“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?”
Jo tried to breathe evenly, calming her heartbeat. She obviously wasn’t going anywhere with Toby tonight. And even if Holly’s invitation didn’t solved the long-term problem he presented, it got rid of this home-alone evening. “Why not?” she said. There was a tiny tremble in her voice, but Holly didn’t notice. It wasn’t a very good connection. “Listen, Hol,” she went on, “my dad’s just told me that he’s going away tomorrow and Tess is going to be staying here till further notice.”
“OhmygodlittleJo!” Holly was understandably horrified. Tess had once told her that she should get her tooth fixed, or she’d end up uglier than the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Holly had avoided her ever since. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
It was Holly who pressed the bell. Jo saw her from the window, and opened the door. Ed was waiting on the path near the gate. He was wearing a tight T-shirt with distressed seams, like the ones Toby had approved of in Rose and Reed. It showed how flat Ed’s torso was. The thought flashed through her mind that it must be weird, not having a chest that stuck out in any way, that in fact was almost concave. She realized furtively that Toby, with his contoured muscles, would have looked much better in the T-shirt.
Ed, who hadn’t seen Jo since the Summer Ball, nodded at her. She nodded back.
“Hiya!” said Holly. “Oh, you’ve got my favourite trousers on! I love that logo, the way the two Rs wind around each other. ”Will you give them to me when you’ve finished with them?”
“Hol, you’re much taller than me.” Jo looked down at the trousers with the Rose and Reed logo on the pocket, noticing they weren’t very clean, and that she should have changed when she got home from work. She still had her jacket on, too. But it was too late now. “You can put them in a glass case and admire them, if you like, but you’ll never be able to wear them.”
Holly smiled her crooked-toothed smile and took Jo’s arm. “I might wear them as cut-offs, if that didn’t make me look like my mum. Come on.”
The garden at Press Gang was crowded for a Tuesday evening. Jo, Ed and Holly ordered Frappucinos. Jo had a piece of pineapple cake, too. There were no garden tables free, but they found an abandoned bench with some spilt ice cream on it. Holly wiped it with a tissue and they sat down in a row.
“How am I going to survive?” Jo asked them. “It’ll be like Chinese water torture. Drip. A Levels. Drip. A Levels. Drip. A Levels.”
Ed looked bored. But Holly sipped, put the cup down carefully and looked seriously at Jo. “Well, don’t bite my head off, but I think your mum’s absolutely right.”
Ed started to say something, but Holly suppressed him.
“I mean,” she went on, “Sixth Form is so cool! You get to be a prefect, and sit on School Council.” She turned to Ed. “You agree with me, don’t you? Jo just can’t go and work in that horrible shop while we’re swanning around at school being fabulous, can she?”
Ed laughed. Jo thought he looked older since she last saw him, only a couple of weeks ago. That couldn’t be, surely, but there was something different about him. “That’s what you think Sixth Form’s like, do you?” he asked Holly. “Being fabulous? They make you do this thing called work, you know.”
“Oh, Jo won’t mind that,” said Holly, with enthusiasm. “She’s really clever, except at Maths, but since she wouldn’t do Maths A Level anyway – ”
“Can I speak?” interrupted Jo sulkily. “For a start, in Sixth Form you’re still in prison, when you could be off doing something in the real world. And also, if I do leave, I’ll still be friends with you all, won’t I? After all this time, do you think I’d just abandon you two, and Pascale, and Tom, and Stuart and everyone else?”
There was a pause, which Jo couldn’t quite read. She nibbled a corner of the pineapple cake. It wasn’t embarrassment that was silencing them, and it certainly wasn’t amazement at her brilliantly persuasive argument. Ed was looking into his coffee and tapping his foot lightly on the grass. It suddenly came to Jo that he looked different because there was no gel on his hair. He’d stopped being a wethead.
Holly’s expression was as fervent as an evangelical preacher. “Oh…Jo!” The words were a long, strangled sigh, loud enough for the couple at a nearby table to turn and stare. She lowered her voice. “Even if we do all stay friends,” – she saw Jo’s expression – “which we will, of course, it won’t be the same without you. Look how great Summer Ball was this year, and we’ve got two more to come! And when you’re in Upper Sixth you get to be voted Kingsgrove or Queensgro
ve, and you might be chosen to be Head Girl.” She noticed that Ed was grinning and Jo was frowning. “Only if you want to be, of course,” she added.
Jo could feel her spirits sinking. She put her plate down on the grass. The cake felt like a stone in her stomach, and that thing inside her was doing its theme-park ride again. “Holly,” she said as unaggressively as her plunging mood would allow, “I don’t want to be voted Queensgrove at next year’s Summer Ball, and I don’t want to be Head Girl. I never want to see any of the teachers again. I don’t want to hear Tess and Trevor moaning at each other on the phone about whose turn it is to go to Parents’ Evening, or Speech Day, or the Christmas play, or the Carol Service.” She watched Holly’s blank expression become animated again; she knew what she was about to say, and stopped her. “And I don’t want to do a single freakin’ A Level, and I especially don’t want to go to freakin’ university!”
There was a silence. Ed, who had stopped grinning, cleared his throat. “Are you going to eat that, Jo?” he asked.
Jo looked down at the unfinished slice of cake. An ant was exploring the rim of the plate. “Help yourself.”
Ed picked up the plate and stuck the fork into the creamiest bit of cake. “Thanks.”
During this exchange, Holly had evidently been re-thinking her tactics. She looked sympathetically at Jo. “Look, we understand, don’t we, Ed?”
Ed, munching, made no response.
“I mean, we’ve all just done exams. We’re all fed up with Miss Balcombe’s attempts to be a teacher. We’re all glad to see the back of the National Sodding Curriculum. But we’ve got the summer to forget all that, and we can start again in September with courses we’ve chosen.”
Jo sipped her coffee silently.
“No Triple Science?” encouraged Holly, squeezing Jo’s arm. “No PE?”
Jo sipped a bit more. “I’m not going back, Hol.”
Holly drew breath to protest, but she was stopped by the sound of Ed clanging the fork onto the empty plate. He held it down with his thumb and picked up his coffee. “Sounds to me like Jo’s made up her mind,” he said, with no approval or disapproval, or judgement, or irony, or loading of any of the words.
Jo could feel her neck going pink. Ed understood. No-nonsense Ed, willing to obliterate every argument Holly had mustered with one sensible stroke.
It was too much for Holly. “Oh, Ed, what’s the matter with you?” She seized Jo’s right wrist, pinching it uncomfortably “Come on, Jo, let’s go down to the river and look at the ducks, shall we? Just you and me.”
“I don’t want to look at the ducks,” protested Jo. “What about my coffee?”
“We’ll be back in a minute.” Holly was raising and lowering her eyebrows like someone in a sitcom, trying to send a silent message. Jo knew she wanted to talk about something not for Ed’s ears.
“Let me finish my coffee first,” she insisted.
Over the rim of the cup Jo caught Ed’s eyes. They were smiling. “What if I just don’t listen?” he suggested to Holly. “I’ve got my earphones with me.”
“It’s all right, Ed,” said Jo before Holly could speak. “I haven’t seen those ducks for at least a month.” She drained her cup. “Lead on, boss.”
She followed Holly between the parties of drinkers down to the riverbank. The water was low, and most of the ducks were sitting on the grass hoping for scraps from Press Gang’s customers. They usually only got cigarette packets and chocolate wrappers, but being ducks, they never learnt.
Holly pulled Jo out of earshot of everyone except the ducks. “Now listen,” she said sternly. “You’re not going to want to hear this, but I’m going to say it anyway. Ready?”
Jo didn’t have time to respond.
“This stupid nonsense about leaving school is all because of Toby Ferguson, isn’t it?” demanded Holly, frowning so hard that the open-eyed prettiness she usually displayed had disappeared completely. Her face was one big mass of concern.
Relief made Jo want to hug her. “Jeez, Holly, is that what you think? It’s ages since I decided I was going to leave – long before I met Toby!” Around the time Tess left, she thought. The fifteenth of February. By the end of that month Jo’s mind had been made up. She’d mentioned it to Mrs Bull, who had tried to persuade Jo to consider A Level Computer Studies, and Mrs Bull had obviously told Mr Treasure.
“But when you did meet Toby,” continued Holly, undaunted, “and he started showing off about having his independence, and getting a car, and being a fashion buyer and all that, you thought you could do the same, didn’t you?”
Jo was offended. “I don’t want to be a fashion buyer,” she said, though she knew this wasn’t what Holly had meant. “I just want to leave school.”
“And do what?” persisted Holly. “I mean, has Toby got his independence? Has he got a car? Is he a fashion buyer? Well?”
Holly’s eyes looked shiny. This was really important to her. Her chest was going up and down as she tried to control her breathing. Her anxiety as she waited for Jo’s words was certainly flattering. But somehow, it was annoying, too.
“You know he hasn’t,” said Jo coldly.
Holly’s tears, precariously balanced on her lower lids, escaped. She was looking pretty again, though, even with her nose going pink. She sniffed. “Exactly. Without decent GCSEs you can’t do anything – everyone knows that, which is why people never shut up about it, and get slaughtered on vodka and God-knows-what on Results Day. But you will get decent GCSEs, because you worked hard for them.” Her eyes filled with more tears, and she sniffed again. “But why do all that work, Jo, then throw the results away, because of a boy?
“It’s not because of a boy!”
People nearby turned to see who was shouting. Jo didn’t know she had shouted. With an effort to calm herself, she lowered her voice. “I couldn’t give a toss what Toby has or hasn’t done,” she told Holly. “But at least he made the decision to leave school when he was sixteen, and did it. And if I want to, so will I.”
Holly looked stricken. She wiped her cheeks with her palms. “Right.”
Jo thought for a moment that she’d won, and Holly had given in. But the word wasn’t a surrender; it was a decision. Holly had one more round of ammunition to fire. She wiped her nose with her fingers and raised swimming eyes to Jo’s face. “Has Toby ever told you exactly why he left St Bede’s?”
Jo’s heart began to jerk about. This wasn’t fair. This was a blow below the belt.
“What’s this about, Hol?” she asked suspiciously.
“He was expelled.”
“What?” Jo wasn’t prepared. She’d had a few seconds to prepare a scene involving a job offer he couldn’t refuse, or terrible GCSE results. But she hadn’t considered this.
“It’s true, Jo, I promise.”
“And how do you know?” asked Jo indignantly.
Holly looked very uncomfortable. “I found out through my mum’s friend Liz.”
Jo was so surprised she felt her mouth slacken. She knew she was staring at Holly, but couldn’t stop. “And how the bloody hell does this Liz know anything about Toby?”
“She’s the school nurse at St Bede’s.”
Jo struggled to digest this. Some phrase like ‘professional confidence’ hovered in the back of her mind. “And she’s been gossiping to your mum? What a bitch!”
“Jo!” Holly was horror-struck. “It was me she told, not Mum. It came up by accident. Liz was at our house and we were just talking, and when I heard where she works I asked her if she’d known a boy called Toby Ferguson. I had no idea what she was going to say – I was as shocked as you are. He was expelled two years ago, when he was sixteen. Before he even took his GCSEs.”
Jo felt weak. He had never done his exams. No wonder he hadn’t got very far into art school, or fashion buying. “What was he expelled for?”
“Liz didn’t know. Or maybe she did know, but she realized by then that she shouldn’t have said anything.” Holly slid Jo a ne
rvous glance. “I know she was wrong, and maybe I was too. But I’m just so worried about you.”
“I bet you are.” Jo couldn’t help sounding mean. She felt like a world class dickhead. She began to walk back up the riverbank. “Thanks for your concern.”
“Jo…” Holly hurried after her. “Wait a minute.”
Jo stopped, and the two girls faced each other. They were near enough now for people to hear. Holly was almost crying again. “Please, little Jo,” she pleaded. “You can shoot the messenger if you like – I don’t care how angry you are with me. But for your own sake, just do what’s right, will you?”
Chapter Ten
Trevor loaded his car with as many of his belongings as he could, and he and Jo stood self-consciously on the pavement beside it. Suddenly Trevor lunged forward, grabbed Jo’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head like he used to when she was little.
“Be good, now, Jo-girl,” he said, his breath damp on Jo’s scalp. “Don’t let her get to you.”
“I’ll be fine,” Jo reassured him. “Don’t worry about me.”
He stood back and looked at her. The late afternoon sunshine showed the colours in his hair, and the criss-cross lines beside his eyes and mouth. Jo wondered if, when he was eventually free, some other woman would make him happier than Tess had.
“Send me a text or something?” he asked.
“Course,” said Jo. Tears nearly came, but she stopped them, and flapped her hands at him. “Go on, just go, before this gets like the last scene of The Return of the King.”
“What happens in the last scene of The Return of the King?” he asked, opening the car door.
“They’re saying goodbye to each other,” explained Jo. “You know, the hobbits. But it takes so long, most people have left the cinema and are half way home before the credits actually roll.”
Trevor laughed. “Edited by Joanna Probert – ruthlessly. That’s a credit I’d like to see.”
“Maybe you will, some day,” said Jo. Producer, screenplay-writer, director, actress, editor. And finally, censor.
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