when . . .
Oh wait, did I tell you how hideous I looked? Mum said there was nothing ‘suitable’ in my wardrobe, so she dragged me round town on Sunday afternoon, refusing to top up my phone until I’d agreed to a grey pencil skirt, black court shoes that turned walking into a mystic art and a disgustingly white bra, which according to her was ‘bog standard issue’ with the straitjacket blouse. And then Dad had the cheek to tell me to ‘go easy on the make-up’. If I hadn’t insisted on taking my Where’s Wally? sports bag, I would have blended into the background just like him.
Dad doesn’t do surprises, but he was about to break the habit of a lifetime. He doesn’t do lunchbreaks either, but he always let me wolf down my Starbucks panini in his little glass office on the third floor. And even though he didn’t say much – just muttered occasionally as he pummelled his keyboard – it was nice to spend a bit of time with him for a change.
I’m still not sure what he did exactly; on the door it said David Hudson, Senior Analyst. All I knew was that he was in the middle of some deal or other – and that judging by the enormous black suitcases under his eyes, it wasn’t going particularly well.
That’s why I decided to give him a laugh, bursting into his office without knocking and waving an imaginary gun. ‘OK freeze! Just hand over the money and nobody gets hurt.’
It was a stupid joke. Apart from the rubbish American accent, it wasn’t the sort of bank you robbed anyway. According to most people, it was the sort of bank that robbed you.
Dad certainly wasn’t laughing. And why was he fiddling around under his desk anyway? All I could hear was a dull thud and that swear word he only used when he thought I wasn’t listening. (Like I didn’t hear it every seventh second at St Thomas’s.)
‘What’s up?’ I said, quickly concealing my two-fingered revolver in a fist. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I could ask you the same question,’ said the curly-haired guy in the Arctic Monkeys T-shirt who popped up from behind Dad’s desk, rubbing the top of his head. ‘Who are you anyway?’
I remembered just in time that I was undercover. Incredible as it sounds, there were actually people who would have walked over broken glass to do work experience at Dad’s bank. That’s why only Brian Simkins, my mentor for the week, knew who I was, in case it looked like favouritism.
‘I’m Jess,’ I said, suddenly clocking that underneath the geek chic exterior he was really quite cute. ‘Who are you?’
‘Steve . . . Steve Cook,’ he said, slipping a screwdriver into his plastic toolbox. ‘IT support, not that it’s any of your business.’
The first flirtable bloke of the week and he had to go all defensive on me. ‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ I said, doing that thing Ella taught me where you suck in your cheeks to make dimples. ‘I’m on work experience. Someone told me to wait here for Mr Hudson. Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘Soon,’ said Steve, checking his watch and heading for the door like he couldn’t wait to get shot of me.
‘Great band,’ I said.
‘What? O
h . . . yeah,’ said Steve, realising I was checking out his T-shirt. ‘Seen them live three times.’
‘Nice one.’
He could have done with a decent moisturiser. The ghost of a smile flickered across his dry, chapped lips. ‘Anyway, I’m finished here. Just a bit of routine maintenance. I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Nice meeting you, Steve. Pity it’s my last . . .’
I watched him hurry towards the open lift and throw himself through the doors like Indiana Jones. I wasn’t that hideous, was I? Why did any half-decent bloke find conversation so challenging, when the ones you couldn’t care less about wanted to talk your face off?
And then my phone went again.
Maybe Dad was texting to tell me where he’d got to – except of course he barely knew how. Who was I kidding anyway? Dan Lulham had been pinging non-stop texts at me me for the last three days. And they all said pretty much the same thing.
luv u baby. pleez!!! take me bk
soree I hurt u. pleez cum bk
u and me were gr8 together
what can I do 2 gt u bak?
Yeah, I know. How did I ever get involved with somebody who still used text speak in a non-ironic way?
OK, brief update, so listen carefully. Daniel Bergkamp Lulham: spotty chin, crap taste in music. Good kisser, great hair. The love of my lunchtime. We got together at Ella’s party and almost made it to our six-week anniversary. If you’re ever unlucky enough to meet the little maggot, do yourself a favour and tell him to get stuffed.
They say that truth is the first casualty of war. It was certainly the first casualty of the war graves trip. Long story short: whatever he was doing to Natalie Corcoran in the mockup of the trenches, it was not demonstrating First World War resuscitation techniques. Now Natalie had dumped him too. And surprise, surprise, he wanted me back.
The dumb thing is, I was half thinking about it. You know what it’s like, a two-timing rat in the hand is worth half-a-dozen Prince Charmings in the head – especially with the summer holidays looming. And I was just about to text back when —
‘Sorry! Sorry, Jess. You haven’t been waiting long, I hope.’
‘Dad, are you OK? You look . . .’
He looked terrible. Red-faced and shimmering with sweat, he took a quick swig from his bottle of Evian and homed in on the computer. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, tapping in his password.
‘What have you been doing anyway? You never said you were going out.’
‘Oh, you know,’ he said, relaxing visibly when he heard the Windows theme tune. ‘Just . . . stuff.’
It was the same answer I came out with whenever he asked me what I’d been up to at school. Dad was so preoccupied with work that I knew for a fact he’d hardly left his office all week. ‘Yes, but where were you? I’ve been here for hours.’
You see the thing about my dad is that – unlike Dan Lulham – he finds it almost impossible to tell lies. He stopped typing, barely able to look at me through sad, droopy eyes that were in urgent need of a revitalising roll-on. ‘We weren’t going to say anything – not yet. And if you don’t mind, I’d prefer it if you kept it to yourself for now. You see, the thing is Jess . . .’ He drummed out the rhythm of galloping horses on his glass desktop. ‘The thing is . . . there’s something I need to tell you.’
I was already wishing I hadn’t asked. ‘It’s OK, Dad. I know you’re busy with that Russian thing. Why don’t you tell me tonight, yeah?’
‘No, no, it’s all right. You’ll probably find out soon enough anyway.’
What happened later was absolutely horrible. So I think it’s kind of interesting that the thing that still gets to me, the thing that still jolts me back to consciousness in the middle of the night, is when I remember what Dad said next.
Things Can Only Get Better
‘I expect you’ve noticed that your mother and I have been having . . . problems.’
‘No,’ I said, conveniently ignoring the Sunday afternoon silences, the Saturday night bickering and Mum’s mantra about Dad never having time for anything ‘except bloody work’.
‘It’s probably mostly my fault,’ said Dad. ‘This job doesn’t get any easier you know.’ He stole a glance at his computer screen. ‘That’s why Margaret thought we should see someone.’
The only time he called Mum Margaret was when she offered advice on his driving technique.
‘You don’t mean a solicitor, do you, Dad? I mean, you’re not getting ...?’
‘No . . . No, no, no. I mean . . . no. We’ve been seeing a marriage counsellor, that’s all.’
There were plenty of two-bedroom kids at St Thomas’s. I just didn’t fancy becoming one. I couldn’t see any advantages in bed and breakfast at your dad’s place every other weekend; although according to Ella it was why she was allowed so many parties.
‘I’ve been shooting off to East Croydon every Friday,’ said Dad. ‘Well, you know what the trains are like; getting there and back in an hour forty is a tall ask.’
‘Why can’t you just talk to each other? You don’t need a stupid counsellor.’
Dad smiled. ‘That’s what I thought at first. But Tricia’s actually very . . . insightful. She’s helped us identify some of our most destructive patterns.’
Dad laughed like a drain at those telly programmes where a few questions from a ‘trained therapist’ about the victim’s childhood were enough to cure any freaky eater/chronic hoarder/habitual gambler/selective mute (delete as necessary). It didn’t sound right when he went all holistic on me.
‘Dad, please.’
‘Don’t cry, Jessica. We’ll sort things out, I promise.’ He lowered his voice, almost seeming to check the filing cabinets for hidden microphones. ‘Look, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but it wouldn’t be too great for me if what I’ve just told you came out here. The partners aren’t exactly sympathetic about anything that might interfere with work.’
‘I don’t care about that. All I want is for you and Mum to —’ And I would have carried on sobbing if two sharp knocks hadn’t announced the arrival of the most tedious man on the planet.
Dad looked relieved to see his trusty assistant. ‘Ah, here’s Brian. I’m sure he’s got something interesting planned for this afternoon, Jess.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said the man sprouting copious clumps of hair from every possible part of his body except his head. ‘I thought I’d try and make a better job of explaining mergers and acquisitions while we bind those new pitch books.’
I offered up a silent yay.
‘Did you get those figures for me, Brian?’ said Dad.
Brian nodded and handed him a sheath of documents.
‘And?’ said Dad.
‘Looks like you might be on to something.’
‘I’d better get down to it, then,’ said Dad wearily. ‘I’ll see you in reception at seven, Jess.’ He leaned towards me across his paper-strewn desk. ‘And please don’t worry about . . . you know. Things can only get better, I promise.’
And the sad thing is, I think he actually believed it.
I was too upset about Mum and Dad to do anything but shove another page in the photocopier and put on my listening face.
‘You see a derivative is basically a contract with certain conditions attached. Now you can either use them as a way of . . .’
Brian Simkins could have won Olympic gold for boring, but we did have one thing in common: we both thought the world of my dad. Brian owed him big time. He’d been off last year with ‘stress’ and Dad had persuaded human resources to create a special job for him.
‘I’m afraid we’ll have to come back to this later, Jessica,’ he said, piling up a mountain of a freshly bound pitch books and balancing them under his chin. ‘Your father wants me at the meeting for moral support. He’s really going the extra mile on this Russian deal. The clients don’t like it of course. And I don’t suppose the partners are that thrilled either. It’s actually very brave of him. The whole thing could all blow up in
his face.’
Brian must have interpreted my miserable expression as a look of disappointment.
‘Don’t worry, we can still go over derivatives again. In the meantime, I’ve arranged for you to spend an hour or so with one of our IT chaps. Perhaps if you’re lucky, young Steven will show you how the firewall works.’
I wasn’t that bothered about the firewall, but I couldn’t help wondering if young Steven was the same guy who’d been so desperate to get away from me in Dad’s office. Surely an hour in my company would show him the error of his ways. Shallow as it sounds (and I’ve been called worse things, believe me) my state of mind was already improving.
Maybe Dad was right. Maybe things could only get better.
DJs and Canapés
There were few signs of life in the pokey office on the lower ground floor – just a deserted workstation, a dead can of Coke beside a half-eaten cheeseburger and a noticeboard bulging with health and safety procedures and assorted photographs of a woman with a fake tan and a smile to match.
Brian checked his watch for the forty-fifth time and made annoying clicking noises with his tongue. ‘I know it’s probably against every child protection initiative in the book, but I really should get to that meeting, Jessica. Your father could do with some support up there. Would you mind waiting on your own until young Steven arrives?’
I tried not to sound too delighted. ‘Yeah, no worries. I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll see you in an hour or so,’ said Brian. ‘Maybe later I could talk you through how a hedge fund works.’
You’ve probably realised that I’m not one of those burst-a-blood-vessel sports nuts who stampede across the school field trying to thwack the hell out a hard white ball with a long stick. I prefer my sporting challenges a touch more sophisticated. Ask Ella about that spitting game we invented in Year Nine. So, after I’d finished snooping round his office doing my Sherlock act (he was clearly a one-legged man with a passion for tropical fish, a mild nut allergy and a sister in Skegness), I came up with a brand new sport of my own.
Kicking off my court shoes, I picked up the deceased Coke can and dragged a black swivel chair to the far end of the office. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. I sat in the chair with my legs scrunched up, pushing hard against the wall to propel myself backwards at death-defying speeds. The aim of the game was to chuck the Coke can in the wastepaper basket before you got to the other side of the room. And because I’m a lot better at colour coordination than the hand-eye variety, it was at least ten minutes before I scored my first basket.
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