Unstoppable Read online

  This book is dedicated to:

  My dad, Brian Freedman

  My teacher, Dave Baldwin

  My friend, Ugo Ehiogu

  14 YEARS AGO

  Two newborn babies are lying, side by side, in a cot.

  They are twins, but they are different.

  A girl and a boy.

  The girl was born first, late into the night.

  The boy followed soon after.

  The girl has light skin and is punching out her arms.

  The boy has darker skin. He is quiet and calm.

  They clasp one another’s hands.

  They are one.

  INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  14 YEARS AGO

  PART 1: FIRST CUT

  PRESENT DAY SUNDAY

  MONDAY

  TUESDAY

  WEDNESDAY

  PART 2: KNIFE EDGE

  THURSDAY

  FRIDAY

  SATURDAY

  SUNDAY

  PART 3: COME BACK

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  PART 4: NEVER ORDINARY

  ONE WEEK LATER

  EPILOGUE: ONE WEEK LATER

  SEVEN YEARS LATER

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ALSO BY DAN FREEDMAN

  COPYRIGHT

  PART 1

  FIRST CUT

  PRESENT DAY

  SUNDAY

  Roxy Campbell looked at her watch. The hairdresser would be arriving any minute, but there was still time.

  She stared out of the window. From her brother Kaine’s room she could look out across the whole of the Compton Estate and down the five floors to the tarmac sports court where he was playing football.

  She could see that, as usual, he was showing off. He had just kicked the ball between his opponent’s legs and was now taunting that same opponent for not having been able to stop him. Why did he have to be such an idiot? He brought trouble upon himself.

  Navigating her way through the strewn mess of trousers, shorts and socks on the floor, she picked up his right football boot and, using her mum’s sharpest scissors, started to make two small incisions on either side of the tongue. They wouldn’t be seen, but they would do the damage that she required.

  Guilt stabbed her from the inside. But she carried on, picking up the left boot to replicate the damage.

  The doorbell went, and Roxy heard her mum answer it and welcome Simone inside. She carefully placed Kaine’s boots back where she had found them and left the room.

  Kaine had already taken the ball past Rufus Blackstock once, but he went back and did it again, just to show how easy it was.

  ‘You think you can make me look stupid?’ Rufus said, pushing Kaine hard in the chest. ‘Try it one more time and I’ll break your legs.’

  ‘Who do you think you’re pushing?’ Kaine responded, shoving his rival back with such force that he nearly fell over.

  ‘Leave it, Kaine!’ said Alonso Jackson, trying to pull Kaine away.

  ‘He started it!’ said Kaine, spitting on the ground and pulling AJ’s arm off him as they walked back into their own half. He was still muttering to himself as the game quickly kicked off again.

  Kaine immediately called for the ball and watched as the goalkeeper bowled a high throw straight out to him. Sensing Rufus rampaging towards him from behind, Kaine both controlled the ball and turned in one touch before lashing a strike towards the goal with such ferocity that the goalkeeper couldn’t get out of the way quick enough.

  ‘How d’you like me now?’ Kaine shouted, going right up to Rufus’s face to celebrate. ‘You’re just upset cos you’re even uglier than your mum!’

  ‘What did you say about my mum?’

  ‘You heard me!’

  ‘I’m gonna kill you,’ said Rufus. ‘You’re dead. I promise you. You’re dead.’

  He drew his finger across his neck in a throat-slitting gesture, but Kaine just laughed. He knew if someone said something like that about his own mum, he would go ballistic at them too. He decided to carry on and wind Rufus up a bit more.

  ‘Yeah, mate, I’m really scared,’ Kaine said. ‘Your mum’s more scary than you are. Especially when she tries to kiss me!’

  ‘There,’ said Simone, using her own small mirror to show Roxy what her hair looked like from behind. ‘What do you think?’

  They were sitting on the bed in Roxy’s small, but well ordered, room. Roxy nodded at Simone and took hold of the mirror herself to make a closer inspection from different angles. Finally, she smiled.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ she said, getting up and marching into the living room. ‘Mum, Dad, look! What do you think?’

  ‘You look beautiful,’ said Samantha Campbell, giving Roxy a kiss. ‘I’m just sorry it took so long to give you your present … it’s just, well, you know … Anyway,’ she said, looking at Roxy’s dad, ‘with any luck things will get a bit easier soon.’

  It had been three weeks since the twins had turned fourteen, but with only their mum’s income to support the whole family, their presents had been delayed. The front door burst open and in walked Kaine and AJ. Roxy immediately felt her body tense up.

  ‘Ha!’ said Kaine, seeing everyone gathered by the mirror in the living room. ‘Trying to get people to look at your hair so they don’t concentrate on the rest of you, Roxy?’

  Roxy looked at Kaine. No matter how many times he was cruel to her, it always hurt. And when it was in front of AJ, it cut like a dagger.

  ‘Go away, Kaine!’ she said. ‘You can talk! When are you going to get your hair cut? You don’t look cool, you know!’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, elbowing AJ in the ribs. ‘Like she knows anything about cool! Anyway, Mum, when am I going to get my trainers? How come she’s got her birthday present, but I haven’t got mine?’

  ‘We told you, soon, Kaine!’ Daryll Campbell said.

  ‘I’m asking Mum, not you!’ said Kaine. ‘We all know she’s the one paying for it.’

  Roxy could see the vein in the side of her dad’s neck starting to bulge. She knew it was only the presence of Simone in the room that was stopping things from getting ugly between him and Kaine.

  But Kaine was already going, stomping across the hallway to his room. ‘Come on, AJ,’ he called. ‘FIFA. Now. I’m gonna smash you up, boy.’

  ‘Well, I think you look great,’ AJ quietly said to Roxy, giving her his cheeky smile before dashing after Kaine.

  Roxy could feel herself blushing but did her best to quell it. Especially in front of her dad.

  Later that evening, Roxy stared into the bathroom mirror at her own reflection. She wondered what the girls at school would make of her new look on Monday morning.

  She missed Jasmine. They had been so close from Year 7 onwards but, since Tochi had come on the scene, they had drifted apart, and the last few times Jasmine had asked her to come to the chicken shop or to have pizza, Roxy had said she couldn’t – there was no way her dad would let her eat junk food.

  Now Jasmine and most of the other girls had boyfriends, and when they did hang out together as just the girls, they’d stopped inviting Roxy. It made Roxy jealous to see them all together in school, and the fact that they all had boyfriends somehow made them feel older than her, even though they were all in the same year. The only way she knew what was happening in their lives was by following their accounts and looking at their photos.

  She consoled herself with the fact that AJ had said that she looked good. But what did he really mean? Was he trying to give her some kind of message?

  ‘What are you doing in there, Roxy?’ said her mum, banging impatiently on the bathroom door. ‘You know your dad needs to shave his head before tomorrow. There won’t be time in the mor
ning.’

  Roxy unlocked the door and her dad pushed his big frame straight past her. Sometimes, when she wasn’t on the tennis court, she felt as though he barely noticed her. She could see the nervousness in his eyes and sense the tension that was already in his body. Everyone in the family knew that if he didn’t get that job the next day, their lives would get even harder.

  As he arrived home and put the previous night’s dinner into the microwave, Noel Kerrigan, Deputy Principal at Compton Academy, found himself still thinking about Kaine Campbell.

  He’d been doing some marking at school, and on his way home had stopped by the Compton Estate to see what was happening. The boys had been playing football and he’d stayed to watch for a few minutes. It wasn’t Kaine’s goal that he couldn’t get out of his mind. And it wasn’t the fact that the game had nearly descended into a brawl that he was thinking about right now either – though he would need to mention it to Mrs Buckland.

  It was that one touch: Kaine’s exquisite, arrogant piece of skill from the keeper’s long throw. With each passing day, he was becoming more and more convinced that Kaine Campbell – his Year 9 pupil at Compton Academy – was a natural-born footballer.

  He took a swig of his beer and checked the time. It was late, nearly 11 p.m., but he picked up his phone and made the call anyway. It rang out, so he left a message.

  ‘Brian? Noel Kerrigan here, mate. Listen, are you still scouting for Southampton? There’s a kid, Brian. He’s fourteen. We’ve got a school match on Wednesday. I think you should come and have a look at him.’

  MONDAY

  Lying in his bed, Kaine heard his parents and Roxy leave. They all had their busy little lives that they felt were so important. His dad and Roxy would be going to school to use the court there, and his mum would be starting her shift at the care home. Standard. His window was open, so he could hear them traipsing down the steps.

  As their footsteps slowly faded away, a feeling of peace and calm finally washed over Kaine. They were gone. At last. He’d had it with all of them. His dad and Roxy’s partnership or tennis obsession – or whatever they wanted to call it – weirded him out. He knew that Roxy wasn’t the sweet little girl that she liked to make everyone think. She was way more devious than that, but he was the only one that could see straight through the act.

  Meanwhile, his mum may as well not have existed. The only thing she ever did now was work all hours of the day. She hardly ever cooked for Kaine and Roxy any more. She just kept saying that since everything relied on her job, if she didn’t get to the care home on time, then there’d be no food to eat anyway.

  Now he had the flat to himself, Kaine could breathe. Just knowing that none of them were there made the world a far better place. He checked the time on his alarm clock: 7.04 a.m. He could have another whole hour’s sleep and a couple of games of FIFA before he even had to think about getting to school.

  And if he was late, who cared anyway? The first lesson was history, and Kaine knew he could get away with whatever he wanted with Mr Hollis. The man never seemed to get angry. The week before, when Mr Hollis was explaining about the Gunpowder Plot and asked if anyone had any questions, Kaine had put up his hand and, with a completely straight face, said: ‘Sir, it’s not about the plot itself but … I had a curry last night and my bum honestly feels like it’s on fire now, do you mind if I scratch it?’

  Kaine made himself laugh just thinking about it. He knew school wasn’t what was going to be important in his life. Only football was. His teachers could waste their time talking about irrelevant facts, but he didn’t have to listen.

  He turned over and tried to get back to sleep but he could hear his stomach grumbling. What he would do for one of Mamma’s home-cooked meals now.

  ‘You are a tricky customer, Kaine Campbell, but I know how to get round you.’ Mamma smiled as she produced her world-famous salt fish and cou-cou special.

  The sweet smell filled the air, and Kaine could already taste the flavours in his mouth before he had even taken his first bite. A cut of cod, served with cou-cou (which was made mainly from cornmeal), sweet potato, a hard-boiled egg and, best of all, everything drenched in a smooth, buttery tomato sauce, the dish was so good that every time Kaine tasted it, he thought he had died and gone to heaven.

  Kaine had been refusing to get his hair cut for weeks, and it had been getting more and more out of control until finally, Remmy – or Mamma as she liked to be called by her grandchildren – had come up with a solution to the problem, just as she always seemed to whenever there was an issue in Kaine’s life.

  Her proposal had been a simple one, which had been to both parties’ satisfaction: one haircut in exchange for one of her trademark home-made dishes from Barbados. She watched as Kaine launched himself into the succulent dish, chewing and nodding vigorously.

  ‘Success?’

  ‘Big success!’ Kaine nodded. ‘I’m so hungry.’

  ‘Doesn’t your mother cook for you?’ said Mamma. ‘What’s wrong with her? Don’t you worry. I’ll speak to her. So, eat. A hungry man is an angry man.’

  Kaine did as he was told, savouring each mouthful. While he was eating, he counted all of his grandmother’s sprinting medals. From Combermere School all the way through to the National Track Finals, they charted her success during her days growing up in Barbados. Now they were all proudly displayed on her walls.

  ‘How do you know me so well, Mamma?’ he asked.

  ‘Listen to me, young man,’ she said, fixing him with her stare. ‘I knew about you before you even existed. I told Sam she was having twins before the doctor did. It was quite a big deal. And, don’t forget, they weren’t even married at the time. I was there the day you were born.

  ‘Out came Roxy. She had to be first, of course! There she was, causing a ruckus straightaway; crying, and punching out her little fists. She looked like an angel, but boy she made a noise. And her skin was so light; I couldn’t believe she had come out of Samantha’s body.

  ‘And then out you came, half an hour later, just after midnight. I remember thinking to myself: They’re twins, but they’re going to have different birthdays! And your skin, it was as black as mine and Samantha’s. I never knew twins could look so different!’

  Kaine laughed. He had long since given up trying to convince people who didn’t know him that, genetically at least, he was half-white.

  ‘I knew you instantly, Kaine,’ said his grandmother. ‘You are me. So, don’t be surprised that I know what it takes to get you to cut your hair! And sit up straight when you’re eating – don’t slouch around!’

  Kaine loved his grandmother. She had had a really hard life – the hardest Kaine could imagine – but she was still the best company of anyone that he knew. He took another bite and shook his head at how delicious it was.

  ‘I love being here and being with you, Mamma,’ he said. ‘But don’t you feel like you spend more time with me than you do with Roxy?’

  ‘Listen,’ she said, grabbing his hand. ‘I like spoiling you, Kaine. And don’t worry about Roxy. She won’t allow herself to lose out on too much of anything in life.’

  ‘Run!’ Roxy could hear her dad shouting as she hared around the court, chasing after the continuous stream of balls that he was blasting down.

  Mr Kerrigan had allowed the two of them use of the Academy’s tennis court before school on the strict understanding that they finished by 8.30 a.m. sharp and that Roxy was never late for lessons.

  The balls were coming faster and faster now, her dad raining down shots for her to practise her groundstrokes.

  ‘Take it earlier,’ he shouted. ‘Earlier! Before you can even smell the ball, you need to be into it.’

  Roxy could feel her lungs, her heart and her brain all screaming for her to stop. There was a thumping ache in her head and a searing pain in her thigh, but she knew there were no breaks. The last time she had asked for one, her dad had made the session twice as long.

  Now he seemed to be increasing
the power even further, hammering the balls at her.

  ‘Earlier! Are you listening to me, Roxy?’

  Racing to her right, Roxy mistimed a forehand. The ball clipped the top edge of her racket and ricocheted up into her face. It went straight into her nose and stung painfully. She could feel drops of blood snake their way down her nostril. She sniffed them back up and swallowed them down.

  While her dad was checking a new coaching session on his phone, Roxy scampered around the court’s edges to collect the balls. Slowing down, she practised trying to walk how Jasmine and Tochi did at school. She allowed her hips to move more freely.

  ‘Stop mucking around and come here now, Roxy!’ said Daryll.

  Mortified, Roxy immediately turned the walk into a sprint and headed to the net where he was waiting for her. Looking at the bristles of blondish brown hair on his shaved scalp, his thick, muscly body … there was no doubt where she got her skin colouring and physique from.

  ‘Now, in the Finals on Sunday, Roxy,’ he said, ‘I want you to destroy every opponent you face. Whatever their weak spot is, you find it, you seek it out, and then you go in for the kill. OK?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Good,’ Daryll continued. ‘We know all the other players. The only one you have to worry about is Annabelle Taylor.’

  Roxy grimaced. Annabelle Taylor was the player she hated playing against more than any other. Not only did she have the infuriating habit of bouncing the ball way too many times before serving but, the last time they had faced each other in a tournament, at the change of ends, Annabelle had held her nose and asked Roxy when she had last taken a shower. It had put Roxy off, and after she had lost, her dad had refused to speak to her for two whole days.

  ‘She’s been training in America over Easter, working on her serving and volleying,’ he said. ‘So, if she’s going to come to the net, what do we need to work on?’