At least her jeans were clean, and she had one unworn top left in the drawer. Once it was on and she’d done her eyeliner and put concealer on her cheek she felt better. She even dug out a pair of earrings and a belt that roughly matched the top, and put on her jacket with the stand-up collar that kind of pushed the bottom of her hair up. The top of her hair just sat there as usual, though.
On the bus she re-read the letter. It wasn’t very businesslike, even though it had the shop’s familiar Rose and Reed logo at the top, with the two capital Rs entwined. It was printed in bright blue ink except for ‘Dear Miss Probert’, which was in untidy round handwriting. It was obviously a standard letter sent to all the candidates, of which there would be hundreds. Five pounds an hour. For a Saturday, forty pounds. For six weeks in the summer, over two hundred pounds a week. It was more money than Jo could envisage.
She thought about how long an hour was. An hour of Computer Studies felt like five minutes, but an hour of Biology, or History, or especially French – oh Jesus, French! – seemed much, much longer. The hours at the job she’d had last year, in the pet shop, had gone at a sort of jogging speed, rather than serious running. So what would an hour selling expensive clothes feel like? Waterskiing? Or doing a marathon with blisters on her feet?
There weren’t hundreds of other interviewees. There were only two. One was a girl who was older and had much better hair than Jo, and the other was a good-looking boy.
“Now,” said the man whose identity tag said Gordon Ritchie, Manager, “I’ve asked you all to come at eleven thirty so I can show you round the shop together before interviewing you separately. That OK? Oh, and there are two vacancies today.”
Jo considered making an excuse and leaving. She could have handled being one of a hundred rejects. But the humiliation of spending time with these two nice-looking people, even chatting to one while the other was interviewed, then being the only candidate left unemployed at the end of the morning was just too great.
“Welcome to Rose and Reed! Do you wear our clothes?” the manager said as he led them up the stairs. “My name’s Gordon. I’m the branch manager. I thought we’d start with Menswear.”
Gordon had a Scottish accent, tight trousers and expensive pointy shoes. He talked a lot during their tour of Menswear, then Womenswear, then Lingerie, without leaving them a space to answer any of his questions. Jo was relieved. Older-Better-Hair Girl could obviously afford to shop at Rose and Reed, and Good-Looking Boy was too good-looking for it to matter. She wished she was at home with Blod on her stomach, watching Saturday morning TV.
“Joanna Probert!” Gordon consulted his list and fixed Jo with his rather bulbous eyes. “You don’t mind going first, do you, darling?” His fingers closed around the arm of a passing sales assistant. “Oh, Eloise. Get some coffee for our intrepid interviewees, please.”
“Black for me,” said OBH Girl. “I mean, black coffee.” Eloise was black. OBH Girl went red. Eloise smiled.
“Can I have a Coke?” asked GL Boy.
“’Fraid not,” said Eloise. “Coffee or tea?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
Eloise turned patiently to Jo, still smiling. Jo wanted to smile back, but found that her smiling muscles wouldn’t work. “White, please,” she mumbled. “One sugar.”
“Now…” Gordon took Jo into the office, guided her to a chair and sat on the desk. “Have you worked in a shop before?”
“Yes, a pet shop. It says it on my CV.”
“Have I got your CV?” He moved some papers around on the desk. “Doesn’t look like it.” He smiled brightly. “Sorry! So what goes on in a pet shop that might be relevant to working with fashion?”
Jo still wanted to run away. But she persevered, telling him that she had learnt about stock control and knew how to work the till, and understood what customer relations were. “People don’t know how to treat pets, you see,” she pointed out. “So they’re always bringing them back and complaining that they’re not doing what they’re supposed to.”
“Like the Monty Python sketch!” exclaimed Gordon in delight. He put on a face. “This. Parrot. Is. No. More!” Jo smiled patiently.
Eloise came in and put Jo’s coffee on the desk beside Gordon’s thigh. As she left the room she gave him a look that Jo wasn’t supposed to see. It said, “Get on with it, Gordon, it’s Saturday out here.”
“Well, yes,” continued Jo. “You hear quite a lot about that Monty Python sketch when you work in a pet shop. And the other thing about animals is that people often buy them for other people, and the people they’ve been bought for don’t like them, and want the shop to take them back, and of course they haven’t got any proof of purchase, and one gerbil’s very like another, so – ”
“When could you start, if you get this job?”
“Next Saturday?”
“The pay’s five pounds an hour. All right?”
Jo tried to remember the questions she’d lined up. Always ask the interviewer at least one question, people said. It makes you look interested. “Yes, thank you. Would I get a discount on the clothes?”
“Certainly. Twenty percent.”
“Oh…well, good.”
There wasn’t anything more to say. He hadn’t read her CV or her reference from Mr Piper at Piper’s Pets. He was trying to get rid of her. Jo picked up her coffee. But it was too hot, so she put it down again.
“I’ll phone you by Wednesday,” said Gordon. “What’s your number?”
“It’s on my CV.”
The frog gaze landed on her face again. “I’ll just write it down again, shall I?”
She dictated the number and took two sips of scalding coffee. Then she picked up her bag. “Goodbye, then.”
“Goodbye, er…” – he checked his notes – “Joanna.” They shook hands. “Thanks for coming.”
As she opened the door she almost flattened GL Boy. “Sorry!” she said without looking at him.
“In a hurry?” he asked.
“Things to do,” she said over her shoulder, hauling open the swing door to the shop floor.
“See you next week, maybe.”
“I doubt it,” said Jo, and set off for the bus stop.
* * * * * *
“But you like Ed, don’t you?” asked Pascale. “Holly told me you do. Didn’t you, Hol?”
Holly, Pascale and Jo were in the school library, whispering. “I do like Ed, but not in the going-out-with sense, obviously,” explained Jo.
Pascale frowned. “Are you telling me my boyfriend’s not fanciable?”
“No, of course not. But isn’t Tom Clarke your boyfriend now?”
“Jo, how can you be so stupid?” Pascale looked at Jo critically. “And by the way, did you know you’ve got a spot coming on your cheek?”
“It’s not a spot, I walked into a rose bush.”
“A rose bush?” said Holly and Pascale together.
Mrs Alder, the librarian, passed by their table, her lips pursed in a silent “Sh!”
“I can’t stand this,” said Holly, closing her folder. “Let’s go.”
“But we’re revising,” said Jo.
“No we’re not, we’re talking about boys. And study leave starts next week, thank God.”
It was a perfect May day. The windows were open to the kind of sunshine that made Jo suddenly remember what summer felt like. It was the first period after lunch, and the bench under the blossom tree at the edge of the field was empty. Holly sat down at one end of it. “Tell us about this job, then, Jo,” she said.
Gordon had called the afternoon before and, to Jo’s great surprise, had offered her the job. She assumed one of the others must have been hit by a bus or been offered something better somewhere else.
“Do you get money off the clothes?” asked Pascale. She was standing with her back to the sun, which lit the edges of her plentiful hair and threw the face that launched a thousand crushes into shadow. Even as Jo said the words she could feel herself regretting it.
&
nbsp; “Twenty percent.”
“Ooh! Can you buy things for other people?”
“I expect so, if I pretend they’re for me.”
“Shotgun first go, then!” Pascale settled herself and her pile of books next to Holly, barely leaving room on the bench for Jo. “I’ll come and try some things on this Saturday.”
“No you won’t,” said Jo. She sat down on the grass. “I’ve got to buy some things to wear while I’m working, and there’s a limit on what I can spend. They’re not completely stupid, you know.”
“So who else works there? Anyone nice?” asked Holly. Her whole face was smiling. She looked ridiculously pretty, as she always did. She was more beautiful than Pascale in every way except possibly her one crooked front tooth. But the boys still went for Pascale. Since when had boys been put off a beautiful girl by a wonky tooth? Jo had abandoned the search for an explanation years ago.
She knew she shouldn’t tell them, but she couldn’t help it. “I don’t start until Saturday, so I don’t know which of the two other people who were interviewed got the job. But they both looked OK.”
“Anyone from Kingsgrove?” asked Pascale.
“No, they’re more like college students,” Jo told her. She paused, trying to picture OBH Girl and GL Boy. She couldn’t, after such a brief acquaintance. “Or maybe they’re just people who want a part time job that might turn into a full time one.”
Like me, she thought.
Pascale had her boy-detecting antennae flashing. “So when you say they look OK…”
“All right, Cal,” said Jo. “One of them’s male. And yes, he’s quite good-looking. But that’s all I know about him.”
“And he might not have got the job, so you’ll never see him again anyway,” observed Holly sensibly.
“But there’s a chance you will,” insisted Pascale. “How sweet! Our little Jo in a shop all day with a good-looking boy!”
Holly leaned towards Jo, the sun full in her face, brightening her hair to an even more blazing gold than usual. “Don’t listen to her,” she said. “Jealousy’s rotting her brain cells. Personally I hope the girl got the job if it’ll shut Pascale up.”
“So do I,” said Jo, though this was untrue. Making Pascale jealous was a novel experience. “And by the way, look who’s turned up.”
Mrs Cadwallader, the Deputy Head, crossed the field and gave them a look of loathing. “Have you permission to be out here, girls?”
“Yes, miss,” said Holly, who was always the boldest in these situations. Fairly adult indeed. Holly was always doing thoughtful things like defending Jo against Pascale’s shamelessness. Yet here she was, lying with demure proficiency to Mrs Cadwallader like every actress’s portrayal of a schoolgirl.
“Well, I just hope you have,” said Mrs Cadwallader uneasily.
The bell rang. Sandwiched between Holly and Pascale as they walked across the field, Jo longed to be left to herself. When they reached the crowded corridor, she quickened her step.
Holly immediately caught up. “So what are we doing on Friday?” she asked. Someone’s bag clouted her in the chest. “Excuse me! Are you trying to kill me? God, this school’s full of hooligans. Can’t wait till Sixth Form. I could have given that clown a punishment if this was next year. I mean, we should go somewhere to celebrate the start of study leave.”
“Um…” Jo didn’t consider several weeks of being in the house all day with newly-unemployed Trevor a cause for celebration. “Press Gang?”
Press Gang was a café-bar. Until a couple of years ago it had been an ordinary riverside pub, but new management had restyled it. The dark wood interior had been replaced with polished floors and metal tables, and the bar now served coffee, cakes and cocktails. It now seemed to be more of a café really, and it was generally accepted in the neighbourhood as a gathering-place for anyone who was too young to get into a real pub. Jo didn’t like it much. The garden tables and benches were sticky, the ashtrays seldom emptied, and you had to check your change.
“We always go to Press Gang,” complained Holly. “What about a Chinese instead?”
“Since when have I eaten that muck?” asked Pascale, who had caught up too. “And it’ll only be the three of us,” she added gloomily. “Ed works at Burgerblitz till eleven thirty on Friday nights.”
“Tom Clarke?” suggested Jo.
Pascale stopped, ignoring the two people behind her who walked into her. She gave Jo’s shoulder a small push. “Will you just shut up about Tom Clarke?”
Mr Phipps was already in the Maths room, writing on the board.
“What’s up with Cal?” whispered Jo as she and Holly sat down at the front with the no-hopers. Pascale was good at Maths, so she sat in the back row. But even if she hadn’t been, Mr Phipps would have put her there. He knew that if he wanted the boys to do any work he mustn’t let them see her. Even her back view.
“Tom didn’t bite, I think,” said Holly, searching her pencil case busily.
Jo suddenly felt, very strongly, that she didn’t want to go to Press Gang with Holly and Pascale, or Tom, or Ed, or anyone, on Friday or any day. From nowhere the memory of pressing her cheek into the DVD flooded her head. Unconsciously she raised her hand to the wound. The mark had scabbed over, and Jo had picked the scab off and blobbed make-up on the crater, which was why Pascale had assumed it was an incipient spot. But it wasn’t a spot, it was a cut she’d inflicted on herself. The DVD case resting against her cheek. The feeling of pressing down on it. The sudden jolt of pain. More pressure, more pain, growing and growing, blotting everything else out…She took a deep breath, suddenly feeling dizzy and nauseous. “Look, Hol, you two do what you like, but I think I should get an early night on Friday as I’m starting work in the shop the next day.”
Holly started to say something, but at that moment Mr Phipps roared for the class to shut up, so Jo didn’t have to answer her, or even look at the astonishment on her face.
* * * * * *
His name was Toby.
On that first morning, Jo hardly saw him as he worked upstairs in Menswear, supervised by Gordon. Downstairs in Womenswear Jo tried to take in what Eloise was explaining. Eloise was patient, but training Jo had to be fitted between serving customers. It was slow work.
“Look, Jo,” Eloise said at half past eleven, glancing round the crowded shop. “There’s new summer stock in the stockroom to be sorted. T-shirts. Will you unpack them and put them on hangers? When you’ve done that you can go to lunch. Just tell me when you’re going.”
Eloise needed a break from having to look out for Jo, and Jo couldn’t blame her. “OK,” she said, watching Eloise wrap up a raspberry mini-skirt for a woman who looked at least thirty years too old to wear it. Of course, it could have been for her daughter. Or granddaughter.
“Just make sure the size on the T-shirt is the same as the size on the hanger,” said Eloise. “They’re already priced. Here’s the card for the stockroom door.”
Even someone as new as me can do a simple job like this, thought Jo. She smiled with what she hoped Eloise would think was confidence. “Right. I’m on it.”
Rose and Reed’s classy decor ended when you pushed the door marked Staff Only. The office where Gordon had interviewed Jo was the only room with a window. Everywhere else was below street level. There was the stockroom, a tiny toilet and the optimistically-named Staff Room, which was an oblong space with a lockable cupboard for employees’ belongings, two hard chairs and a kettle. These rooms were artificially lit, with no air conditioning and nothing on the walls except staff rotas and a notice about fire regulations. Jo slid the card Eloise had given her down the slot on the stockroom lock, feeling as if she were descending into a bunker to await the end of the world.
It looked to Jo as if there were more T-shirts than every branch of Rose and Reed could sell in the entire summer. They filled three huge boxes, one of which had been damaged, so that its polythene-bagged contents had slid out like lava across the floor. Jo looked around. “
So where are these hangers, then?” she muttered.
Toby’s head came round the door. “You talkin’ to me?” he said, like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.
Jo went pink. “No, I didn’t know you were there. I was just wondering where the hangers are. I’ve got to put these T-shirts on them.”
He came in and looked around. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
Jo couldn’t think of a reply, so she shrugged.
“I’m on my lunch hour,” he announced. “I’ve got to go now because Gordon wants his lunch later, and there’s only the two of us up there. But I could run out for a sandwich and come back and help you. This looks like a big job.”
Jo tried to refuse, but he ignored her. “Look, why don’t I get you a sandwich too? You hungry?”
“Yes, but you don’t need to do this.”
“What do you like? Meat or veggy? Cheese?”
“BLT’s my favourite.” Jo tried to listen to herself. She’d only exchanged a few sentences with him in her life, and now he knew her favourite sandwich. If he asked her what size her bra was, would she tell him?
“BLT it is, then. And a Coke? Or juice, or water?”
“Diet Coke would be good. Thanks.”
“No problem.” He started to close the door, then opened it again. “The hangers are in a box behind those rails,” he told her. “The sizes are all mixed up, though.”
“Thanks,” said Jo again.
When he’d gone she stood in the middle of the stockroom floor and sighed. She felt like the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltzkin, a story Tess had eventually refused to read any more because four-year-old Jo always started crying when Rumpelstiltzkin demanded the newborn baby. The miller’s daughter couldn’t spin straw into gold, and Jo wasn’t confident she’d be able to unfold and hang up all these T-shirts on the right hangers. But the miller’s daughter still got her prince.
Moderate Violence Page 3
