Maxwell's Retirement Read Online Free PDF Page B

nothing to do with my subjects. It’s this.’ She held up her mobile phone, which obediently bleeped for an incoming message. She dissolved into tearsagain. ‘It just keeps on and on. I can’t stand it.’
    If Maxwell was confused before, he was totally at sea now. ‘Can’t you just turn it off?’ This was, after all, his own preferred method.
    ‘That doesn’t help, Max,’ Jacquie said, absently patting Julie on the back. ‘The messages are there when you switch the phone back on. They’re not like calls. They are automatically stored on the phone.’
    ‘I think I knew that,’ Maxwell said, uncertainly. A distant memory from a long-ago reading of an instruction manual rose to the surface. ‘I seem to think you can block a caller.’ His hatred of the moronic interrogative prevented him from making the statement a question, but it was one, nonetheless.
    Julie and Jacquie looked at him, their eyes big with concern. Their worlds had rocked on their axes. Jacquie was the first to recover the power of speech.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, only just biting back the ‘well done, dear’. ‘You can do that, but not when the caller withholds their number. You can block all withheld numbers, but of course that means that anyone you
know
who habitually does that would be blocked as well.’
    ‘Yes,’ Julie said. ‘That’s the problem. My stepdad is a doctor and he withholds his number. He often has to ring me, or text, and so I can’t block withheld numbers.’
    Maxwell seemed to see a simple answer just in front of their noses. ‘Can’t he
unblock
his number when he texts or rings you?’ It seemed too simple to be true.
    ‘It’s a bit of a faff,’ Julie said. ‘He wouldn’t always have the time. Anyway …’ she looked at Jacquie, asking for help.
    ‘Julie hasn’t told anyone about this,’ she said, giving Maxwell what he had learnt to consider The Look. ‘She hasn’t even told her friends. The texts are not very friendly, Max. In fact, they are really very disturbing.’
    ‘Can we see one?’
    ‘I delete them straight away,’ the girl said. ‘I just don’t want to have them on my phone. It’s spoilt everything, you know,’ she burst out. ‘I used to love it when I got a message.’ She looked at Jacquie. ‘I had a little bird tweeting for when I got a text. It made me really happy, somebody wanted to say something to me, even if it was just “Hi”. But now, I just dread it. I don’t have my little bird any more. Just a beep.’
    Maxwell reached across the table. Political correctness be blowed, he just wanted to hold her hand. He racked his Head of Sixth Form brain to try and recall her family situation. Stepdad, obviously, she had just told them that. But, who else was part of her family? Slowly, the details emerged. Stepfather, quite high-powered at Leighford General and very driven.Had clearly had a radical humourectomy at an early stage. Mother, blonde, socially mobile from the Barlichway estate to a detached executive home and looking for more. She used her one brain cell for that sole purpose. One sister, older and at university. Two half-brothers, twins and as precocious and unpleasant a pair of seven-year -olds as Maxwell had met in his many long days marching. They had come to the Christmas concert and had almost single-handedly – perhaps ‘double-handedly’ was more appropriate – led one of Santa’s little helpers the rest of the way to the nervous breakdown begun by her being Head of Social and Religious Studies. They reminded him of the Boys from Brazil. But he didn’t say any of this.
    ‘Julie, I know you find it difficult, but your friends love you and so do your family. You must let them know what’s happening.’
    The girl snorted. ‘Friends! Well, they wouldn’t care. And as for family – I don’t think they’d notice if I just disappeared. Puff of smoke. The first thing they’d know would be when they needed someone to collect Neeheeoeewootis and Vaiveahtoish