Confidence

by Rowland Manthorpe

  ‘So stickers on posters – that’s why you’ve been banned from exams?’

  ‘A display case got scratched—’

  ‘Now it’s coming out!’

  ‘But basically yes. Because of a legitimate protest, I’m now not allowed to sit my exams. And—’

  ‘So you— Sorry, go on.’

  ‘The actual piece of “vandalism” that got me banned – it happens that I didn’t do it, and I don’t know who did. Though naturally, I agree with their point.’

  ‘But what do you say to people’ – Dave got investigative, leaning back in his chair – ‘who say, “You broke the law. You did the crime, you should do the time”?’

  ‘I suppose I’d say . . . Isn’t university supposed to teach you to think for yourself and stand up for what you believe in? If so, it’s succeeded. We’re doing it.’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Jemima took it out to the slumbering dozens. ‘Does this make you want to burn your bra in support or roll your eyes and go back to sleep? And what about your desert island biscuit? You’ve got five more minutes to decide.’

  ‘If it’s not a Mint Club, I’m staging a walkout.’

  The jingle cranked up.

  ‘Lovely, girls!’ Jemima was already turning to Gareth. ‘Who’s up next?’

  ‘Next it’s the charity fashion show, I’ve got Becky bringing the Dogs’ Hospice . . .’ He read his clipboard. ‘Event Coordinator, Keisha. Coming up now.’

  ‘Thanks!’ Ellie stood up suddenly, her head surprisingly light. She took Nadine’s hand and led her out of the glass bubble, giving a final smile and wave to Dave and Jemima. Dave was massaging his eyeballs, while Gareth checked if Jemima had anything in her teeth.

  The corridor was dark and dreamlike. Nadine shook her head, smiling to herself.

  ‘Well done! They’re lovely, aren’t they?’ Gareth ushered them up the stairs. ‘And you’re okay to find your way back yourselves?’

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ Ellie nodded, with no real notion of where they were.

  ‘I’ll leave you here then, ladies. Have a great day!’ He skipped away.

  When they reached the waiting room, Nadine thumped herself down on a chair. ‘Oh my God. I just went on the radio and managed to say nothing at all!’

  ‘Oh sorry, was I hogging it?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘You didn’t say nothing, did you?’

  ‘It’s worse than that.’ Nadine stared at the water cooler in disbelief. ‘The only thing I said was “Women have pubes”!’

  ‘Oh no!’ laughed Ellie. ‘I mean, that is very important.’ She pulled Nadine up and grabbed their bags. ‘Plus you’re the brain of this outfit. You engineered this whole thing. I’d never have been able to do that if I hadn’t heard you with the Badger guy. Honestly. I’d have been screwed.’

  They pushed out of the heavy door and into a shockingly sunny morning. It felt like tumbling from a club at dawn, bleary-eyed and aching.

  ‘You did ace.’ Nadine looked around. They seemed to be somewhere near the bypass. A steep grassy slope led down to a major road. ‘It was a fully sane performance.’

  ‘Thanks. I can’t believe that’s it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I mean, that’s it. It’s, what, seven-forty? We spent all yesterday preparing and it lasted about one minute!’

  ‘I know. And the only thing I said was, “Women have pubes”.’

  ‘How many people do you think heard it?’

  ‘No idea. Rose, Justin, Maggie – that’s three.’

  ‘And now today’s ruined. It’s a write-off.’

  ‘I know. Shall we try walking along the hard shoulder?’

  ‘I’m knackered and completely hyper. The only thing I’m fit for is the multiplex.’

  ‘I need to get shitfaced after that,’ said Nadine. ‘From now on, my anxiety dreams are going to be about that experience.’

  ‘And I know I should revise—’

  Nadine groaned, as they sidestepped down the slope.

  ‘But how can I, knowing I might not have to sit my exams? It’s the worst thing ever, but it’s also this massive get out of jail free card. You know when you’re going to an exam and you think, “I could not go. I could just run away”?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, that’s happened. But it’s someone else saying, “We won’t let you go.”’

  ‘I’m almost jealous. Where shall we go? Seriously, I can’t go to the library, I’ll do something drastic.’

  ‘Rose opens the Shackle at eleven. We could try and walk there and then sit outside.’

  ‘A lockout?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Charlie’, Taz’s email began. No ‘Dear’, no ‘Hi’, not even a comma at the end: the epistolary equivalent of a slap in the face.

  ‘Pitch. Tomorrow 9am. ETA on:

  1) pitch?

  2) market research?

  TW.’

  ‘Who waits till the night before to send this?’ Charlie fumed at Alistair. ‘Where’s the, like, friendly, timely reminder? The “Shit, mate, this is coming up, have you realised?” We’re meant to be business partners here – business partners. I’m not his slave.’

  ‘Yeah, how unreasonable,’ Alistair replied sarcastically, as he took down the blue bowl he’d been using for every meal since May. ‘You’ve only known about it for a month.’

  ‘Could you give the “disappointed dad” shit a rest?’ In revenge, Charlie swiped one of Alistair’s beers from the fridge (he never drank them anyway). ‘At least I’m doing something, instead of sniping from the sidelines.’

  ‘Wow, what are you taking on next?’ said Alistair. ‘World peace?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Alistair carefully stirred his baked beans.

  In the silence, Charlie eyed him hopefully. ‘What are you doing tonight?’

  Alistair gave a heroic sigh. ‘I suppose I’m helping you with this pitch.’

  ‘Really?’ Charlie brightened. ‘Awesome!’

  ‘No, you fucking dick, of course not really! I’m revising for the exam I’m sitting in four days.’

  ‘Right.’ Charlie thudded out of the kitchen. ‘Cheers, mate.’

  Everybody was letting him down.

  The night that followed was relentless. Charlie delved blindly into the internet in an endurance form of digital apple ducking. A list of his search terms between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. would have read something like: business parter, business partner, business partner relationship, business partner contract, business partner verbal contract, business partner betrayal, business partner betrayal facebook, fantasyfootball, market research, market research students, market research students free, stats students, stats student spending, who invented pie chart?, fantastfootb, pitch how to, pitch template free, pitch top ten, pitch video, Dragon’s Den top ten, worst Dragon’s Den, top rejections Dragon Den, wheelbarrow, wheelbarrow accessories, fantasyfoo, student spending Powerpoint, student spending Powerpoint free, student loan, how much student loan, student loan how much year, moneysupermarket student loan investment, student stock market investment loan legal?, student number, how many student Uk, ingrown hairs infected?, ingrown hairs scratch, ingrown hairs symptom of other, scratching ingrown hairs?, ingrown hairs shaving, beard, top ten beard, nhs direct, folliculistus, keratosis pilaris, molluscum contagiosum, howmanywords 5 mins, howmanywords 5 mins fast talker, how talk slower, student images, student image free, business plan, what is business plan?, top ten business plan free, logo, logo design, logo top ten, logo free, fantasyfo, student money video, student spending video, how rip YouTube, rip YouTube free, edit software free, how split audio video, insert video PowerPoint, how stop PowerPoint put everything in Calibri?, PowerPoint template, PowerPoint crash when save, PowerPoint keep crashing, why people dicks on PowerPoint forums, Mark Zuckerb, how many dollars in £, entrepreneur, entrepreneur advice, seed-funding, seed-funding how to, entrepreneur personality, are priests celibate?, Myers-Briggs, Myers-Briggs
extrovert, Myers-Briggs extrovert entrepreneur, best Myers-Briggs type entrepreneur, laptop fan loud, how stop laptop fan loud, how long Toshiba?, fat cheese, cheese protein, best protein, whey, whey makes sick, whey alternatives, break up fat, break up, break up advice, top ten break up, Jennifer Aniston break up, Jennifer Aniston John Mayer reason break up, Friends highlights, Gunther actor, baldness, baldness early onset, average number relationship, average number people sex, average number people sex 21, average number people sex uni, faceb, asos men swimwe, Hugo Boss Tuna Swim Shorts Black small, Hugo Boss Tuna Swim Shorts Black small sale, natwest, sperm count, sperm count how do you know, sperm count should worry?, iPlayer, piratebay, True Blood seeson 2, True Blood season 2 torrent, youporn, cuckold, cuckold amateur, cuckold amateur compilation, girlsgonewild, girlsgonewild compilation, what to do when graduate, how many coffee, how many coffee safe, student spend, student spend report, Parkins & Esther UK 18-24 Consumer Spending Patterns 2006 pdf, Parkins & Esther UK 18-24 Consumer Spending Patterns 2006 pdf free, finals, finals advice, finals stress, low, feeling low, how know depression?, depression symptons, not depression similar, ingrown hairs depression, folliculistus depression, keratosas pillaris depression, PowerPoint alternative, PowerPoint alternative free, facebook business plan, facebook business plan, facebook business plan pdf free, how many hours sleep, should sleep?, should sleep if can’t 4 hours?, should eat if can’t sleep?, effect no sleep, no sleep insanity, no sleep depression, no sleep ingrown hairs, anyone else hate Calibri?, HP Laserjet 2470, HP Laserjet 2470 install, HP Laserjet 2470 troubleshoot, dicks on HP forums, Toshiba recognise printer, what is wrong with HP Laserjet 2470 won’t recognise my computer Toshiba?, what is wrong

  Charlie wished Sara were there. She’d have brought him toast and Dairylea when he was losing the will. Hunted out statistics he could slot into the yawning emptiness of his slides. Smuggled slivers of design advice into artful compliments. Charlie could have got unreasonably annoyed at her, instead of the makers of PowerPoint, the makers of Toshiba, and himself. As if to seal her absence, Sara didn’t reply to his 10 p.m. text. Carefully, deliberately, Charlie squashed the mental image of her and some dickhead in a trilby, sniffing coke off whatever you sniffed coke off – probably the toned stomachs of other dickheads in other trilbies.

  By the end of the night, Charlie felt several years older and sadder. Yet somehow, when 8 a.m. rumbled around, he had done it: he’d written a presentation and fabricated some market research and woken Alistair up by barging in to use his printer (Alistair deserved it).

  Standing under a hot shower, Charlie finally allowed himself a mental break. As the steam rose around him, his thoughts billowed and broke free. Charlie imagined that the pitch was over – and somehow, he’d nailed it. ‘The Comeback Kid,’ he football-commentated to himself. ‘From nowhere, Naughton has pulled it out the bag.’ It had been a shaky start, but Charlie had turned it around. At a certain point, guided by intuition, he’d ditched the script and looked each audience member in the eye, speaking from the heart. They’d seen through his nerves and recognised his potential. Charlie couldn’t quite believe it, but later that same day, they’d offered them the seed-funding. And in spite of all the excitement and distraction, afterwards he’d suddenly found he was able to focus on revision. Knowing everything wasn’t riding on his exams, he’d gone in and done his absolute best.

  As he helped himself to Romilly’s shower gel, Charlie’s future unfurled and laid itself out before him. By the time news of his 2:1 had reached him, it was barely relevant any more, because the business was taking off – its growth was remarkable. Lucas wanted to work for him, and Alistair had to admit that Charlie had been right to take the risk, and apologise for not believing in him. Within five years, Charlie was living between apartments in New York and London and a beach house in California; he’d paid off his parents’ mortgage and set them up for retirement, earning their eternal gratitude and respect; even his sister Rachel looked up to him – she pretty much had to, because he was so much richer than her.

  When he got out of the shower, Charlie realised he was running late. At ten past nine, he ran into the Barclays Wealth hall, sweating heavily, clutching his USB and printouts, hating himself for being a childish, incompetent, arrogant idiot.

  About twenty people sat at the far end of the room. Three judges were behind a trestle table – an older man who looked like an academic, and two young guys that definitely didn’t – with the pitchers standing just in front of them. Taz was sprawled at the back, hands in his hoodie pockets, next to one of his entrepreneur society mates, a bearded postgrad Charlie didn’t know.

  Charlie squeezed along the row to sit next to him, and quietly handed over the material, telling himself to wait until the show was over before he let Taz feel the full brunt of his irritation.

  ‘Morning.’ Taz leafed nonchalantly through the pitch script, a chief exec skimming his business section digest.

  ‘I’ve been up all night.’ Charlie’s eye twitched, and he resisted the urge to scratch it. Despite his shower, he already felt dirty, as though fear were seeping out of his pores.

  The nerdish odd couple at the front were drawing their pitch to a close. They were PhD students, selling something to do with biology or seeds – Charlie had missed the vital layman’s section.

  ‘Intro’s a bit weak,’ murmured Taz.

  Piss off, Charlie thought, saying only, ‘I’ve split it up so we can present alternately. Yours is in blue.’

  Taz looked at Charlie, and pointed at his own chest. ‘Me present?’

  Two girls in front turned shut-up glares on them. Charlie raised a hand in apology. ‘Yeah,’ he whispered. ‘We should both talk, as partners. It’ll look weird otherwise.’

  Taz’s eyes narrowed. ‘But as a consultant,’ he said, a bit too loudly, ‘it wouldn’t be appropriate.’

  ‘What?’

  Taz sank further in his chair and looked up at Charlie, pursing his lips. ‘We’re not partners, I’m a consultant. I advised you. I thought that was clear?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Charlie edged down to be level with Taz. ‘In Nero’s, I told you the idea, and you were into it.’

  ‘But you didn’t ask me to be partner. That’s a massive commitment. If I was partner, I’d have been involved at every stage. Josh can tell you, as a partner, I’m a nightmare.’

  Josh smirked, pleased with his shout-out.

  ‘But you told me—’

  ‘I didn’t. No offence, Charlie, but I’d never put my name to something without working on it properly. I mean, I’ll take a look now, but . . .’ Taz pouted and rubbed his beard: I doubt I can do much with this.

  A thin round of applause bounced around the hall, as the biologists shared a relieved smile. Mechanically, Charlie joined in, and found himself clapping after everybody had stopped.

  So we’re not partners? Charlie almost said again, but he managed to stop himself before any further debasement could take place. The humiliation tapped into an ancient, familiar feeling. He was that guy at school who thought a girl was going out with him, only to be told, two weeks later, with an embarrassed, train-tracked smile, that not only were they not going out now, they never had been. The milkshake, and the muffin, and the long walks home when he’d helped her scale the fences round the tennis courts and they’d chucked a tennis ball back and forth, sometimes for over an hour – none of that had meant a thing.

  ‘I actually consulted for several groups,’ added Taz, as if the conversation were being recorded.

  ‘Hm, I see.’ Charlie did his best professional nod.

  The next group was called forward – two computer science finalists in suits, with some kind of software idea. As Charlie watched one of them dance from foot to foot, he began to comprehend something. He looked down at his script, reading snatches of sentences he’d written about assessing the student market and leveraging social networks and building a national brand. And he saw that it was so many ways of saying he would im
press himself upon the world, that people would be buoyed and moved by him – not by him doing or affecting anything, simply by him whipping up a sufficient amount of energy to give an impression of movement.

  It wasn’t that the concept was intrinsically bad, or that somebody out there couldn’t make it work. But Charlie saw clearly and finally the irrevocable distance between that person and himself. He’d had a good idea for some other student, someone with more energy and better networks and a good work ethic, someone without nagging doubts. The thought of promising this plan, and then having to deliver it, made Charlie feel inexpressibly leaden, totally incapable of galvanising himself or others. Right now, if someone gave him a company to run – a company that ran on him – he would probably sit down and weep. He couldn’t do it. He certainly couldn’t do it alone. He wasn’t sure he could do it at all.

  Charlie stared at the printouts and tried to figure out what this meant, and what he should do. He wanted simply to stop, to put the paper on the floor and walk out of the room. Beside him, Taz drew a pen from his breast pocket and drew wavy lines under a large paragraph of Charlie’s business plan. Don’t bother, Charlie wanted to say. It’s just a load of words.

  A smattering of applause signalled the end of the pitch, and Charlie wrenched his eyes from the clockwork motion of the speaker’s sway.

  ‘Social Tiger?’ one of the young judges called. ‘Social Tiger’s next up.’

  As Charlie stood up, the room seemed to move under his feet. It’s a performance, he tried to tell himself. Just do it. A hand reached over and took his USB from him. Charlie smiled inanely over the judges’ heads. I’m not your guy, he wanted to say. It isn’t me – sorry. Instead he filled the silence by miming a shot at the basketball hoop hanging above them. It was something that his more confident self might have tried – except that he would have brought it off somehow, or judged the situation better. As it was, the judges looked bemused. Just force it out, Charlie thought, as he turned towards the quiet but utterly inattentive audience. Just start and then you’ll be able to keep going.