Irresistible

by Bankes, Liz

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Acknowledgments

  A Note on the Author

  To Ryan, Tilly, and Billie

  Best housemates ever

  Jamie Elliot-Fox is toxic.

  I wrote that in my diary in the middle of last summer.

  To warn myself. In case I got sucked in.

  In case I let myself fall for it.

  In case I unleashed a whole load of trouble.

  But I still did.

  Chapter 1

  “Mia,” she says, pronouncing it to rhyme with “higher.”

  I think about correcting her, but then I chicken out. It’s fine. I’ll just have a new name.

  “Does that denote an exotic heritage?” she continues.

  “Um, no. Well, Mom’s part Welsh.”

  “Shame. We’re trying to fill our minority quotas.”

  She watches me while I try desperately to think of something to say, then puts her hand over her mouth and mock-whispers, “I’m joking.”

  “Oh, okay!” I am able to breathe again. “I think my name was Dad’s idea. He thought it sounded different. He wrote a song about it or something. I’ll ask him the next time he visits. They were, like, seventeen when I was born,” I try to explain.

  She makes a small, polite cough that is definitely not polite.

  I’m sure I’ve blown the interview. They probably don’t let you wait tables somewhere like this if you start off by talking about your parents’ scandalous teenage pregnancy.

  The woman looks down at her pad and then up again, as if she is erasing the past few minutes from her brain. She’s sitting on an ornate wooden chair in front of a massive window. There are shadows over her face; her white teeth and shining eyes poke through the darkness, making her more frightening. She would be beautiful, I think, if she weren’t so terrifying. Her blond hair is scraped back into a bun, and her eyebrows have been plucked into severe arches. When she looks up, she has a wide-eyed smile that looks more like the grimace of someone about to kill you.

  “So, Mia, tell me a bit about yourself.”

  “I’ve just finished Year Eleven.”

  “That makes you … ?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “So I am assuming you have qualifications.”

  “Well, yeah, I’ve done all my GCSE exams. I mean, everyone in my year did. So … yes.”

  “I lose touch with these things—at James’s and Dezzie’s schools they do the International Baccalaureate. More rigorous, they say, don’t they?”

  I nod. Always best to nod.

  “And what subjects did you take?”

  “The ones you have to do, plus history, drama, and French. I also took a course in food tech.”

  She’s looking at me like I’m speaking in Chinese. “Food tech might help prepare you for our restaurant, I suppose.”

  “Yes … Well, we mostly designed egg cartons, but I can cook things. My mom taught me her version of spaghetti with meat sauce. Basically you just add a lot of wine.”

  I stop and think of the menu I saw when I was waiting in reception. “I mean, probably not the kind of wine you have here. Mom usually has a box of wine in the fridge, but you … probably … don’t.”

  I’m doing that thing where I’m nervous and babble till I’m out of words. At least I didn’t mention the time my chili chicken kebabs made my stepdad, Jeff, violently sick because I didn’t turn the oven on correctly and the chicken was raw.

  She smiles unkindly. “No.” She lets the moment linger. “But French … That may be useful. We have an international clientele.”

  Hmm, I think. Useful if they want me to tell them what I did on my vacation or to describe the contents of my pencil case.

  “Well, why don’t I tell you a bit about Radleigh?”

  She launches into a guidebook-style intro, which I start nodding along to. I mean, I did google the place. It has its own Wikipedia page, which talks about how Radleigh Castle has always been a hub for the rich and famous. It began as one of those authentic castles with knights and damsels and stuff. Then it was more of a grand stately home, inhabited by generations of dukes, before it was turned into a hotel at the beginning of the twentieth century. There’s a hilarious part about how, a few centuries ago, there was some club for “mischief” based here, which got a reputation for “lewdness” with rumors of unmarried women becoming “excited,” but that’s all stopped now. I am not surprised. The guests here look pretty old. I expect they spend less time being lewd and more time falling asleep in the middle of the day.

  Radleigh’s Great Hall Restaurant is apparently famous for its “olde English” cuisine. That makes me think of pigs on spits with apples in their mouths. The restaurant is where I’ll be working if I get this job. I wonder if I would get free food.

  This woman is on the Wikipedia page too. Julia Elliot-Fox. She inherited the castle and then married a banker named Richard, and they have two kids: James, who’s eighteen, and Desdemona, who’s thirteen.

  Julia is just getting to the nineteenth century when I look up to the window behind her.

  There is a boy standing there. Watching me.

  He’s wearing a shirt with the collar turned up and shorts. There’s a cigarette hanging from his mouth and an expensive-looking bottle in his hand. He’s got messy hair, a bit of stubble, and lips that make him look like he’s permanently pouting. At the same time that I’m wondering why he’s staring at me, I notice that I can’t seem to look away. He’s only slightly to the side of Julia, so I can look right at him while she’s talking.

  It’s his expression. He looks like he’s smiling at some private joke. And his dark eyes seem to go right into my thoughts.

  I force my gaze back to Julia, who is saying something about the war. I nod in a way that hopefully says, “I am very interested in the things you are saying,” but my eyes flick back to the window.

  The boy’s eyes are stern, like he’s examining me, but he still has the smile at the corners of his mouth. It looks like he’s about to mouth something at me when someone else appears in the window. It’s a girl, wearing a white shirt and black skirt; I think she must work here, except enough of the buttons on her shirt are undone that you can see her bra, which is probably not part of the dress code.

  She reaches out and puts her hand under his shirt to where the waistband of his shorts must be. He leans forward and kisses her.

  And he’s still looking at me.

  Her hands run over his chest, while his stay by his sides, still holding the cigarette and the bottle.

  They move up against t
he window. He must be pressed right against her, and I suddenly wonder what the weight of his body would feel like. I wonder how kissing him would taste and imagine his stubble grazing my neck.

  I take a sharp breath in and force my eyes away from the window. Why on earth am I thinking things like that? I don’t even know who the boy is. My hands, placed rigidly on my knees, suddenly feel hot, and I realize my mouth is dry. I’ve totally stopped nodding along to Julia.

  The boy stops kissing the girl and takes a swig from the bottle. It has a dusty brown label. He hands her the bottle and kisses her on the nose, looking at me one more time. Then he reaches up and knocks twice on the window. He pats the girl on the butt, and then he’s gone.

  Julia stops midflow and coolly turns her head to the window. The girl looks terrified and stumbles back, almost dropping the bottle in the process.

  Although I can’t see her face, I can see that Julia gives a small shake of the head. She turns back to me and raises her eyebrows.

  “Now. Tell me why you want to work at Radleigh Castle.”

  Chapter 2

  The next ten minutes feel like ten years as I stutter and um my way through the interview. I don’t tell her how I’ve been daydreaming about saving up lots of money and not going back to school in September, perhaps arranging an internship somewhere instead, or just traveling around and coming back when I’ve spent all my money.

  I want to do things like end up on a mountain somewhere at five in the morning and see a huge lake stretching for miles with absolutely no one else around, or wander around a city, trying street food and meeting people who take me to some random music festival or beach party with a bonfire—basically, doing the things I can’t do around here, the same town I’ve lived in for sixteen years.

  Julia asks how I would handle the less-glamorous tasks, like cleaning the bathrooms. I pause. Mom’s not the neatest of people, especially when she’s had her book group (which is actually more of a wine and cackling group) over and gives me £10 to clean up. And Jeff has an office that is essentially a mountain of paper and cups of congealed tea. Matthew is only seven, so he’s got an excuse for leaving a trail of candy wrappers and books behind him. Technically I’m the cleanest person in my house, but I don’t know if that qualifies me to handle the Radleigh Castle restrooms. I tell her I like cleaning toilets. She doesn’t say anything to that and just moves on to the next question, probably because my answer sounds pretty weird.

  Finally, she asks me how I would deal with speaking to distinguished personages. I panic and say, “Curtsy at them?”

  She says, “Well, I think we’ll end there,” and stands up.

  As she walks me out, all I can think is, Oh God, now I’ll have to be like Lizzie from school and take a job working for the fish man.

  The interview room is just up the corridor from the main entrance, and we walk back over creaking floorboards, past paintings of people in wigs. A dark wooden door at the end of the corridor looks like it leads to a cellar or secret passageway or something. I think how this would have been an awesome place to grow up. Because Jeff is a history teacher, we’ve been on lots of family trips to old houses and castles. I went through a stage where I was obsessed with ghosts and would deliberately lose Mom, Jeff, and Matthew in order to find the quietest, spookiest room I could, and then I’d stand there, waiting for ghosts to come and scare me. I’d read stories about “real life hauntings” and had been convinced that every creak or whistle I’d heard was the “gray lady” or “mad monk” finally appearing.

  I’m the same with movies and stuff—I start off desperately hoping to be scared, but it never seems real enough. Gabi, my best friend, never had this problem; at sleepovers she would continually dig her fingernails into my leg when we were watching some slasher film we were probably too young for, while I was usually a little bored. And when we got taken to see The Woman in Black on the Year Eight theater trip, she got taken out for screaming too hysterically.

  I think that if I get this job, I’ll probably be here till late each night. My ten-year-old self would be delighted. Gabi’s current sixteen-year-old self would go completely crazy. I’m going to look tonight for any scary “haunting” stories about this place. I bet there have been a few scary children singing nursery rhymes. Or maybe one of these portrait women in wigs was driven mad with grief and can still be heard wailing in the corridors.

  We turn off into a room on the right, which is the reception area, where the receptionist had made me wait for ten minutes while she “verified” that I was really here for an interview, as opposed to being here to steal or set fire to things.

  Julia asks the receptionist for “Jennifer Fish’s mother’s number.”

  “Unfortunately, we’ll be letting her go,” she explains.

  “Oh? Why’s that?” asks the receptionist, barely containing her desire to get the gossip.

  “Overindulgence,” Julia replies through her false smile. “And there’ll be a bottle of port to replace.”

  The receptionist tsks and mutters something under her breath that sounds like “Another one …”

  Julia leaves to make her phone call and I sit opposite the receptionist. Jeff won’t be here to pick me up for another half hour. I could probably walk, but I’m not totally sure of the way. I lean back, wondering what I’m going to do for half an hour, and the wooden back of the chair creaks loudly. I sit up quickly, thinking that breaking antique furniture is probably not the best way to fill my time.

  The receptionist coughs. “We have books if you are looking for something to do, dear,” she says pointedly. She’s reading a book, exaggeratedly licking her finger each time she turns the page and peering at me over her glasses.

  I look around. There’s a shelf of very old-looking books behind me—the kind with brown leather spines. I wonder what she would do if I picked one up and did what she is doing, which is essentially wiping her spit all over it.

  I’m about to pull out one of the old books when she snaps her fingers and points to a box by the door. It’s full of paperbacks, mostly those with photo-style illustrations of couples kissing on the front. The one I choose has a guy with long hair and an oiled chest and a woman whose clothes are falling off. I wonder if they were left by guests and the receptionist has hoarded them. Well, at least it will pass the time.

  After spending a while trying not to laugh at “dangerously sexy Dante” and his “rock-hard thighs,” I feel a breeze coming from the door. I shift forward on my chair so I can see through an archway and into the castle courtyard.

  Julia comes sweeping back in and sees me watching. “Do have a look around while you wait,” she says.

  I hand the receptionist back the book and thank her. She holds it in an overly dainty manner between her thumb and finger and places it back in the box.

  I go across the corridor and into the courtyard. It’s like a mini garden, with trees and flower beds and a stone path running through it. Walls loom at me on all sides, with windows too small to see into, apart from the ones at ground level. On the right I can see into the restaurant. The wall ahead of me is broken into a series of archways at the bottom that lead out to a terrace of stone slabs with tables and chairs on it. There’s one old man at a table with his head on his chest, snoring. The restaurant leads to a conservatory building on the left, and through the glass I can see the outdoor swimming pool. Julia said it is available to guests in the day. Maybe staff get to use it in the evening …

  It looks awesome, surrounded by stone pillars with plants growing around them. And at the end there’s a building that looks like a Greek temple with four huge stone pillars at the front of it. I cannot believe people actually live here.

  Sitting between the building and the pool on a lounge chair is the boy from the window. He’s reading a book and smoking, putting the cigarette in his mouth each time he turns the page. He’s wearing the same black shorts, but no shirt now. He’s too far away to see clearly. I think that it would be useful in situa
tions like these if I carried binoculars with me, then realize that makes me sound like a pervert. He’s probably been swimming, I think. I imagine his chest drying off in the sun. Then my phone goes off loudly.

  The old man snorts and glares around, and the boy looks up from his book. I fumble to reach the phone in my bag and run back through one of the arches into the courtyard. My phone is still blaring, and I still can’t find it in my bag.

  I press the answer button just as I reach the reception area again, and the receptionist is saying, “Excuse me …” above the noise of my ringtone.

  On the phone, Jeff says, “I’m here! I think …”

  I go out the old wooden door at the bottom of the left tower and walk across the gravel, heading to the parking lot on the left. I can’t see Jeff’s car, which is a relief, to be honest, because it’s a Volvo and really old, and Gabi always says I should get him to park around the corner when he picks us up from parties. I tell him I’ll start walking to meet him.

  “I’m on a windy country lane. I nearly killed a deer!” he says helpfully.

  I walk toward the point where the parking lot meets the lane and see Julia and another woman standing by a car. Julia is talking while the woman looks uncomfortable and fiddles with her car keys. As I pass them, I hear Julia say, “… a bottle of the nineteen-forty-five Graham’s she’d stolen from the cellar. It won’t be drinkable now that she’s opened it and shaken it up.”