Moderate Violence (23 page)

Jo pictured Holly, her loyal defender, pleading that
day by the river. She’d always known, without ever really thinking about it,
that Holly loved her. Holly’s attempt at lying had gone so deeply against her
natural morality that she had suffered intolerably. When she’d let Jo in the
back door of Toby’s house, it was because she’d collapsed under the unendurable
strain.

“You’ve been as big a fool as I have,” Jo told her.

Holly had gone pink. She looked insanely pretty. What
was it with Tom Clarke, that he hadn’t made his move, properly, on her? Perhaps
it was best not to wonder, thought Jo ruefully.

“Anyway,” went on Holly, “then I found out he’d been
expelled from St Bede’s.” Her eyes met the question in Jo’s eyes. “There was a
long list of trouble,” she said, still very pink. “But possession of cocaine
was the final straw apparently.”

Jo nodded, sighing inwardly. “Well, that’s not as bad
as dealing, I suppose.”
Or seducing younger
boys.
“Go on.”

“OK, I tried to get Toby to…er…end the relationship,
but he didn’t. So I told you about him getting expelled, and tried to make you
see what a loser he is, so that you’d dump him.”

Jo almost smiled. If it wasn’t so brutally
embarrassing, it might be hilarious. It would, she thought vaguely, make a neat
idea for a movie. Or had the gay-guy-straight-girl craze run its course?

“And all the time, he kept promising to tell you the
truth. But he never did, and when you threatened to smash the door down on
Tuesday night, I was so relieved!”

Jo said nothing. Holly still didn’t know, and with the
smallest bit of discretion on Ed’s part she never
would
know, that Jo had thought Toby was cheating on her
with Pascale.

“And all the time it was going on,” went on Holly, “I
kept telling myself it was Toby that was in the wrong. But it was
me
, wasn’t it?
I
made you cut yourself, and nearly die, didn’t I, little
Jo?” Her voice wobbled, and tears rushed to her eyes. She blinked, and they
splashed onto the table. “I know you’ll forgive me, because you’re you. But I
don’t deserve it.”

Jo watched her cry for a few moments. She replayed
Holly’s words in her head and as she did so, the truth became inescapable. She slowly
leaned forward and laid her left arm on the table, underside up. The scars left
by the scratch-patch and the compass were displayed in all their glory.

“It’s not you, Hol” said Jo. “And it’s not Toby, or
Trevor, or Tess, or anyone. It’s
me
.”

Chapter Fifteen

Jo studied the file. She didn’t know what to
do with the labels, because things had become clear. And when something was
already obvious, you didn’t need to label it, did you?

She held her breath, ready to delete the names and
labels, but she let her breath out and stared at them, wondering. Supposing she
re-classified them? A movie X-rated thirty years ago might be a 15 now. Times
changed. People changed.

She hovered the mouse arrow over Pascale’s label. Pascale
had proved to be a true friend; Jo didn’t deserve to be forgiven, and yet
Pascale had forgiven her. She considered the space beside Pascale’s name
carefully. Then, before she could change her mind, she deleted ‘Explicit sexual
content’ and her fingers clattered out ‘Strong scenes of violence’
. On your part, Jo, that is.

And Ed. What you see is what you get. He was always,
always honest. Jealously, she’d tarred him with the same brush as Pascale. But
the ‘Strong sex references’ label had nothing to do with what Ed was really
like, on the inside.

In its place, she wrote ‘Fit for viewing by persons
generally’, and was satisfied. When she’d got rid of Toby’s ‘Suitable for all’
label, she typed ‘Suitable for persons of 18 years and over’.
There.
She’d liberated him, setting him
loose in the adult world, where he wouldn’t have to pretend that he was
something he wasn’t. He might even one day break into fashion buying.

Immediately, without having to think about it, she
exchanged ‘Fairly adult’ for ‘Mild peril’ beside Holly’s name. Holly was like
the fish in
Finding Nemo
– all at
sea, venturing into an unknown world, suffering the real, but not mortal, peril
caused by a force stronger than herself.

After a moment of indecision she added her own name to
the list. She stared at the chunky little two-letter word, chewing her lip.
Then she typed, ‘Contains adult material’ beside it.

If Trevor could step up, so could she.

It was Results Day tomorrow. With a small sigh she
opened her Facebook page. There was a message from Holly asking everyone to
meet at 10 o’clock at school. ‘I’ll be there’, she typed in the Comment box. Then
she added, as an afterthought, ‘xxx’, and pressed ‘Enter’.

* * * * * *

“But no-one gets
six
A-stars!” gasped Holly.

Jo was standing in the corridor staring at the slip of
paper in her hand, with her friends hanging on to each of her arms, staring
too.

“And three ordinary As, and a C for Maths. Oh,
Jo
!” Pascale, almost in tears, hugged and
hugged her. So did Holly. By the time they’d finished looking at each other’s
results, all three of them were crying.

“You’ve got A-star for Maths, Pascale!” exclaimed Jo. “You
must be a genius!”

“I wonder what Ed got for Maths,” pondered Pascale. She
blew her nose. “If he didn’t get A-star he’s going to be mad jealous.”

Pascale had two other A-stars too, and Holly a total of
four. “I got A for French!” she said for the third time. “For
French
! How clever am I?”

“Clever, clever, clever! But six…” said Pascale,
grinning at Jo, “six is ridiculous. Especially when you don’t even know if
you’re staying on.”

“Oh, Jo, you
must
stay on!” cried Holly, her eyes still shiny with tears.

Jo put the results slips in her bag. “I might, I
think.”

Holly and Pascale both stared at her. Holly recovered
first. “
Brilliant
.” Her eyes were
alight with relief. “When did you decide?”

“I haven’t decided. But maybe, now that Trevor wants
to…” began Jo. Then she stopped. She didn’t know what to say.

“Wants to what?” demanded Holly.

Jo wiped her cheeks, keeping the tissue ready in case
more tears came. “Oh…to be, you know…”

“A dad?” supplied Pascale unexpectedly. Her tone was
tentative, her dark eyes serious.

Jo gave her a grateful look. “I suppose so. Instead of
a liability.”

“Well, thank God for that,” said Pascale in her
what-a-load-of-bollocks voice.

Jo put her arms around Pascale and held her tightly. It
wasn’t the usual girl-hug that everyone in their class had given each other
when they opened their envelopes. It wasn’t even the friend-hug Jo, Pascale and
Holly always did when they met or parted. It was a love-hug. There was no doubt
in Jo’s mind: she loved Pascale, for her faults, her innocence, and, though it
sounded a bit po-faced, for her nobility.

“Thanks, Pascale,” she said into Pascale’s hair. “I
care much more about you than you know.”

Pascale’s body shuddered. She was making big efforts to
keep control. “Oh,
bollocks
!” she
said.

The tension was broken. They both laughed, embarrassed
and relieved. Jo had made her apology, revealing the depths of her shame
without needing to re-visit the event, and Pascale had understood.  

“I could murder a cup of coffee,” said Holly, her
watchful gaze flipping between Jo and Pascale. “Come on, or those greedy bastards
will have drunk it all.”

They set off in an untidy saunter, with people shrieking
and embracing all around them, along the corridor to the dining room, where
coffee and cake was being dispensed by last year’s Lower Sixth. Teachers
gathered at the door, commiserating with and congratulating people. “Well done,
Jo Probert,” said Mr Treasure. “See you on Tuesday.”

Jo smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

The three girls went out of the French windows and sat
at the picnic tables under the trees by the field. Most of their year seemed to
be there. Everyone was excited; it was as noisy as a primary school playground.
Jo liked it. It was such a familiar sound, and such a familiar place. The
insipid coffee, the feel of the bench on the back of her legs, the marks on the
dining-room windows left by the Christmas stickers Year Seven always made. Jo
looked round, wondering whether she actually
would
stay on. Or did she – just a little bit – still want to hold up that
placard saying ‘Look at me! Aren’t I special?’

Their table had filled up suddenly. Almost before Jo
had time to notice him, Ed had sat astride the picnic bench beside her and
spread his results slips on the table. “What do you think of
that
, then?”

He had three A-stars. “One for Maths, thank God,” he
said, with a sideways glance at Pascale. Pascale didn’t look at him, but got up
and started speaking to someone at another table, her coffee cup in her hand.

“That’s great!” Jo told him warmly. “I got the results
I wanted, too.”

“So are you staying on, then?” He said this with such
artless expectation Jo’s heart began to murmur.

“I’m thinking about it,” she said.

His expression seemed to ignite. “Yeah? That’s…um,
really good.” He regained control of his face. “Did Pascale tell you?” he asked
in a low voice.

“Nope. What about?”

“About her and me.”

Jo smiled. “If you dumped
her
, she’ll never tell me. If she dumped
you
, I’ll hear about it eleven hundred
times.”

“Nobody dumped anyone. We came to a mutual agreement.”

“Really?” Jo was surprised. “How come she tolerated
that?”

Ed began to chuckle. Jo liked the sound of him
chuckling. It was more masculine than a giggle, but more musical than the
drunken cackle she’d heard so often from Trevor. “Because she’s in
lurve
. Her new bloke’s called Tarquin!” His
voice was almost a squeak. “I mean, who’s called
Tarquin
?”

“Um…well, not many people are called Pascale,” Jo
pointed out. “Or Poins.” For a moment, she was jealous that Pascale hadn’t told
her
about Tarquin, but then she
remembered that before this morning, she hadn’t seen Pascale since the Very Bad
Experience. And Holly hadn’t seemed to know either. “So how did she meet this
Tarquin?” she asked.

“At some party she went to at her dad’s firm,” said Ed,
“where they had to dress up as eighties stockbrokers. I tell you, if she’d
asked
me
I’d have refused. I’m
never going to go to a fancy dress party again my life.”

“I think you’d look OK in a striped shirt and red
braces,” said Jo, beginning to smile a lot.

Ed was grinning too. “It gets better. This Tarquin’s
got a twin brother called Torquil. What are these people thinking of?”

Jo giggled. “Poor Tarquin! Because he wears Rose and
Reed jeans and has got dark hair, he caused all this trouble and he doesn’t
even know it!”

Ed started drumming his heel on the ground. His knee
bounced up and down. He only did that when he was nervous. “Toby OK these
days?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

He stopped drumming his heel and stuck his hands in his
pockets. “Finding out your boyfriend’s gay must be so
weird
,” he said quietly. “I’d be furious
if that happened to me.” He smiled bashfully. “If my girlfriend went off with
another girl, I mean.”

Jo took a few seconds to work out what she wanted to
say. Ed waited patiently, watching her face. She was aware of him watching her,
but the anxiety she’d always felt about what he was seeing – was her hair
stranding, or her nose shiny? – wasn’t there. “To be honest,” she said at last,
“I was more furious about things that happened
before
that night.” She looked at him earnestly. “I never felt like Toby was…you know,
a proper boyfriend, but I didn’t know why. I thought there was something wrong
with me.”

He gave her something approximating to The Look. “There’s
nothing wrong with you, Jo.”

“Um…” She knew her neck was going pink. “Well, anyway,
it was all a bit difficult.”

 Ed put his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his
hand and went on looking at her. “And you and Holly are still friends, are
you?”

Jo nodded. “Amazingly enough, yes.”

He seemed to be awaiting an explanation.

“We worked it out,” she said.

He grinned knowingly. “And Pascale’s come out of this
with her reputation intact, hasn’t she?”

Jo wished she could tell him the truth. Her attack on
Pascale, though scary for both perpetrator and victim, was the straw that had
broken the back of the whole Toby thing, and ended up sorting it out. “She’s a
brilliant person, you know, Ed, even if she can be a bit mean about boys.”

“That’s an understatement.” There was admiration on his
face. “She really likes you, you know, Jo. She was hysterical that day when you
were in hospital. She kept saying it was her fault, and Holly kept saying it
was
her
fault.” Another grin. “Me,
I think it was Tarquin
’
s fault.”

Jo smiled, and the smile turned into a laugh. Ed slid a
little further along the bench, so that his thigh was pressed against hers.
“This party at Tom Clarke’s on Saturday,” he said softly. “Will you come with
me
?”

Jo didn’t know what her face was doing. She hoped she
was smiling, but she could hardly speak because her heart had turned into a
battering ram. She could feel Ed’s hipbone sticking into her and his breath
going in and out. “That would be nice,” she said. Then she thought of
something. “But
you
can’t go,
surely?”

He frowned. “Why not?”

“Tom says it’s fancy dress.”

“So?”

“You said you’re never going to a fancy dress party
again.”

“Did I? When?”

“Just now, when you were telling me about Tarquin.”

He took hold of her hand under the table, right there
in front of everyone. No-nonsense Ed. Do what you feel like doing. “The trouble
with you, Jo,” he said, “is you’re too clever.”

Jo fished her results slips out of her bag and waggled
them at him. “Six A-stars!”