Black Wood (2 page)

I plucked jeans and a T-shirt from the floor. The T-shirt looked dark under the armpits, but a quick sniff said I’d get away with it. Just. I smoothed my hair down over my ruined eyebrow, had a quick squirt of body spray. It’d have to do. On the way out of the bedroom I caught a glimpse of my gran’s watch, lying on top of a pile of books. It was the only jewellery I wore. I slid the old-fashioned bracelet over my wrist, pressed it against my chest. The clasp clicked weakly into place and I felt that familiar shiver telling me she was close, watching over me. My other hand was occupied with hitting speed dial on my phone.

I was downstairs in the kitchen by the time he answered. The blind was closed, and the sunlight pressing against it gave the dark cabinets a thick marmalade hue. I’d planned to sand and paint them. Yellow, maybe, in attempt to brighten the place up. To brighten us up. Too late now.

‘It’s me. Can you pick me up please? I’ve got some bags and stuff …’ My voice came out muffled, as if I had a bad cold.

‘Jo? Are you crying?’

Shit. I needed to hold it together. ‘No. I’ve got the flu or something. Can you come and get me?’

‘Maybe you should stay in bed. I don’t want to be catching anything and …’

‘Craig! Please … I’m … I’ve … Look, Scott’s kicked me out, OK? I need you to take me to …’ I hesitated for what I hoped was the right amount of time. ‘To Claire’s …’

I heard the sound of keys jangling and a door being slammed shut. ‘I’m on my way,’ he said, ‘and Jo?’

I sniffed. ‘What?’

‘You’re coming to mine. No arguments.’

I pressed the button to end the call and slid down the dishwasher door onto the kitchen floor. Thank God for that. I was worried that the bluff would backfire and I’d be dropped at Claire’s doorstep ready to be greeted by her ‘Well I don’t really want you to be here but I’m not going to say that’ face, having to pretend I couldn’t see her parents’ disapproving faces peeking out from behind their twitchy curtains in the house next door. I still remembered that day I turned up on their doorstep a month after Claire had come home. We were eleven, and our lives had been turned upside down. We needed each other. So that we could try to make sense of it all.

‘I just want to see her,’ I’d begged, my voice thick with tears.

‘Stay away from her, Joanne. She doesn’t need friends like
you
.’

I understood unhappiness from a young age. My dad never wanted me. He wanted my mum all to himself. He told me as much when he took me to school on my first day. Instead of being excited about meeting new friends, learning new things, wondering what I was going to get for my lunch … instead of all that I felt scared.

Ashamed.

While all the other kids’ mums and dads kissed them and handed them their lunch boxes filled with crusts-off sandwiches and chocolate biscuits and own-brand crisps, my dad had pushed me into the playground with the words, ‘Pity you can’t bloody stay here. I might get to spend some time with your mother for once.’ He’d slapped me playfully on the bum, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that he wasn’t joking.

My fantasy world had begun before that, though. They say you can’t remember anything before the age of three or four, but I can vividly remember being left to play on my own, surrounded by empty cereal boxes and egg cartons that I used to make into castles while I pretended I was a princess. I never really minded. I made up characters in my head and I just assumed it was normal. Why wouldn’t I?

I’d already met Claire by then, and I’d hoped she would see me as an ally, both of us starting school together, a bit of history to form a fragile bond. I spotted her on the other side of the playground surrounded by similar girls with similar plaited hair and neat knee-length skirts. My hem was too long, because my mother couldn’t be bothered to take it up, and my hair was pulled back into a rough ponytail with an elastic band. I could feel the cheap rubber nipping at the hairs at the nape of my neck. I smiled, but when she caught my eye her cheeks went pink and she turned away. I was confused, but I knew I wasn’t welcome.

The only person who didn’t seem to be in a group was a small skinny boy with glasses and an eyepatch. His jumper was grey and frayed at the cuffs. Everyone else was wearing navy blue. As I walked towards him, he scuttled backwards like a crab and I could tell straight away that he was just like me.

‘I’m Jo,’ I said, dropping my gaze a bit. I pulled at the bottom of my jumper, turned my knees outwards until I was standing on the outside edges of my shoes. He stopped, stared at me.

‘Um … I’m Craig.’ His eyes were round with wonder that someone was actually talking to him. He’d no idea that I felt a little flutter in my stomach, because someone was talking to
me
 …

Maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

How wrong I was.

Craig became my boss, amongst other things. He gave me a job in the shop he managed when I moved back to Banktoun from Edinburgh. I’d had to convince him over several pints of 80/- and packets of plain crisps that I was reliable and that I wasn’t going to freak out again and run away. I was OK now, I’d insisted.

And I was.

For a bit.

The shop had become quite a feature on the High Street since the owner had bought the bakery next door and knocked through. It was definitely as big as shops got in Banktoun. Edinburgh was only fifteen miles away, but for some people that was something that involved weeks of planning and a special shopping outfit. For others, it was all about standing in the rain to catch the express bus so you could get to work without taking the scenic route through every town and village along the way. The local council were trying hard to convince people to ‘shop local’ and for Banktoun Books, at least, it was working.

We made an effort. We had a loyalty scheme. We had book signings, and kids’ clubs, where I always had to spend two hours afterwards wiping sticky fingerprints off the hardback picture books and finding the ones that’d been ‘hidden’ beside travel and cookery or left in haphazard piles under the miniature plastic tables. I enjoyed it, and I couldn’t think of any other job I’d rather do.

Even with the worst hangover in the world, there was barely a day when I didn’t want to go into work. Not many people could say that. Especially not Scott, who was one of the ‘7.10 Express Gang’. He detested his job in the bank, but he’d been there since he was seventeen and I couldn’t ever see him having the balls to leave the place. One thing I wouldn’t miss were his stuck-up colleagues who thought they were special because they spent all their wages on Next ‘office wear’. I’d always tried my hardest, but somehow I was never good enough for them.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought he’d done me a favour.

‘It’s just not working, Jo, is it?’ he’d said.

I’d just made the tea, which was a new chicken pasta thing that I’d discovered by flicking though the latest Jamie Oliver during a quiet spell. It’d taken twice as long as it was meant to, and the kitchen looked like the aftermath of a botched burglary. We were having it on trays and
Hollyoaks
was on – one of Scott’s guilty pleasures. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but I always gave in and let him watch what he wanted.

‘Mmm?’ I said, through a mouthful of pasta.

‘Us. This,’ he said, standing up and carrying the tray through to the kitchen.

‘Aren’t you eating that?’ I blurted, shocked at his sudden turn.

I heard him slam the plate into the sink, kick the door of the dishwasher. I went through and found him leaning on the worktop, head in his hands. I’d been ravenous while cooking, but suddenly it felt as if my insides were falling out, like when you drive too fast over a hill.

‘Is there someone else?’ I said. One of those questions that you don’t really want the answer to, but you find yourself asking anyway.

He stood up and rubbed his hands across his face. There was a slight bristling sound as his palms found the five o’clock shadow and I realised that he hadn’t even kissed me when he got in. I’d been so busy with the cooking that I’d been oblivious to his awful mood.

‘It’s not Kirsty, is it?’

I said this nervously, because I was sure I was right. Kirsty was his latest office obsession. There had been a few. Generally, I didn’t think he’d done anything apart from sniff around them like next door’s dog, but there was something different about Kirsty.

‘Scott?’

He sighed, stood up straight and put his hands on my shoulders. I stared up at him. My lip started to quiver, because I knew what was coming, even though it had come from nowhere. He hadn’t even eaten his tea, which wasn’t like him at all. He picked up his keys. ‘I’ll go to my mum’s tonight. Give you some space.’

I let him go without another word. I felt hot tears running down my cheeks. Noticed stringy drips of pasta sauce stuck to the side of the pot, already congealing.

Craig pulled into the parking space outside Harrison’s Pharmacy and killed the engine.

I frowned.

‘Aren’t we going to the flat?’

He pulled his keys out of the ignition.

‘Nope. Sharon’s in the shop on her own. Come on.’

I didn’t bother arguing. I glanced over at the back seat, littered with piles of clothes that I didn’t have enough bags for. The boot was jammed full of books and CDs and whatever other junk I thought was mine and not Scott’s. The last thing I wanted was the humiliation of going back round to collect anything else.

Bridie Goldstone’s curtains had twitched the entire time we’d dragged stuff out of the house and bundled it into Craig’s clapped-out ‘retro’ Fiat Panda.

His primary reason for keeping it, despite it breaking down at least once a month, was to wind up his partner. Rob drove a brand-new BMW and refused to set foot in Craig’s rust bucket in case he got his shiny suit trousers dirty. They’d met up town one night in the aptly named ManGrove, and despite their apparent opposing personalities they’d been together for nearly six years. I still wasn’t sure what Rob thought of me. We seemed to circle around each other like cats defending their territory. Craig was the scratching post in the middle.

We cut through the bollard-ended lane that connects the High Street with Monkton Road, locally known as ‘the Back Street’, which is the only place you can park in the town centre since they smothered the rest of it in drab block paving. One day, a town planner would come up with a different-coloured brick and there’d be a revolution, but until then we were stuck with ubiquitous orange spattered with dirty grey splurts of discarded chewing gum.

The town clock chimed half nine and the High Street was slowly waking up. Old biddies with wheelie bags on their way to the butchers. Men in dirty jeans, smoking outside the bookies. Later there’d be shuffling kids, nattering mummies with posh prams. The usual small town suspects.

And for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t want to go to work. I wanted to curl up on Craig and Rob’s massive puffy sofa and drink hot chocolate and watch a load of those TV movies where they always have a happy ending.

A glance through the window revealed nobody in the book-shop, except Sharon, our part-time assistant. Craig had taken her on for the summer, but we both got the distinct impression that she didn’t want to leave. She seemed to like working there with us, even though I got the feeling it was more about the social aspect than doing any actual work.

She was standing behind the counter aggressively stabbing buttons on her mobile phone. The bell over the door tinkled as we walked in and she casually dropped her phone and looked up, hands scuffling about the counter as she tried to pretend she’d been tidying up the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ notebooks that were stacked up next to the till. The phrase was getting tired now and we were struggling to shift the things. She tossed a lock of hair as black and shiny as fresh tarmac away from her face. Her purple eyeliner was flicked up in a ‘V’; a silver ring stuck out of her right nostril. I preferred yesterday’s diamond stud. She had one of those small pin badges stuck to her black shirt. It said ‘Bite Me’.

Her eyes flitted from Craig to me.

‘Oh, sorry, I … Jo! What’s happened to your eyebrow?’

She had that way of sounding nosey, shocked and concerned at the same time. It was a common trait in this town, where no one could resist poking about in other people’s business. It was something I was used to, having lived here all my life – well, apart from the brief, miserable stint up town – but it was still irritating when you wanted to keep some things private. Oh well. She would find out about Scott and me soon enough. I hastily smoothed my fringe down over my left eye. ‘I’m tidying the stockroom today,’ I said, scurrying past the counter with my head down so she didn’t get the chance for another gawp.

Craig, who saw himself as an amateur psychologist, had told me once that my eyebrow-plucking thing was an indicator that I was about to have one of my
turns
. He used that phrase ironically, trying to laugh off the full extent of what could happen when my mood swung into a downer. I could tell when we were in the car that he was losing patience with me. He didn’t have time for this now. He had a wedding to plan.

So I tried to reassure him that I was fine, but I think I was trying to convince myself.

Craig was right, though. I hadn’t done the plucking thing in months. Oddly enough, I’d felt happy lately. I should’ve known it wouldn’t last. It’d be less of an issue if I didn’t do something quite so noticeable. I stared at myself in the kettle as I waited for it to boil and the convex distortion made me look small and scared.

‘Fuck him.’

I spun round. ‘Jesus, you made me jump!’

Sharon stood at the door to the stockroom, hand on hip, her mouth curled in disgust. So Craig had told her, then.

‘I always thought he was a bit of a knob. Can I have ginger and lemon, please?’

She nodded towards the worktop, where seven kinds of tea were stacked up in little boxes. I only drank Nescafé, but Craig had given in to Sharon’s wanky New Age herbal thing, although every time he made his own tea he ‘accidentally’ used a bag of PG Tips that he kept under the sink. I wasn’t sure who he was trying to impress. Certainly not Rob, because he had one of those five-hundred-quid coffee machines that did everything except fly to Costa Rica to pick the stuff.