Moderate Violence (8 page)

Eloise nodded. “Just before closing’s a favourite
time,” she told Jo sagely. “Could you watch the girls, please, Jo, especially
if they go into the changing rooms? Sandy’ll watch the boy. And don’t let any
of them distract you.”

Jo wasn’t sure whether to feel embarrassed for Sandy,
Eloise or herself. “Actually,” she said awkwardly, “they’re not shoplifters. They’re
my friends.”

 “Oh, my Lord!” guffawed Sandy self-consciously. “Well,
you’d better go and see to them.” Then he added, with a resigned glance at
Eloise, “I don’t suppose they’ve actually come in to spend any money, have
they?”

Ha ha. Very hilarious
.

Jo waved to them, but only Holly waved back. Pascale
was examining the price-tags on a rack of skirts, and Ed was standing behind
her with his hands in the front pockets of her jeans. Explicit content and
strong references right enough.

“So where’s the famous Toby?” asked Holly in an excited
whisper.

“He works upstairs.”

“Let’s go up there then.”

“OK,” said Jo. It was a lot less public upstairs in
Menswear. Even if Gordon had to be a witness to this vomit-inducing behaviour,
at least Sandy, Eloise, the other Saturday girl Tasha and an assortment of
female customers wouldn’t. “Follow me, troops.”

Some angel was smiling on Jo. The only people in the
Menswear department were Toby, a young guy trying on jackets and an older one
arguing quietly with his wife. “Where’s Gordon?” she asked.

“Stockroom, I think,” said Toby. When he saw Ed he put
on his customer-approaching face. “Can I help you?”

Pascale and Holly burst into giggles. Here comes the
predictable bit, thought Jo. “Toby, these are my friends,” she said.

“I’m Ed,” said Ed.

Toby had flushed slightly, but he smiled his no-teeth
smile and nodded to Ed, then looked at the girls. “So which one’s which?”

Pascale and Holly stood there, one each side of Ed,
like bridesmaids posing with the groom. To Jo’s mystification, Holly was still
giggling. It wasn’t like her to giggle. In fact, she despised people who did,
and often said so.

“I’m Pascale,” said Pascale confidently. “It’s so great
to meet you, Toby!”

Jo knew what Pascale was going to do next, and she did
it. Before Toby could escape, she grasped his arms just above the elbows and
kissed him firmly on one cheek, then the other, then the first one again. “That’s
the way the French do it!” she said, fixing him with a mocking,
we’re-the-grown-ups-here look.

“And this is Holly,” said Jo unnecessarily. She just
didn’t want Holly to pipe up, “And I’m…Holly!” like the last girl in a girl
band’s intro.

Jo could tell Toby thought Holly was beautiful. She
was
beautiful. She put her arm around Jo
and bestowed her wide, crooked-toothed smile on Toby, whose flush deepened. “You
take care of my friend Jo now, won’t you, Toby?” she said. “I love her!”

“I love her too!” chipped in Pascale.

Jo slid a look at Ed, who was fingering the price tag
on a soft leather jacket. She wondered if Pascale and Holly were embarrassing
him. If so, he was hiding it well.

“We came in just before closing time so that we can all
go out somewhere, if you want,” said Pascale. “Didn’t we, Ed?”

Ed turned away from the jacket. Six months’ wages
wouldn’t be enough to pay for it. He took his sunglasses from his pocket and
put them on. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got the night off.”

“Ed works at Burgerblitz,” Jo explained to Toby.

Toby looked at Ed, who was leaning on the rail at the
top of the stairs, kicking the floor idly and looking bored. He was wearing
deliberately creased clothes, she thought. But he couldn’t let the light of a
Saturday afternoon shine on greasy hair or undeodorised armpits. Despite the
studied scruffiness of his outfit, he was still supercool Ed Samuels.

“I had a mate who flipped burgers,” Toby told him. “Said
he could never get the smell out of his hair.”

Jo couldn’t see Ed’s eyes. The dark glasses made his
sharp features sharper. His appearance was quite different from Toby’s neat
face and easy, strolling gait. Jo could suddenly see the two years between
them. Ed looked like he was posing, but Toby didn’t need to. An arrow of guilty
pleasure darted through her.

“Well, if I
do
stink of hamburger, Pascale’s never complained,” said Ed frostily.

“Oh, I’m sure you don’t, Ed,” Holly hurried to say. “Now
come on, where shall we go?”

“I can’t,” said Toby unexpectedly. They all looked at
him. “Tonight, I mean. I’m not free.”

Pascale put her hand on his arm. “You mean you want to
take Jo out on her own. That’s OK, we get it.”

“No,” said Toby. In his eyes Jo saw a lie. But she
didn’t know what the lie was – that he didn’t want to go out with her friends,
or he didn’t want to go out with
her
.
“I mean, I’d come if I could. But I’ve got to go up to London. I promised
someone.” His gaze fell on Jo. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you.”

It wasn’t so much a lie, Jo decided, as an excuse. He
didn’t want to spend Saturday night with four sixteen-year-olds, or even one. He
had his own friends, to whose company Jo’s Saturday night would be sacrificed. She
minded, but she couldn’t let him think she was immature enough to mind. “That’s
all right,” she told him warmly. “I should be revising anyway.” She looked
round at the others. “We all should!”

“On Saturday night? Even
you
can’t be that geeky, Jo,” said Pascale. Her dark eyes
widened in Toby’s direction. “Maybe see you soon, then, Tobe.”

No one argued. Holly gave Jo a he’s-lying-isn’t-he
look, but that was all. The three of them said goodbye to Toby, less
enthusiastically than they had said hello, and disappeared down the stairs. Trying
not to imagine what Ed, Pascale and Holly would be saying once they got outside
the shop, Jo smiled at Toby encouragingly. “Are you going to see something in London?
A show?”

Gordon appeared at the top of the stairs. “Any customers
up here?” he said softly out of the side of his mouth.

The young guy and the middle-aged couple had gone. “Nope,”
said Toby.

“Thank God for that. My feet are balls of fire,” said
Gordon in his usual voice, bustling about behind the cash desk. “Did I hear you
say you’re going to a show?”

“Nope,” said Toby again. “I’m just meeting a couple of
friends.” Then he added, more quietly, to Jo, “We might go to a club, but we
might just have a drink. I haven’t seen them for ages.”

Jo stopped herself asking if one or both of them were
female. “Have you got lots of friends in London?” she said conversationally as
they went down the stairs. Jo hardly ever went ‘up to town’ as Tess called it,
even though Waterloo Station was only 30 minutes away on a commuter train. Kingsgrove
was part of London really, but to Jo it always felt like it was on a different
planet from the dirty, noisy, traffic- jammed London so few miles away. She
didn’t much like London. She thought she would rather live in New York, or Los
Angeles. But then most people probably thought that.

“No, not lots,” said Toby. He took her hand and they
walked through the shop, which was empty except for Tasha, who was tidying the
changing-rooms. Toby leant on the cash desk. “But the ones I have got, I like
to see sometimes.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Sorry,” he said. “You’ll meet them eventually.”

“In the flesh, or only on Facebook?” she asked, as
light-heartedly as she could.

Toby dropped her hand. “No, not on Facebook.”

“Why not? I’ll friend you, or you can friend me, and – ”

“I haven’t got a Facebook account,” said Toby. He gave
a small, self-conscious laugh. “Not everyone has, Jo.”

Jo was puzzled. “Yes they have. Even my mum. Even my
gran in Wales, for God’s sake.”

“Well, I think the whole thing’s bollocks,” said Toby,
decisively but not aggressively. “I’d rather phone someone any day, or email
them. You want my email address?”

“OK,” said Jo. She felt uncertain. How did he conduct
his social life, or keep up to speed with everyone’s else’s, or tell hundreds
of people about things instantaneously, without Facebook? How could he stand to
miss out on all those photos, or someone’s hilarious post, or tragic news, or
brilliant news? How could he just ignore the
necessity
Facebook was?

 “You working tomorrow?” he asked, scribbling on the
back of a promotion flyer from the pile on the cash desk and handing it to her.

“No.” She looked at the email address:
[email protected]
.

Fergieman
?

“Me neither,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere, since it’s
Sunday.”

“I’ve got to go out to lunch with my grandparents. The
other ones, who live here. Sorry, um…Fergieman.”

He grinned. “What’s
your
email, then?”

She wrote the address below his and tore the flyer in
half. “jo dot probert hyphen pratt at yahoo dot com,” she said as she gave it
to him. “Not as snappy as yours.”

“Thanks.” He put the address in his pocket. “Look,” he
said, “call me when you’re finished with your grandparents. We’ll have the rest
of the day.”

“All right.”

He stepped closer and kissed her lightly on the tip of
her nose, and then on her lips. She kissed him back, hoping Tasha, whom she
suspected of fancying Toby, would see her doing it.

“So…what did you think of Pascale and Holly?” Jo asked
as Toby released her.

He took a comb from his pocket and drew it through his
hair. “Holly’s really nice,” he said without hesitation. Then he
did
hesitate, flicking a glance at Jo. “And
Pascale’s
hot
.”

“Nice too? Or just hot?”

“Oh, nice too,” he said, laughing with his mouth almost
closed.

But she thought afterwards he probably only said this
because Pascale was her friend. Usually, hot was hot and nice was nice. And she
didn’t ask his opinion of Ed. She couldn’t bear to hear it.

Chapter Five

Jo’s plan of escape from the golf club straight
after lunch worked perfectly. As the car tyres crunched between the posts of
the exit gate, she pretended to fiddle with her bag on the floor,
surreptitiously texting Toby. A few second later, her phone rang.

“Oh, it’s Toby!” She spoke to him for a few moments,
then said to Tess, who was driving, “If you drop me at the corner of Whittaker
Road, Toby’ll meet me there.”

“Aren’t you coming home with us, Joanna?” Granny Pratt
asked from the passenger seat.

“Evidently not,” supplied Tess moodily.

“Well, I suppose we don’t provide much excitement.” Jo
thought this was unusually perceptive of Granny. “We’ll fall asleep in our
armchairs after that big lunch, anyway. You go and enjoy yourself, dear.”

Tess couldn’t very well protest, though Jo was sure
she’d lined up the next round of ammunition in the War On A Levels. While
Granny and Grandad slept, she would have released it all over a captive Jo, and
Jo would have had to endure it.

When Tess stopped the car in Whittaker Road and Jo got
out, Toby pushed himself off the wall he was leaning on, put his arm around Jo
and waved to the occupants of the car. Tess looked at him over her sunglasses
through the lowered window. “Hello, Tony,” she said.

“Hello,” said Toby, not correcting her, and nodding
politely to Granny and Grandad, who nodded politely back.

Tess gave Jo one of her Angelica Huston looks. “Don’t
get back too late, will you, darling? You’ve got work to do. And I hope you’ve
got your key, because you know where your father’ll be.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Jo.

Whittaker Road was on her route home from school. From
the top of the bus she’d often noticed a series of cul-de-sacs leading off it,
all called after poets. Milton Rise, Wordsworth Place, Keats Close, Tennyson
Walk. When Tess had driven off, Toby led the way into Keats Close. “This is
it.”

 He stopped at the gate of a medium-sized brick house
with a little roof over the porch like the one on Jo’s old dolls’ house. In
fact, the whole house was a little girl’s fantasy, with lacy curtains and
window boxes full of petunias. There was even a plant stand in the shape of a
small wheelbarrow beside the front door.

“It’s lovely,” said Jo. She kissed him on his cheek and
giggled. The champagne she’d drunk at lunch was making her feel inanely happy.

“Your mum’s really fit, if I’m allowed to say that,” he
said, squeezing her close to him and smiling. It was the smile she’d first seen
when he’d met her at Kingsgrove station on Wednesday. A candid smile, that
smoothed his face and showed that perhaps, despite being so good-looking, he
truly liked her.

They walked up the path, still entwined, and he
unlocked the front door. “My mum’s not so fit, I warn you. She’ll be back soon
too. She’s only gone shopping.”

“This seems to be the day for meeting mothers,” said
Jo. “Should I be nervous?”

“Oh no, Mum’s cool.”

Taking her hand, Toby led her from the tiny square
hallway into a sitting-room that occupied the whole depth of the house, with
windows at the front and sliding patio doors at the back. These were open onto
a garden, lovingly kept. A long-legged, drooly dog bounded in, its claws
clicking and sliding on the polished floor. “I told you, I’ve got my mum
trained. She’s as obedient as Robson here.” He released Jo’s hand, squatted and
rubbed the dog behind its ears. “Hey, Rob, what’s going on?”

Jo looked around the room. It couldn’t, she realized
with a sinking heart, be any more different from the sitting room where she had
left Toby with Blod on his lap that first night. All the furniture looked brand
new. There were expensive rugs on the floor, and everything sparkled with
conscientious cleanliness. No one cleaned Jo’s house except Sylvia the Chinese
Cleaner, who only came for two hours each Thursday. The carpets and furniture
bore the evidence of Trevor’s smoking habit, and bits of
The Guardian
that always became separated
from each other, junk mail, CDs, beer bottles, half-read books and half-watched
DVDs littered every surface. The smell of stale booze, cat litter, un-emptied
bins and un-opened windows was noticeable the moment you opened the front door,
except on Thursday evenings. But Jo was willing to bet that in Toby’s house the
kitchen worktops would be strangers to bacteria, and every lampshade, curtain
rail and skirting board free of dust. And there was no smell, not even of dog.

“Does your mum do all this herself?” she asked warily.

“Do all what? Come on, let’s go in the garden.”

Robson was running around them in excited circles,
hurling himself against their legs. Jo almost fell over.

“Sorry, he can be pretty crazy,” said Toby. He caught
the dog’s collar and wrestled him to the grass. “Come on, you stupid animal,
lie down.” He looked up at Jo, squinting against the sun. “How was your lunch?”

“All right,” muttered Jo.

“What did you eat?” asked Toby, scratching Robson’s
ears.

A vision of the golf club restaurant came into Jo’s
head. The swirly carpet and pink tablecloths, the parties of intoxicated
golfers and murmuring middle-aged couples, the young waiter who flushed with
embarrassment when Granny Pratt spoke French to him. Overcooked lamb on Jo’s
plate, Grandad pursing his lips seriously when he tasted the wine, Tess
chirruping pointlessly about the importance of A Levels. And university, of
course. University was the only thing Tess had ever done in her life. Jo had to
go to university; it was what everyone did, except Trevor, of course, but that
was another story.

Jo’s mood suddenly darkened, almost to misery. Is that
what champagne does to everyone, she thought? Make you feel happy, then daft,
then plunge you into depression? How much alcohol did you need to drink, and
how often, to achieve Trevor’s level of tolerance? He drank as if getting drunk
was a project he was working on, requiring dedication from which nothing would
distract him. But for all his tolerance it never seemed to make him happy, or
daft, or even depressed. It just sent him to oblivion, a place where all
feelings – good or bad – disappeared.

“Roast lamb,” she told Toby. “And sticky toffee
pudding. And champagne.”

Toby was still crouching beside Robson, looking up at
her. “Were you celebrating something?”

Granny and Grandad Pratt often ordered champagne in
restaurants, usually after a serious discussion with the man they and Tess
called the
sommelier
and Trevor
and Jo called the wine waiter. “I think they wanted to wish me good luck,” she
said.

“In your exams?”

She nodded.

“Wow.” He fondled Robson’s ears more vigorously. “What
will they do when your results come out? Take you to Las Vegas for the
weekend?”

Jo didn’t smile. “No, that would be far too naff. Venice,
perhaps, for an art lesson. Or the Pyramids, for a history lesson.”  

Toby let go of the dog and stood up. “Blimey. Your
family’s something else.”

Something else. What, exactly? Toby could have no
possible idea what the Probert-Pratt experience was like. Suddenly, Jo thought
about how ugly Tess’s mouth got when she said things that exasperated Trevor,
and how Trevor narrowed his once-nice eyes when he retorted with things that
annoyed Tess.

There was a light all round the edge of the garden. Jo
watched it get brighter and brighter, wondering what it was, and why Toby
seemed unthreatened by it. She felt panicky.

“It’s very bright out here, isn’t it?” she said. She
couldn’t make her lungs draw in enough breath; the words came out very quietly.

“Haven’t you got any sunglasses?”

Sunglasses wouldn’t help. The sun was on its
mid-afternoon trajectory, making defined shadows under a recently-planted row
of saplings, but the light crowding Jo’s vision wasn’t the sun. It was a
relentless glare, barging in from all directions, flattening the contours and
perspective of the garden into two dimensions, bleaching the lawn, the dog, and
Toby himself into an over-exposed Kodak print.

Jo didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want Toby’s mum
to come home to find a strange girl, possessed by a rush of elemental loathing,
in her spotless house. Bewildered, she clutched the nearest thing, which turned
out to be the back of a plastic garden chair. “Toby, I don’t feel right. Maybe
I’d better go home.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I drank too much champagne. My
head feels funny, and I can’t see properly. Maybe it’s a migraine or
something.”

His lips tightened, and he blinked a few times,
searching her face. “Come in out of the sun and lie down, then. Take an aspirin
or something.”

Jo’s panic increased. She had to get home. She couldn’t
stay in this place. “I can’t do that, Toby.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t!”

She was almost shouting. Toby gave her a “Whoa there!”
look. “All right,” he said suspiciously, “I’ll take you home. Come on.”

As they walked through the house the front door opened
and a short woman with a supermarket bag in each hand eased her way in. “This
is Jo, Mum,” said Toby. He didn’t offer to take the bags.

Mrs Ferguson was tawny-haired, with peachy skin and a
fleshy face. Her jeans squashed her hips and thighs, and she had on a yellow
blouse with very short sleeves, the kind that were at the top of Tess’s
Unflattering Sleeves list. Her sweet, eager expression didn’t make her look
like the sort of woman whose husband would go all the way to Saudi Arabia to
avoid her. “Hello, Jo,” she said in a Scottish accent. “I won’t shake your
hand, if you don’t mind. Supermarkets are full of germs, aren’t they?”

Jo couldn’t speak. Her head pounded. Images of the DVD
case floated through her mind. The sharp pain, the shock of blood. The light
around her increased, but when she closed her eyes she saw redness, not
darkness. She swayed, and had to put her hand on the wall to steady herself.

“Too much champagne” said Toby to his mum. “I’m just
taking her home.”

“Sorry,” blurted Jo. She hoped Mrs Ferguson didn’t
think they were leaving because she’d come in.

“She’s not usually like this,” said Toby, more sarcastically
than apologetically. He must think Jo was making all this up, just to get away
from him. He must think she considered the house, or the garden, or even his
dog, unsuitable in some way. Jo’s family were something else, he’d said. Something
different from his, he’d meant. Oh bloody hell, he thought they were too
refined for him. Of course he did; he hadn’t met Trevor.

“Well, I’ll maybe see you when you’re feeling a wee bit
better, Jo,” said Mrs Ferguson, smiling thinly.

Toby took Jo’s arm firmly and steered her out of the
door. “We’ll wait for ever for a bus on a Sunday. Let’s walk.”

“I can’t walk.”

He stopped and looked at her. “What do you mean, you
can’t walk?”

“I feel like I might faint.” She couldn’t muster more
than a whisper. She took her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll call my dad to come
and get me.”

“Oh.” Toby was still holding her elbow. “So I’m staying
here, then, am I?”

She hardly heard him. She had to concentrate on
pressing the right keys, getting Trevor’s number, listening to the ringing
sound, willing him to answer.

“Y…ello!” said her father in his Homer Simpson voice.

“Will you come and pick me up?” she asked, hoping he
could hear her properly over the pub noise. “I’m not feeling very well.”

“Where are you?”

“Toby’s house. Keats Close. Off Whittaker Road. Number
six. Trev, are you sober enough?”

“Have to be, won’t I? See you in a minute.”

She shut the phone. The brightness was still all around
her, obliterating Toby.

“Why did you ask if he’s sober enough?” he asked, his
suspicious tone darkening. “Is he in a pub?”

Jo shrugged. She couldn’t embark on an explanation.

“What’s wrong?” asked Toby. “Why are you shivering?”

Because I’m dying! She though. She gasped for breath.
What the hell was happening? Panic? Is that what it was, a panic attack? She’d
heard that’s what Juliet Parslow had had at Thorpe Park when they’d gone there
on a school trip in Year Nine. Mr Phipps had told her to sit down and put her
head between her legs, and the boys had sniggered. “I don’t know. Maybe I ate
something bad.” She clamped her teeth, but the shivering didn’t stop. “Sorry,
sorry,” she muttered through her teeth.