The hammer rang once. A spark jumped off the anvil and did not go out. It waited. They followed.

It was the first Saturday of September, and Tara had worked out, lying awake the night before, that it was the first Saturday of her last year on the Green.

Next September she would be gone. She had not decided where yet. There were five boxes on a form, five universities, and she had filled in three of them in pencil. But wherever it was, it would not be here. It would not be the Whetstone café, or the bench by the pond, or the route to school past the bakery that sold broken biscuits by the bag. A year from now, all of this would be the place she came back to.

She had decided, lying awake, that she wanted to do something this year that was just for her. Not homework, not the Gazette, not looking after Danya when his parents were out. Something with her hands and her body that had nothing to do with essays.

Juno had the answer before breakfast.

Juno was her oldest friend, a fast-talking, quick-climbing girl who had been doing gymnastics since she could walk and had recently given it up because her knees hurt. A climbing wall had opened on the old industrial estate behind the railway, in what had been a carpet warehouse. It was called the Crag, which Tara thought was a slightly silly name for a building, and it had a teen membership.

"Twenty-eight pounds a month," said Juno on the phone. "And the first month is free if you join by Sunday. Come today. I need a partner for the ropes. You can't top-rope on your own."

Tara did not know what top-rope meant. But she liked the sound of it.

The Crag smelled of chalk and rubber and something like a new trainer. The walls went up to the old warehouse roof, covered in coloured handholds like a pack of sweets spilled across a cliff. People Tara recognised from school were halfway up them.

At the front desk was a girl from the year below, Rena, who worked there on Saturdays. Everybody called her Renewal, because she was the one who handed out the membership forms, and once, in a school debate on contracts, she had argued so well that the nickname stuck.

"Teen membership?" said Renewal. "It's on the tablet. Fill in your details, tick at the bottom, and you can climb today."

The tablet had a form on it. Name, address, date of birth, a box for a parent's signature because Tara was seventeen, emergency contact. Then a long grey block of text in small letters, which began Terms and Conditions of Membership and went on, as far as Tara could tell by flicking it with her thumb, for ever.

At the bottom was a box. I have read and agree to the Terms and Conditions.

Juno was already in her harness by the bouldering mats, waving.

Tara scrolled, and scrolled, and the grey text slid past like a train going by. Everyone ticked these boxes. She had ticked dozens of them, for games and apps and a library card. Nothing bad had ever happened. She reached for the tick.

Renewal put her hand flat on the side of the tablet.

"It renews unless you stop it," said Renewal, quietly, so that the man behind Tara in the queue would not hear. "Sorry. I'm supposed to just let people tick. But look for the word 'automatically'. It's in clause six."

Tara took her hand back from the box.

Renewal scrolled the grey text up with one finger, past the parts about lockers and lost property and what happened if you dropped a weight on someone, and stopped.

6. Term and renewal. The Membership has a minimum term of twelve (12) months from the start date. At the end of the minimum term, the Membership will renew automatically for a further twelve (12) months unless the Member gives not less than thirty (30) days' written notice of cancellation before the renewal date.

Tara read it twice.

"So it doesn't just stop after a year," she said.

"It renews unless you stop it," said Renewal. "Silence counts as yes here. Lots of places do it. You have to act to stop paying."

Redline had come over from the café counter with a coffee. Her real name was Delphine. She was in Tara's year and had a habit, famous across the whole sixth form, of marking up everything she signed with a red pen: permission slips, phone contracts, the form for the school ski trip. She had once returned a dentist's consent form with four questions in the margin.

"Read the small print out loud," said Redline. "It's easier to hear than to read."

Tara read clause six aloud, and then she did the thing she had not done while scrolling. She counted. She was joining in September. Twelve months from September was September. The renewal would happen in September, and the thirty days' notice would have to be given in August.

In August next year she would be packing her room into boxes. She would be saying goodbye to her grandmother, and to Danya, and to the Green. She would be working out how to get a duvet onto a train.

"When is the deadline to say no?" said Renewal.

"The month I leave," said Tara.

Fee was at the next table, eating a flapjack. Fee was really Felicity, and she had once, at the age of sixteen, paid a ninety-pound penalty to leave a phone contract she had signed in a hurry. She had never got over it. She talked about it the way some people talked about a bad haircut, with a kind of fond horror.

"What does it cost to leave?" said Fee, leaning over. "Before the year's up, I mean. That's the bit people never look at."

Renewal scrolled again. Clause nine. A Member who cancels before the end of the minimum term will be charged an early termination fee of £90.

"The fee is there to keep you," said Fee. "Price the exit before you sign. Then add it all up."

She told them about the phone. She had been sixteen, in a shop on the high street, and the salesman had been friendly and quick and had said the word upgrade a great many times. She had signed on a screen much like this one. Two months later she had found a cheaper deal and tried to leave, and a different, less friendly man on the phone had read her a clause she had never seen. Ninety pounds, he had said, to end the contract early. She had paid it out of the money she had saved for a festival ticket, and she had not gone to the festival.

"The worst bit," said Fee, "wasn't the money. It was that it was all written down. I'd agreed to it. I'd just never looked at the part about leaving. I only ever looked at the part about joining."

Danya had come in with Tara's grandmother, who was on her way to the shops and had wanted to see what a climbing wall looked like inside. Danya asked for a pen and a napkin and made himself the secretary.

They worked it out together.

The first month was free. After that, eleven months at twenty-eight pounds. Danya did it in his head and then checked it on the napkin. Three hundred and eight pounds for the year.

If Tara forgot to cancel in August and the membership renewed, that would be another twelve months at twenty-eight, three hundred and thirty-six pounds, for a wall in a town she no longer lived in. Or she could leave early from the second year, and pay ninety pounds for the door.

"Is there another way?" said Tara.

Renewal pointed at a board behind the desk. Pay as you climb: £9 per visit.

"How often would you come?" said Fee.

Tara thought. With school and the Gazette and her A-levels, perhaps three times a month. Danya wrote it down. Nine pounds, three times a month, twelve months. Three hundred and twenty-four pounds, and nothing to cancel, ever.

They looked at the napkin. Three hundred and eight, and a deadline in August. Three hundred and twenty-four, and no deadline at all.

"It's nearly the same," said Danya, sounding disappointed. He had wanted one of them to be obviously wrong.

Cancel arrived just as Tara was beginning to feel that the Crag was a trap built out of coloured handholds.

Cancel was really Kenji, and he was the most law-minded person Tara knew. He had read, for reasons nobody fully understood, the membership contracts of every gym and pool and sports centre in town, and he kept a spreadsheet of them. He was not alarmed by contracts. He seemed to find them restful.

He read clauses six and nine on the tablet, and then, to Tara's surprise, he defended them.

"A fair exit isn't a red flag," said Cancel. "Look. The notice period is thirty days, and it's the same both ways. If they want to end your membership, they give you thirty days too. You can cancel by email; it says so in clause ten. Some places make you write a letter and post it, or ring a number nobody answers. This one doesn't."

"But the renewal," said Tara.

"The renewal is how a small wall keeps a teen price at twenty-eight pounds," said Cancel. "They have to pay rent on a warehouse every month whether you come or not. If everyone paid as they went and stopped in the winter, they'd have to charge everyone more, or close. A minimum term isn't a trick. It's a deal: you promise them a year, they give you a cheaper price. Both sides can leave on the same terms."

Fee made a face. "The fee's still ninety quid."

"The fee is real," said Cancel. "I'm not saying it isn't. I'm saying this contract is ordinary."

He took out his phone and opened the spreadsheet. "Look at this one instead. A gym on the ring road. Twelve months minimum, then it rolls on monthly for ever. To cancel you have to give ninety days' notice, in a signed letter, sent by recorded post, to an address in another city. If they lose the letter, you're still a member. And they can put the price up whenever they like, with seven days' notice, but you can't leave when they do."

Tara read it. It was a different kind of document altogether. Every door in it opened only one way.

"Both sides can leave on the same terms?" said Cancel. "That's the question I ask first. Here, no. At the Crag, yes. Write down the date you'd have to tell them, and the Crag's exit is just a date. The ring-road gym's exit is a maze."

"So this one isn't a trap," said Tara.

"Not a trap," said Cancel. "A deadline. The question isn't whether it's fair. It's whether you'll remember to use the exit."

Tara looked across at Renewal, who was serving the man from the queue. Renewal had stopped Tara's hand, and she worked here, and she seemed to like the Crag. Both things were true at once.

Tara thought about next August. She had been planning to be a different person by then: someone with a room in a hall of residence, and a reading list, and a new bus route. She found she could not quite picture that person remembering to send an email to a climbing wall on the right day.

Juno came over from the mats, chalk to the elbows, slightly out of breath.

"Are you joining or not? The free month ends tomorrow. I've been waiting forty minutes. There's a route on the green wall I can't do without someone belaying me."

She was not being pushy. She was lonely on the ropes, and Tara was her oldest friend, and she had found something she loved after giving up the thing she had loved before. She wanted Tara in it with her.

Tara's grandmother, who had been examining the coloured handholds with deep suspicion, came back to the desk. "Is it a good deal?" she asked. "In my day you just paid the man."

"It might be," said Tara. "It depends."

Redline slid the tablet back across the desk towards her. Next to it she put the napkin, with Danya's sums in pencil and two little circles in red ink: one round £308 + August, one round £324, no deadline. Underneath, in Danya's careful handwriting, was the whole ledger:

Join today: £308 for the year. Renews in September unless I email by August. Leaving early: £90. Pay as I climb: £9 a time. About £324. Nothing to cancel. Juno: wants a partner every Saturday. Me: leaving next September.

There was no answer written at the bottom. Danya had left the last line blank.

"Never sign anything unread," said Redline. "You've read it now. So what are you agreeing to, in your own words? Say it before you tick. Then it's yours."

Juno waited. Renewal waited. Cancel and Fee, at the next table, had stopped arguing. The tick box sat at the bottom of the grey text, and the cursor blinked beside it.

Tara picked up the stylus.

 

 

(Write what Tara says, or writes on the form.)

 

The spark dimmed to a warm dot and settled back on the anvil. The Green was just the Green again.

Back on the Green

That afternoon Danya was given a sticker book that came free with a comic. On the back, in tiny letters, it said that the sticker club would send him a new pack every month for £3.99 unless a parent cancels.

He took it to his mum, read the line out loud, and asked, "When would we have to say no?" Then he wrote the date on the family calendar himself, in red.

Afterword. The idea in this case is reading the exit before you sign. Many memberships and subscriptions renew automatically: you keep being charged unless you act to stop, by a deadline. Others charge an early termination fee to make leaving expensive. Neither is always a trick. A minimum term can be a fair deal, and a fair, symmetric exit, the same notice for both sides and an easy way to cancel, is a good sign rather than a bad one. The useful habit is to find three things before you agree: when it renews, what it costs to leave, and how you actually get out, and then to say in your own words what you are signing up for. Laws on renewals and cancelling differ from country to country and change over time, so the actual contract always comes first. You can practise reading real-looking contracts, and telling a trap from an ordinary term, in ClauseDojo.