She looked at the pile of DVDs on the dressing-table desk, their plastic prongs and sharp corners concealed by a veneer of just being DVD covers. The sight calmed her. As she sat there on the bed, cradling her wounded arm, the panic, the desperation and the guilt – about Toby, about the press-release method and the scratch-patch – began to trickle away.
Her gaze landed again on the calendar. Being free wasn’t about physically escaping, whether from China, or a concentration camp, or the rudeness of Mr Treasure’s horrible secretary. It was about that line by some poet from ages ago, that Mr Gerrard had made them discuss. ‘Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage’. By the end of the lesson they had worked round the idea that it was your mind that imprisoned you, and therefore it was your mind that freed you.
She wished that poet, whoever he was, could appear, right there in her bedroom. She wanted to tell him that although she’d left the English room that day feeling bemused, and wondering why poetry had to be so complicated, now she understood with luminous clarity what he’d meant. He’d meant that you make your own prison, and you find your own method of escape. Jo had found her way to escape.
Chapter Six
At the end of each year Kingsgrove School held a Summer Ball. This year the organizing committee, of which Holly was chair, had decreed that the fancy dress theme was The Universe, and that everyone’s clothes, make-up and hair had to reflect stars, suns, moons, planets, space rockets or whatever they could think of.
“Why have we got to have a theme at all?” Pascale moaned. It was the day before the second Maths paper, and Pascale had come round to help Jo revise. They hadn’t done any revision yet; they were in Jo’s room, sifting unenthusiastically through Jo’s party dresses. “I mean, if it was just a party, without all this universe bollocks, you could wear this blue thing.” She sat on the computer chair and smoothed Jo’s blue dress across her knee. “The colour suits you, with your baby blue eyes.”
“The universe is sort of blue,” said Jo, trying to be helpful. “Or at least the earth is, in shots of it taken from space. You know, with clouds swirling around all over it.”
Pascale pondered. “You mean you could fix swirly things to this dress, and be the earth?” She scrutinized Jo with narrowed eyes. “Might make you look a bit fat, though.”
“Well, it’s an idea.” Jo took the blue dress from Pascale and held in front of herself. She’d had it last year for Trevor’s fortieth birthday party. It did suit her, and she liked the twisted ribbon straps. But it wasn’t exactly a ball dress – it wasn’t even floor-length – and she didn’t think Pascale’s ‘swirly things’ would improve it. Also, it was sleeveless. A couple of weeks had gone by since Jo had stood in the bathroom swirling pink water round the washbasin. But the wound on her arm still festered. The desire to pick the scab every time it formed was impossible to resist, especially when she was in bed. Lying in quiet darkness was supposed to induce sleep, but lately, all it had induced in Jo was an awareness, both repugnant and delicious, of the plaster on the inside of her elbow, and the compulsion to rip it off. And then, the guilt, the necessity of keeping the blood off the bedclothes, the furtive trips to the bathroom.
She would have a scar there for ever. But in those moments of weakness, she didn’t care.
She tossed the blue dress onto the pile of clothes on the bed. “I can’t wear this. I’ll have to get Trev to buy me something new.”
Pascale studied her reflection in Jo’s mirror. “Ed and I are wearing matching stuff,” she announced. “His dad’s got this silver jacket from his Rock ’n’ Roll Nostalgia Nights, and silver boots. We thought if Ed wears those, and I wear a silver dress, and we both have glitter in our hair and do a zig-zag on our faces, we could be sort of Ziggy Stardust people. You know, seventies glitter rock. Sexier than dressing as aliens or astronauts.”
“That’s a really good idea!” Jo honestly thought it was. “But you can only do that sort of thing if you’ve got a boy to go with. You’re lucky.”
The question of who was going to be Jo’s escort was a vexed one. Strictly, you could go to Summer Ball without one – lots of girls had to. But Jo couldn’t stand the thought of being one of those girls. And Toby wouldn’t be able to come because it was only for Kingsgrove students. Tom Clarke, the second most presentable boy in Jo’s class, was also a committee member, and it was understood that he would be taking Holly.
“Hm,” said Pascale. Jo knew she was only pretending to ponder. “Pity Toby can’t come.” She flicked Jo the look Jo had been expecting for a while. Curious, but full of superior knowledge. “So how are things going with the fit and delicious Toby?”
“Things are good,” Jo said nonchalantly.
“Three weeks now?”
“About that.”
“And how’s it going?”
“I just told you, things are good.”
“Everything?”
Jo wanted to tell her. It was next to impossible that Pascale would understand, but she longed to tell someone, and here was Pascale, asking.
“We haven’t…you know, done it,” she said in a rush. “If that’s what you mean.”
“Did I say anything?” said Pascale, her eyes wide and her hand at her throat. Then she dropped both her hand and the pretence of outrage. “Why haven’t you, then?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Probably because he’d rather do it with you.”
Pascale could never tell the difference between real and sarcastic adoration. “Really?” she asked, flushing with pleasure. “Did he say that?”
Jo sighed. “No, of course he didn’t say that! I know you think he’s an arsehole for going out with me, but he’s not that much of an arsehole.”
“Oh.” Pascale thought about this for a second. Then she added, bristling, “You know, Jo, you can sound really bitter sometimes. And it’s not attractive.”
Though Jo was used to such comments, generally from Tess rather than Pascale, this particular one enraged her. “Well, whoever said anything about me was attractive?”
Somewhere, deep inside Pascale’s theatrical expression of shock, was genuine surprise. She put her hand on Jo’s arm. “Oh, Jo, are you upset?”
Jo’s anger dispersed as suddenly as it had appeared. Always, what Pascale did and said was authentic. She was incapable of calculated malice. Her brain-processes, except in Maths, were entirely engaged in plotting the best way through the maze between girls and their discarded, existing or prospective boyfriends.
“I just don’t know what to do, Cal,” Jo confessed.
Pascale had her bereavement-counsellor face on. She nodded sympathetically. “Is it that you don’t fancy him?”
Jo had to think about this before she answered. Whenever she saw Toby she noticed all over again what she’d noticed the first time – that by any girl’s standards he was good-looking. So she must fancy him. That’s what fancying someone was. And yet, whenever he started to put his hands on her body, something seemed to stop him succumbing to the power which Pascale wielded so easily. Maybe the truth was that Jo simply didn’t have that power. “Maybe he doesn’t fancy me.”
Pascale’s eyes brightened at the prospect of guiding a lost soul through the relationship maze. “So why don’t you just say, ‘look, Toby, do you want me as a girlfriend, or a friend? And if you don’t want me as a girlfriend, what are we doing?’” she suggested, making it sound very simple.
Jo was half horrified, half amused. “I couldn’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“Because…” Because she was afraid he might reject her. And because she was even more afraid of where that rejection might lead her. “Because”, she continued “however fanciable he is, I don’t think I want to sleep with him.” Then, seeing Pascale’s confused expression, she added, “Yet, at any rate. Three weeks isn’t that long.”
“Three weeks will become three months, though,” insisted Pascale, “and you still won’t have done it, and both of you’ll be wondering why
not, and it’ll just get ridiculous.”
“All right,” said Jo, glad to close the subject. She looked steadily at Pascale. “You won’t mention this to Holly, will you?”
Pascale made a mock-offended face. “As if!”
“And thanks for the advice, Cal.”
“Just ask Doctor Pascale!” said Pascale happily. “Now, talking of Holly and her insane ideas, we still haven’t solved the problem of your escort. How about David Mathison?”
David, who was in the Lower Sixth, was one of Pascale’s many rejects. “He and I had fun together before…we stopped having fun,” she said. “He’s nice, and he knows you a bit, and I bet he hasn’t got anyone to go with. All those Lower Sixth girls are such dogs.”
Jo laughed. “Is that why he went out with you, then?”
“He would have gone out with me even if every girl in his year was Miss Universe,” smiled Pascale. She whipped round and stared at Jo. “There you are, you can dress as Miss Universe! Long dress, high heels, tiara, sash…my God, Jo, you’ll look like a million dollars! And I’ll be standing there with a zigzag on my face!”
Jo’s heartbeat felt uneven. She sat down on the bed amongst the discarded clothes. “That’s brilliant. Do you think anyone else will have the same idea?”
“Not if we don’t tell them.”
“Not even Holly?”
“Especially not Holly.” Pascale giggled. “She’s the one that’s got us into this fancy dress crap anyway. I want to be there when you walk in and her jaw hits the floor.”
“Can you ask David Mathison for me?” asked Jo. “You could hint that I’m doing something glamorous, without telling him exactly what it is. He’ll need a tux.”
Pascale raised her eyebrows. “God, he’d look amazing in a tux.”
“But will you call him? I can’t, out of the blue. Please.”
“Well…” Pascale was pretending uncertainty again. “I suppose I could. And if he’s already taken, there’s Stuart Holt, and Max Can’t-remember-his-other-name, and – ”
“Oh, shut up! Just make sure you get me someone who’ll be tall enough when I’m wearing high heels and a tiara. This is going to be brilliant!”
* * * * * *
Jo stared at the names on the list. There were still only five, though now there were six significant people in her life. She’d been putting off labelling Toby because it felt so underhand, having a secret from him. But if he didn’t have a label, it wasn’t fair on the others who did.
She turned over a few DVDs, trying to focus on one thing about Toby that set him aside from other people. But there were so many things. He was the only boy who had ever noticed her, pursued her, taken her out, kissed her, touched her body, comforted her when she was upset and tolerated her friends.
Well, she’d helped him along a little, with that phone call from the train. And she’d asked him if he had a girlfriend, which wasn’t exactly subtle. But all girls did that sort of thing. It was part of the game. And hadn’t Toby played the game too? Buying her that sandwich, helping her with the T-shirts, writing his number on her hand? Yet…her heartbeat wouldn’t settle.
She had the biggest double bed in the world. Her mother lived miles away. And nothing would rouse Trevor from the alcoholic coma he fell into every night. Toby must be thinking he’d struck fantastically lucky. But somehow, he hadn’t.
She flicked through DVD covers impatiently. This was stupid, stupid, stupid. But now she’d started it, she couldn’t abandon it. She had to keep her place in the middle of them all. She had to be in charge like the ringmaster cracking his whip. She couldn’t risk allowing herself to wobble.
U for Universal. ‘Suitable for all’, it said on the back of Disney’s Aladdin. God, what was that doing here? She hadn’t watched it in years. But maybe that was what Toby was. A ‘U’ person, who’d had lots of jobs and picked up lots of friends on the way. People in London he knew from when he was a waiter, he said. People who worked funny hours, so he met them late and stayed over. Mitch, one of them was called. Maybe Jo would meet them someday, but it was more likely that she wouldn’t. Toby was one of those people who liked to keep his groups of friends separate. He didn’t have a Facebook account. He wanted to segregate his social life, while plate-spinning his friends. All things to all people.
With a sigh, she typed ‘Suitable for all’ next to Toby’s name.
She thought about what Pascale had said: Ask him if he wants you as a girlfriend, or a friend. What would happen if Jo did that? She imagined a scene in a film where the actress asked the actor that question. How would the script read? What would the director want? Long pauses, evident distress, or would he prefer the scene to be understated, leaving the audience to interpret the feelings?
Toby’s smooth cheeks would sink slightly, and a nearly-hurt look would come into his eyes. His eyebrows would sharpen at the corners; he would be alert for a trap, wondering what she really meant. Was she saying she didn’t want him as a boyfriend? Well, why didn’t she just go ahead and dump him? Suspicion and uncertainty would hover between them, taking up the space on the screen between the actor and the actress, arousing the audience’s sympathy…or apathy. Such was a director’s gamble.
Toby would hate her for asking the question. She knew it, and she knew she couldn’t do it anyway. Like she’d told Pascale, they just had to wait and see what happened. She and Toby were sensible people, she reminded herself. Sex wasn’t everything, though the way some people went on about it you’d think it was. Pascale’s insistence on a trial separation from Ed, which was only a tactic of hers and had never really happened, had probably resulted in them doing it even more often than they had before. You could tell by the way she was always touching his leg.
The thing was, if Jo was ever going to do it, she wanted to do it with someone who made her feel that she couldn’t not do it with him, and only him. So even if she broke up with him, whoever he was, she would still know that he’d been the one, in that world-changing moment.
But was Toby him?
“Jo!” came Trevor’s voice up the stairs. “Jo-girl! Where are you?”
Jo pushed herself up and opened the bedroom door. The landing was so dark it was more like an evening in November than June. She could hear rain starting. Large drops thudded on the window pane, then more and more until all the thuds merged and became a power-shower. She went to the top of the stairs. “What?”
“I’m off to the pub,” said Trevor. He was wearing his leather jacket, jingling his keys in his pocket. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?”
Jo nodded. “Got work to do. Maths exam tomorrow. You know it’s pouring with rain, don’t you?”
“See you later, then.”
The front door slammed. Jo sat down on the top stair, gazing emptily at the place in the hall where he’d just been standing. In a movie there would be poignant music, or a cut to a lively scene, she thought. But in real life, there was just a space.
* * * * * *
Jo and Holly had just done their last exam.
“Come on!” Holly took Jo’s arm and propelled her along the corridor. “After we’ve cleared out our lockers we’re free to go. And look at this amazing weather!”
Mediterranean, they kept saying on TV. Pubs and restaurants were trying hard, with tables outside, to pretend they were in Spain. But even with its buildings throwing sharp shadows and heat haze rising off the tarmac, Jo thought Kingsgrove High Street still looked and smelled like Kingsgrove High Street – dusty, petroly, burger-and-chipsy.
“What are you doing tonight?” Holly asked. “Seeing Toby?”
“Don’t know.”
“But it’s the end of exams!” Holly was shocked. “Cal and I are going to Press Gang with Ed and Tom and their mates.”
“Oh, OK. Well, I’ll see what Toby wants to do.”
Holly was busy with her padlock. “How are things with Toby?” she asked. “God, this thing is so awkward! Why can’t they design padlocks that work, for God�
�s sake?”
Jo opened the door of her own locker, thinking about how things were with Toby, and wondering if Pascale had instructed Holly to ask her. “Things are OK.” Her PE kit and an ancient copy of Macbeth nestled together in her locker. She picked up the book. “We did this in Year Nine,” she said to Holly. “Do you think they want it back, or shall I chuck it?”
“Leave it on a desk. Not yours,” advised Holly. She was doing her whole-face smile. “You like Toby, don’t you? It shows in your face every time you talk about him.”
“I’m sad, aren’t I?”
“No, you’re lovely!” She started to pack her bag. “I’m so lucky with my friends! Pascale’s on the other end of the scale from you, Jo. And I get the best of both.” She took a bar of chocolate from her locker and sniffed it. “Do you think this is edible? It’s only six months past its sell by date.”
“Throw it away,” advised Jo, wondering about the scale. The scale of what? Attractiveness? Flirtatiousness? Ability to play a whole basketball match without going red in the face? With boys watching? Pascale could certainly do all of those things one hundred percent better than Jo.
It crossed Jo’s mind how weird it was that Holly hardly ever saw her, just her, without Pascale, outside school. She never seemed to go to Holly’s house any more, though she’d hardly been out of the place when she and Holly had been at primary school together. They’d gone to each other’s parties and sleepovers, and Jo had become very attached to Holly’s mum, who was so unlike Tess that nine-year-old Jo had once confessed to Holly that she wished they were sisters. She’d wanted a mum who had a serious job (Holly’s mother was a senior nurse), but could act like a nine-year-old herself when she was playing dominoes or Pictionary with them. Tess never played games. Except golf, which didn’t count.
Once Jo and Holly had started at Kingsgrove and met Pascale, they’d stopped going to Holly’s house, maybe because it was a bus ride away, or maybe because her mum had to sleep during the day when she was on night duty at the hospital. Jo’s house had quickly become headquarters. And whatever they did there, it involved either all three of them or Jo and Pascale.
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