by Bankes, Liz
So I thanked Cal and said I hoped that it all got sorted with him and Rosie.
I binned the cat later as soon as I got the chance, obviously, but the thought was nice.
I sat on the cushioned floor of the boat next to Dan. ‘See – I can be nice. So no boat puns,’ I muttered to him. He whispered back, ‘I shrimply wouldn’t dare.’
Although he started a little overenthusiastically, Cal turned out to be quite good at punting. The others made half-hearted attempts, but as he seemed happy enough doing it we let him carry on. Needless to say I did not have a go. I’d ignored Dan’s advice about wearing sensible shoes.
Cal gave a pretend tour, telling silly made-up stories about the buildings and scenery that we passed. At one point we pulled up alongside another boat, being punted by one of the official boathouse crew and he and Cal started trying to compete for an audience and shout the other down.
As Cal leaned over to shake the guy’s hand and they slapped each other on the back, Dan let out a sigh. He turned to me and said, ‘I hope he and Rosie sort things out soon. He’s completely manic at the moment. When he sleeps in my room he keeps me up for hours chatting and trying to get me to play Xbox. Last night I ended up agreeing he could sleep in the bed with me because he kept mentioning how “uncomfortable and lonely” it is on the floor.’
I stifled a laugh and Dan turned to me with a confidential expression. He looked around and then said Cal had got on his nerves so much in bed that he had kicked him and pretended he was doing it in his sleep.
I told him I was shocked and appalled.
Dan grinned and said, ‘Don’t spread it around – everyone will want a piece if they find out I’m a bad boy’.
Later on, as we walked up from the boats into town, the thing I’d been dreading happened.
Cal stopped in the middle of the pavement. He said that if we were being tourists for the day we had to go into one of the colleges. And how convenient – we were standing right next to one. I looked through the doorway and into the quad. I hadn’t seen it in the daytime for a while. The dome was a glaring white in the sun, just like on that first day. I followed them up the steps slowly.
When I said it was my college they all turned back in surprise. Then Simon asked if that meant everyone could get in for free.
I nodded and told them I had a card – they could come in as my guests. I found it in my bag and walked to the front of the group. And then my heart stopped. Because someone with blond hair walked past one of the archways and for one mad, hopeful moment I thought . . . Well, it’s obvious what I thought.
Dan was just behind me and quietly asked if I was okay. I nodded, still rooted to the spot. He frowned, then turned back to the others and said, ‘Actually I want to go to Christ Church – the Harry Potter one.’
Simon asked if that would still be free.
I shrugged and said that my card worked in all of them, while tapping the card with my finger to hide the fact that my hands were shaking. I waited for them to decide.
Dan put his arm round my shoulder and said firmly that if not he’d pay for everyone. And that we could act out scenes from the films.
I shrugged his arm off and told him I’d rather stick pins in my eyes, just as Cal shouted out, ‘Shotgun Harry!’
Dan had his back to me as we left so he didn’t see me mouth, ‘Thank you.’
On the way to Christ Church Cal suddenly stopped in the middle of the pavement again and Arlo smacked right into the back of him. This time it was because he’d seen Rosie, sitting on her own in a café.
He didn’t go in, probably because he didn’t want to embarrass her, Dan said, after she’d pretended she was meeting a group of people. But I’d spotted something the rest of them hadn’t – on the table in front of her were two cups. Looks like I’m not the only one lying . . .
Love you.
Cleo x
Chapter 26
When they get back I can hear laughing and shouting in the hall. The loudest voice is Cal’s. I get a flash of anger then. He lied, too. Maybe if he hadn’t done that I wouldn’t have turned mental and started checking his phone.
And now I’m pacing around the room feeling like I can’t go downstairs and be with everyone because of him.
I lean against the door and my chest is rising up and down as I try to control my breathing.
I’m making a fool out of myself being here.
The sound of his foot on the stairs strikes through everything. My heart leaps, but the rest of me is still pulsing with anger. My head feels all over the place. He reaches the landing and stops. I clench my fist to prevent myself from flinging open the door and seeing him. There’s a creak of the floorboard. I hold my breath. I’m listening so intently I can hear the material of his shorts as he moves. In my mind I can see him reaching out towards the door.
I stare at the door handle and I swear it moves ever so slightly.
I breathe in. And I wait.
And then his footsteps disappear upstairs.
I sit heavily down on the bed and rub my eyes in frustration. This is ridiculous. I can’t go through life in a permanent state of panic, too scared to ever do anything. I’m going to start getting what I want. Like Martin said at lunch, if you want something in life, you have to go out there and make it happen, not hide in a bedroom.
Obviously he just said the first bit, not the bedroom bit.
I need a plan of action.
I’ll do what I always do when I’m flustered and I want to get my brain in order – write a list. I grab my diary and a pen out of my bag and find a spare page to write on.
Which bits of my life need sorting?
1. Sell lots at work. Maybe even get offered some kind of extra responsibility before the end of the programme.
2. Have an amazing social life, full of parties and energetic discussions about current affairs/philosophy.
3. Cal.
The first one I can make an attempt at, with all the techniques Martin told me about. I basically need to pretend I’ve already made the sale – like I have some software that guarantees success implanted in my brain.
And no soul?
No, don’t overthink it.
The second should be doable as well if I keep meeting up with the people from the course. It turns out that my birthday is the day after Martin’s. He’s having a party at his college and he says I should come. Even the meal I have to go to at my parents’ private members’ club on results day is looking less bleak as Martin’s parents are members too and he says he might be there that evening for a birthday meal.
And I don’t really know much about current affairs or philosophy, but I could start reading the papers and research things. Most of the conversations that take place in the house are about food, or whether you’d rather have hooves for hands or the head of a cow, or whether Cal could get through the whole day using his feet instead of his hands (he couldn’t).
They do make me laugh, though.
But the thing with the people from the course is that they hardly know me, so I can reinvent myself and not just be Cal’s shy girlfriend, like I am around the housemates.
Number three – that’s the difficult one.
Because what do I want to happen?
Chapter 27
I keep refreshing the screen. They went live at nine but the website’s so overloaded it keeps crashing. I just need to know if I got in. Mum’s collecting the actual results from school, but I’d rather know before I talk to her.
I look over at the sales scoreboard. ‘Ian’ now has a sale to his name.
We’ll try to forget the fact that she was so old she could barely hear what I was saying and may have thought I was her granddaughter.
I’m saved from the crippling guilt and shame by my phone ringing.
Wait a minute.
My work phone is ringing . . . The one that I use to call people all day and that I was assured shows up as a withheld number. Has someone managed to call it back? Maybe it
’s the old woman? Or the man who said people like me are scum and that I’d be better off being a prostitute? I don’t fancy talking to him again, really. Or anyone.
Then Bruiser’s arm reaches across my desk and hits the answer key and I hear my headset connect.
‘H–hello?’ I say, bracing myself.
‘Am I speaking to Rosie?’ the person says in a very proper manner.
‘Yes.’
‘YES. I got through! ARGHHHHHH.’
The sound blasts into my ears and everyone at my table looks up.
‘It’s Gabi, bitch!’
‘Yeah, I worked that out,’ I laugh.
Then I see Clint on one of his rounds. He’s frowning curiously at me.
‘I got through by pretending to be a proper person!’ she says. ‘It was great. I told them I wanted to talk you about that accident I had. And that it had to be you because I’d heard you were really good at scamming money out of hospitals or whatever it is you do.’
‘Um,’ I say, eyeing Clint. ‘Thank you, Mrs Morgan. We really value positive feedback.’
‘No problem,’ says Gabi, apparently not noticing that I just called her Mrs Morgan. ‘So, we have your results!’
Clint has turned away.
‘What? How?’ I hiss into the phone.
‘We got here before your mum,’ says Gabi. ‘Nish distracted the admin lady and Mia grabbed them. They rejected my initial plan, though.’
‘Right.’
‘Which was me and Max pretending to be your parents.’
‘Gabi?’
‘I had a speech prepared about how you were our medical marvel mixed-race baby and everything.’
‘Gabi!’
‘And a wig.’
‘You have my results?’
Clint is walking back over, accompanied by a woman I’ve never seen before but who looks important and a bit scary.
‘Oh yeah!’ says Gabi. ‘Okay, so I’ll tell you ours first. I got an A in events management and a B in English – isn’t that mental? And an E in photography, but to be fair I never went or took any photos. Mia got Bs, but that’s irrelevant because she’s abandoning us. Nish got As, obviously, so she’s in.’
‘Did you know you could be entitled to thousands of pounds in unclaimed PPI?’ I say in a tone that is supposed to say, ‘That’s awesome!’
There’s the sound of an envelope ripping.
‘You got . . . As in history and economics. And a B in business. You little boffin!’
‘Now I just need to take some details,’ I say dully and Clint nods approvingly at me.
I got into uni.
But I feel sort of empty. Relieved, initially, but after that, nothing.
Gabi’s saying my name on the other end of the phone. She thinks I’ve gone. And then she hangs up. I make a face at Clint that says, ‘So close!’ and he shakes his silly slicked-back head at me.
The event reminder on my phone pings. Dinner with parents in London. It’s going to go off on Cal’s phone, too. I added it to his calendar because he’s so forgetful.
Today’s also the day of his resit exam. If he does it.
Chapter 28
‘We’ll have some aperitifs before the meal, my good man.’
My dad hands his coat to the man on the desk and gives him a big grin. A bit like the one that his publicist told him to do at photo shoots and that I found him practising one day at home.
‘You need to put your tie on, sir,’ says the man as he turns and hangs up the coat.
Dad laughs as if rules like that couldn’t possibly apply to him and strolls up the stairs to the bar entrance, where he’s stopped by a woman who says he can’t come in unless he adheres to the dress code.
He laughs and then makes a show of being told off as he fishes his ties out of his jacket pocket.
‘They don’t like a maverick, do they?’ he says to me and Mum. I just smile like I usually do when he’s being a bit embarrassing (and because the woman on the door is glaring). Mum is sending an email on her phone and ignores him.
He orders the drinks, ridiculously overpronouncing the name of the sherry, in complete contrast to how he was just talking to the taxi driver, calling him ‘mate’ and speaking with a slight cockney accent.
We sit in the lounge area and wait for our drinks. I look at my phone to see if my sister’s texted. I don’t have much hope for her getting past the door staff, considering that when I told her I thought they were fussy about shoes she said, ‘Okay, so I have to wear shoes’ like she was making a mental note.
Nothing from Poppy, but I do have a message from Martin.
Nice dress x
I scan the room and see them immediately, sitting around a table by the window. They are one of those families who all look alike. The dad has icy blue eyes, the same as Martin’s, thin lips, a sharp face and a bald head. The woman has white blond hair tightly cropped around her face, which is angular and striking.
Martin says something to his parents and then the three of them walk over to our table.
Dad is delighted when Martin’s mum immediately recognises him as Dave Hunter, MP. His actual name is Hugo, but he thinks taxi drivers will vote for him if he’s called Dave.
They introduce themselves as Jeffrey and Lena Morton-Spitz and their son Martin, which Dad correctly guesses makes them the Morton-Spitzes of Morton-Spitz Sausages. He invites them to ‘pull up some chairs and join the family’ – well, me and him, as Mum has gone off to make a phone call.
Martin sits down next to me, just as his mum waves her hand at him and says, ‘Oh yes, Martin’s about to go into his second year at Oxford . . .’ and then they launch into a comparison of their children, which Mum joins in with as she sits back down.
‘If we’re going to be talked about, perhaps we should talk about them?’ Martin says to me out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Dad is currently undertaking an alcohol addiction, while Mum’s just got into a very inappropriate relationship with her PA, Colin.’
I laugh in surprise. ‘Well, Dave Hunter’s real name is Hugo.’
‘Really?’ he says, sounding amused. He has a dark blue suit on today and just like all the others it fits perfectly. And he always smells amazing. The other times we’ve met I’ve had to resist the urge to smell him. He’s the sort of person my mum would call ‘well turned out’.
As if she’s somehow read my mind, Mum starts telling Martin’s mum how smart her son is. He smiles politely.
I get a fluttery feeling in my chest seeing how much she likes him.
That’s happened a few times now when I’m around Martin, though I’ve tried to ignore it.
‘It’s a far cry from green shoes,’ says his dad with an odd smile.
Martin’s mum pauses with her glass almost to her lips and blinks. Martin’s expression hardens.
‘Well,’ says Mum, obviously not sure what to make of all this. ‘Rosie, is your sister on her way?’
‘Oh you have two, do you?’ says Mrs Morton-Spitz as I tell Mum I don’t know.
‘Yes.’ Dad nods. ‘Poppy and Rose. Very . . . different girls.’
‘Twins?’ says Mr Morton-Spitz.
Mum shakes her head and then starts describing me and Poppy as if she’s forgotten I’m sitting here.
The waiter comes over with a Pimms for me and a lemonade for Martin.
‘No Pimms for you?’ I say.
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t tend to drink.’ Then he leans towards me and gives a slight smile. ‘Doesn’t mean I can’t have fun.’
Ignore the fluttery feeling. Don’t try to smell him.
My phone starts buzzing in my bag. It’s Poppy. I look around to try and work out whether I’m allowed to answer it in here or not. Mum marched through the room on her phone, but I don’t think anyone would dare tell her off. No one ever does. Whereas when people see me I think it’s clear that the only danger is that I’ll apologise too forcefully.
‘You can use it on the stairs – I’ll show you,’ Marti
n says.
When we get there the phone’s stopped ringing, but as I go to call her back it starts up again.
‘Hey, what is it?’
‘Ro, there’s a problem.’
‘Did you forget to wear shoes?’
There’s a pause. She’s actually checking.
‘Nope, got shoes. I’ve also accidentally got your boyfriend.’
Chapter 29
Please don’t let him be wearing his shorts.
Cal is patting the cloakroom attendant, who looks very uncomfortable, on the shoulder.
‘Come on, dude. Who wears ties?’
‘Our members, sir,’ says the attendant in a tired voice.
Poppy walks in through the door and waves.
‘Went for a smoke,’ she says and indicates towards Cal. ‘This has been going on for a while.’
Cal looks over to see who she’s talking to and sees me. He grins lopsidedly and spreads his arms.
‘I was invited, right?’
I nod. All I feel is panic, like I’ve been caught out. But at the same time my heart melts when I look at him standing there in a crumpled white shirt and black trousers. He looks like he’s in school uniform.
‘I can lend you a tie. I have a spare,’ comes Martin’s soft, low voice from behind me.
‘Who’s this guy?’ laughs Cal and then he stumbles.
‘Martin Morton-Spitz. A new friend,’ says Martin, smiling pleasantly at him. ‘Anyway, it must be nearly time to eat. We should all get to the dining room.’
He holds out a tie to Cal, which Cal takes, eyeing him warily.
‘Since when are you friends with Draco Malfoy?’ he mutters to me as we walk upstairs.
I’m about to ask him how the exam went when he strides ahead into the restaurant.
‘Hey, guys!’ He waves over at the table and immediately trips up on the carpet.
Well, this is going to be fun.
Our cutlery clinking is the only sound as everyone eats, staring awkwardly down at their plates. Everyone except Poppy, who never really notices stuff like this and is happily munching away. I steal a glance at Cal, who is sitting diagonally opposite me, but before I can get anything from him my mum interrupts.