“But you like him, don’t you?” Tess’s expression had softened. Something near to maternal indulgence came into her eyes. “Is my darling girl in lurve?”
“No, of course not,” said Jo. She couldn’t help her face reddening, though. She caressed the moon-marks one final time, wishing she could look at them. Then she took the other half of the cake. “But when she is, you’ll be the first to know, since you’re so interested.”
The front door slammed. Jo and Tess listened to the familiar sounds of Trevor dropping his keys onto the hall stand and calling, “Hi guys, I’m home!” which he considered very modern. “Anyone in?” His head came round the kitchen door. “Oh…hello.” His gaze took in them both, and the cakes. He put down the supermarket bag he was carrying and slung The Guardian onto the table. “Want to see something I got in the post this morning?”
“Is it a pizza flyer?” asked Tess. “Or a tax demand?”
“Very funny. Any tea going?”
Jo took a bite of cake, got up and lifted the kettle. “So what is it, then?”
Trevor searched his pockets for a folded piece of paper. He spread it on the table. “This is the place Mord’s got his eye on,” he announced.
Jo put the kettle down again. She and Tess looked at the paper. It was an estate agents’ property details. There was a picture of the exterior of the house and several of the interior, and a lot of extravagant description of what a great location it was in. But Jo didn’t read the words. Astonished, she gazed at the main picture, which was of an old – perhaps hundreds of years old – house, surrounded by grass, against a backdrop of sunlit mountains.
“It’s a farmhouse,” said Trevor proudly. “The nearest town is Aberystwyth.”
“Aberystwyth! Fancy that!” Tess picked up the piece of paper and thrust it at Trevor’s chest. “And you’ll sink every last penny into it, won’t you? I can’t believe even you can be so selfish.”
“Tess…”
“You’re insane, do you hear me? In…sane!”
“No I’m not.” Jo could hear her father trying to keep calm. “And I don’t think I’m being selfish either. I like it in Wales. I mean, you’re always saying you’d like to have a house in Belgium, so – ”
“What are you wittering about Belgium for?” Tess’s voice had got a bit squeaky. “Can’t you see how mad this is? What do you know about running a business? You’re like those imbeciles on TV who buy a house in Provence and find there’s no water supply or something. You’re going lose all the money from the house, money we could – ”
“Who’s ‘we’?” interrupted Trevor. “This is my money, Tess.”
“Is it?” Tess stopped squeaking. “I seem to remember something about a wedding present from my father.”
“And who’s paid the mortgage every month for the last seventeen years, and is still paying it?” Trevor’s voice was steady, but Jo could hear the frustration in it. “Face it, Tess, the proceeds of the sale of the house are going to be split between us, and so are the contents. It’s called divorce.”
Tess couldn’t refute this. Half-rising, she prodded Trevor’s shoulder. “And supposing I refuse to give you a divorce?”
Trevor gave a weary sigh. Jo filled the kettle, feeling almost sorry for him. Why couldn’t Tess just let him buy his Welsh farmhouse and leave him in peace? “Look, Tess,” he said steadily, “stop fantasising. What’s going to happen is this. We’ll sell this house, I’ll go back to Wales and you and Jo will move somewhere smaller, maybe a flat, or maybe not, if your dad can be persuaded to stump up again. But I’ll support Jo, like I always have done.”
There was a silence while Tess, still trembling theatrically, pondered this scenario. Jo leaned against the worktop beside the murmuring kettle and folded her arms. “I know, Tess!” she said, pretending enthusiasm, “you could get a job!”
More silence, though Jo was pretty certain Tess wasn’t pondering this scenario.
“I mean,” Jo went on cheerfully, “if I leave school, I can get a job too and move into my own place, and you won’t have to live with Trevor or me. Wouldn’t you like that?”
Tess stopped pondering. “You’re not leaving school,” she said sharply. “You’re going back in September and you’re going to do your A Levels and go to university. I insist, do you hear? And so does Trevor.” She turned on him. “Don’t you?”
Trevor, looking exceedingly tired, nodded soulfully at Jo. “Yes, I suppose I do,” he said bleakly. He put the farmhouse details back in his pocket. “Hasn’t that kettle boiled yet?” Fumbling for his cigarettes, he opened the back door and went into the garden.
“And shut that door!” bellowed Tess after him. “How many years did we live together, and you still don’t know about my hay fever?” She turned to Jo and patted her hand. “Never mind him, darling. Granny and Grandad want to take us for lunch at the golf club on Sunday, to wish you luck in your exams. That’ll be nice, won’t it?”
Jo tensed her left forearm. The muscle responded with a light stroke – more of a memory, really – of the press-release sensation. “That’ll be splendid,” she said, and picked up what was left of her cake.
* * * * * *
At work on the following Saturday, every time Toby’s legs appeared before his head as he came down the staircase from Menswear, Jo felt a jolt of recognition. Every time, she watched him cross the ground floor with a sense of propriety, fighting the desire to say to the customer she was serving, “That’s my boyfriend, you know!”
But at half past five she stopped having him to herself. The scene was so predictable, Jo could have written the screenplay and sent it to a film production company, which would have been encouraging at first, but would ultimately reject it. “Sorry, not quite clichéd enough,” the rejection letter would say.
Jo was behind the cash desk with Eloise and Sandy, a weekday part-timer who’d been persuaded to come in that Saturday to help train Jo and Toby. Sandy was a slight man in his forties with a quick, professional way of handling the customers. He looked to Jo somehow two-dimensional, as if his clothes were held on by tabs, like the dressing-dolls she’d played with when she was little. “Don’t look now,” Sandy muttered to Eloise and Jo, “but a dodgy gang of three’s just come in. Two girls and a boy.”
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 frie
nds,” 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.”
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