Unstoppable Read online

  Praise for Liz Bankes’

  Irresistible

  ‘Compelling, juicy, and highly enjoyable.’

  Chicklish

  ‘A quick, fun read . . . I will be keeping my eye out for more books by Bankes in the future.’

  Once Upon a Bookcase

  ‘Great, chemistry-filled scenes.’

  Fluttering Butterflies

  ‘A fun debut [with] some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments.’

  Daisy Chain Book Reviews

  ‘Simply irresistible, truly one of those rare reads that captivated me . . . amazing.’

  Totally Bookalicious

  ‘Really absorbing – should Mia stick with good-guy Dan or follow her heart and dive into a rocky relationship with Jamie? A real page-turner!’

  Amber, 16

  ‘An enthralling insight into the inner workings of teenage life, with the thrill of relationships and new experiences – fantastic!’

  Polly, 15

  From an early age Liz Bankes wanted to be a Thunderbird. Upon discovering that they were fictional and wooden she decided to be a writer. She wrote her GCSE coursework about a woman who cooks people in pies, and later won the Tunbridge Wells Girls Grammar School creative writing prize.

  She went on to study book-reading at some universities in order to avoid getting a job and to spend the next four years in pyjamas. After working on a building magazine and a science magazine, she had the wonderful and very exciting chance to write a story.

  As well as all book-related things, she also likes comedy and cats.

  First published in Great Britain in 2014

  by Piccadilly Press

  A Bonnier publishing company

  Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Liz Bankes, 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Liz Bankes to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 360 1 (paperback)

  978 1 84812 361 8 (ebook)

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  To Mum and Dad

  For making the home I always want to come back to

  (and not complaining when I do).

  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

  Chapter 46

  My Top 5 Acknowledgements

  Worries.

  1. I will fall over/break all the computers/kill the office hamster on the first day of the work placement, get sacked and then have to come home.

  2. All the people I’ll meet in Oxford will think I’m weird and I won’t have any friends.

  3. Living in Cal’s house will mean he discovers that I shave my legs, I don’t wake up with all my make-up already on (I can’t do the sneaking to the loo at five a.m. thing every day) and that really I’m quite mental. As a result he’ll leave me.

  4. My parents will find out that the ‘spare room’ I told them I’m living in at Cal’s is actually a cupboard and I am really staying in his room. They will insist I come home and he will think I’m a child. As a result he’ll leave me.

  5. I worry that I worry too much.

  Chapter 1

  Are you even allowed to have a life crisis at seventeen? I didn’t mean to. It was just that at the end-of-college barbecue everyone was going on about all these amazing things they’re going to go off and do and how great it was going to be. Suddenly I yelled, ‘I DON’T THINK MY LIFE IS RIGHT!’ Yes, I actually yelled. This was when I realised that Pimms is actually quite strong. People turned round and stared. Mainly, I think, because most of them hadn’t heard me speak before. I’m pretty shy at college. And in life. But anyway, everyone soon turned back to their conversations and then my friends led me quietly away.

  They weren’t going to let me off easily, though. So, as requested, I’ve formulated my top five worries.

  It’s probably best I stopped at five, because I could have easily gone on all day. For instance, I didn’t put in the one about how sometimes, when I’m annoyed with someone, I have this dream where their house burns down. That might make me sound like a bit of a psycho. I told Cal about it and he said he found it funny, but I’ve noticed him move candles away from me now if I’m sitting near them.

  I found it is a lot easier to be honest when you are writing things down. When someone asks how you are, they want you to say, ‘Fine, thanks, how are you?’ and not reel off a list of the things that are troubling you that day. But when you write and you don’t have to hear your voice trying to explain things, it’s easier to find the right words.

  But now I have to do the tricky bit. I have to talk about it. I think I’d rather go on pretending everything is fine, but she insisted. And she is very insistent.

  I knock on her door and hear a cheery, ‘Rosie! Come in.’

  When I walk in I see she’s sitting in an armchair turned to face her bed and is holding a clipboard and a pen. I’m not sure where I am supposed to sit down. I go and perch on the end of the bed.

  ‘You can lie on it if you want.’ She nods encouragingly. ‘Like therapy sessions in films and America.’

  ‘Um, okay, thank you.’ I lie down. I feel like when we arranged this it wasn’t quite so weird. I think that had something to do with the Pimms.

  There’s a moment of silence.

  ‘Gabi, why are you wearing glasses?’ I say.

  She looks surprised. ‘I’m your life coach. I need to look proper. Don’t you like them?’

  ‘Oh no, they’re very nice.’

  I hear Gabi’s sister Millie crashing around somewhere outside the room and shouting, ‘Where are my glasses?’ Gabi slips them off quickly and hides them under a cushion, just as Millie bursts into the room.

  ‘Have you got them?’ she demands.

  ‘No,’ says Gabi scornfully. ‘Why would I want to look like you? Please leave my office – I have a client.’ She points at me with her pen.

  I wave awkwardly at Millie from the bed. ‘Hello!’

  She frowns at me for a second and then looks back at Gabi. ‘Doesn’t it worry you that you’re technically an adult and you still play make-believe games with your weird friends?’

 
; Which is slightly insulting.

  ‘Actually, as an eighteen-year-old, I can have you legally evicted from this house,’ Gabi snaps. ‘Can’t I, Rosie?’

  ‘Um, I’m not sure.’

  Gabi fixes me with a look.

  ‘I mean, maybe,’ I say quickly. ‘Anyway, what do I know? I’ve got problems!’ I lift up the bit of paper with the list on.

  ‘Exactly,’ Gabi agrees.

  Millie stomps out of the room, kicking over a wastepaper basket as she goes.

  Gabi waves her hand dismissively. ‘She’s got the Morgan family rage – it kicks in at about fifteen and lasts a year or so.’

  I nod and smile at her, although I didn’t know Gabi when she was fifteen. Our ‘gang’ formed at sixth-form college two years ago. But Gabi’s ex-boyfriend Max (well, officially they’re broken up, but they still act like a couple, so no one really knows what is going on) has talked about the ‘year Gabi was angry’. Max is also Cal’s brother, so things are sometimes a bit awkward between Cal and Gabi.

  Gabi takes the paper from me. ‘So let’s go through these.’ She smiles at me and then starts reading.

  I twiddle my fingers. It’s the first time I’ve told anyone that I’m dreading the summer. I have a work placement on the Young Bright Sparx scheme, which is really competitive. Or at least that’s what my mum keeps telling people she talks to in Waitrose. It will be really helpful for when I’m studying business at uni and will look great on my CV.

  Only thing is I actually have to go and do it now. Oh God.

  ‘I don’t think offices have hamsters,’ says Gabi as she reads my list.

  ‘My dad’s does – it’s part of the Local Government Cares initiative.’ (I think it’s supposed to be a metaphor for poor people. Dad had his photo taken with it for the local paper and it bit him. )

  Gabi peers at me and then shakes her head. ‘No. I don’t think you have it in you to kill. Unless you have a secret hamster-murdering habit.’

  Rudi. Year Six class hamster. I thought I’d let him run around my room, he disappeared and then I sat on him. I told Mr Todd he’d been carried off by an eagle because I really, really hate getting told off.

  ‘And you’re the least clumsy person I know, so I don’t think you’ll fall over and break the computers. Unless you turn up drunk or something.’

  I look at her and we laugh. We both know I’m the most unlikely person to do anything that even borders on being crazy. Every time we go to the only local club, Spanky’s, I look around every few seconds for the police officers on their way to arrest me for being underage. When they had an emergency services fancy dress night I nearly had a heart attack.

  ‘I am going to skip over number two,’ Gabi continues, ‘because you are an awesome friend. If you try to argue then you’re basically saying I have crap taste in friends and I’ll have to give you a kicking.’

  She gives me a grin, which I return, but I don’t say anything as I’ve seen her fighting with her sister and she can be quite vicious. Gabi’s reading the next one on the list. Cal.

  What kind of person doesn’t want to live with their boyfriend for the summer? Their boyfriend, who they’ve been with for a year and they only get to see every two weeks because he’s off at uni. But that’s the thing. He sees the best of me. When I’ve thought up lots of funny stories to tell him and I’ve spent ages on my hair and I’m always wearing matching underwear.

  ‘So do you think it’s too soon to live with him?’ Gabi cuts into my thoughts, direct as ever.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just that at the moment whenever I see him we do something.’

  Gabi wiggles her eyebrows up and down.

  ‘No! I mean something romantic. Like an activity.’

  ‘I understand,’ says Gabi solemnly. ‘You’re very active.’ And then she winks.

  ‘I mean like punting or going to a castle!’ I can feel my cheeks burning.

  ‘Okay!’ Gabi laughs. ‘So you’re worried that when you’re not doing romantic activities . . .’

  ‘He’ll find me boring. And then he’ll see that I get really stroppy when my laptop doesn’t work. And sometimes I go to bed at nine o’clock. And I don’t usually sleep in my underwear – I have really comfy pyjamas with bears on them.’

  She shrieks with laughter. ‘In other words, he’ll discover that you’re a normal human?’

  I look up at her. ‘Am I?’

  Gabi nods. ‘I think he’ll be relieved, to be honest. And I know for a fact that his pyjamas have cows on.’

  She blinks and there’s a brief pause. She got on really well with Cal before she broke up with Max. Cal’s too nice to say anything, but I know he’s wary that his brother’s going to get hurt again.

  ‘Next!’ Gabi shouts, a little too loudly, and moves her finger down the list. ‘Well, your parents won’t find out about your sleeping arrangements unless you phone them up and tell them.’ She gives me a warning look. I know she’s thinking about the bunking-off-from-college incident, when I phoned the reception to confess after only an hour.

  ‘Number five. Yes, you do worry too much. But you know the solution to that, don’t you?’

  She’s looking at me knowingly, but I have no idea what she means.

  ‘Drugs?’

  Gabi’s eyes go wide. ‘God, no. Seriously, Rosie. You’re paranoid enough without drugs. No, it’s this.’ She points at herself and then at me, and moves her hand back and forth between us, whacking me on the boob.

  I look at her questioningly and fold my arms across my chest for protection.

  ‘Talking! You have to tell us when you’re worried. It will make you feel better.’

  I start fiddling with my fingers again. I know it will. Nish, Mia and Gabi are my best friends in the world ever. Whenever one of the four of us has a problem we all drop everything and have a crisis coffee.

  Only it’s never me who has the problem. Gabi and Mia moan about their summer jobs, whereas I have a paid work placement. (Nish gets a double allowance because her parents are divorced, so spends her free time shopping, but she does have to listen to her parents slag each other off.) They are all worried about getting into uni, while I’m pretty much there with the module marks I’ve got already. And while Nish mutters about her girlfriend Effie abandoning her to study in Paris, and Mia moans about Jamie’s lack of enthusiasm about their year in Australia, and Gabi gets confused about her feelings for Max, I have my perfect relationship, where we never argue and spend romantic weekends together in Oxford.

  ‘Oh come here,’ Gabi says, seeing that I’ve gone back into thinking rather than talking again. She pulls me towards her into a big hug. It feels warm. I can smell Gabi’s straightened hair and that citrusy perfume she wears.

  I pat her on the back. Because that is what socially awkward people do.

  ‘You know what happens when you keep things bottled up,’ says Gabi. ‘I don’t want to have to come to Oxford to pick you up off the floor.’

  I got so stressed during exams that I fainted a couple of times. Once publicly, in the canteen at college.

  ‘Oh, don’t remind me!’ I say.

  ‘Well, at least your medical problem is quite a romantic one,’ says Gabi. ‘Swooning is a way for heroines in books to be ill, but still attractive, isn’t it? All I’ve got is that I get gassy after eating too much cheese and there’s nothing sexy about that.’

  My phone buzzes in my bag.

  ‘Who is it?’ says Gabi, who doesn’t think that it might be nosy to ask someone that. She wants to know who it is, so she asks.

  ‘It’s Cal. He says he’s got a new housemate.’

  6. My boyfriend is going to leave me for the insanely hot girl who is moving into his house.

  Dear M,

  I realise this is a little old school, writing you a letter. But you were always a Luddite with your brick phone and aversion to social media. So I thought you’d appreciate it. And I remember you saying that it was a shame that everything we write is on c
omputers, so no one leaves a physical impression on the world when they’re gone. I told you to stop being such an English student.

  So here is a letter. It’s on nice paper and everything.

  Now I just have to work out what to write.

  Writing a letter makes it feel like you should say something profound or poetic or meaningful. But it’s four o’clock on a dull Saturday and I haven’t had any coffee, so I’m just going to tell you what I’ve been up to.

  I moved out of college and into a house-share. It’s with four guys, all of whom are on the cusp of moron, but the upside to that is that they weren’t too curious about why I’m not living in halls. One of them (Simon – large, has the air of a sex offender) didn’t seem curious about anything except whether my top would turn see-through if he stared at my tits for long enough.

  In the interview thing I asked them what they each bring to the house. Arlo (has an afro and glasses – loves computers, which says enough) said he has a car if I ever ‘need a lift to Asda’. I said that sounded great – if hell freezes over. Or I forget Mum’s Ocado log-in.

  The third housemate, Cal, seemed permanently happy. On drugs, possibly. Or just a bit simple. You know I distrust people who seem too cheerful. But he did suggest a trip to the pub to celebrate the new housing arrangements, so he went up in my estimation slightly. I have time for someone who believes it is never too early for a gin and tonic. He seems to also believe that it’s acceptable to wear pyjamas in the daytime, which it is not. The pyjamas have cows on.

  After about half an hour it was all sorted, as long as their fourth housemate didn’t have any objections.

  We will all be living in the house over the summer, apparently. Which is unfortunate, because I was hoping to be alone. They’ll be here because they have jobs. Me – well, I was vague. About that and everything. Luckily, just as they asked me where I was living last year, I heard the front gate creak and I looked out of the window. The fourth housemate was coming down the front path pushing a bike. I had two thoughts – 1) this guy has the haircut of a boy-band member, 2) bikes will go round the back when I live here. Or preferably in the bin. The guy looked through the window right at me and I realised that I knew him.