Irresistible

by Bankes, Liz

  “Mmm, yes. Of course. Shaken up,” says the woman in a shrill, wobbly voice. “I’m very, very sorry. We’ll replace the port, of course.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” says Julia, and I know she’ll be smiling the fake smile, “unless you have a thousand pounds to spare. It’s not something one gets in the grocery store.”

  “David’s a chartered accountant,” the shrill woman says, and then trails off.

  I’m nearly on the other side of the car before I feel I can turn and look. In the passenger seat is the girl I saw kissing the boy at the window. Even from here I can see a dark red stain at the top of her white shirt where she must have spilled the port. Pretty incriminating. She is crying, and on one side of her face her mascara has run down in a long black drip.

  I wonder if I should tell them it wasn’t her fault. Or even that if she did steal the port to drink with the boy, then it’s his fault too. I hover behind them, but I can’t speak up. Julia is too terrifying. And what if I didn’t see everything? The girl in the car must be wondering what I’m doing. I try to give her a friendly smile, but I don’t think she really registers me. She’s looking back up at the castle.

  The boy is standing at the front door with his hands in the pockets of his shorts. The huge stone facade towers behind him at a slight angle. At first I think he’s too far away to have noticed us, but then I see his head turn in our direction, and for a second I’m sure that he’s looking over at me. He lights up another cigarette and walks off.

  Chapter 3

  “O. M. F. G.,” says Gabi, with a dramatic hand wave between each letter. She grips my arm across the table, nearly knocking my coffee over in the process.

  “What?”

  “Jamie. Elliot. Fox.”

  “Can you speak in normal sentences?”

  “He’s, like, famous, Mia.”

  “He seems like a jerk. What’s he famous for?”

  “Um, for being rich and hot? You must have heard about him! God, it’s like you live under a bridge.”

  Within a second she’s whipped out her phone and is scrolling rapidly. She hands it to me triumphantly. “Ta-da!”

  A few people who are quietly murmuring over their coffee look at our table, which is something that often happens when we’re out together. It’s like Gabi has a volume dial on her voicebox that is always turned a few notches higher than everyone else’s.

  “That was some quick stalking, even for you,” I tell her.

  “But you want to see him, don’t you?”

  “No. Maybe. Okay, yes, I want to see him.”

  I’d like to be all nonchalant and cool, but I’m intrigued. Obviously he’s good looking, with his stubble and dark eyes. And his muscly chest that I haven’t actually seen close up, but that I imagine being muscly. Not that I’ve been imagining him walking around in just his shorts, all wet from the swimming pool.

  But he clearly knows he’s hot or he wouldn’t go around kissing people in windows. Or staring. Why would he stare at me? What does he think I’m going to do—run outside and say, “Now that you’ve glared at me through a window, I must have you”?

  Gabi sees that I’ve gone into a daydream, so she does her usual trick of digging her nail into my hand.

  “Hey! Okay, so his Facebook is, like, really private, but Han and me met him and his friends that night we went to York’s.”

  She says the night we went to York’s. She means the night we didn’t get into York’s and instead stood freezing our asses off in a nearby bus shelter, passing around a Smirnoff Ice. It seems that these days it’s all about trying to get into clubs and places, instead of just going to people’s houses when their parents are away. I miss getting all excited about house parties and making playlists for them and putting all our money together to give to whichever tall person was going to go try to buy drinks at the supermarket. I have no chance of getting into any clubs—I’m only just over five feet tall, so bouncers spot me immediately. Gabi has the most enormous boobs ever to have grown on a person, though, so she just strolls in.

  Maybe if I get this job then I’ll be able to socialize in the Radleigh Castle bar, like a sophisticated … um, woman, and drink port with Jamie Elliot-Fox. And kiss Jamie Elliot-Fox against windows. But without getting fired.

  While Gabi’s talking about that night, I look at the first picture. There’s Jamie in a suit, but with the shirt collar open. He’s leaning back on a sofa, casually holding a glass of wine, while the people around him, including two girls practically sitting on his lap, clutch vodka bottles and generally look totally wasted. He’s fixing the camera with that same critical, amused look he had at the window.

  “You took off with those goths,” she continues.

  Gabi thinks that anyone who doesn’t like pop music is a goth. Actually Han’s sister and her friends had turned up and were on their way to see a band, so I went with them.

  “They’re not—” I try to interrupt.

  “Whatev. So you went with the goths and then I texted you saying we’d met all those Woodbridge guys outside the club and gone to their house party—remember?”

  “Yeah, they were all named Tarquin or Octavian or something.”

  “So Jamie was there, and that was the night I became Facebook friends with that guy Willem.”

  “William?”

  “No, Willem.”

  “That’s not a real name.”

  Gabi dramatically takes a sip of her hot chocolate. Well, to anyone else it would be dramatic, but it’s how she does everything.

  “Anyway, Max got really jealous and they were, like, actually going to fight, but Fat Steve calmed everything down.”

  “Really?” I raise my eyebrows at her. “Max has never been in a fight, Gabs. We’ve never even seen a fight.”

  “Whatev. You weren’t there. There was fighting in their eyes, Mia.”

  “Just not in reality.”

  “Exactly!”

  “So you’ve met him, then?” I scroll through some more photos. He’s not in all of them, but every so often he’ll appear. On the beach in his shorts again, wearing shades. In another suit, sitting by a bonfire. In most of the photos he’s got a drink in his hand, but he looks in control, in stark contrast to lots of the people around him.

  “Well, he didn’t talk much. He stood there drinking and watching everyone. Oh yeah, and he was with this girl, apparently. The richest girl I’ve ever seen. Like a horse with lots of hair. But all these other girls kept crowding around him, and he was whispering to them and making them laugh, like, really flirty. If Max did that, I’d go crazy. He said something to this one girl, and she took her top off and swung it around her head. Next thing, she’s looking around for him, but he’d walked off!”

  “Wow, he sounds great.”

  “His friends said he lives in this pool house outside Radleigh Castle. How awesome is that? He has parties all the time. When you work there, we should totally go—Babe!”

  We are interrupted by Max’s arrival.

  “Hey, princess,” he says, pointing both fingers at Gabi. He shuffles over in his ridiculously baggy jeans, stopping briefly when the oversized cap he wears perched on the back of his head falls off. I’d like to point out that he is both white and middle class. Considering the amount Gabi bitches about other people’s fashion sense, I think that she must go temporarily blind whenever Max is around.

  He slides into our booth. “Aight, baby?”

  Okay, make that temporarily blind and deaf.

  Max nods at me. “Mia.”

  “Hi, Max.”

  Then he and Gabi start kissing, which, as is usual for them, carries on for about five minutes. I keep my eyes on her phone. A girl with dark curly hair keeps appearing in the photos; she must be the one Gabi was talking about, because she does have a lot of hair and is near to Jamie in most of the pictures. Her name is Cleo Farah. She is stunning, with big brown eyes, sharp cheekbones, and coffee-colored skin.

  Max and Gabi are still firmly atta
ched to each other’s mouths, so I look at the next photo. Jamie is dressed up again, but it looks like it’s for a family thing rather than a party. Maybe a wedding. He’s wearing a vest and has his arm around a girl who looks about twelve years old. She must be his sister. He’s smiling, but not in the frowny way he is in the other photos—this looks more real.

  I suddenly realize how stalkerish this is and put Gabi’s phone down.

  At that moment, my own phone starts vibrating in the bag on my lap. I’d turned the sound off after the ringtone nearly gave me a heart attack at Radleigh Castle. It’s a call from a private number.

  The receptionist at Radleigh called me from a private number to arrange the interview. Maybe they’re calling to say I got the job. Or that I didn’t. Or that I was seen watching Jamie in the swimming pool. There aren’t laws against watching men in shorts—are there?

  I realize I’ve just been staring at the phone and haven’t actually answered.

  “Mia, it’s Julia Elliot-Fox. We’d like to offer you a waitress position.”

  Chapter 4

  “This,” says Julia, “is the wine cellar.”

  We shuffle toward the room, four pairs of feet crunching on the gritty stone floor.

  “You are not to go in there.”

  We stop.

  “Johan, our sommelier, has the key, and he will send you up what you need in the dumbwaiter behind the bar.”

  I realize there is a man with a white mustache in the room, who has just taken a bottle from one of the shelves and is noting something down on a pad. He looks at us haughtily and then returns to his work.

  Julia closes the door and walks back past us, her heels echoing in the corridor. We follow her up some steps and through a door that leads outside again. We come out at the rear of the castle, near the kitchens and the restaurant, with the swimming pool just visible.

  The boy next to me taps my shoulder and whispers, “Which is worse, Johan or a pile of dog poo?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Johan,” the boy continues. “He’s sommelier.”

  I look at him, confused. Does he not like sommeliers? Maybe he’s just odd.

  “Smellier,” he explains.

  It’s so awful, it makes me laugh. “That is actually the worst joke I’ve ever heard.”

  “Oh, come on. I thought of it on the spot!”

  “All right,” I say. “Next time, maybe you should prepare a few in advance.”

  “Sorry, what was your name again?” he says. “I was focused on remembering which way the forks go in the silver service and didn’t listen to anything else.”

  “Mia.” I glance over at Julia to see if it’s safe to talk. She’s talking to one of the other waiters through the window. “You’re Dan, right?”

  “I am. You win on names, then.” He nods toward Julia. “I hope there’s not a test at the end of this tour; I’ll be fed to the hounds.” As he says it, he leans closer to me and grins, like we’re sharing a secret.

  I recognize Dan. He’s two years ahead of me at the boys’ school across the road from my school. I’ve never spoken to him before, though. He’s got a really wide smile and dimples in his cheeks, and he keeps flicking his head to get his hair out of his eyes. I suddenly feel really pleased that I’m going to be working with him all summer.

  “This is crazy, isn’t it?” he says. “Imagine living here.”

  “We should,” I tell him. “We could claim squatters’ rights.”

  “Dibs on the west wing.”

  “I’ll have the pool house.” I smile. We’ve forgotten to keep our voices down.

  “Will you?” Someone has come out of the door behind us, and I nearly jump out of my skin. Jamie raises his eyebrows at me as he walks past. Today he’s wearing a black polo shirt with the collar turned up, which, with a feeling of stalkerish shame, I recognize from one of the photos.

  I see Dan fiddle with the collar of his white waiter’s shirt as we both watch Jamie head in the direction of the pool house. My stomach dips in embarrassment, and I can feel my cheeks burning. I instinctively smooth down my skirt. I went shopping with Mom and got this high-waisted skirt and fitted shirt and new black heels. Up until now I’d felt pretty good in my new clothes, as if looking all sharp and professional would help me not make a mess of everything.

  I don’t know why it’s bothering me so much that Jamie just heard me. I probably won’t even see him that often if he’s off in his pool house all the time. I look up and catch Dan’s eye, and he grins. I immediately feel more relaxed.

  “And that,” says Julia pointedly, making us both turn back to her, “is about everything. The more experienced staff will guide you. Melanie, I’d like you behind the bar tonight,” she says to the older girl with us. She has long red hair and freckles and has been nodding a lot and saying “Hmm” during the orientation, as if she knows it all already. “Mia, you’ll be on tables, and Daniel, you’ll be in the kitchen.”

  “Just my luck,” says Dan.

  I feel slightly panicky. I’ll be the most on display. I breathe out slowly. It will be fine. I practiced holding three plates at a time in Gabi’s room, with her pretending to be a distinguished Radleigh diner. She got a bit too into it, throwing imaginary food across the room and shouting, “GARBAGE! UTTER DISGRACE!”

  Melanie pipes up. “Julia?”

  “Mrs. Elliot-Fox will do, I think,” corrects Julia.

  “Mrs. Elliot-Fox … sorry. I was just wondering, where should I put my engagement ring?” She holds up her hand with the ring facing out. “Simon would be so sad if anything happened to it, and—”

  “I’ll take it,” cuts in Julia. “Although I don’t know how you expect to damage it serving drinks. And do something about your hair, please.”

  “Oh, yeah, um, okay.” Melanie holds out the ring and starts piling her hair into a ponytail. “Oh, I don’t think I have a—oh dear …”

  “I’ve got one,” I say, handing her the spare hair tie from my wrist.

  “To the kitchen!” says Dan.

  As we follow him through the restaurant to start the shift, I run through all the things I need to remember. Serve food on the diner’s left. Don’t let them see you holding up your hands in L shapes to figure out which side left is. Don’t fall over.

  I’m completely exhausted. I didn’t have a minute’s break the whole night. Nonresidents have to book ahead, and residents are supposed to tell you when they are eating, but they all came in at different times, so there was constantly an order to take, food or a tray of drinks to bring over, or plates to clear. The kitchen was like a sauna whenever I had to go in, so I felt bad for Dan, who was there all night loading and unloading the dishwasher. He was looking pretty sweaty and crazy-eyed by the end. And when the guests had gone, there was the cleaning to do. When I offered to do the bathrooms at the end of the night, I thought Melanie was going to kiss me. It was tactical, really; all the windows are open in the restrooms, so it’s much cooler in there. Job done, I suddenly hear the murmur of lots of voices outside, punctuated frequently by laughter and shouting. I think for a minute that people have gone into the dining room again, but then I hear splashing and realize the sounds must be coming from the pool. Closing time doesn’t apply to them, then.

  Back in the kitchen, Dan opens the fire door to let some air in and we sit on the step. “Jesus.” He grins, wiping some dish-detergent bubbles from his hair. “Easing us in slowly, weren’t they?”

  “Argh!” I reply, leaning my head against the door frame.

  “How were the fine diners?” he asks.

  “Okay. Mostly they just ignored me, or pointed to their glasses when they wanted a refill. One old guy eating on his own said I was pretty.”

  “He must have been really drunk.”

  “Hey!” I elbow him in the leg.

  “I’m kidding. You look lovely. I love my women dripping with sweat.”

  “Ha! Oh God, even laughing hurts.” I shut my eyes. “I think I need to ge
t up or I’ll end up sleeping out here among the Dumpsters.”

  Dan stands up and pulls me to my feet. His arm tenses as it takes my weight, and I notice he’s very muscly. When I stand up, I’m close to him, even though I’m about a foot shorter. His hair falls across his face and he smiles at me. I realize I’m staring at him and go to fix my own hair, which had been gradually falling out of its clip all night.

  “It looks good … all messy,” he says.

  One of the other waitresses calls over that she’s locking up the kitchen.

  “Okay,” we both say together and then laugh. We’ve arranged to walk home across the park together, once Melanie’s beloved Simon arrives to pick her up. I think she’s probably been talking about beloved Simon for a lot of the night, because the other bartender looked like she wanted to kill her.

  I tell Dan I’m just going to check the schedule so I know when to come in tomorrow. It’s kept under the bar. I scan the sheet, and it takes a while for my brain to focus. I think I’m not on there for a moment and then I realize it’s done by last name. Dan must be named Dan David, as it says David was in the kitchen tonight.

  “And which one are you?”

  Jamie’s face is right over my shoulder. He seems to like sneaking up on people and generally being annoying. I can’t help but notice he smells really nice. A sort of fresh, appley, spicy smell. I point at my name.

  “Joseph,” he says. “That’s a pretty name.”

  “That’s my last name. I’m Mia Joseph. Mia.” I’m trying to sound serious and like he’s bothering me, but I slip into a laugh at the end.

  He raises his eyebrows. “Great. Well, Joseph, we’re having a little party in there.” He nods in the direction of the pool house. “And we’re playing a little game.” He cocks his head to the side, still frowning at me with those full lips of his. He probably does that pouting thing on purpose.

  “Okay. Well, have fun.”

  His presence is making me nervous. And sort of excited.

  “A drink before you go home?”

  I slide the schedule back under the bar. I wonder what would happen if I did stay. Part of me is aching to find out. Another, more sensible, part is telling me that the evidence so far suggests that a drink with Jamie would be a bad idea.