Firewallers

by Simon Packham

  ‘Well, you must be going blind, then. And we all know why that is.’

  If Dan Lulham was feeling guilty, he certainly didn’t show it. He was standing in the bus shelter with a disgustingly slippery smile on his face. ‘All right, Jess?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  He shrugged and went back to checking his mobile.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I shouted. ‘That photo was supposed to be private. You swore you’d never show it to anyone.’

  ‘Yeah, and you swore we’d be friends forever, so how come you dumped me?’

  ‘Because you had your tongue in Natalie Corcoran’s big mouth, that’s why.’

  ‘I told you about that. I was just —’

  ‘You said you wanted it to remind you how . . . how . . . how beautiful I was. Not so you could send it to your pathetic mates.’

  His pathetic mates sniggered.

  ‘And you actually believed me?’ said Dan. ‘Get over yourself, Jessica.’

  ‘You sent about a million texts begging me to go out with you again.’

  The school bus pulled into the parking bay. The doors opened and Dan Lulham raced up the steps. ‘Yes and I was right, wasn’t I?’ he said. ‘I told you I’d get you back.’

  My first instinct was to run up the stairs after him and stick my fingers in his eyes. But as soon as Barry the bus driver started his stupid ‘no spitting, kicking, biting or eye-gouging’ routine, I realised the journey would be a nightmare. How could I ever get the bus again? How could I ever walk into assembly with my head held high?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Dan Lulham. ‘Won’t the supermodel be joining us today? That’s a shame, because some of your new fans are just dying to meet you.’

  I didn’t want him to see me crying, so I shouted a whole load of stuff that Mr Catchpole would have called the sign of an ‘impoverished vocabulary’ before hitting him with the one insult that I knew would really hurt. ‘Your hair looks crap by the way.’

  It took me an hour to walk home. Every time a car with a St Thomas’s kid went past, I slunk further into the shadows, like a vampire at dawn.

  There was one good thing anyway: afternoon surgery must have finished early because Mum’s black Volvo was parked in the drive. It almost set me off again – and according to Dad, it was only men who got emotional about cars.

  Relief beckoned as I twisted my key in the lock. Home was the one place in the world I really felt safe. No matter what happened on the outside, things always looked a whole lot better the moment I walked into the house.

  All that was about to change.

  Things Get Worse

  I knew something was wrong when I heard them shouting. Mum was no stranger to the rising decibel, but the last time the Golden One had gone off on one like that she was still fastening her shoes with Velcro.

  I stood in the hallway, wondering how ‘best friends’ had suddenly turned into mother and estranged (‘she’s pregnant by her stepfather’s boyfriend’) daughter on American daytime telly.

  The kitchen door was shut. All I could make out was the occasional word or two, bubbling up from a cauldron of hostility.

  ‘Gurglegurglegurgle UNBELIEVABLE gurglegurgle OUGHT TO BE . . .gurglegurgle OF ALL THE BLOODY . . . gurglegurgle. . .GOT TO TELL HER, MUM gurglegurgle WHY WOULD ANYONE DO SOMETHING LIKE . . .gurglegurgle. . .’

  The kitchen went silent as I pushed open the door. All I could hear was the faint hum of the dishwasher, and Mum’s face forcing itself into a smile. ‘Hi, Jess, how was —?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said.

  Millie didn’t need to wear much make-up. At least, that’s what they were always telling me. But it was obvious from the ‘tasteful’ streaks of mascara that she’d been crying. ‘There’s something you need to know about, Jess.’

  Mum aimed her anti-bacterial spray at the chopping board, carefully avoiding eye contact as she turned to face me. ‘You’d better sit down.’

  It was what they said in soaps when they wanted to break bad news. I preferred standing for it, like the national anthem. ‘What is it? Just tell me, Mum, you’re scaring me now.’

  ‘It’s your father,’ she said.

  My heart did whatever hearts do when the one thing you fear most jumps out in front of you and screams. ‘What’s the matter with him? He’s not . . . ?’

  ‘No,’ said Mum, declaring all out germ warfare on the work surfaces. ‘It’s not that, it’s —’

  ‘He’s not had a heart attack, has he? I knew he was stressed out but —’

  ‘He’s not had a bloody heart attack,’ said Mum. Having successfully slaughtered ninety-nine per cent of all known living germs, she was attacking the toaster in search of the elusive, final one per cent. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him. Not like that anyway.’

  ‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘Just tell me what’s happened to him.’

  Mum dropped her weapon, the fight draining out of her, like a convict with nowhere left to run. ‘He’s been suspended from work, Jess. Gross misconduct. I’m afraid he won’t be —’

  ‘I knew it,’ I said, relieved that it wasn’t life-threatening, but at the same time furious on Dad’s behalf. ‘I knew there was something dodgy going on.’

  Mum’s face went white. ‘How could you have done?’

  ‘She couldn’t,’ said Millie emphatically. ‘Could you, Jess?’

  ‘It’s something to do with that Russian thing, isn’t it? Dad never talked to me about it, but I’m not blind, I could see how important it was.’

  Mum looked lost. Not just lost for words, but like a toddler who can’t find her mum in Sainsbury’s.

  And it was starting to make sense. ‘Brian said it could all blow up in his face. Well, that’s what’s happened, isn’t it? Something went wrong. And now Dad’s got to take the blame. I’m right, aren’t I?’

  The dishwasher was first to break the silence, beeping six times before Mum finally whispered, ‘Yes. Yes, that’s right, Jess. Something like that.’

  ‘Mum,’ said Millie. ‘What about —?’

  ‘That’s enough, Amelia,’ said Mum. ‘This is difficult enough without you sticking your nose in every five seconds. We’ll discuss it later, when we’ve all calmed down.’

  ‘Why can’t we discuss it now?’ I said.

  ‘Because I say so,’ said Mum, smashing her fist down on the draining board. ‘Look, as soon as I find out something more . . . concrete, you two will be the first to know.’

  Millie slung her leather messenger bag across her shoulder and marched to the door. ‘Well, I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Mum, tearfully. ‘I’m just trying to do what’s best for all of us.’

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ I said, noting the unfamiliar sound of Millie’s bedroom door slamming shut.

  ‘She’s upset. About your father. I’ll go up and have a little chat with her while you’re getting changed.’

  Talk about role reversal. I was supposed to be the door slammer of the family. ‘Don’t worry, Mum. I’m sure she’ll be fine when Dad gets home.’

  Mum didn’t say anything; she just ripped a handful of fresh basil from the pot on the windowsill and reached for a saucepan.

  Mum’s little chat had obviously failed epically. The lounge was simmering with unspoken resentment when Millie finally joined us for tea. We sat on the sofa, picking at our prawn and tomato pasta, the comforting murmur of the television relieving us from the burden of conversation. Dad’s favourite celebrity chef was somehow managing to make bread and butter pudding look sexy. Mum normally spent half the programme heckling (‘Apparently you need to get your cleavage out or the dough won’t rise’), but her mind was obviously elsewhere.

  It took me years to perfect my sulky teenager act. Millie seemed to have picked it up in half an hour. And why was Mum so angry? Surely it was time to forget their differences and show some support for Dad.

  ‘Hey, Mum, Dad would really like that puddin
g, wouldn’t he?’ I said, hoping she’d come out with one of her caustic comments about the chef’s yo-yo dieting.

  ‘Would he?’

  ‘You know he would.’

  But Dad’s taste in stodgy puddings was far from the only thing on my mind. I was worried sick about that photograph. The very thought of walking into my tutor base the next morning was giving me stomach cramps. It would be just like that lot to beam it onto every interactive whiteboard at St Thomas’s. And it would be all over Facebook by now. Ella was probably texting me every five seconds with an update (‘Sorry, babes, you’ve gone viral’), so it was just as well I’d switched my phone off and hidden it in my sports bag. Pity Mum hadn’t done the same thing. Her ridiculous ringtone shattered the uneasy silence, like an ice-cream van at a funeral.

  ‘Who is this, please?’ said Mum, dumping her pasta bowl on the coffee table and rising slowly from the sofa. ‘And how did you get my number?’

  Millie reached for the remote, putting Dad’s favourite chef on mute (which probably wouldn’t have bothered him that much) so she could listen to Mum’s phonecall and finish desecrating her once perfect fingernails.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you,’ said Mum, pacing between the bookcase and that photo of the whole family screaming delightedly on the log-flume ride at Legoland. ‘Where did you get your information from, anyway? It’s supposed to be confidential . . . Public interest? Do me a favour.’ She stared at the faded photograph, probably wishing that Mr Lego had invented a time-machine. ‘No comment . . . No comment. Look, I don’t have to put up with this, you know. Don’t ever call me or anyone in my family again. Good night.’

  Five seconds later, her phone started ringing again. And again and again until she turned it off completely, which was practically unheard of.

  ‘Who was it?’ I said. ‘And why have you turned your phone off?’

  ‘It was a journalist,’ said Mum. ‘She wanted to know about your father.’

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘I mean, who cares? It’s not like Dad’s a celebrity or something. People get suspended from work every day.’

  ‘Yes but . . .’ Mum reminded me of the boy who forgot his lines in Millie’s drama presentation. Mum stood there with a look of pure panic on her face, scanning the room for a prompter.

  And it was Millie who came to the rescue, just like she did in the play. ‘You know what it’s like, Jess. Bankers aren’t exactly flavour of the month these days. The media loves a juicy banking scandal.’

  ‘Brian told me the press could have a field day,’ I said, ‘but I thought he was just exaggerating. That bloke thinks mergers and acquisitions should have their own movie deal.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ said Mum.

  And then the landline went. Millie raced out to the hall and started screaming down the receiver, with ‘Scum of the earth’ being the only phrase that might just have made it onto children’s TV. She sounded more like a character from the play than the Golden One. (Dad said if he’d come out with some random swearing no one would have guessed the boy with the ‘unfortunate haircut’ had forgotten his lines.)

  ‘Yeah, and I hope your children are really proud of you,’ said Millie, sweeping the phone and Dad’s tin of dead biros onto the hall carpet, before stumbling back into the lounge and throwing herself at Mum. ‘How can they do this to us?We haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘No,’ I said, unmuting and switching to a documentary about a girl who could only eat tomato soup. ‘And neither has Dad.’

  Mum froze for a moment before wrapping her arms around Millie and gently stroking her long black hair.

  The girl in the documentary was taking her first tentative steps with solids when someone started banging on the front door. But it wasn’t one of those chirpy, ‘We can save you money on your gas bill’ type of knocks. It sounded ominous, like the prelude to bad news.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said Millie.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ said Mum.

  All three of us crept out to the front door and looked up at the shady figure behind the frosted glass.

  ‘Who is it?’ shouted Mum.

  ‘Are you Mrs Margaret Hudson?’ growled the voice.

  ‘Doctor Margaret Hudson.’

  ‘Even better,’ said the voice. ‘Look, I just want to ask you a few questions – that’s all. Can I come in please?’

  ‘It’s another journalist,’ whispered Millie. ‘Tell him to get lost.’

  ‘We’re busy,’ said Mum.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the voice. ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ said Mum.

  ‘How about a quick photo, then?’

  Mum was perilously close to losing it completely. ‘What is the matter with you people? Can’t any of you take no for an answer? It’s nothing to do with us anyway.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said the voice of reason. ‘That’s why I’m sure you’d appreciate the chance to put your side of the story across.’

  ‘Look, if you don’t get off my property in the next two minutes, I’ll call the police,’ said Mum.

  ‘All right then, Doctor,’ said the voice. ‘I’ll wait in the street. Let’s hope the neighbours don’t start asking questions.’

  Millie screamed some more lines from that play, the gist of which was that he should do something physically impossible with his camera and return to the gutter from whence he came.

  The voice sounded unimpressed. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Not until you decide to cooperate. Look, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, Margaret, but if you don’t say anything, I’ll have to make it up.’

  ‘Go to hell!’ roared Mum.

  The girl in the documentary was wolfing down an enormous cheeseburger; the guy with the camera was still camped out at the bottom of our drive. We watched him through a chink in the curtains as he checked his BlackBerry in the yellowy glow of the streetlights.

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ said Mum. ‘I’m not putting up with this for the next God knows how long.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Millie.

  ‘We’re getting out of here. I will not be held prisoner in my own house.’

  ‘We can’t just take off in the middle of the night,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mum. ‘I had a terrible feeling the press might come sniffing around, so I packed a suitcase for all of us and chucked it in the back of the car.’

  ‘Where would we go anyway?’ said Millie.

  ‘It’s OK, I’ve thought of that too. Now, if you two want any bits and bobs, you’d better run upstairs and fetch them. I’ll give you five minutes.’

  ‘But what about work?’ I said. ‘Doctors aren’t allowed to throw sickies. You told me that yourself.’

  ‘There are plenty of locums out there, Jess. I’ll call the surgery in the morning. Please don’t make this any harder than it has to be. The sooner we get on the road, the sooner we get there.’

  I had an idea she was talking about that health spa she went to with the bipolar radiographer from work, which would have been fine by me if it wasn’t for one crucial detail. ‘And what about Dad? It’s not fair on him. How’s he going to feel when he walks in here tonight and we’ve abandoned him?Tell her, Millie.’

  The Golden One flashed me the sort of smile that Mum perfected at medical school for breaking bad news to the relatives. ‘Dad’s not coming home tonight, Jess. He’s driving down to Grandma’s. He’s going to stay there until —’

  ‘I want to talk to him,’ I said. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I know he’s OK with this.’

  ‘Sorry, my love,’ said Mum. ‘He’ll have turned his phone off. Well, you’ve seen what it’s like. It’s probably best if we all keep a low profile for a bit.’

  ‘Best for who?’ I said.

  ‘Look, we haven’t got time for this,’ said Mum. ‘If there’s anything you think you might need, go and get it –now.’

  ‘Well, how long are we going for?’ I said.
‘A couple of days? A week?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mum. ‘As long as it takes. Now, for God’s sake get a move on, Jess. We’re leaving in ten minutes.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ I said, ‘but you’d better have remembered my strappy black top.’

  I sometimes wonder if I should have stood my ground – locked myself in my bedroom (I’d done that a few times) and refused to come out. But Mum seemed so sure about it, so certain it was the right thing to do. And as far as I could tell, the Golden One felt the same way. But that wasn’t the real reason I raced upstairs without complaining and started shaking school books out of my Where’s Wally? bag. The real reason was a bit more selfish. It was that photo.

  As Brian Simkins never tired of saying, Dad was probably the most talented analyst he’d ever worked with. He was also the most honest man in the universe, so I was totally confident Dad would sort things out in the end. What I wasn’t so confident about was my own ability to make it through school the next morning without ending up in therapy. It sounds pathetic, I know, but I just couldn’t face Dan Lulham’s smug ‘I told you so’s or the Year Ten haters laughing at me behind my back. A few days at a health spa was just what the doctor ordered.

  So I did what Mum said: tossed the bare essentials into my Where’s Wally? sports bag. Phone and iPod (they were in there already), half a packet of Juicy Fruit and some sanitary towels. Plus a few basic cosmetics, of course: two types of shampoo and conditioner, anti-frizz serum, foundation, mascara, eye-liner, hair mask, face mask, cleanser, toner, hair-straighteners, hair dryer, round brush, regular brush, hairbands, hair clips, nail varnish (top coat, bottom coat, three colours and some remover), perfume, deodorant and a packet of wipes.

  I couldn’t resist one luxury item. Even if it was only for a couple of days, I knew how much I’d miss him. And I wasn’t exactly proud of myself for running out on him like that. So I squeezed in a photo of Dad (that one when we’d just tipped a bucket of cold water over him in the paddling pool) and ran downstairs.

  ‘Right,’ said Mum. ‘Have you both switched your lights off?’

  After I’d come down again, Mum gave us our final instructions. It was the first and probably final time we’d ever see her with the hood of her Marks & Spencer’s hoodie up. ‘OK, when I give the signal, we need to get to that car as quickly as possible. And keep your faces covered. We don’t want him getting any photographs.’