Unfortunately, I wasn't a particularly tolerant person when something interrupted my study time, and the addition of alcohol didn't seem to do anything to improve that. I was able to put up with their nonsense for all of about two seconds before it became 'mosquito buzzing near your ear' annoying. And I really hated mosquitoes.
Maybe it was the leg jiggling, vodka chocolately buzz that prompted me along, but I found myself bouncing off my bed once more and heading to the door to see what all the fuss was about. Pulling the door open with a flourish, I came face to face with a startled Kira and Kara who were standing just outside.
"What's going on?" I asked, looking from Kira/Kara's tear-stained face to Kara/Kira's solemn one. Kira/Kara was holding a crumpled piece of paper, while Kara/Kira, randomly, was holding a clump of foil packaged condoms.
These girls had never really struck me as the type to need much prompting to unload their every single thought or problem out into the world and they did nothing to dissuade me of that appraisal.
"They've put the rent up again!" Howled Kira/Kara, slumping back against the wall dramatically. "I don't know why I'm surprised, every bloody semester they do it, but I don't think I can afford it this time."
"Oh no," I said lamely, immediately wishing I'd just stayed inside. Usually the drama with these two was that Kira/Kara's gel nail had cracked or Kara/Kira's boyfriend had said some celebrity looked hotter than her, but this was a genuine problem.
I was having my super secret special alone time, I didn't want to deal with genuine problems! To this end, I'd started to back away inside my room when Kara/Kira asked frankly, "What about you? Isn't this going to screw you over too? Or are you scholarship kids taken care of?"
"I'm not on a scholarship," I answered honestly and both sets of heavily made up eyes narrowed.
"So how are you affording it?" Kira/Kara demanded and I shrugged awkwardly.
"My mum has some savings..." I mumbled, finding myself suddenly and strangely ashamed of the fact.
"Lucky," Kara/Kira said bitterly, putting an arm around Kira/Kara and starting to lead her off towards their room. She stopped almost immediately though and leant back to thrust a few of the condoms towards me.
"Oh, here, they were giving these out downstairs." She looked me over, presumably taking in my less than salubrious attire and then she shrugged, "Better safe than sorry, I guess."
"Uh...thanks." I accepted the offering and shoved them in my pocket.
Feeling thoroughly discomfited by the whole exchange, I shut my door and stood staring at the cheap plywood blankly for a few moments. That had been an entirely foreign experience for me. To have people jealous of the financial security of my family? It was proper twilight zone sort of stuff.
Where before the alcohol had whizzed through my system making everything seem brighter, it now seemed to be having the opposite effect and my mind became dim and cloudy. My brain didn't seem to be functioning properly, but my gut instinct was obviously working just fine and I realised I was sick to my stomach...and not just from the mudslides. My brain sheepishly joined the party a couple of moments later and started to whir.
When Mum had told me that she’d the savings to be able to pay for my accommodation at uni, I'd been over the moon, ecstatic, but there'd also been a small part of me that had muttered 'um...how?' I hated that little voice because, essentially, it was encouraging me to distrust my mum, but I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe it was the voice of reason.
When Mum had then asked me to butt out of the money stuff it hadn't been a wishy washy sort of request. Even coasting on the mudslides, I could remember her words clearly, 'I know you like to take control of this stuff, Rox, but I'm asking you to have faith in me. Let me do this for you and don't get involved.'
I'd been across the household accounts since I was about 9, so this had been no small ask. It'd always reassured me to know where we were with our bills; had helped me sleep at night when we were on top of them and kept me up when we weren't. Still, when Mum had clearly worked so hard to save for me (even if it had originally been for my wedding) and then asked me to trust her, how could I have said no?
So every time when uni costs had been talked about with my friends I'd kept quiet, and when I talked to my mum we avoided the subject until it'd become such an automatic taboo that I'd almost managed to make myself stop thinking about it. Almost...
With that one brief conversation with the K's, the block in my mind had been shattered and all the doubts came flooding back in. If the costs had been increasing every semester, as Kira/Kara had said, had my mum's savings been able to keep up? I couldn't be sure and, suddenly, I really needed to be...
Maybe if I'd been sober, or Abi had been there to talk me down, I wouldn't have done it, but I wasn't, and she wasn't, so I did.
Grabbing Abi's laptop off her bed, I opened it up and quickly tapped in the password, silently thanking Abi, as I always did, for the generous and unqualified access she'd offered me to her computer.
Bobbling about with impatience, I waited for the start up nonsense to do its thing, and then brought up the internet and typed in the address for my mum's email provider. My mum was a bit of a technophobe and I'd been the one to set up this account and password for her back in the day so this part didn't bother me too much. I felt a sort of ownership over her emails that pushed my knowledge of privacy laws to the back of my mind.
My mum wasn't the sort to change her password, I doubt she even knew how, so her inbox loaded up without hesitation. I had absolutely no interest in the vast majority of her mail, and my eyes skimmed down, looking for one message in particular. I found it near the bottom of the inbox. Confirmation of internet banking set up.
The painful squiggly feeling in my stomach intensified now I'd moved beyond the sort of access mum had freely given me. I moved quickly, as if speed would lessen the guilt. It didn't.
The message from mum's bank advised of the client number to enter at the online banking site, but not the password, which she had presumably set up over the phone. Copying the number in the email, I brought up her bank's site and pasted it in the right section of the log in page. Then I sat there and looked at the blank password box.
As my first attempt I typed in her email password. It bounced back as invalid. Oh well, at least my mum had some small grasp of internet security...not that it helped me right at that moment.
Angry red writing informed me that I only had two more tries left before I was kicked off the system and I pulled at my bottom lip with my teeth as I considered my next attempt. Hacking looked so much more glamorous on TV; there was always some cool twist to the password; a riddle to solve, or the name of the CEO's illegitimate daughter who he was secretly hiding in an Italian monastery. My hacking was absolutely nothing like that. Instead, I took a stab in the dark and put in my mum's middle name. No dice, and I only had one try left.
In a way this was a relief. Even pretty tipsy and desperate for some answers I recognised what I was doing as a moment of madness and having one try left sort of felt like fate's way of sorting it out. If my next try wasn't right the system would kick me off and, hopefully by the time it would allow me back on, I'd be sober and over it.
With a deep breath, and a gulp of my fourth mudslide, I threw out my last guess. My name and year of birth. The page loaded up instantly. Well, OK then, gut-wrenching guilt aside and here we go...
There were two accounts linked from the homepage, mum's day to day one, and the savings account conveniently named 'Savings Account'. I ignored the first, pretending I didn't notice how low the balance was, and clicked for the details of the second.
There wasn't much activity in this account, as you'd expect, which is why it only took about two seconds for my gaze to fall on the line of data that forced a low, keening sort of groan out of me. Exactly one month before I'd started uni two and a half years ago, there was a deposit. It was a large deposit. It had been transferred from Elliot P Sinclair's account.
; I swayed on my bed, and gripped the covers in my fists to steady myself.
Elliot Sinclair?
As in the guy who'd spent his formative years swimming in his big pool of glorious money whilst I'd slogged along next to him in the marsh of borderline poverty? What in the name of all the monkeys in the zoo was that about?
Yes I knew him and my mum were fond of each other, but not that much money fond of each other, surely?
In the next second, the true horrifying reality set in and why Elliot had deposited a massive amount of money into my mum's account became moot. He had, and it was obvious what it had been used for.
My heart started to beat so fast my gaze shook as I tried to push past my nausea and focus on the story the account activity told. My mum had been managing to save, I could see that. There were little deposits over time and she'd managed to get a modest sum together. This amount, however, hadn't been nearly as much as Elliot's deposit, and had been withdrawn in dribs and drabs soon after Elliot's money had appeared.
What the hell? I'd barely spoken to Elliot since starting uni, we moved in such different circles we hardly ever saw each other and I'd liked it that way. He was a reminder of a not-so-stellar past me and the new me wanted nothing to do with him.
Except…It was something I could barely bring myself to think, but there was no denying it. It looked like the new me had been bought and paid for by Elliot Sinclair.
With this blunt assessment a sense of cold purpose slid down my spine. With the cold came a sort of numbness and, as I reached down to pull Abi's little printer out from under her bed, my movements were jerky and mechanical. Maybe it was stupid, the proof was irrefutable no matter what format it was in, but I seemed to need something tangible to properly make it real. I needed to feel the betrayal, to hold it in my hand and not have it just disappear when the computer was shut down.
To that end, I printed off the offending page from mum's account and then closed everything down and returned Abi's stuff to where it had been before.
Looking around, it was like nothing had changed; the room sat there innocently, knowing nothing about how bitterly I now felt towards it. I couldn't stay there anymore, which was fine because I had somewhere to be anyway.
Stopping only to shove my feet into my old sandshoes, I snatched up the print-out and stormed out of my room. It was late-evening as I set off, and my lack of clothing should really have given me a moment's pause as I left the building. I was protected by a fury that pulsed around me like a shield, however, and didn't feel the chill.
I knew where Elliot lived as my mum had not-very-subtly suggested to me on a number of occasions that I should pop by and see him. It'd been bad enough when this had just been her trying to keep tabs on the both of us and, I'm sure she thought, throw me into the path of the sort of people I should be mixing with. With what was revealed on the piece of paper I had clutched in my hand, it was even worse. What if I had seen him and he'd spent the entire time knowing the truth whilst I was in the dark? The humiliation I felt now was bad enough, but to think of being with Elliot and him knowing that he'd paid for my accommodation when I didn't…I couldn't even begin to comprehend how degrading that would have been.
The ice that had seen me out of my room and on the path to Elliot's abruptly flared into a red-hot fire and I found that walking to his place was not good enough. I wasn't the fittest person in the world, but I broke into a jog regardless, a jog that turned into a run until I was full on pelting my way across campus. I wasn't wearing a bra so, yeah, I was that angry.
And so it was that I banged on Elliot's door, red-faced and sweaty, my hair wild about my face, half-bent clutching a stitch and out of breath, but fundamentally not giving a monkey's.
At first there was no reply. I thumped my fist against the wood harder and waited a couple of seconds before banging again. My mind refused to comprehend that he wouldn't be in. This needed to be sorted now, him not being home wasn't an option.
Maybe it was an extreme case of mind over matter and I managed to will him into existence, because, eventually, I heard a noise inside and then the door was opening.
There he was.
It was weird seeing Elliot up close, I'd been so used to him being at a distance recently, but then again, having seen him practically every day for ten years meant that the weirdness was fairly easily overruled by hateful familiarity.
It felt like the rage towering inside me should have added at least a metre to my height, but reality was a little different. I was still hunched from my stitch, so I had to look up at him somewhat Quasimodo-ish.
"Rox?" Elliot stared down at me, a glass of amber liquid paused midway up to his mouth. His eyes swept me up and down. "The hell happened to you?"
He sounded a bit fuzzy, although whether that was due to the drinking he'd been doing, or the drinking I'd been doing, I wasn't sure. It didn't matter, though because his expression sharpened in the next instant as he added, "You alright?"
Oh, of course! How could I forget? This was how Elliot got away with being such an entitled monkey's arse. He could swan around oozing condescension all he liked, and then all he had to do was cock his pretty head slightly and say something moderately caring and the world would forgive him. Well, not today, buddy boy.
"What the hell is this?" I brandished the account summary at him and his eyes followed the movement before he shrugged disinterestedly.
"Piece of paper?"
I shoved it at him, slapping it against his chest, and then stormed past him into his flat.
"By all means, come on in," he murmured sarcastically, but when I whirled to face him again, I saw that his focus was on the paper in his hands and there was nothing disinterested about him now.
"Damn," he said flatly after a few seconds. Then, his eyes narrowing, "Did your mum give you this?"
"No," I replied shortly, refusing to feel bad about how I'd come by it, especially not in front of Elliot bloody Sinclair.
"So she doesn't know you know?" His voice was suddenly fierce and I looked up at him, startled.
I'd spent pretty much a decade in Elliot's company, but I don't think I'd ever seen his eyes so dark, or so intense as they were in that moment. The mudslides in my belly gave a little roil, but I did everything in my power to hide how uncomfortable his gaze made me.
"Not yet," I lifted my chin stubbornly, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt.
His fierce expression faded slightly. "Well, that's something." He left the door pointedly open and thrust the paper back at me. "Nice seeing you, Rox."
I automatically took the account summary and he calmly walked over to refresh his glass from an opened bottle on the coffee table. That done, he went over to gaze out the small window along the back wall, as if I was no longer there.
"That's it?" I demanded incredulously, feeling decidedly wrong-footed from his swift changes in demeanour. "That's all you have to say?"
"Yep," I saw him take another pull at his drink, but he didn't turn around as he replied, "that's it. See you later."
"No!" My hands started to shake so hard the paper I was holding rattled. "That's not good enough!" I marched over and planted myself in front of him. There hadn't been much room between him and the window and, now I'd insinuated myself into that gap, well…there wasn't much room between Elliot and me.
I could feel the warmth of his body and smell his faint cologne, and the hair on the back of my neck prickled. OK, I'd misjudged this. Still, even with scant centimetres separating us, he was not to be drawn and he continued to look over my head and out the window.
I was not the type to take being ignored very well, even at the best of times, and being overlooked (literally) at that moment made the impulsive anger that had sent me over here in the first place blaze up.
Quick as a flash, I reached forward and snatched the glass from his hands. Lifting it in a defiant sort of toast, I downed the remaining liquid in one go, the alcohol searing along my tongue and down my throat.
"Yeah!" I tried not to splutter as I lifted the empty glass up to his eye-line so he could have a closer look. "That's right, I just drank your drink."
He had more than enough evidence to that fact, so I'm not sure why I'd felt the need to announce it. Elliot seemed to agree if the 'OK, crazy' look he was giving me was anything to go by.
"So what the hell happened?" I thunked the now empty glass down onto the windowsill and tried to get us back on track. "You somehow found out my mum was saving up for me and decided to put your 'saviour of the poor' hat on and stick your stupid nose in as per usual?"
'Your stupid nose' wasn't my finest slur, but rage and alcohol was leaving very little room for thought processes now.
Elliot seemed to consider his options for a moment, and then he shrugged, turning away from me to snatch up a clean glass out of a nearby cabinet.
Cold air rushed into the gap between us and I found that it was a little easier to breathe now we weren't so pressed up against each other. Maybe Elliot felt the same way; he definitely looked more comfortable with the distance and another glass in his hand.
"Yeah, sure," he said offhandedly over his shoulder, making me purse my lips.
"Yeah, sure what?"
He squatted down in front of what was clearly his liquor cabinet, selected a new bottle then straightened and waved it at me casually. "The hat and the nose thing." He poured himself a healthily slug and then leant back against the cabinet, taking a mouthful and closing his eyes in contentment as he swallowed.
As for me? Well, it wasn't contentment I was feeling.
Over the years I had thought I hated Elliot. I thought the teasing, the careless comments about our differences in fortune, and the friends he'd invited over who had treated me with disdain had amounted to hatred. I was wrong. I knew this because I'd never felt anything like the loathing that consumed me in that moment.
Saving from Monkeys Page 27
