Doing It (13 page)

‘It looks like something’s swallowed you,’ he snarled, barring her way out of the front door.

Zoë had run back upstairs shouting, ‘Is that rage or lust making your eyeballs bulge?’ She changed into her pink party dress, came down and threw the hot pants onto the gas fire. ‘I’ll never wear them again,’ she screamed. The hot pants shrivelled and stank and melted down the coals and Zoë zipped out of the door. Out on the street she ran down the road listening to her father’s bellows retreat as she turned the corner. She was furious with herself for letting her dad catch her dressed to kill and for throwing her pants away like that. She was so full of red hot life and danger it surprised her she didn’t just sizzle her way through the pavement all the way down to hell.

She’d liked Dino that morning. Once he’d stopped trying to throw his weight around he was undeniably sweet. And rather gorgeous. Dino was a looker all right, every bit of him was lovely, but she hadn’t forgotten either that he
had
tried to throw his weight around, or that she had unaccountably let him. The whole time they spent in bed, she was wondering whether or not to bite it hard or kick him suddenly in the goolies. She was quite capable of doing either. One thing she did know: Dino was going to suffer, no matter how much she liked him. Telling him a huge pack of lies was an amusing form of revenge, but it wasn’t enough. The poor boy thought he was using her. Sooner or later, he was going to find out differently.

In the meantime, she was enjoying herself. They spent the morning romping about in bed like a pair of kids on a bouncy castle. She would have been happy to stay all day – she had nowhere better to go, certainly not home – but as soon as she found out that Dino’s friends were coming round to help him clean up, she remembered that she was going bowling. She jumped out of bed and was dressed before he really knew she was going. He just had time to make a date at the weekend with her before she was out of the door and gone.

Zoë caught a bus into town and dialled a number from a phone kiosk.

‘Hi, Sam.’

‘So how was the party?’

‘I stayed all night.’

‘Zoë!’

Zoë laughed at her friend’s scandalised tone. ‘I stayed with the guy whose house it was.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Gorgeous, very. You remember that one with the dark hair with little goldy bits in it?’

‘Him? Ohhh, nice.’

‘But stupid. I’m seeing him again. Or at least, he thinks I am!’ She roared with laughter.

Sam roared too, uncertainly. ‘You’re a bad girl, Zoë Trent.’

‘No, listen. I told him the most monstrous pack of lies. You wouldn’t believe it. Wrong name, wrong age, wrong everything.’

‘What did you do that for?’

‘I don’t know why, I don’t know why, I just did it!’ roared Zoë, who was certainly not going to admit that she’d been gate-crashed into sleeping with someone. ‘He thinks my dad’s a reptile doctor – no, really! He thinks my name is Siobhan. He thinks we have an indoor swimming pool and that my parents trust me so much, they let me have the house at weekends when they’re away.’ That wasn’t all true – she hadn’t actually told Dino the last two things, but the fact was, Zoë was an inventive and helpless liar. She just did it as she went along. ‘Not only that,’ she went on. ‘Listen; I got a bag full of money.’

‘Zoë!’

‘About sixty pounds.’

‘Where from?’

‘Where’d you think?’

But Sam wasn’t having it. ‘Zoë, that’s really tight, those people were at that party in good faith.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a whingebag. They’re all fat soft kids, they’ve got families and homes, they won’t miss it.’

‘Fat soft kids. You’re a fat soft kid!’

‘Not fat, not soft, not a kid, either. D’you wanna help me spend it?’

‘No.’

‘Come on! Sixty quid!’

‘I can’t today. What do you want to do that for, Zoë? Anyway, I’ve got loads of homework.’

‘Homework!’

‘Yeah, well, some of us want to have a life, you know.’

‘Sixty quid, Sam.’

Sam paused. ‘Sixty quid, that’s a lot of money.’

‘Come on. We can spend it all. Every penny. Today. All in one go.’

‘OK. Right!’

‘Good girl! Down town. See you in Stred’s in an hour?’

‘I’m going to have to finish my homework first. I’ll be a couple of hours at least.’

‘Come on, Sam, I’m paying.’

‘Two hours. OK?’

‘OK,’ agreed Zoë grudgingly. It wasn’t fair. She was paying, wasn’t she? She wasn’t sure Sam had the right to say no, but that was Sam. She was prepared to be as mad as anyone, but only after she’d finished being sensible and only if she was certain she wasn’t going to get found out. She was a master of disguise, was Sam.

Zoë put down the phone and stood looking up the streets. Two hours to kill. Boring. Boring boring boring! Why was life so boring?

It was gone eight o’clock on Sunday evening by the time Zoë got back home. They’d had a great time. There wasn’t a penny left. They’d seen a film, gone bowling, eaten a mountain of crisps and sweets and bought a CD each. Zoë had to leave hers round at Sam’s because her parents searched her room regularly. She hadn’t been there since Friday evening.

Her parents popped out of the front room like a pair of armed badgers before she even had time to close the front door.

‘You just don’t care, do you?’ yelled her dad. ‘We’ve been worried sick and you don’t even care.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘It’s not fair!’ he yelped.

‘Darling, what makes you behave like this?’ cried her mother, the waterworks already coming on. Her eyes glistened, but her father put out his hand to silence her.

‘You have absolutely no regard for anyone else. You don’t think about anyone else, you don’t have any feelings for anyone else. It’s just you you you all the time. Well?’

Well, what could she say? It was true, every word. The thing was – she didn’t care. She really truly did not care. She felt like the princess in the fairy story who had been brought up by strangers. She just didn’t fit. Her parents weren’t so bad to her. They had their faults, sure. Her father was high-handed and obviously didn’t like kids; her mother couldn’t understand her and rather pathetically never gave up trying to. Even when Zoë was a little girl, her mum used to hide outside the door for hours listening to her playing dolls with her friends to try and work her strange, elfin daughter out. She’d tried, you had to give her that. No, it was quite clear, it was Zoë who was the problem and no one else. She made herself feel like shit, the way she went on. She just couldn’t stop.

Her mother stood staring at her, flaunting her tears like the Crown Jewels, but Zoë refused guilt of any kind. Was it her fault she had caring parents? No. She stamped upstairs.

‘I ought to have had a couple of thugs, you two are bloody wasted on me,’ she shouted downstairs. She went into her bedroom, then came out again. ‘Stop making me feel guilty!’ she yelled.

‘Zoë, all we ask is that you let us know where you are. You’re only fourteen, we need to know you’re all right. We’re responsible …’ said her mother.

‘Yes, responsible, responsible, remember about being responsible?’ bawled her dad. ‘But I don’t suppose that word means very much to you, does it?’

Zoë slammed the door. ‘Weaklings,’ she growled. It was true. Her father blustered and her mother wept, but neither of them had the slightest clue how to keep their daughter in check. Inside, she prowled around her room. Why did she have nowhere else to go? Why was she so abandoned and alone in her own home? Why didn’t her father come up and knock her about the place, when she treated them like shit?

‘Pants! Shit! Cunts!’ she yelled downstairs at them, but answer came there none. She crept downstairs. Her parents were watching a quiz show on TV and eating nuts as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Zoë wanted to murder them, but all she did was run upstairs and weep on her bed instead. She couldn’t kill them, but someone was going to have to die, and soon. It was just a question of who.

Sex? No prob, bruv! He was a natural.

I’m good at that, thought Dino. That girl … he’d almost driven her mad with pleasure. Jackie didn’t know what she was missing. He felt so pleased about it, he was almost willing to forgive her. In fact, he probably would have if it wasn’t for the fact that he didn’t have to. He had a new girlfriend now.

About half an hour after Siobhan left, Jackie rang him, full of apologies. She was horrified at herself. She couldn’t understand how, or why she’d run off. That sick had just offended her so much, she was out of the house before she knew what she was doing.

‘We need to talk,’ she said.

‘I don’t think there’s anything to say.’

‘I do want to sleep with you.’

‘Well, someone else did last night too, so just … don’t bother,’ he’d said, and he put down the phone.

Jackie was history.

Dino was so relieved at having successfully lost his virginity that he had no idea how unhappy this new situation made him for all sorts of reasons. For starters, he didn’t trust Siobhan as far as he could throw her. His behaviour at blackmailing her into having sex with him had left a very nasty taste in his own mouth and badly dented his self-esteem. Jackie had rejected him yet again, which hurt very much indeed. Finally, even while he was busy congratulating himself on having chucked her, he was terrified at the thought of losing her.

He was in love with her and he didn’t even know it.

After dismissing her, Dino went downstairs to eat some cereal. That had showed her. He tried to imagine doing the things he’d done with Siobhan with Jackie, but it made him feel queasy and odd. A little later he looked at the clock and saw with a shock that it had somehow become one o’clock. People were supposed to come round at midday! His parents …! The house looked as if someone had thrown a party in it.

Dino’s anxiety levels began to rise alarmingly. He rushed back to the phone and rang his friends one after the other, but every one of them was too busy lying in bed to speak to him. He began running around from room to room throwing rubbish into a binbag, but in half an hour nothing seemed to have changed. Already, he was very seriously regretting having told Jackie about Siobhan, richly though she deserved it. It wasn’t until gone two that the doorbell rang. He rushed to open it; it was Deborah. She smiled beatifically at him.

‘Is Jon here yet?’ she asked.

‘Quick,’ he yelped. ‘We have to clean up!’

To his amazement, Debs didn’t seem to get the message. The first thing she did was try to ring Jon, but there was no answer from his phone and his mobile was switched off. Then she wanted to go round to wake him up, and Dino had to keep watching the front door in case she sneaked out. And the rest of them? Not one of the lying, cheating bastards had showed up. The house was a death pit of household destruction. Fag ends in the carpet, plastic cups ground underfoot in puddles of sour, stinking beer. There were all the breakables to unwrap and puddles of sick lurking in places that no one had as yet even discovered. His parents were due home in just a few hours and there was a week’s work for twenty strong men still left to do.

By the time Ben came round at three, Dino didn’t know whether to cuddle him or punch him for being so late.

‘Where the fuck were you?’ he whimpered.

‘Hangover,’ said Ben. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get it done. Where’s Jackie?’

Half an hour later, there was another knock at the door. Both Deborah and Dino ran to open it. There stood Jackie and Sue.

‘Deborah!’ gasped Jackie. Was this who Dino had spent the night with? ‘You!’

‘Have you seen Jonathon?’ demanded Deborah. ‘What? What have I done?’ she added, seeing Jackie’s horrified face.

It took a while to sort it out. Deborah, who had just spent an hour on her own with Dino, had had enough, and left. Jackie, realising that she’d made a mistake, apologised to her and started trying to make it up with Dino, but he was too agitated about getting the house clean to realise that she was offering to sleep with him again. Shouting started. Sue was furious with herself for coming at all. Jackie had rung her at an hour of Sunday morning she didn’t previously know existed. She had a bad hangover and this was not her problem. It was all cobblers, anyway. She hadn’t believed Dino’s story about sleeping with someone else for a second.

‘There wasn’t anyone else there, what did he do, ring an escort agency?’ she’d asked when Jackie rang her on her mobile. How obvious was it that as soon as they got there, Jackie and Dino would stand and shout at each other while she’d be expected to run around and actually help with the housework?

It was a point of principle. Sue never helped with the housework.

‘OK,’ she snarled. ‘I’ll do
one
bedroom and then I’m going. I have homework to do.’

‘You came to the party too,’ yelled Dino. ‘You enjoyed it!’

‘It was a crap party,’ she snapped, and stamped upstairs to the big bedroom only to find that she’d forgotten about the offending vomit.

Jackie thought she was going to go hysterical. ‘We have to talk,’ she blubbed as Sue thumped upstairs.

‘We have to
clean
,’ insisted Dino.

‘How can I do housework when you spent the night with someone else?’ she screamed.

One brief glimpse at Jackie’s face was enough to tell Dino that if he stuck to his story, he was unlikely to get so much as a light dusting out of her. Even guilt at running out on him wasn’t going to help her to see reason. His parents were due back in a few hours. Deborah had gone, Sue was unreliable, Ben was male. What could he do?

‘I was lying,’ he lied.

‘You were
lying
?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You just wanted to hurt me!’

‘Jacks, you ran out on me. You promised. And you promised to help get the place together and here it is, it’s half past three and look at it, it’s a shit hole. I’m sorry I told a fib but can we please,
please
get this place put together. Please?’

Jackie blinked through her tears at the chaos all around them. It was, after all, her who was in the wrong. He was a lying bastard, but at least he was lying about
not
having slept with someone rather than the other way round.