Moderate Violence (18 page)

Unexpectedly, Ed looked straight at her. It wasn’t The
Look – he’d never consider bestowing that on Jo – but it was meaningful. Suddenly,
its meaning came to her, and a miniscule shift in his gaze showed that he knew
she’d understood. They looked at one another for a long moment, then Jo got up,
pulled her chair nearer to his, and sat down again. You couldn’t be too
careful, even in Gino’s. “You think she’s seeing
Toby
?”

He nodded miserably.

Jo’s blood-vessels had contracted, every one of them. Her
body shuddered with a cold, mean spasm. Under her cardigan she could feel the
hairs on her arms sticking up. “What makes you think that?” she whispered.

“She’s kind of gone cold on me.”

“Toby’s gone cold on me too,” said Jo before she could
stop herself.

Ed was immediately alert. He looked at her with bright
eyes. “It’s bloody obvious who they’re
hot
for, then, isn’t it?”

Jo strongly wished her words unsaid. “No, I didn’t mean
that, exactly.” She tried to say what she
did
mean. “Um…it was ages ago that…well…” Nothing she could think of was
suitable for Ed’s ears. Girls didn’t go around telling boys about the stuff
that had gone on, or rather hadn’t, between Toby and herself. She tried again. “I
just get the feeling he’s not really concentrating on me.”

Ed didn’t say anything. He was leaning his elbows on
the table, his head in his hands. He looked very dejected.

“Have you actually
seen
her with Toby?” asked Jo gently.  

“
I
haven’t,
no.”

“Who has, then?”

“Poins.”

For Pascale’s brother Poins to be a witness, Toby must
have been in the little igloo house. Jo felt dismayed. “
Poins
?”

Ed leaned back and put his hands in his trouser
pockets. “I was round at Pascale’s on the Friday night before they went to
Spain, waiting for her while she was getting changed. I was playing cards with
Poins. You know what he’s like, always wanting to play some game. Then he asked
me if he could do some card tricks on me, but I refused because I hate all that
crap, and he said that the other bloke that called for Pascale the other day
let him do card tricks so why wouldn’t I? And when I asked what bloke, he
realized, and went all shy, and said he didn’t know his name. So I asked him
what he looked like and believe me, Jo, it was Toby.”

The waitress brought their coffee. Jo spooned some of
the froth off the top of her latte, her brain busy. “What did he say about
him?”

“Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Just say it, Ed.”

“He said the bloke had jeans on with ‘RR’ on the
pocket. Like Rolls Royce.”

Jo tried to think rationally. Poins, who liked cars and
planes,
would
notice that. “Lots
of people buy Rose and Reed jeans,” she said.

“And this bloke had dark hair, and he looked done up,
Poins said. I guess he meant sort of well-groomed. Like Toby.” Ed’s brown eyes
were watching her nervously. “What do you think?”

Jo’s brain was still busy. That Friday was the day of
the staff meeting at work. The day she’d said that stupid thing to Toby. The
next day, he’d tried to have sex with her in a taxi. And the day after that,
Sunday, was the day Jo had gone round to consult Doctor Pascale on what to do
about Toby. She put down her spoon. She felt sick.

“Oh my God,” she said in a small voice.

“Are you all right?” asked Ed, his expression
sharpening.

“Oh my God,” she said again. “I talked to Pascale about
Toby…personal things…”

“When?”

“The day before she went on holiday. The Sunday. And I
had a pizza after work with Toby that Friday, the day he…”

She swallowed. She was sure she was going to be sick.

“The day Poins saw him at Pascale’s later on?” supplied
Ed.

Jo’s heart began to thud. “Why didn’t you say anything
sooner?” she asked, trying not to sound as if she was accusing him. “I mean,
this is more than a week ago.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he confessed. “You know,
wondering.” He gave her one of his candid looks. “But she’s coming back from
Spain tomorrow, and I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

Jo picked up her coffee and sipped it. Her nausea
diminishing, she tried to sound businesslike. “What are we going to do?” She
took another sip. “If we confront them, they’ll just deny it.”

He went on looking straight at her, his mouth in a
line. Then he laughed. The way he looked when he laughed reminded Jo of the
moment when he’d pulled her towards him when they’d danced. The thing with Ed,
she decided, was that he didn’t mess around. If he wanted to dance with you, he
did it. If he wanted to know what his girlfriend was doing with your boyfriend,
he asked. And if he wanted to laugh, he laughed. “Christ, Jo, we’re a right
pair!”

“I think it’ll just have to come out of its own
accord,” she said, realizing this as she said it. “They’ll tell us eventually. They’ll
have to.”

Ed nodded. He seemed receptive to this idea.

“And don’t forget,” went on Jo, “it may be a load of
nonsense. Poins might have been making the whole thing up just to get back at
you because you wouldn’t let him do his stupid card tricks. Pascale doesn’t
call him Poisonous for nothing.”

Ed shook his head. “I
know
she’s cheating on me.”

“Well, if you get proof, dump her,” she told him
decisively. Someone had to be the first to fail the never-been-dumped
challenge, and if there was any justice in the world, it should be Pascale.

“Don’t worry, I will.”

Jo knew he would. No messing around. “What time
tomorrow does she get back?”

“About three in the afternoon.”

They were both silent, thinking about this. “We need to
arrange some way of getting them together, with us there,” said Jo. “Then they
won’t be able to hide it.”

Ed’s eyes brightened, though there was still anxiety in
them. “We could go on a double date, to Press Gang, maybe, tomorrow night?”

“Toby won’t go to Press Gang.”

“Why not?”

Jo couldn’t admit that Toby refused to tell her. “He
just doesn’t like the place. In fact, I can’t say I’m very keen on it myself.”

“Somewhere else then,” said Ed, frustration creeping
into his voice. “Toby can choose where, if he’s so picky.”

Jo was dubious. She sipped her coffee mechanically. “I’ll
try to fix it, but the next day we’re both at work is Thursday.”

Ed looked at her, not understanding. “Get hold of him
on Facebook, then. Or on the phone, or email him or something. I mean, he’s
your
boyfriend
, Jo.”

“OK, but last night I said will I see you before
Thursday and he said guess not.”

Ed drank a lot of his coffee and clattered the cup back
onto the saucer. “God, he
has
gone cold on you, hasn’t he?

Jo felt the beginning of a flush on her cheeks. She
couldn’t tell him that it wasn’t so much that Toby had gone cold on her, it was
more like he’d never warmed up. “I’m glad you told me,” she said, and put down
her cup. “It makes a lot of things clearer.”
She rested her chin on her hands and stared into the cup, trying to
keep her face and voice normal, so that Ed wouldn’t realize how profoundly
depressed this conversation was making her. “Trouble is, Ed, I feel such an
arse
.”

“It’s not
you
that’s the arse,” said Ed, “it’s Pascale. She can’t act like this and expect to
keep her friends. She’ll end up such a famous bitch no one will speak to her.”

Jo looked up at him. “No she won’t. Kingsgrove’s not
exactly short of bitchy girls. And there’ll always be another sucker waiting in
line.”

“All right,” conceded Ed. Then he smiled sarcastically.
“But I’d like to be a fly on the wall when Holly finds out. She’s going to go
ballistic.”

It was true. Holly’s morality was ingrained. A sudden
rush of affection flooded over Jo. “I love Holly,” she told Ed. “She was my
friend before Pascale ever was. We were in Reception together.”

Ed was unimpressed by this admission. He pushed his
empty cup away and crossed his arms on the table. “So will you call Toby and
fix to meet tomorrow night? Then call me and I’ll get Pascale.”

Jo bent down and took her phone out of her bag, letting
her hair swing forward over her cheeks in case he was watching her. “What’s
your number?”

He recited it and she put it in her phone. Then she
said, “Actually, how did you get mine?”

 “Off Holly. I told her that Pascale had tried to phone
you from Spain, but it wouldn’t connect, so she wanted me to give you a
message. It was lame, but you know Holly, always ready to help.”

Jo looked at him. His ears had gone pink. He’s as dopey
as I am, she thought. “If she asks, I’ll pretend that’s what happened.”

“Thanks.” He looked at Jo awkwardly for a second, then
pushed back his chair. “I’d better get going. I’ll pay for your coffee.”

“No, it’s OK, really,” protested Jo, but he’d already
got the money out. “And call me, about the double date,” he reminded her.

She nodded. “Thanks for the coffee.”

He paid at the counter, collected his change, stuck his
hands in his pockets and set off towards Burgerblitz without looking back. Jo
went on sitting at the table, cradling her coffee cup, looking reluctantly at
the phone that lay beside it. Call Toby, Ed had said. But Toby would be at
work, and she’d have to leave a message which he probably wouldn’t pick up
until this evening. She could call his landline and leave a message with his
mum, but he might not go home after work. Sunday was one of his clubbing
nights. And she didn’t particularly want to speak to his mum.

Stolen mobile phone, indeed. A blade of fury stabbed
Jo’s insides. He could, conceivably, have been with Pascale on that Sunday
evening when he said someone had spiked his drink in a club. It was unlikely,
though, as she and her family had to catch an early flight the next day. On the
Monday, when he’d thrown the sickie, at least Pascale was in Spain so he
couldn’t have been with her. But wherever he was, Toby still hadn’t been with
Jo
.

She called his mobile. “Hi, it’s me,” she said to the
messaging service. “I miss you! Can we meet tomorrow? Call me after work.”

She hung up, but her phone rang immediately. “I’m on
lunch hour,” said Toby. “You called me. What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Her heart jerked around in her chest. Mendacity
made her nervous, even when she was lying to such an uncaringly mendacious
person. “But we just didn’t arrange anything last night, and I want to see
you.” Her voice really did sound unnatural. Surely he’d notice?

“Well…”

Here it comes, she thought. Lie number one thousand,
two hundred and sixty-three. “Look, Jo, I’m going clubbing tonight.” His voice
didn’t sound natural either. Or maybe it never did when he was lying, but she
hadn’t realized until now. “And tomorrow night I’m busy too.”

“Oh.” She tried to sound suitably disappointed. “Well,
Tuesday?”

She waited. Toby was calculating silently. “OK, then,
where?”

“You choose.”

There was another silence. “Er…look, can I get back to
you?” he asked. “It may not be Tuesday, but I’ll try to make Wednesday. I’ll
call you. Bye.”

When Jo hung up, her armpits felt clammy. Liar, liar,
liar
, she murmured to herself. She
pocketed her phone, picked up her bag, and, abandoning the almost-cold coffee,
opened the swing door and went out into the midday sunshine.

Chapter Twelve

The double date idea hadn’t worked, but the
following day Jo and Ed made a new plan.

Pascale had phoned Ed from the airport earlier to say
she’d had a stomach upset in Spain and was still feeling queasy. When Ed had
pressed her further, she’d said she was very tired after the journey and wanted
to go to bed early.

“She said in this little-girl way, ‘You can wait till
tomorrow if I can, can’t you?’” Ed had reported.

They decided that later that evening Jo would show up
unexpectedly at Toby’s house and that Ed would do the same at Pascale’s. If
neither of them was at home, the game, as they say in old gangster movies,
would be well and truly up.

“Don’t worry, we’ll catch them,” Jo had assured him.

At five to eight in the evening, with her
feelings swinging between anger and dread, Jo walked from the bus stop down
Whittaker Road to Keats Close. She knew that on the other side of Kingsgrove,
Ed would be on his way to the igloo.

When she got to the zebra crossing she turned to check
the traffic. Then she saw something so unexpected that her heart did a
somersault. Dawdling along Keats Close consulting her wristwatch, was a blonde
girl who looked so much like Holly it had to
be
Holly. Jo saw her produce her phone, press some keys and put it to
her ear.

Jo, who had gone hot and cold and hot again, didn’t
cross the road. She hurried down the alley between the dry cleaner’s and the
kebab shop. Holly hadn’t seen her.

She waited for about five minutes, leaning on the wall
of the kebab shop. The hammering in her chest slowly subsided. Stupid, stupid
moron
. She tried to calm herself,
reasoning that Holly hadn’t been going to see Toby at all, but just happened to
know someone who lived in Keats Close. But Jo’s common sense told her that
after eleven years of friendship, she knew everyone that Holly knew.

Why was
Holly
,
not Pascale, on her way to Toby’s?

Her brain reeled. Could he actually be cheating on her
with
both of them
? In fact,
cheating on each of them too? Everyone knew that boys were either the loyal
type who had one girlfriend or the serial cheat type who had lots. Why hadn’t
it occurred to her before that Toby was a prime example of the second type?

 She tried to think clearly. She hadn’t seen Holly for
almost a week, since the scene last Tuesday at Press Gang. They’d had a couple
of non-committal phone conversations, Holly sounding a bit strained. Jo had
assumed that she was worrying about approaching the subject of Sixth Form again
without upsetting Jo.
But
she hadn’t been worrying about that at all, had she
?

Blood surged through Jo’s veins, making her ears sing. She
wanted to run away, but she knew she should go straight to Toby’s house and
confront him with the news that she knew Holly was there. She mustn’t let him
get away with it. Ed wouldn’t mess around, and neither would she.

Breathing unevenly, she left the alley. Long shadows
fell across the street, and a breeze tugged her hair across her face. Slowly,
she walked down Keats Close and up the path of Toby’s house.

“Jo!” he said when he opened the front door. He was
wearing a new-looking, ironed shirt with the Rose and Reed logo on the breast
pocket. His face looked as if someone had just told him he hadn’t won a million
pounds after all. “Um…I’m about to go out, but come in.”

As Jo stepped into the hall her nose detected his
familiar going-out smell – shower gel, shampoo, aftershave. Robson was barking
somewhere at the back of the house. “Anybody in, apart from you and Robson?”
she asked, reaching up to kiss Toby’s cheek.

“Um…my mum’s gone to Scotland for a couple of weeks, in
fact, but – ”

At that moment Holly came out of the sitting-room. “Hello,
Jo! How are things?”

Jo pretended surprise, then bafflement. “What are
you
doing here?” Then suspicion. “Er…am I
interrupting something?”

Toby held up his hands. “Not guilty, Your Honour.”

“Of course he’s not
guilty
.”
Holly slapped Jo’s arm lightly. She sounded her usual self, but Jo could see
that at the very back of her eyes, behind the self-confident brightness, she
knew that she was guilty, Your Honour. And she knew that Jo knew that. “We’re
just hanging out, aren’t we, Toby?”

They were both looking at Jo. Holly was twisting a
tendril of hair around her finger, which she only did when she was nervous. Jo
thought the better of protesting that Toby was
her
boyfriend, so
she
should be the
one hanging out with him. She wanted to lull them into a false sense of
security. And she certainly didn’t want to sound like the kind of girlfriend
she despised – possessive, paranoid and pathologically uncool. “I
see
,” she said ponderously. “You’re just…”
– she made speech marks in the air with her fingers, something that Holly
always said only brainless saddos do – “‘hanging out’. O…K…”

A small frown appeared between Holly’s eyebrows. Jo
knew it meant that she was embarrassed by what Jo had just said, but was
prepared to tolerate it because Jo was only an artless little thing, and
Holly
was
in charge here. “What does that mean?” she asked carefully, as if Jo
were hard of hearing. “Don’t you trust us?”

Jo’s strategic intentions vanished. She felt hot with
rage. She felt like her six-year-old self, who used to make scenes in toyshops,
and had to be dragged out, kicking. She felt like she’d felt just before she’d
driven the compass into her arm, and stabbed herself with the nail scissors,
first one blade, then both.

“
Toby
!”
she said, so sharply that Holly actually jumped, and Toby blinked. Jo pushed
Toby with all her strength. There wasn’t much room in the hallway, and as he
took a step backwards he caught the banister post with his ankle, stumbled and
sat down heavily on the stairs. Jo stood over him, shouting. “You
bastard
!
If you want to hurt me, why don’t you just beat me over the head
with an iron bar and have done with it?”

Holly had caught hold of both Jo’s arms. Struggling to
free herself, Jo shouted at Holly too. “And
you’re
supposed to be my
friend
!”

Toby got to his feet. He was stronger than Holly. He
caught hold of Jo and pressed her to his chest. To her shame she began to cry,
not with lung-wrenching sobs, but pitiful, poor-me tears, like Cinderella in
the ashes.

He loosened his grip enough for Jo to look up at him. She
knew her face was blotchy, but she didn’t care. She pushed him away. “You, and
Pascale, and
you
…” – she gave
Holly a venomous stare – “I wish I’d never seen any of you. I wish you were all
dead
, and in
Hell.
”

Through blurred vision she saw that Toby and Holly were
exchanging stricken looks. “It isn’t how it looks, Jo. Honestly,” said Holly. The
false brightness and the accusation had disappeared from her voice. She sounded
like the Holly Jo loved, and had imagined loved
her
. “Toby and I are just friends, that’s all. And what’s
Pascale got to do with it?”

Of course. Holly didn’t know about Pascale. Toby had
deceived her as ruthlessly as he had deceived Jo. She took a tissue from the
pocket of her jacket and wiped her eyes. The tears kept coming, though. She
couldn’t speak, and the only thing she could hear was her own jerky breathing.

Holly was framed by the sitting-room door, her hair
silvered by the light behind her. Blonde strands, some of them ringleted where
they’d been wound round her finger, fell round her face. The desire to be
forgiven made her bright eyes even brighter. But Jo couldn’t forgive her. She
knew an important scene was being played out here by these three characters on
this little stage. And it wasn’t over yet.

She struggled to calm herself. “Just friends?” she
repeated sarcastically.

“That’s right,” said Toby.

Jo looked at him. Automatically she began one of her
if-this-was-a-scene-in-a-movie fantasies. The director would want Toby to do
The Look, filmed in soft-focus, and then the camera would show Jo’s face,
attractively tear-stained with the help of the make-up girl and half an onion. She
would gaze imploringly at him, then turn to Holly, who, looking even more
gorgeous than her real self, would smile an actress’s smile, lips perfectly
lipsticked, teeth fixed and whitened. She would have some line like, “How could
you think anything else, Jo? Don’t you know I love you?” And then she and Holly
would hug, and the camera would show Toby looking deliriously happy, and the
music would have a lot of strings in it.

But the audience, if they were bothering to watch Jo
carefully enough, might pick up what she was feeling. Patronized – she was sure
she could act that if she tried. Distrustful? Easy. Actresses did that all the
time, employing the lowered chin, raised eyes, prettily-puckered brow method. Most
of all, though, she felt liberatingly bloody-minded.

“So, Holly…
you’re
going out tonight with
my
boyfriend?” she asked slowly, pretending not quite to understand.

Holly flicked Toby a what-the-f… glance.

“No, I’m going clubbing,” explained Toby patiently.

Jo’s eyes were dry now. She put the balled-up tissue
back in her pocket. Holly tried to put her arm around her shoulders, but she
wouldn’t let her. “Why’s Holly here, then?” she asked Toby, “If you’re going
clubbing?”

Toby’s expression was wary; Holly’s was panicky. “I
just came round to tell him about something,” she said awkwardly.  

Jo couldn’t read the truth in either of their faces. What
was Toby afraid of? What was making Holly panic?

“Well,
fine
,”
she said decisively. She opened the front door. “Isn’t that just fan…tas…tic?”

“For God’s sake, Jo – ” began Toby, but Jo ignored him.

“I’m leaving now,” she said. “So you can just shag each
other’s brains out in peace, can’t you?”

She walked quickly up Keats Close and into Whittaker
Road, where she sat down on the bench outside the library. The white light
threatened, but she shut her eyes and breathed, and it retreated.

 What the hell was she going to say to Ed when she
phoned him? Oh, Toby’s not with Pascale tonight, he’s with
Holly
. He hasn’t only stolen your
girlfriend, he’s stolen my oldest, closest friend too. He’s turned them both
into liars like him, and I’ll never trust anything either of them say, ever
again.

No, she couldn’t say that. The words would sound
pathetic to Ed, who would have no conception of the enormity of Jo’s loss. Trevor.
Toby. Pascale. Holly. All of them had gone. The only person she had left was
Tess. Selfish, stuck-up Tess.

When she was calm enough, she took out her phone and dialled.

“Pascale was in,” Ed hurried to say before she could
speak. He sounded relieved. “When I got there her mum told me she’d gone to bed
early and was fast asleep.”

Jo
wasn’t
calm. Her grip on the phone tightened. She could feel her breath condensing
against her cheek. “So you just believed her mum, did you?” she asked meanly.

“Christ, Jo,” he said, not hearing – or pretending not
to hear – Jo’s hostility, “you’re as bad as me. I’m such a suspicious bastard,
I said I’d left my keys in her room and had had to manage for a week without
them, so her mum let me go in, and there she was, fast asleep.”

Jo could picture Pascale, suntanned, peaceful, sleeping
in the dusk of a bedroom curtained against the light of the summer evening. She
felt defeated. “Oh,” she said.

There was a pause. “So what happened at Toby’s?” asked
Ed.

“Um…” There was no point in pretending. “Well, Toby was
there. And Holly was with him.”

There was another pause while Ed processed this. “
Our
Holly?” he said eventually.

No, some fantasy Holly you wish had
been there instead
.
Me, too.

“Yes, our Holly,” she said. At the back of her throat,
tears threatened. She swallowed uncomfortably. “They pitched me some stupid
story about how they’re just friends and Toby’s going clubbing tonight, and
Holly had come round to tell him about something.”