Moderate Violence (21 page)

It was cool in the night-time garden, but suddenly she
became almost unbearably sweaty. Her T-shirt was clinging to her back below her
shoulder blades, and the waistband of her denim skirt seemed to be melting into
her flesh. She’d pulled her hair back into a clip, but all over her scalp sweat
was cooling as it touched the air. And something was driving her heart faster
and faster. She pressed her nails into her palms, willing herself to fight it
as if it were an invisible sparring-partner. But its very invisibility made it
too fearsome an opponent. Invisible like The Force.
Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope
. Or like Frodo
when Gollum bit his ring-finger off at the top of Mount Doom. No one could
fight what they couldn’t see.

 Her hands still clenched, Jo pushed them into her
eyes, so hard that coloured circles chased each other in blackness. She had to
shut up about
movies
, for
Christ’s sake. She had enough to deal with in the real world, and no one to
help her do it.

She blinked until her vision cleared, then went back
inside. The curtains were open, and moths gathered at the lighted windows. Jo
pulled the French windows shut behind her and leant her damp forehead against
the glass. She couldn’t see the garden. All that was out there was a black
tunnel that ended nowhere. But when she shut her eyes again, the darkness
disappeared and the brain-piercingly brilliant light took its place.

As helpless, and as determined, as a moth, Jo backed
from the window and stumbled into the kitchen. She paused in the middle of the
room, blinking and swaying.
Liars
.
Stinking, filthy liars
,
the lot of them
.

The kitchen was full of metal things. Electric things.
Sharp things.

You’re a liar too, Jo.

Necessary lies. She looked down at the large square
plaster on the inside of her elbow. An infected mosquito bite, she’d said to
Pascale. Just above her wrist was another plaster, where the compass point had
gone in. How long ago had she done that? Three days? Four days? The wound had
begun to heal, though there was still yellow stuff on the plaster whenever she
changed it. No one had even asked about that, though she was ready with an
excuse about burning her wrist on the oven shelf. The marks on her legs – one
higher up from the scissors’ single blade, one lower down from her two-pronged
attack in the garden – were easier to hide; no bikini, no questions, no made-up
answers.

She opened the cutlery drawer, hazily recognizing the
long-bladed scissors, the carving knife in its sheath, table knives, the narrow
boning-knife Tess had never learnt how to use, smaller knives, kebab skewers. She
took out the vegetable knife. The one with the comfortable, familiar handle. The
blade was short, but not too short.

She stared at the knife for a long time, her heart
jack-hammering in her chest, sending her blood sprinting round her body, ready
to spill out all over the kitchen floor. She put the knife back and slammed the
drawer shut.

Then she took it out again and put it up her sleeve, in
case Tess came back and saw her in the hall. Upstairs, she hid it at the back
of her knicker drawer. Then she lay down, spreadeagled on the enormous bed,
staring at the algebra formulae she’d taped to the ceiling and forgotten to
take down after the exam.

Her fists were clenched; her eyes burned. The vision in
her head glowed so brightly that the dark room seemed full of light. It was a
vision of release from terror, like when Tess used to hear her having a
nightmare when she was little, and would come in and cuddle her until she
opened her eyes. There was a buzzing in Jo’s ears, but she couldn’t tell if it
came from inside or outside her skull. The feeling of wanting to run around and
scream was intolerable. She pressed her jaws together. So much noise, so much
light.

Then she was moving. Off the bed. Over to the chest.
The underwear draw was opened. She glared into the mirror. Was this the person
who’d caused all the pain? The person she needed to hurt? She felt as if she
were moving in a ball of light, like a spotlight on a stage. Maybe what she
assumed to be a nightmare was reality. Maybe, she thought as her fingers found
the knife handle, if she inflicted this punishment upon this person, upon
herself, she could forgive herself.

The knife didn’t seem all that sharp. Her leg didn’t
hurt much. But there was blood. Jo sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the
bright red ooze seeping out of her body and making its way across her thigh.

Reaching for a tissue, she dabbed and pressed the
wound. The blood hadn’t stopped. It looked very red. But there was no pain. Absolutely
none. The light all around her had gone, too. She sat there on her bed with the
bloodstained tissue in her hand and blood running down her leg onto the carpet.
She felt very, very tired – she’d walked to Holly’s and run back, which was
quite a long way. She felt cold, too, though the bedroom was warm. So cold she
was beginning to shiver. And her heart felt odd, swelling and contracting
irregularly, as if it couldn’t make up its mind what to do.

She lay down. Her eyes closed themselves. Empty,
soothing darkness enveloped her. What a mentally deficient way to behave, she
thought, sticking a knife into your leg because your boyfriend is gay.

The duvet cover felt wet underneath her. Good grief,
had she peed without knowing it? The wetness did feel warm, like pee. She had
no strength to sit up and inspect it. She’d just have to let the bed get wetter
and wetter, and brave Tess’s disgusted scolding.

Oh. Hide the knife from Tess
. She felt for it on the bed beside her, but it wasn’t there. It
must have fallen on the floor. And here she was, lying here in a pool of pee
like a baby in a cot, unable to reach it. If it wasn’t so stupid it would be
funny.

Ha ha ha. When the results come out
you should get A-star for stupidity, Jo-girl.

She heard the front door slam. A woman was giggling and
a man was saying something Jo couldn’t make out. Then there were footsteps on
the stairs. “Hello!” called Jo, but then she thought maybe she hadn’t said
hello at all. There were more voices, a silence, then the man swore
energetically. She didn’t hear anything else.

There was something heavy on her leg. Maybe she’d
fallen down a hole and got her leg stuck. And then she was moving, but she
didn’t know how, because she wasn’t walking. It was all too confusing.

Then it came to her in a flash, like the answers to
maths problems came to Pascale. She was in a
movie
,
of course. A stunt had gone wrong. She was messing up in some way. That’s
obviously what it was. A movie with a 15 rating? Violence, clearly, or else why
would her forehead be crushed against the vibrating window of a car, while
something immovable pinned her to the seat? Oh, it was a
kidnapping
scene. She was bound by
electrical cord. That’s what kidnappers always used in movies. The camera was
focused on her terrified face. She couldn’t scream because she was gagged. And
she was very, very thirsty, though the audience couldn’t know that. Couldn’t
someone get her a drink of water?

Only a 15, though. Only moderate violence. No one had
died.

Chapter Fourteen

The pattern on the curtains round the bed
looked like caterpillars having sex with slugs. Jo screamed in revulsion. A
thin nurse in a pink tunic told her to calm down, and she screamed more. Then
someone stuck a needle in her hand.

All around her were the sounds of people who’d had
accidents or emergencies in the middle of the night. Jo stared at the tube
embedded in the back of her hand, and at her bandaged leg. She was wearing a
washed-out blue hospital gown. Was this still a movie? No, it couldn’t be.

Tess was sitting on a plastic chair beside the bed. She
didn’t look much like she was in a movie. Her face was puffy and her eye
make-up had made muddy tracks on her cheeks. She was clutching the arm of a man
Jo had never seen before. “Oh my God, oh my God,” she kept saying. “Oh my God.”

The man was about thirty-five, not bad looking in a
heavyset sort of way. His shirt, which had started out white, and his trousers,
which had started out a sort of tan colour, were stained with a blotchy red and
brown substance. He was in need of a shave, too. “I’m Mark,” he said solemnly. His
eyes were very pale blue. “You must be Jo.”

“Hello,” said Jo. She looked at her mother, who had put
her head on the bed and was sobbing into the blanket. “Hello, Tess.”

Tess’s head came up. “Oh
darling
!” she wailed. “What have you
done
?”

The pillow was soft behind Jo’s head. And she didn’t
feel like screaming, or asking any more questions. She just felt sleepy.

Tess blew her nose noisily on a tissue. “Look at Mark,
he looks like a butcher. If we hadn’t come home just then…” She stared into
nothing, seeing the scene all over again. “Anyway, he was a hero. He put his
tie round your leg.”

Mark looked at Jo, and she looked back. She was too
tired to speak.

“Just sleep now,” said the nurse. She had pointy
cheekbones and pale, freckled skin. Jo wondered how old she was.

 There was a silence. Mark blinked a few times. “Your
daddy’s coming all the way from Wales,” he told Jo. “He should be here soon.”

“If he hasn’t been stopped on the motorway, since he’s
probably drunk,” added Tess.

Jo’s eyes filled with tears. “My daddy,” she said. Then
the urge to sleep overwhelmed her, and she didn’t say any more.

* * * * * *

When she woke up, Trevor was standing beside
her bed. “Hello, Jo-girl,” he said.

Jo didn’t say anything. Her throat hurt. Her bed was
one of two in a side ward. The other bed was empty. A nurse was pushing a
creaking trolley along the polished floor. The hospital smelled of hospitals.

“Tess went home to get some sleep,” said Trevor.

There was a water jug and plastic beaker on the bedside
locker. Jo looked at it, and Trevor poured her some water. Then he helped her
drink it. She felt a fool.

“I feel a fool,” she said croakily.

“Not half the fool I feel.” A spasm of nervousness
passed over Trevor’s face. “You’re not going back to that shop, are you?”

The thought of the shop, and Toby, and Gordon, made
Jo’s stomach hurt. “No,” she whispered. Then, louder, “Do you know what
happened, Trev?”

He nodded. “I think I get the general idea. I could
wring their necks, the lot of them.”

“Don’t do that,” said Jo. “I don’t care any more. Is
Holly here?”

“She was,” said Trevor. “And Pascale. I saw them in the
café. It’s not visiting hours till two o’clock, but the nurse let me in because
I’ve come all the way from Wales.”

“And because you’re my dad.”

“And because I’m that.”

They looked at each other. “Did Pascale say anything?”
asked Jo. “About me?”

 Trevor wasn’t sure what she meant. A question came
into his eyes. “Well, she was crying a lot,” he said. “She’s very upset.”

Jo could imagine it. Deep inside her, way further in
than her heart, she knew Pascale hadn’t told Trevor or anyone else about the
violence Jo had inflicted on her.

“Holly’s pretty upset too,” said Trevor with a small
sigh. “She’s been a pretty silly girl.”

“I’ve been just as silly, Trev.” Jo had to say it,
though the confession was painful. “Or stupid, more like. Stupid about Toby. I
thought – ”

Her voice cracked. She was trying so hard not to cry
that her throat felt as if someone’s thumbs were pressing on both sides of it. This
is what it feels like to be strangled, she thought.

“It’s
Toby
that’s
been stupid, not you.” Trevor had hold of her hand again. He put his other arm
around her shoulders and rested his cheek on her hair. “And a liar. If he was
my son…well, I just hope his dad’s got something to say to him, that’s all.” He
paused before continuing in a softer tone, “but it’s not just that. I wasn’t
here for you when I should have been Jo-girl.”

Trevor’s words had turned the key that had been stuck
in her head for so long, and opened the door to the stuff she kept locked up.
Hot, insistent tears flooded her cheeks and dripped off her chin. She wiped
them away but they didn’t stop. She held onto the front of his sweatshirt,
sniffing frantically, hiccupping and snorting, but unable to stop either the
tears or the words.

“His dad works overseas, and he’s horrible to his mum,
and she just cleans the house all the time. And Toby got expelled from school
in Year Eleven. And Tess is so hopeless, and she’s made everything so difficult
for you, and I know you drink a lot but it’s only because you’re unhappy, and
neither of you ever seemed to care what I felt like when you had fights all the
time, and now she’s got this boyfriend, and you’ll get a girlfriend, and I’ll
just be a sort of…spare part.” She let go of his sweatshirt. The tears were
subsiding a little. “When you went off to Wales like that and left me with her,
I thought ‘he doesn’t care about me’” – she shook her head as Trevor tried to
protest – “of course I know you
do
.
But it was just that I didn’t have any
say
in anything, and I felt like I meant nothing.
Nothing
,
Trevor! I felt like I needed to hurt myself just to make myself realise I was
still
here
.”

Jo’s chest was still going up and down fast, but she’d
stopped crying. Her voice was a whisper. “There just wasn’t usually so much
blood,” she said. “I got good at it. I was really, really good at it. But then
I wasn’t.”

Trevor was swaying a little, breathing unevenly. He
took one of Jo’s tissues and blew his nose, trying to compose himself,
murmuring in Welsh. He only did this when he didn’t know he was doing it.

When he started speaking English again it was to say,
“Your dad’s a bloody idiot, Jo-girl. But I’ll sort it. I’ve told Mord to stuff
his bed and breakfast. I want to be with my girl.”

The possibility of Trevor changing his mind about Wales
had never entered Jo’s head. It had never even hovered
near
her head. “I’ll move into a flat.” He
gave a collapsed sort of smile. “And with any luck we’ll be able to keep the
house. You’re going to go on living there, with all your things, just like
always.”

Jo digested this. “So you’re going to get a job here,
in London?” Her voice still sounded as if she had tonsillitis, though the water
had helped.

“Yep.”

Compassion swept over her. “You sad old git,” she said.
“You never got it, did you?”

There was something in Trevor’s face Jo had never seen
before. He looked like Bruce Willis in
Die
Hard
. He looked like a man who steps up. “No, but I get it now,” he
said seriously. “I don’t think Tess will, though. She…” Trying to be kind to
Tess, he failed to find the words.

“She always thinks everything’s about
her
?” supplied Jo.

Trevor nodded ruefully.

“The more she went on about what would her friends
think if I didn’t go to university, the more I told her I wasn’t going back to
school.”

He nodded again.

“Not productive.” Something occurred to Jo. She didn’t
want to live with an unhappy, alcohol-dependent man who pretended he was still
twenty-five. She had finished with that. But neither did she want to live with
a woman who had no need to pretend she was still twenty-five; she was far
younger than that, and always would be. “If we do keep the house,” she said,
“do you think
she
might move out,
instead of you?”

“Maybe, if this bloke she’s got comes up with some
dosh.” Trevor rested his elbow on the bed and took Jo’s hand. “It’d be bloody
excellent, wouldn’t it? I’ll look after you.” The Bruce Willis look was still
in his eyes. “In case you’re wondering, I’m going to get myself in a programme.
You know, about the drinking. I don’t need it, so I’m going to crack it.”

He sounded so earnest, Jo smiled. “That’s why you want
me with you,” she told him. “To keep you on the wagon.”

“Rub – bish!” His accent had intensified. Jo saw his
face flood with emotion. She watched him struggle for control. It was a few
moments before he spoke. “I can do it on my own, but I don’t want to,” he said
quietly. “I miss you, that’s the truth. I want you to come home and live in our
house, and go to school and me go to work, just like it was. Only this time, I
won’t act like such a tosser.”

Something began to nag at the edges of Jo’s mind. A
memory, a note struck by Trevor’s words. What was she thinking of? Older boys…
Ed can be such a tosser sometimes…so can older
boys…who are you cheating on Ed with?

Pascale had never told her about the nameless
dark-haired boy who let Poins do card tricks with him. Had she told Ed? By now,
Ed would surely know about what had happened at Holly’s house, too. She thought
about Ed for a moment. Then she raised herself off the pillows, leaning on her
elbows, and looked at her father. “Look, I’ll think about going back to school,
OK?”

He tried not to look triumphant. Jo was touched. “Though
of course, it depends on my results,” she added.

“When are they out?”

Jo considered. Time had gone bonkers lately. Her fight
with Toby and Holly had taken place on Monday, the day Pascale had got home
from Spain. The attack on Pascale and the unedifying scene in Toby’s kitchen
had both happened on the same evening, which must have been Tuesday. But was
that last night, or longer ago?

“Is today Wednesday?” she asked.

Trevor nodded.

“Not tomorrow, but the Thursday after, then,” she said.
“The twenty-third. And I’m supposed to go and see Mr Treasure on the
twenty-eighth.”

She lay down again, watching Trevor, who rubbed his
forehead, embarrassed at the memory. “I never did make that appointment with
him, did I?”

“Nope.” Jo had forgiven him long ago. “But it doesn’t
matter now.”

Trevor looked at his watch. “Talking of appointments,
the doc said she’s coming to see you before visiting time. I’ll make myself
scarce, shall I?” He kissed her on both cheeks. “I’ll just be downstairs.”

“Thanks, Trev,” said Jo, meaning it. “For…you know,
coming back.”

He nodded, and kissed her again. As he left the ward,
he almost collided with the doctor, a young Asian woman. Under her harassed
expression Jo could see the beauty she always envied, the gold-dark beauty of
Asian women. They had brown hair like her own, but theirs always stayed up, and
was thick enough to decorate gorgeously with combs and jewels. She wondered
what Doctor Mandani would look like with her hair decorated.

“Blood pressure not great, but not terrible,” said the
doctor, looking at Jo’s notes. “You lost quite a lot of blood, so we’ve got to
keep an eye on it.”

“Why did I lose so much?” Jo had been longing to ask
this question ever since she’d realized that the substance which had ruined
Mark’s shirt and trousers was her own blood.

The doctor looked at Jo calmly. “You’d done it before,
we could tell by the scars. And you’ve been lucky, because the top of your
leg’s a dodgy place to choose. Did you know there’s a big artery there?”

Jo nodded, feeling childish. She
did
know that.