Moderate Violence (14 page)

“Can I come round?” she asked. “I want to talk to you
about something. Not on the phone.”

“Of course!” said Pascale happily. “Hope it’s scandal!”

“It’s not,” said Jo. “See you in half an hour.”

Pascale lived in a boxy white house in a row of boxy
white houses between older, redbrick villas. Some residents had trained flowers
round their doors, or put up fancy shutters. But Pascale’s house remained
unadorned. Jo always thought it looked like a square igloo.

“Hiya!” Pascale, barefoot and looking like an artist’s
model in a flounced skirt and with her hair unbrushed, took both of Jo’s wrists
and dragged her into the hallway. She examined Jo’s face critically. “Are you
sure you’re not ill? Even
you
aren’t
usually this pale.”

“Maybe I need some sun,” Jo reassured her.

Pascale’s hands moved to Jo’s elbows, and she shook them
gently. “Come on, cheer up!” Her fingers found the plaster on Jo’s left arm. She
pushed up the sleeve of her blouse. “What’s this? Have you hurt yourself?”

“Mosquito bite,” said Jo.

Pascale frowned. “Must be a
huge
bite.”

“I picked it and it got infected.”

“Silly!” scolded Pascale, releasing her. “Let’s go in
the garden.”

They went through the house to a tiny lawn on which two
sun loungers and an umbrella had been set up. “Where are your parents?” asked
Jo.

“Shopping. We’re going to Spain tomorrow remember. Got
your sunblock on?”

Pascale plumped herself down on the more comfortable of
the two loungers and pulled her skirt up almost to where her knickers ended. “Must
get my legs brown. I’ll get us something to drink in a minute when Poisonous is
out of the kitchen.”

Pascale’s brother was called Poins. Jo often wondered
how Pascale’s parents, people apparently so unimaginative that they couldn’t
even put a pot plant beside their front door, had come up with their children’s
exotic names. She felt rather sorry for Poins, who was a cheerful boy of about
eleven. The sort of boy who played with Meccano. He had once told her proudly
that his name was in Shakespeare, though he didn’t know which play. Jo had been
determined to find out for him, but only remembered this when she happened to
see, or hear about, Poins.

“Did he ever find out which Shakespeare play his name
is in?” she asked Pascale.

“What do you mean? He’s always known. It’s in
Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2.
Dad
told him that when he was really small, and he’s always trotting it out. He
used to say it to strangers on the bus.”

“Oh,” said Jo. Perhaps she had misunderstood.

“Now, shoot.” Pascale folded her arms and put on her
what-seems-to-be-the-trouble face. “Hol and I thought you and Toby might be
having…you know, The Night. West End restaurant and all that. So did you?”

Jo lay back on the lounger. “Nope.”

“Why not? Was there some problem?” This was what Doctor
Pascale liked to diagnose, ponder, and treat.

“Well, only the same old one,” said Jo.

Pascale made an exaggeratedly horrified face. “You mean
you still don’t know if you want to? Jo, it’s been
months
!”

“Two months and one week.”

“What’s been going on, for God’s sake?”

Lying on the sun lounger was making Jo feel too much
like a patient on the psychiatrist’s couch. She sat forward, her hair swinging
over her face. “It’s been OK, Cal. You know, kissing.”

“Proper kissing?” asked Pascale sharply.

Jo sighed. “Yes, a bit of tongues. But last Friday,
something happened that changed how I felt. I suddenly realized how much I like
him, and he was kissing me, and everything just seemed really nice. Last night,
though, when he’d taken me out to that posh restaurant, and he wanted to do it,
I just
couldn’t
. I felt such a
cow.”

Pascale put her mouth into a line. “Last Friday, when
everything seemed so nice, you didn’t tell him you
love
him, did you?”

Jo said nothing.

“Don’t you know
any
thing,
Jo?

“Look, I just did it,” said Jo, exasperated. “It felt
right at the time.”

“What did he say?” said Pascale in a
prosecuting-counsel voice.

“He…well, he was pretty nice about it.”

Pascale’s eyes were ablaze. “No, what did he actually
say
?”

“He kind of changed the subject.”

“Oh,
Jo
!”

“I know, I’m stupid. It’s just that – ”

“It’s just that he’s doing what blokes always do and
you’re sitting there
letting
him.
Put up a bit of a fight, for the sisters. Girl Power!”

Jo looked at Pascale, expecting her to run her hands
through her hair, like actors when they had to show frustration. But she was
sitting very still, her face in the shade and her legs in the sun, frowning and
thinking.

“You’re too soft, little Jo,” she said. “You need to
toughen up and play the game a bit. I bet when he thought he was going to get
it and didn’t, he was horrible to you, wasn’t he?”

Jo didn’t say anything for a moment. Pascale was right
on both counts. She
was
too soft,
and Toby
had
been horrible to her
last night. But it wasn’t as clear-cut as Pascale thought. “I don’t blame him,
though, Cal,” she said quietly. “It was my fault.”

Pascale let out a strangled shriek. “I don’t believe
I’m hearing this! Of course it wasn’t
your
fault!
You
weren’t horrible,
he
was! Jo, you really have got to be a
bit more hard-nosed!”

This was insane, thought Jo. Two girls sitting in a
garden discussing how to be hard-nosed. Did boys do this? Jo doubted it. “So
what do I do?” she asked obediently.

“Right.” Pascale sat forward. “Don’t contact him. No
call, no text, no email, nothing. If he contacts you, ignore him. When do you
next see him at work?”

“Tuesday.”

“Well, get there early, before he does. When he
arrives, pretend to be talking on your phone. End the call fast when he sees
you, as if you’re talking to someone you don’t want him to know about. Then
bustle away as if you’ve got something really important to do.”

“But he usually gives me a kiss when he comes in.”

“Jo, you’re not going to get
near
enough for him to kiss
you! And ignore him while you get on with your work.”

“He’s upstairs in Menswear most of the time, anyway,”
said Jo, imagining the scene. “But he might corner me in the stock room.”

“If he does, don’t let him
ask
you anything. You know, the ‘have I got the plague or
something?’ questions they always ask. Especially
don’t let him get away with that ‘wrong time of the month,
is it?’ bollocks. The trick is to start talking before he does.”

“What do I say?” Jo wondered if she should be taking
notes.

“You say ‘If you want to apologize, Toby, I’m
listening. If you don’t, then piss off.”

Jo laughed in spite of herself. “Like a teacher! Well,
not the last part, but – ”

“But nothing. Just
do
it. If he cares the smallest bit about you, he’ll come up with some pathetic
excuse. Or perhaps a good one. It depends what level of bullshitter he is. Some
boys can bullshit for England.”

Jo said nothing. She was thinking about the DVD labels.
Toby, with his vague ambitions and nameless, faceless friends did have the
makings of a top class bullshitter. But there wasn’t a label to describe that.

“Come on,” Pascale said, getting up. “Let’s get drinks.”

“I’ll forget all this stuff the moment I see him, you
know,” said Jo as they went into the kitchen.

Pascale opened the fridge. “Look,” she said, leaning on
the door, “just remember that
you’re
asking
questions, not him. Of course, you can let him ask when he can see you again,
and of course you say you’re busy and you’ll call him.
Don’t
let him be the one to call you, and
don’t
be the one to suggest seeing him
again.
He’s
the one in the wrong.
Now, what do you want, Coke or apple juice? Or just water?”

“Apple juice.” Jo was still dubious. She knew from
experience that even when the other person was in the wrong she’d end up
apologizing. If you liked someone, that’s what you did in order to keep them
liking you. “What if he dumps me?” she asked, taking the glass from Pascale,
trying to control the wobble in her voice.

“He’s not going to,” said Pascale with decision. “If
there’s any dumping to be done,
you’re
going to do it.” She smiled gleefully. “You, me and Hol have got a one hundred
percent record on not getting dumped, Jo. And you’re not going to be the one to
spoil it, are you?”

Chapter Nine

Jo tried to get to work early on Tuesday,
but the bus got stuck in traffic. She’d only taken one-and-a-half steps into
the shop when she found her nose buried in Toby’s T-shirt. He held her so
tightly against his chest she couldn’t move.

“Snog on your own time, you two,” said Gordon airily as
he passed.

Jo slid her hands between her chest and Toby’s, and
pushed. He didn’t move, but he got the message. When he released her, his
expression was a mixture of a hard frown and a timid smile. “What’s the
matter?”

Jo didn’t know what to do with her own face. If she
smiled, it would look as if she wasn’t upset any more, which she was. But if
she didn’t smile, she would look like the humourless martyr she put so much
effort into
not
being. In the
end, she settled for raised eyebrows. “What do you think?” she said coldly.

Put up a bit of a fight, Pascale had said. Be tough and
play the game.

Toby followed her down to the Staff Room. Her fingers
shook as they searched her bag for her identity tag. She untangled the ribbon
and put it round her neck. As she flipped her hair out from underneath it she
saw that Toby was staring at her, his face muscles loosened by surprise.

“Is this because I didn’t phone you?” he asked. Then he
seemed to register something, and his eyebrows collided in a frown. “Did you
phone
me
? Because if you did, you
wouldn’t have got me. Someone stole my phone.”

“Really?” Pascale had suggested Toby might come up with
an excuse. “And no, I didn’t phone you.”

“Oh. Well, I had no note of your number, or your
landline. In fact, you’ve never given me it, have you?”

His voice had become reproachful. Jo forced herself not
to apologize.

“I never even thought about it,” she told him. “But you
could have called a directory. You know my address, don’t you? Trevor’s listed
under Probert, T., funnily enough. Or if you were really clever you could have
asked Gordon when you got to work yesterday.” She tried to keep her voice calm,
though being sarcastic made her feel sweaty.

Toby fiddled with the side of his hair. “I bet even if
I
had
got your number, you
wouldn’t have picked up.” He made a faint attempt at a smile. “But anyway, I
didn’t come to work yesterday.”

Jo was surprised. “Why not?”

“I was sick.”

“What was the matter?”

His face tightened. He was bracing himself either to
lie, or confess the truth. “I…um…I got my drink spiked.”

Jo let out an unamused laugh. “Toby, it’s
girls
that get their drinks spiked.”

“Not necessarily. I was in this club in the West End,
and I just sort of fell asleep.”

“In the club?” she asked incredulously.

He nodded, still fiddling with his hair. A sure sign of
a liar. “And when I woke up my phone was gone.”

“And then?” This was getting stupider and stupider.

“I don’t remember. I was drugged. My mate Mitch must
have got me out of the club, because I woke up yesterday on the floor of his
flat. I used his phone to call work.”

Jo was scornful. “So you know Rose and Reed’s number
off by heart, but you don’t know mine?” Her voice almost cracked, but she
tensed her muscles and tried to breathe evenly.

Toby was regarding her sorrowfully. “I’m sorry, Jo, I
just like clubbing, and you’re too young to get in.”

Jo couldn’t look at him any more. She opened the
cupboard where they kept their possessions while they were in the shop. Toby’s
wallet lay in its usual place. “They didn’t take your wallet, then?”

“No.” Toby’s voice was small and unconfident, the
unrehearsed lines sounding very different from the prepared ones he’d come out
with about the spiked drink. “They only seemed to want my phone.”

Jo deposited her bag and turned round. “Hardly seems
worth going to the trouble to drug you, does it? Did you go to the police?”

“Of course not. What could they do?”

“They could tell the management of the club to watch
out for people ‘falling asleep’ on their premises, couldn’t they? Maybe catch
the guy at it?”

“Or the girl,” said Toby with a flash of inspiration. “I
bet it was a girl. Less suspicious.”

“Yeah, maybe. What’s the name of the club? I’ll phone
and tell them that some girl’s spiking men’s drinks to steal their phones. I’m
sure they’ll believe me.”

Toby’s patience was thinning. “Look, Jo, this isn’t fair.
Why can’t – ”

“
Fair
?”

She put all the outrage she could muster into her
stare. Her eyes smarted. Toby didn’t speak. He just went on looking back at
her, and after a few seconds some force buzzing between their brains made him
realize. He slumped against the wall, closing his eyes and opening them again. “Oh,
God. You’re really pissed off about what happened on Saturday night, aren’t
you?”

Jo noticed the pink rims around his eyes, and the
bruise-like smudges underneath them. Hangover? Insomnia? Tears? Don’t give him
the chance to ask anything, Pascale had advised. Answer a question with a
question, like Holly does. “What gives you that idea?” she asked testily.

Toby was silent. He took a brand-new phone out of his
pocket and pressed some keys. “Give me your number again,” he said steadily. “And
your landline.”

Jo ignored this. He’d got away without an apology,
either for Saturday night or for not phoning her. She felt like she’d been
horrible to him for the sake of her pride, and Pascale’s instructions, but she
also felt mildly pleased that she was able to do it. Suddenly, what she had to
say next took shape.

“Please don’t lie to me any more, Toby. I can’t stand
it.”

The grey of his eyes looked dark against the pallor of
his face. “What does that mean?”

She didn’t answer. He fingered the phone in his hand,
turning it round and round, not looking at Jo. Then he seemed to come to a
conclusion, and took in some breath. “Jo, if there’s something you want to say
to me…”

 He was interrupted by Eloise coming downstairs from
the shop. “Come
on
, you two,” she
urged in exasperation. “Gordon’s going nuts up here!”

Toby fingered the phone a bit more, then thrust it into
the cupboard and started up the stairs. Eloise gave Jo a meaningful look as Jo
locked the door behind them. “What’s up with him?”

“Hangover.”

Eloise laughed. “I like to see a bit of loyalty in a
girlfriend! You know he threw a sickie yesterday, don’t you?”

“Yep,” smiled Jo. “And if you didn’t already know, I’d
tell you.”

Eloise laughed again, and squeezed Jo’s arm. “You go,
girl!”

* * * * * *

When Jo got home from work Trevor was
playing chess with Ken at the dining table. She expected her father to nod
without looking up from the board, but he surprised her by raising his head and
addressing her.

“I’m off to Wales tomorrow,” he announced, “to see
Mord. I’m not sure when I’ll be back, so Tess’ll be staying here.”

“
Why
?” asked
Jo in frustration. She sat down. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

Trevor moved a bishop. “She doesn’t think so.”

“And what do
you
think? You know what she’s like.”

He looked at her from under uncombed hair. “The only
way to stop her nagging you, Jo-girl, is to give in on this nonsense about
leaving school.”

“Trevor,
please
don’t call me Jo-girl.” She looked at Ken, who gave a self-conscious smile. “Hello,
Ken,” she said.

“Hello, Jo.”

He went back to studying the chess board. Jo knew he
was embarrassed, and felt sorry for him. She gave Trevor a hard look. “So
you’re definitely doing this thing with Mord, then, are you?”

“We’re discussing it,” he told her. “I can’t make any
definite plans until your mother calms down a bit, and you know…”

“…what she’s like?”

Trevor shoved his hair off his forehead with the back
of his hand. It fell forward again immediately. Jo tried to observe him
objectively, as if he were a stranger. If she saw him on the Tube, or sitting
in the corner of a café reading a newspaper, what would she see? A forty-ish
man who looked like he could do with a good meal, a good wash and a haircut? Would
it even cross her mind that he might be someone’s dad? “Trev,” she said
tolerantly, “I don’t think living with me is exactly going to calm Tess down.”

“Checkmate,” announced Ken, moving pieces busily. “Want
another match, try to even things up?”

Trevor shook his head. His bony shoulders drooped, as
if they couldn’t support the disappointment of losing the chess match, which
was the latest piece of shittiness in a pile that had been building up for a
long time. “I’d rather go to the pub,” he suggested. “Winner buys the first
round.”

“So that’ll be a triple whisky and chaser, then, will
it?” asked Ken cheerfully, getting up and taking his jacket off the back of the
chair.

They both looked at Jo. “Revision to do, Jo-gir…ah,
Jo?” asked Trevor.

Jo sighed. She almost couldn’t be bothered to tell him.
“My exams finished
ages
ago. That’s
why I’ve been at work today, in the shop.” She looked up at him, knowing she
was being irritating but not caring. “I haven’t got to go to school, you see. There’s
nothing to do there. It makes sense really, when you think about it.”

She saw Ken give Trevor a nervous look, half-smiling,
as if he were expecting a fight to break out, of which he would be the
unwilling referee. But the weight on Trevor’s shoulders, or his longing for a
drink, was preoccupying him. He didn’t notice Jo’s sarcasm. To Ken’s evident
relief, all he said was, “See you later, then. Be good.”

When they’d gone she went on sitting at the table for a
few minutes, wondering what she actually
was
going to do with the evening. She glanced at the clock; seven minutes past
seven. She didn’t want to watch TV all alone in the sitting room, or play a
computer game upstairs, or chat on Facebook to people she saw all the time
anyway, or trawl the internet, or read a magazine, or a book…A
book
? After five solid years of
enslavement to books?

She thought about Toby, who had made his escape from
books, apparently without opposition from his sweet-faced mum or his shadowy,
absent dad. All day, she’d been troubled by the uneasy look in his eyes as he’d
stood there in the Staff Room, turning the replacement phone over and over. They’d
avoided each other, Toby upstairs, Jo downstairs. At lunchtime she and Sophie
had gone to a coffee shop without telling him, and at six o’clock Jo had made
sure she got in and out of the Staff Room before Toby came down. It was
childish, but Jo didn’t know what else to do. One of them would have to
approach the other eventually, but she was sure – almost sure, anyway – that it
shouldn’t be her.

What had he been looking for, when he’d asked her if
she had anything to say to him, and Eloise had come in? Did he want Jo to dump
him, so he wouldn’t have to dump
her
?
She chewed the inside of her cheek, pondering anxiously. What would a
screenwriter make his characters do at this point? The girl would get
kidnapped, or trapped by an earthquake or something, and the boy would rescue
her, and they’d realize they were made for each other and all the stuff about
meeting other friends, getting drinks spiked and having phones nicked would be
forgotten. No, not forgotten. Re-assigned as the necessary growing-pains of the
relationship, yadda, yadda,
bleurgh
.

Romance and psychobabble, all in one movie.

Bleugh
, she thought again. And no amount of babble, psycho or otherwise,
would help her decide what to do about Toby. Or stop her feeling horrible about
being horrible to him. Or wondering if he was, indeed, being horrible to her,
or did she just think he was because Pascale had said he would be?

When her phone rang, she jumped. It was Holly, sounding
distant and tinny. “We’re on our way to Press Gang,” she told Jo. “Me and Ed. Cal’s
gone on holiday. Do you want us to call for you?”