by Jim Eldridge
‘Not with that, I hope!’ Kerrys laughed.
She ran out of the room, snatching up the keys to Manuel’s new car from the hall table as she passed. Manuel struggled through the crowds of family and relatives, bellowing with rage, set on catching her, and the family hastily pushed away from him, all doing their best not to look at his erection, which seemed to be growing.
Kerrys ran out to the new car and leaped into the driver’s seat. As she was struggling to get the key into the ignition, Manuel raced to the driver’s door and banged on the glass of the window angrily, but not too hard. This was his car.
‘Get out here!’ he shouted. ‘Get the fuck out here now!’
Kerrys jerked the door open towards him, and it smashed into the end of his erect prick. Manuel let out a howl of pain and dropped to his knees, clutching himself. Kerrys pulled the door back towards her, then slammed it open again, harder this time, the metal connecting with Manuel’s head.
Manuel crumpled to the ground, groaning, one hand holding his erect dick, the other on his injured head. Kerrys pressed the button to open the boot, and then got out and stood looking down at her semi-conscious brother. She had to deal with him before he came round and got really vicious. Kerrys reached down and her hand closed over his erect dick, using it to haul him up. Manuel howled in pain, but her grip on his dick stopped him trying to struggle.
Yuck! thought Kerrys. This is the one of the grossest things I ever touched!
She led him to the open boot of the car and pushed him, and he fell in. Kerrys flipped his legs and arms to make sure they were in, then slammed the lid shut on him.
‘Let me out of here, bitch!’ screamed Manuel, and he began banging on the inside of the boot.
‘It’s just till you calm down!’ Kerrys shouted back at him.
The banging from the boot continued, angrier and more insistent now. Kerrys looked towards the house. Jas and Mr Jauo-Pinto had come out and were watching her, stunned. Kerrys waved at them.
‘I did say next week, Dad!’ she called to him. She hurried to the driver’s door. Just before she got in she called out to Jas: ‘I love you, Jas! But I gotta see Jo!’
Jas grinned.
‘Love you too!’ she called back.
Then Kerrys was behind the steering wheel, the car starting up and pulling away. Next stop: Jo.
Shit, thought Kerrys as she drove, this has been some day. The big issue now was what to do with Manuel. She couldn’t just leave him in the boot of the car; he might suffocate. But if she opened the boot to let him out, he’d be grabbing her for sure, and killing her. She grinned to herself. The Kamagra had been a good idea at the time, but it was short thinking. Still, the expression on his face, and her grandmother’s! Fuck, that had been worth it.
Ted’s 24-Hour Mart was coming up any time soon. She wondered when would be the best time to let Manuel out of the boot. After she’d seen Jo, definitely.
The kicking and knocking sounds from the back of the car continued as Manuel tried to batter his way out. Kerrys grinned to herself. You locked me in a panic room. Now see how you like it, fucker!
Suddenly the banging and knocking changed, and there was a tearing sound, and then Manuel’s voice shouting, ‘I’m gonna kill you!’
A bolt of fear shot through Kerrys. He was out! Manuel was out! She grabbed a quick glance over towards the back of the car. Manuel had kicked his way through the back seat and was pulling himself through the gap, one arm reaching for her along the floor. The next moment his hand had grabbed her leg.
Fuck! Momentarily thrown, Kerrys’s foot slammed down on the accelerator, while at the same time she tried to keep the steering wheel under control. But Manuel grabbing her like that had thrown her. She had a glimpse of the big main window of Ted’s 24-Hour Mart looming up in front of her, and the next second the car smashed through it at speed, scattering packets and tins as she ploughed through the displays, glass flying everywhere.
Dazed, Kerrys pushed the door open and fell out on to the floor. She was aware that Manuel was no longer holding on to her leg. He was now struggling to get himself free from the wreck of the car.
Kerrys tried to focus, and found herself staring at a gun lying beside her on the floor.
Kerrys grabbed the gun and struggled to stand up. She was aware of Jo standing near her, looking at her open-mouthed in astonishment.
‘Kerrys! What the fuck . . . ?’ began Jo. Then she pulled her car keys out and threw them to Kerrys. ‘Go hide in my car.’
Kerrys didn’t hang around to ask questions. She ran out of the store, pushing the gun into the waistband of her shorts. She didn’t know what was going on for Jo and the mart, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. A gun in the store. Jo telling her to hide. There was Big Trouble here, as if she didn’t have enough of her own.
She ran to where she knew Jo usually parked her car. There it was. She unlocked it, jumped in and squashed herself down in the passenger seat, doing her best to get out of sight. ‘Hide,’ Jo had told her. There had to be a reason for that — Jo wasn’t the sort to over-dramatise things.
There was the sound of running feet coming towards the car. Kerrys allowed herself a careful peek. It was Jo.
Jo opened the driver’s door and jumped in, starting the car up, and asking: ‘OK, Kez, what the fuck is going on?’
‘I was gonna ask you the same,’ said Kerrys. She sighed. ‘But for me, not much. I’ve been locked in a panic room, stole my brother’s car and probably alienated my whole family, crashed into your work, and found this gun. Oh, and Shannon’s missing.’ She turned to Jo and gave her a grin. ‘But enough about me. How’s things been with you?’
JOANNE
39
Friday
As she headed home from the Cappuccino Cafe, Jo thought about Cass, on her way to New York and the man she obviously believed was the Love of Her Life. Big Mistake, thought Jo. But maybe she was just being jealous. Not so much of Cass’s Big Romance, waiting for her, but the thought of going Stateside. The place where she was born, the US of A.
Six years ago, when Jo was twelve, they’d come to London with her dad’s work. ‘We’ll go back for vacations,’ her dad had promised. But that first year there hadn’t been the time or the money for them to fly back to the States — her dad had been busy with work, and her mom had been busy trying to start up her own interior-design business in England. It was the same story the second year: her dad hard at work, vacations taken in the UK (‘We’re discovering our new home!’), and money was still tight.
And then her dad had been killed, and her whole world turned upside down in that one second.
Jo still remembered the day it happened. Getting home from school and finding her mom in a state of shock, white-faced and trembling, tears pouring down her face.
‘What’s happened?’ Jo had asked.
‘Your dad got hit by a bus,’ said her mom. ‘One of those big red ones.’
And Jo had laughed.
It had been totally the wrong thing to do. Completely inappropriate, but Jo didn’t know what else to do. Jo didn’t cry. She didn’t go to pieces. She got on with things. Kerrys had once called her ‘the glue that held them together’. Calm, dependable Jo. You want something, ask Jo.
Jo didn’t mean to laugh; she didn’t find it funny. She just didn’t know how to react. So she’d laughed. It was her way of crying, but without people knowing. Her mom should have known that. But her mom didn’t. Or maybe she’d forgotten. Or maybe she’d never really known Jo deep down at all.
For the next week her mom hadn’t spoken to her. She’d stayed in her room and cried. In a way Jo had been glad; it meant she was able to grieve in her own way, alone, in peace.
The funeral had been awful. First, there was going to see her dad in the casket at the funeral home. That hadn’t been him. It had looked like him, but it wasn’t him. It was just a body, a shell. Her dad was gone. She felt a hole in her life where he had been. No more would he read her a sto
ry at bedtime, or just sit and chat with her. Tell about his day at the marketing company, and how they’d go back to the States for a vacation next year. They’d agreed the perfect place would be Florida. Guaranteed sunshine. Her dad had been there on business trips when they lived in the States and had brought her back a mug with a picture of the Everglades on it. That was where they’d go.
But they didn’t.
For a while Jo wondered if her mom would want them to return to the States. If she did, Jo had already decided she didn’t want to go. By then she’d bonded with Kerrys, Shannon and Cassandra. They were the four musketeers, the most unlikely friends, but tighter than tight. True friends.
But instead her mom had met someone else and married him. Paul Edwards-Jones. A nice guy. Quiet and thoughtful, like her dad had been. And about the same age. The only drawback was he had a daughter, Gwen, who was a mouthy airhead. Selfish and brain-dead. Having to share things with Gwen made their house too small for Jo’s liking. But things could have been worse. Gwen was stupid and vain, but she wasn’t nasty. Well, not too nasty. She had a nasty tongue in her mouth, but she wasn’t clever enough to be deliberately hurtful. And Jo’s stepfather was an OK guy. Good and kind. And he’d married her mom and made her ‘Mrs Jones’, so Jo’s mom was happy, which all made for a reasonably quiet life.
Jo arrived home, walked into the kitchen and then stopped dead. Her stepfather sat in a chair looking miserable, one leg stuck out before him in a plaster cast. Gwen was doing something stupid like writing her name on it, and Jo’s mom was making tea.
Jo looked at her stepfather’s miserable expression, and at her mom and Gwen.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
‘What’s it look like?’ said Gwen. ‘Dad’s done his leg in.’
‘How?’
Mr Jones opened his mouth to explain, but Jo’s mom beat him to it. She always beats him to it, thought Jo. Either her or Gwen. He never has a chance to get a word in.
‘He slipped at the construction site,’ said her mom. She sighed. ‘It’s a good thing we have private.’
‘He should call that claim thing you see on the telly,’ said Gwen. ‘There could be good money in it.’
Mrs Jones shook her head. ‘He was climbing,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s even better!’ said Gwen. ‘It’s definitely not his fault! We can sue the idiots who let him do it.’
Mrs Jones gave a sigh.
‘There was a big sign saying “No climbing”, she said.
This took Gwen back a bit, but only for a second.
‘They don’t have to know that,’ she said determinedly.
It was Jo who asked the question hanging over all of them. ‘Will he still get paid?’
Mr Jones opened his mouth to answer, but again his wife beat him to it.
‘Three weeks’ full pay, then it goes down,’ she said unhappily. ‘His ligaments are done. He’ll probably be out for at least three months.’
‘Three months!’ echoed Jo and Gwen in horror.
‘Which is what I wanna talk to you girls about,’ con-tinued Mrs Jones swiftly. ‘With me between contracts, one of you girls is gonna have to work nights at the mart.’
Oh no, thought Jo. It was bad enough working at the 24-Hour Mart during the day, but nights, the graveyard shift when all the loonies came in . . . Yuck!
‘I’ve already called the manager and let him know one of you is coming.’ As the two girls opened their mouths to protest, Mrs Jones held up her hand to silence them and continued without a break: ‘I know you don’t like it, but it’s treble time, and we’re gonna need the money.’
Gwen pouted and scowled.
‘Well, I’m not doing it,’ she told everyone firmly and defiantly. ‘I’m going out. Jo can do it. She hasn’t worked for ages.’
Mrs Jones glared at her stepdaughter.
‘Gwen, I’m surprised at you. Is this how much you love your dad?’ She then turned on Jo, the same accusing tone in her voice. ‘And Jo, I’m disappointed in you. When our two families joined in matrimony . . .’
Oh God, here we go, groaned Jo inwardly.
‘. . . we became one family. And I am hurt that . . .’
‘Fine. I’ll do it,’ said Jo, desperate for the sermon to end. Always the same. ‘When our two families joined together . . .’ We didn’t join together, she wanted to shout out. You married him. As a result I got stuck with a step-sister who gives a new definition to the word ‘selfish’. She is a pain and I hate people thinking we are the same family.
‘Good,’ said her mom. ‘The shift is five till one —’
‘Five?!’ said Jo. She looked at the clock. ‘It’s gone four!’
‘Exactly. So you’ll need to get ready . . .’
Jo didn’t wait to hear any more. She ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room. She had to shower, change, get made up . . . She was never going to do it in time! Why didn’t people think of her when they did these things? If her mom had told her as soon as she’d come in . . . But then, Jo sighed, her mom had told her as soon as she could. They’d had to talk about the accident first, that was natural.
She showered and then rushed around her room, laying out her uniform. God, who’d designed this? It was so crass and yuck! It made her look like someone who worked in a burger bar. Luckily she avoided the smell of burnt fat.
Suddenly she heard a yell from Gwen from downstairs: ‘Jo! Your weird mate’s here!’
There was the sound of footsteps hurrying up the stairs, and the next second Shannon burst into her room.
‘Sorry, Shaz, I’m in a real rush!’ Jo said apologetically. She began to pull on her Ted’s Mart uniform. ‘This is a real bitch! I haven’t been at the mart for ages, and now I’ve got to do the night shift!’
As she started doing up the buttons of the uniform, she was aware that Shannon hadn’t said anything yet. She looked at her friend, who was standing looking like she was about to burst into tears. Oh God, no, thought Jo. Something bad’s happened.
‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ said Shannon miserably, shaking her head.
Jo gave her friend an apologetic smile.
‘I’m sorry, Shaz, this isn’t a good time.’
‘My mum . . .’ began Shannon awkwardly.
Of all the times for this to happen, groaned Jo inwardly. Suddenly she realised her hairbands weren’t where they normally were. Gwen! She rushed to the door and shouted angrily downstairs, ‘Gwen, you bitch! Did you take my hairbands?’
Gwen’s voice shouted back, ‘No, you bitch! I didn’t!’
Jo didn’t have time to start looking for them anyway. She had to go. She turned and gave Shannon a disgusted sigh.
‘Fuck! I guess I’m gonna have to do without them.’
‘My mum . . .’ began Shannon again.
I don’t have time for this, thought Jo. I have to get to work. But this was Shaz, her friend, looking miserable. But then Shannon spent a lot of her life looking miserable. Sometimes Jo thought it was an act. And right now she didn’t have time for an act. But, then again, this was Shannon. And she did look really unhappy.
‘Walk and talk,’ said Jo.
She snatched up her coat and hurried out of the room and down the stairs, Shannon following, trudging behind her as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders. For God’s sake, Shaz, Jo thought, move faster. I have to be somewhere!
Jo rushed out of the house to her car, opened it and jumped in. Providing traffic was OK, she’d make it.
Shannon emerged from the house and walked over to the car, and looked at Jo. She was going to cry, Jo was sure. She looked like she’d been crying already. Fuck, what a time to choose! thought Jo.
‘I’m sorry but I really have to go, Shaz,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
‘I just wanted to talk!’ said Shannon.
‘OK,’ nodded Jo. ‘Can we talk tomorrow?’
Shannon hesitated, then she
nodded.
‘Go, girl.’ Jo grinned.
She started the car up, slammed the door and raced away.
40
Ted’s 24-Hour Mart was empty of customers as Jo walked in. There was Ron the useless so-called security guard hanging about by the door, and Angelo at the till. Angelo’s face lit up with delighted surprise as Jo walked in.
‘Jo!’ he said. ‘What you doing here at this time?’
Jo sighed.
‘Stepdad minus sense, plus acting his shoe size not his age, equals torn knee ligaments and me working the entire summer filling shelves.’ She gave a rueful grin. ‘Well, half-time with Gwen, so I guess that’s something.’ She looked around the store. ‘Who’s working tonight?’
‘Me, you, Cedric, Ron and Tee.’
Jo frowned. Tee?
‘Who’s Tee?’ she asked.
Before Angelo could answer, the manager, Barry, appeared from the back room. He looked as disorganised as ever. But then, that was Barry. His work, like his life outside it, seemed to muddle along, just about getting by. And everyone else was to blame.
‘About time you got here,’ he said to Jo.
No ‘Hi, thanks for coming in at short notice’, thought Jo. Barry turned to Angelo. ‘Angelo, go down and get some more stock of Jack Daniels. We’re low. And the snacks aisle is looking skinny.’
Angelo nodded and headed for the stockroom. Barry turned back to Jo, a frown on his face.
‘I thought Gwen was coming?’
‘She couldn’t, so I’m here,’ said Jo.
Barry nodded, as if taking this in, though Jo knew he’d have forgotten it almost immediately. Then he dropped the bombshell.
‘Well, here’s the update, Jo. Cedric’s not coming in for the 1 a.m. shift, so I need you to work all night.’
Jo stared at him. All night?!
Barry regarded her quizzically.
‘Problem?’ he asked.
Jo thought about it. All night. Treble time. More money.
‘No problem,’ she said.
‘Good.’ Barry nodded. ‘Right, I’m off.’ He grinned. ‘Kids are off camping, thank fuck. So I get a night with the wife. Tee’s in charge.’