Unstoppable

by Bankes, Liz

  ‘Oh no, thank you for calling, love. It gets quiet here sometimes.’

  I hear the click of the receiver being hung up and then suddenly I am spun round away from my desk as someone grabs my chair.

  ‘Rosie,’ says Clint. ‘How many hits have you had so far?’

  ‘Um.’ I pretend to be counting in my head.

  Clint raises his eyebrows and looks over at the smiley picture of Ian on the wall.

  ‘None,’ I say.

  ‘None,’ he repeats. He shakes his head. And keeps on shaking it for about two minutes. ‘Do you think that’s good enough? Is that what we WANT?’

  ‘Um, probably not. No. I’m sorry.’

  He breathes in dramatically and holds his hand to his temple.

  ‘Never,’ he says, ‘never apologise. I have never apologised for anything in my life. If I ran over your grandmother I would not apologise, because apologising is saying you’re not good enough. It’s saying you can’t. And “can’t” is a filthy word here at WANT. What do you have to say to that, Rosie?’

  My granny would make sure there were a lot of things he couldn’t do if he didn’t apologise for running her over.

  ‘Nothing. I mean, that sounds good.’

  ‘Here at WANT we turn No into Yes.’

  That sounds a bit rapey.

  He carries on. ‘And we turn “I’m sorry” into “I’m s . . . awesome”.’

  ‘How about “I’m selling”?’ I suggest.

  He nods at me approvingly. ‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘Maybe there is a future for you here after all.’

  That might just be the most depressing thing I have ever heard.

  ‘Write that down, Mary.’ Clint gestures at the large lady in her fifties with pink cheeks who follows him around all day looking hunched and quite miserable, and she starts writing in her notebook.

  ‘I’m watching you, Rosie,’ Clint says. ‘Shape up or get . . .’ He waves his hand in the air. ‘. . . home. Shape up or go home.’

  His assistant Mary is still hovering near my desk. She leans forward towards me.

  ‘You know, his real name is Clive,’ she whispers and then she scuttles off.

  ‘Just quit,’ Cal says as he does up his belt and then starts looking for his work T-shirt.

  ‘I can’t just quit,’ I say.

  ‘Why not? It’s only a summer job.’ He starts ruffling his hair up in the mirror, not that he ever styles it. He’s just making it different versions of messy. ‘Do something else,’ he says.

  I don’t know why I can’t face the idea of letting anyone down, even people I don’t particularly care about and who aren’t that fussed about me.

  ‘I’m not a quitter, Cal,’ I say with mock attitude.

  He stops playing with his hair and I can see him looking at me strangely in the mirror.

  ‘Maybe I can find a way to pay you to sit at the bar all day and keep me company,’ he says, grabbing his phone and keys and putting them in his pockets. I shock myself as I realise I’d been willing him to forget his phone. So I could check it again. I’m shocked by how quickly it feels like a normal thing to do.

  ‘I think those people are called escorts,’ I say as he kisses me goodbye.

  I spend the evening downstairs watching TV with the other housemates, except Cleo. Luckily they stay up until Cal gets back, so I don’t have to face the temptation of the computer again.

  I don’t take in anything that’s on the screen. Instead the text messages I read earlier flash in front of my eyes.

  Cal: Thanks. You diamond!

  Cleo: No worries . . .

  Chapter 16

  ‘Hey, what shall we do tonight?’ says Cal as soon as I walk through the door.

  My heart sinks. I’m so tired I just want to lie down and do nothing. And I have my first Bright Sparx studying session tomorrow, so I should do some prep.

  ‘I don’t mind really. What do you want to do?’

  He comes over and gives me a kiss on the lips. Then keeps hold of my head and looks at me.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just quite tired.’

  ‘Do you want to stay in my room and read tonight?’

  I smile gratefully at him. ‘I do!’

  ‘Then I shall bring you tea.’

  I throw my arms round him and hug him tight. ‘I love you.’

  ‘You love me when I bring you stuff,’ he replies.

  ‘Yes,’ I say into his shoulder and he gives a small laugh.

  I flop down onto the bed. Then I roll over and look at Mum’s self-help book sitting on top of the Bright Sparx folder.

  ‘I wish I’d brought some more books,’ I say with a sigh.

  ‘You can borrow one. Or ask Cleo – she’s got loads in her room.’

  He’s on his way out of the door, but he turns back to see why I haven’t answered.

  ‘I said Cleo’s got —’

  ‘I know – I heard.’

  The sharpness in my voice surprises both of us.

  ‘I-I was just wondering when you’ve seen them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he half-laughs, but there’s an air of suspicion in his tone.

  ‘You’ve been in her room,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, at some point. What’s the problem?’

  Again he is mostly baffled, but there’s something else underneath it. Something harder and defiant. And not like Cal.

  ‘There isn’t a problem! It’s fine. I was just asking.’

  ‘Okay . . .’ He frowns. And he goes downstairs to make the tea.

  That’s as bad-tempered as it gets between me and Cal. We never argue. Gabi and the others think it’s unhealthy. Even Mia, who’s more reserved than the other two, says she and Jamie like to have a good argument occasionally. It gets things out in the open.

  So you don’t bottle them up and think about them. Constantly. When you’re supposed to be concentrating on not screwing up an internship.

  ‘What were you thanking her for?’ I whisper to the empty room. However much I try to tell myself that I haven’t actually found anything bad, really, and that it is my brain reading into it, questions just keep going round my head.

  Why was he thanking her? If he was bringing her a book she left at home, why would he call her a diamond?

  I feel like we’re on the edge of something. For the first time with Cal I’m not worried about something small and stupid. It’s bigger. Unless I’m mad and I’ve invented it all. I do feel like I’ve gone mad. All I’m thinking about is how I can get him to tell me about the messages without having to reveal that I’ve been looking at his phone.

  There’s a loud buzz from Cal’s bedside table. That was a message.

  I wait for a moment. Cal is talking to someone in the kitchen. So he won’t be coming back up yet. My hand reaches out towards the table and I stay in exactly the same position, as if I’m trying to pretend that my hand is acting independently from me.

  It’s from Cleo.

  Fine, see you tonight.

  Everything else except the words of the text is blurry. I sit there, frozen, staring at them as if I’m willing them to fade, but they stare defiantly back out at me.

  For some reason a line from a poem runs through my head.

  While I debated what to do.

  It’s from that poem by Robert Browning we did at school. I think it’s the guy realising his lover will leave him again in the morning, but for that moment he has her.

  I have Cal now. If I can stay in this moment, while things are fine, and not try to find out, then nothing will change.

  But I’ll still be wondering. I’ve started noticing every detail of what he does when he’s around her. When he was teasing her about her coffee addiction. Or the other night, when Arlo was asking her about the law course and she was saying how she might do a year abroad, and I saw that Cal was watching her, even when Arlo was speaking. And their eyes met for just a second. I’m sure they did. I didn’t even know that Cleo did law. She�
��s at Oxford and about to go into second year. I haven’t made much of an effort to talk to her, I suppose. It would help if I wasn’t so shy and she wasn’t so terrifying.

  I still don’t know why she’s not living with other Oxford people and has moved in with a load of Oxford Brookes people.

  Unless she did already know Cal.

  The guy in the poem decides to strangle the woman in the end.

  I wish I could turn off my brain sometimes.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘Hi, Rose. Hang on, can you hold for a moment?’

  ‘Oh, oka—’

  Tinny classical music blasts into my ear and I wince. I always feel like I’m bothering Mum, which is ridiculous this time as she called me. But she did rescue me from a conversation with Cal, who caught up with me just as I was going out of the door. He was asking me if I was okay and he was sure something was up. I kept saying it was nothing and I was fine. I was on to the third time of saying it, sounding less and less convincing, when my phone rang. I showed him the screen.

  ‘The Mother. So, I’d better . . .’

  Cal nodded and gave one of his grins, although his eyes still looked worried.

  ‘You’d tell me, though, if you weren’t okay?’

  I nodded vigorously and smiled as well. ‘Yeah, yes. Of course. Anyway, I’d better go or I’ll miss the call. Have a lovely day!’

  I have a feeling that as I turned around we both stopped smiling.

  Just as the music starts up for a third time there’s a crackling sound and then Mum’s voice is back.

  ‘Rosie, hi.’

  ‘Hey, Mum. How are you?’

  ‘Internship going well?’ Her voice is almost drowned out by the sound of a tannoy, so I think she must be on the train.

  ‘It’s . . . well, it’s a bit rubbish, actually. I have to sell things and I’m awful at it.’

  ‘Sorry, darling – signal’s crap. What did you say?’

  ‘It’s fine, Mum.’

  ‘You’re doing well? Done all the reading?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’

  I stared blankly at some sheets from the folder last night, before pretending to go to sleep, so that I wouldn’t confront Cal about Cleo.

  ‘Jolly good,’ she says brightly.

  ‘How’s everything with you?’

  ‘All fine, all fine. The house is quieter.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It’s strange without you girls here.’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘But we’ll adapt! Anyway, my train’s got in. Take care, darling. Keep working hard!’

  And she’s gone. I think that my mum might just have told me she misses me.

  I look over at the Botanic Garden as I cross the bridge. On the river, one of the punting companies is setting up for the day. I left really early because the business school is a long walk from the house. Dan keeps offering to lend me his bike, but with my tendency to assume the worst I imagine cycling straight into a car, so I haven’t taken him up on it.

  On the other side of the road someone is standing outside the entrance to one of the colleges. I don’t know why he’s caught my eye and then I realise that he’s standing completely still. Staring straight ahead through the big, wooden college doors and not moving a muscle. It reminds me a bit of one of those street performers, except he’s not painted silver or anything and is just dressed in a pale blue shirt and black trousers.

  His white-blond hair also makes him stand out and it’s the only bit of him that’s moving as it ruffles in the breeze.

  It’s a shock when he suddenly turns and starts walking up the street. He’s going in the same direction as me, towards the town. We are walking parallel for a while and then he turns off into a coffee shop.

  I overestimated the long walk and I’m the first to arrive. The building is like a really modern office with loads of glass. Nothing at all like the WANT Lifestyle Solutions offices, where the carpet is grey and the walls look like they are made of paper. The room I go into is a lecture theatre, so I sit down at the end of the row and put the self-help book Mum got me out on the desk.

  ‘Excuse me, you’re in my seat.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’

  I start to gather up my stuff and look up to see where the voice came from. The guy with the white-blond hair and blue shirt from outside the college is standing there. He looks amused.

  ‘I was joking – the room’s empty,’ he says.

  ‘Oh!’ I laugh and inwardly cringe.

  The boy raises his eyebrows and in the pause before he speaks I realise that the shirt he’s wearing is the same as one I bought Cal when we were going to one of my dad’s functions.

  When we were getting ready in my room he kept fiddling with the collar and I thought I’d got a size too small, but he said it was because he was nervous. You wouldn’t have known that from the way he was when we got there. He seemed to be able to chat to anyone about anything. Dad would introduce him and go, ‘This is my daughter’s young man – training to be a lawyer.’ And Cal would grin and shake their hands and launch straight into asking them what they did and what they were interested in. It was the complete opposite of how those things usually go, which is a stilted exchange where adults ask you what year you’re in and how you’re finding uni/sixth form and you say ‘um’ a lot and make out like the majority of your life is spent revising/playing an impressive musical instrument/charity work, and not messaging your friends/wasting time on the internet/watching entire boxsets and eating all the biscuits. I saw him talking animatedly to some old ladies about Midsomer Murders and joking with a man whose job was importing wine about how ‘it all tastes like wine really’. I even heard him defuse a fox-hunting debate by telling them all how he’d always wanted to raise a fox cub and puppy together so that they became best friends.

  ‘He’s pretty open, isn’t he?’ my sister said as we heard him telling someone that crisps make him gassy. She always made me stand with her at those things so she wouldn’t have to talk to people and so I could cover for her when she snuck out for a cigarette.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I think that when he’s a lawyer he’ll ruin cases by accidentally telling everyone he thinks his client probably did it!’

  Cal glanced briefly in our direction and I wondered if he could hear us. Then someone dinged a glass for Dad to speak and the group Cal was talking to all stopped and turned round. I saw him fiddle with the neck of his shirt.

  ‘Well, at least you’ll know if he ever cheats on you. He’ll probably just tell you!’ muttered Poppy in my ear.

  While I’ve been off in a daydream, the Cal Shirt Man has picked up Mum’s business book off the table. He flicks through it and gives a look of disdain – first at the book and then at me.

  I can’t help noticing that the shirt fits him really well. His girlfriend must have got the right size.

  ‘You think you can learn this stuff from a book?’ he says.

  I bloody hope so. If I have to rely on common sense or anything like that I’m screwed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, trying not to sound annoyed. Or worried. ‘It might help.’

  ‘It might,’ he says. ‘It probably won’t. Can I borrow this?’

  ‘Um,’ I say, suddenly feeling protective of Mum’s book, even if it is a bit awful.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, turning and going down the steps to the front of the lecture hall.

  When he gets there he looks back and laughs to see my face.

  ‘Don’t worry – I’ll give it back.’

  He sits on a chair in front of the first row. That’s a bit keen. I deliberately sat back here to reduce the chance of being asked anything. He does seem confident, though – he must only be a year or two older than me, but the way he carries himself is like a proper adult.

  The place gradually fills up. Everyone is either on their phones or glancing round the room suspiciously as if we are somehow in competition with each othe
r.

  There’s a loud bang as someone sweeps through the door down at the front of the theatre. A woman with sharp cheekbones, red hair tied back in a bun and ever so slightly evil eyes is standing in front of us.

  She announces that by the end of the course she will have turned us all into ‘ball-crushers’. A few people shift uncomfortably in their seats.

  As we file out of the room for coffee and biscuits I feel a tap on my shoulder. The Cal Shirt Man is holding out my book to me. My chest is gripped with hot embarrassment again as I remember him being introduced about halfway through the talk as Martin Morton-Spitz, a mentor on the programme and a prodigy – already on the board of his father’s sausage company aged only nineteen. He stood up, still holding the book, and pointed straight at me in the audience, saying that people shouldn’t think they can just read all the books and get top marks in exams if they want to be successful in business. You need to get out there; interact with people; see what makes them tick. Then he chucked the book into a waste-paper basket in the corner of the room.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say now, taking it from his hand.

  ‘Sorry for singling you out.’ His eyes twinkle mischievously. ‘But you seem like you spend too much time hiding in the background.’

  ‘Thanks . . .’ I say again. What I really want to tell him is that I would have preferred to stay hiding in the background and as far as possible from him.

  ‘Perhaps I could make it up to you by taking you for a drink?’

  He says it matter-of-factly – not like it would be in a film, with lots of ‘undertones’ and where it would be followed by a musical montage of us on various dates, laughing and having food fights and accidentally touching each other’s hands.

  I worry that I watch too many romantic comedies.

  He says it like it’s no big deal – like it would be unreasonable to say no. Which is what I have to say, isn’t it?

  ‘That would be great, but I can’t – I’m only seventeen.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, eighteen in a few weeks, but it’s still illegal. We might get . . .’

  I’m not sure where I’m going with this sentence. Saying we’ll get arrested seems a bit extreme.