Chapter 13

I sat in my room thinking.

I knew that I needed to trust Cal, or this wasn’t going to work, but I was surprised that Mum didn’t know she would be home that night. Especially as I’d got the impression that these rehearsals were a regular occurrence. And if I let that start digging holes in that trust then we had no chance of lasting.

I pulled out my phone and sent her a text, asking her ring me when she was free.

I was surprised when my phone rang almost immediately.

“Hi,” she said as I answered, “how did the test go, did you manage to scrape through?”

“Just about,” I replied.

“How many marks did you get?”

“Er, fifty on the multiple choice and seventy-four on the hazard perception.”

“That’s brilliant, well done,” she said, “I’ll give you your reward later.”

“I thought you were staying with your Mum tonight.”

“I was, but we have something to celebrate.”

“Won’t she be upset?”

“Not if I explain it right.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“How about, ‘Mum, I’m not coming home tonight, I’m going back to Manchester to let David fuck me any way he wants’?”

“I’m not sure that wouldn’t come under the TMI category.”

“Then how about, ‘David and I are working hard to reconnect and see if we can recover at least some of what we had before, so I need to spend as much time with him as possible’?”

“That’s better,” I said.

“Or I could compromise and just tell her I want to spend as much time naked with you inside me as I can.”

“Cal, when did you develop this new skill of talking dirty.”

“Nearly a year living in a girls dormitory in a boarding school,” she replied, “you should give it a try.”

“I’d probably die, or at least go blind.”

She laughed and I joined her.

“Do you mind me talking dirty to you?” she asked.

“My love, if you could see the front of my trousers right now, you wouldn’t be asking that.”

We both laughed.

“I have to get back to rehearsal, I’ll see you tonight, love you,” she said.

“Me too, see you later.”

We hung up and I got back to studying after a quick call to my driving instructor to let him know about my pass.

He congratulated me and suggested that this time next week, all being well, I’d be ready for the real thing.

“You think so?” I asked.

“I think you’re ready now in terms of the mechanics of driving, we just need to get you more experience at real world driving.”

“Really? That’s great.”

“You’re a good driver David, you just need a little more practice.”

“I think I may be going home this weekend, so I’ll see if my parents will let me do some driving in one of their cars.”

“That would be good, just remember whoever is in the passenger seat must be over twenty-one.”

“I will, I’ll see you at the usual time tomorrow.”

I spent the evening working on a programme I had to write for my A level, breaking for half an hour to go downstairs to the hotel bar and grab a burger and continuing right up until twenty past ten when there was a tap on the door.

The peephole confirmed that it was Cal standing on the other side of the door and I opened it.

“How was rehearsing?” I asked.

“Boring and tiring,” she said, “I’ve got the notes all right, but I need to work on my pronunciation.”

“Maybe I can help with that,” I suggested.

“Would you?”

“Of course,” I said, “do you have a recording of just the music?”

“I have a piano track, would that do?”

“Can you sing along with it?”

“Yes.”

“Then it will do. How about tomorrow after school.”

“Why not now?”

Because it’s ten thirty and you have to be up for school tomorrow and I have to be up to go driving.”

“And we need to celebrate your passing your test.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

She stepped into my arms.

“Guess.”

We awoke at seven the following morning, thanks to the alarm on my phone and showered, separately, dressed and went downstairs for breakfast.

“We must have been tired last night,” Cal said as we waited for the lift.

“Why?”

“We only used one condom.”

“Do you ever think of anything else?” I asked.

“Not when I’m with you.”

“What about when you’re not?”

“Then I think about music a little bit too.”

After breakfast, Cal collected her school stuff from my room and set off to school while I sat in reception with my book to wait for my instructor to arrive at nine.

When he dropped me back off, before I got out of the car, he turned to me.

“David,” he said, looking profoundly serious, “you’re ready, put in for your test. Tick the box that says you’ll take a test at short notice. You just need to practice. I suggest we use the rest of this week to do that and then maybe an hour a day just to keep you sharp.

When I got back to my room I went online and applied for my practical driving test and was disappointed to see that the average waiting period was three weeks, however, I ticked the box to say I’d take a cancellation, entered my details, my debit card number and the number of my theory test certificate and got back a test appointment for the Friday before I was due to go to London.

I’d just finished when Cal arrived, carrying her schoolbag and an overnight bag.

“What do you fancy doing tonight?” I asked.

“Homework,” she sighed, “I’ve got a whole pile.”

“Well, why don’t you do it now and then we can do something later.”

“That sounds like a plan,” she said, “what are we going to do about eating?”

“Depending on timing, we can either eat here or go out somewhere.”

She did her homework and, by the time she’d finished there wasn’t much time to do anything but have dinner. She was right there was a lot of it, much of which involved music manuscript paper and writing parts.

We decided on eating in the hotel and retired back to the room, where we spent an hour working on her pronunciation then used a couple more of the condoms before we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

After showers and breakfast the following morning, Cal let me know that she wouldn’t be able to come over that night, the work she had to do needed the facilities in the practice rooms at the school. It wasn’t a problem and she promised to pick me up after school on the Friday to go home for the weekend.

“I wasn’t aware that I was going home for the weekend,” I objected.

“You are, for two reasons, first you can spend a weekend with me without any distractions and two so that your mother can see how hard we’re working at this which might keep her from trying to act like that Large Hadron Collider thing they have in Switzerland. You know the one where they bang two charged particles together to see what happens.”

“That does sound like Mum, doesn’t it?”

“It does, there’s just one thing though,” she said, sounding a little sad.

“What?”

“My Mum. She’s said you can’t sleep at our house until we are both ready to make this into some sort of commitment at least.”

“Then I’ll just have to spend the nights in my own lonely bed.”

“Should I make you an appointment at the optician?”

She collected her bag from the room and we kissed goodbye at the hotel door before I settled down in reception with my book to wait for my driving lesson.

Cal was waiting for me on Friday when I got back from my lesson and after a quick trip upstairs to do what any teenager living away from home would do when he’s going home for the weekend, packed my dirty washing into my bag for my Mum to do, we loaded ourselves into the car and set off. I’d decided to keep the room on over the weekend, rather than having to move all my stuff out and then back in again.

As Jane Austen never quite said, it is a truth universally acknowledged that in the case of any decision involving both a male of the species and a female of the same species, the female will make a decision, then ask the male if that’s what he wants to do, at which point, the male, in a spirit of self-preservation will agree with the plan and continue as if it had been his idea in the first place.

Which is why, as we reached the turn off on the motorway which would have led us to Brighouse, when Cal said to me, “What do you think about having dinner with my Mum tonight?” I told her what a brilliant idea I thought it was.

The weekend was a break from routine, dinner at Cal’s on Friday, then on Saturday we set off down into the town after lunch to meet up with the gang.

As we walked into the Blue Cup, they all looked up and there were smiles all round as they saw us walking in holding hands.

“Oh, good,” Mike said, “you two are together again.”

“We’re friends,” Cal said, “but we’re working on seeing how it goes. Aren’t we, David?”

“I bet I can guess what the benefits package is,” Keith added.

Everybody laughed, I noticed all the girls glaring at him, but in a friendly way.

I was asked how I was spending the summer.

“Mainly sitting in make-up for an hour or more, then costume for the same sort of time. Then spending the next twelve hours sitting around a film set in order to make about ten minutes of usable film,” I replied.

“We can give you tips on make-up,” Kathy said, “I’m sure we’d make you look good.”

“So, you’re jetting off to Hollywood again?” Dave asked.

“No, we’re filming this one at Pinewood.”

“Why is that?” Jenny asked.

“Cost mainly, it’s a lot cheaper to film in England, even if the weather isn’t as good. Although we will be doing a few days’ worth of location shooting. But it does mean, that if any of you guys want to see the great David J. Barker in action, I could get you in to see a day’s shooting.”

We, in turn caught up with how our friends were doing, the biggest surprise was when Mike held up Jenny’s left hand and we saw the diamond mounted on the slim gold ring there.

“What?” Cal said, “you’re engaged? When?”

“Last weekend,” Jenny answered, “we went to the King’s Manor and when the waiter brought my menu, this fell out of it. Then he went down on one knee and asked me. It took me, oh, seconds to give him my answer.”

“We’re having a party next Saturday if you two can make it.”

“We’ll be there,” Cal said, quickly, “won’t we, David.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

We stayed for another hour, with Cal asking questions about engagements and weddings and girly things like that, while we males discussed rugby and football and manly things like that, then we took our leave with a final round of congratulations to the obviously happy couple and walked back up to Carlton Street.

“Well,” Cal said, “That’s the first two of us down, I wonder who’ll be next?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I didn’t even see that one coming.”