The Making of Mia

by Ilana Fox

  Rose brought out a plate of food and a cup of tea for her, and Jo, despite her good intentions to start her life again, gave in to the smell of bacon and the rumblings of her stomach. The tea was strong, sweet and milky, and as she sipped it she looked at her plate. The eggs had bright yellow yolks, and next to them were golden pieces of fried bread and crispy rashers of bacon with chewy rinds of fat. Soft button mushrooms sat on the side alongside ruby-red cooked tomatoes, glossy baked beans, toast dripping with butter, and plump, juicy sausages – as Jo bit into one she knew she’d be able to clear her plate. Compared to her mother’s distinct lack of culinary skills, the food was amazing.

  ‘How is it, Jo?’ Rose called out from behind the counter, and Jo, mouth full and eyes shining, nodded in delight. She barely noticed the old ladies on the table opposite looking at her disapprovingly, and didn’t register them properly until she was using a crust of toast to mop up the juices on her plate.

  ‘Shouldn’t be allowed,’ she heard one of them mutter to the other, as they looked up from their tea at her every few minutes. ‘She should be ashamed of herself, shovelling food down her throat like that in public. And at her size, too!’

  ‘Someone should stop her – she’ll have a heart attack before we know it,’ the other one said, tutting, and Jo, who couldn’t stand the whispers any longer, stood up and accidentally caught the edge of the table with her hip. The salt mill fell over, and as salt ran on to the tablecloth Jo burst into tears in anger. Rose rushed over and ushered her into the kitchen, where Frank was sitting at a small table smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He looked up in alarm as he saw Jo’s face.

  ‘Joanna, Joanna, what is the matter?’ he began, as Jo’s tears showed no sign of stopping. ‘The breakfast was bad, huh?’ he joked, while Rose put another cup of strong, sweet tea in front of Jo and went back to the café. The elderly ladies were self-righteously patting their blue-rinsed curls into place under their plastic headscarves.

  ‘Mum wants me to sign on the dole so I can pay her rent, I have no friends round here, I have no future, and I’m a big fat lump who nobody likes.’ Jo’s words rushed out, and she sobbed into her hands as Frank stared at her.

  ‘Your mother is not a very nice person, that is right, eh?’ Frank began, and when Jo didn’t respond he continued. ‘For years you come to Frank and Rose with your pocket money to spend on food because your mother doesn’t look after you properly, and when you were at that school you were unhappy because the girls didn’t understand you. That is correct, yes?’

  Jo felt too weary to say anything and nodded, watching a tear splash into her tea.

  ‘And now you don’t get the grades you need to better yourself you are upset, yes? You now have to stay with your mother, yes?’

  Jo nodded again. She wasn’t used to someone trying to understand her.

  ‘So what you need to do is get a job to get away from your mother!’

  Jo stopped crying and looked at Frank as if he were mad. ‘But who would employ me? I’m fat and ugly and stupid.’

  Frank made soothing noises to Jo. ‘Yes, you are overweight, but all the best Italian girls have meat on their bones, with my Rosa a good example. You don’t think she is ugly, eh?’ Jo shook her head as Frank continued. ‘And you are not ugly, you have a bloom that older women want to buy in bottles. Why, if I was a few years younger …’ Frank looked Joanna slowly up and down approvingly.

  Jo sniffed. ‘But I am stupid. I failed my A-levels.’

  Frank disagreed. ‘You, Joanna, are not stupid. You have A-levels, you’ve had a brilliant education. And you have fire, a drive.’

  Jo went to argue, but Frank stopped her. ‘No, no, let me finish. You have your dreams, and you have reached a hurdle. People don’t give up at these hurdles, and if they can’t get over them they go round them to get to their dream.’ Frank reached over to Jo and touched her arm. ‘Little Joanna, I know you can do this. You are special.’

  Rose came back into the kitchen and pulled up a chair, and Frank stepped away from her and moved towards his wife.

  ‘Rosa,’ Frank said, looking at her, ‘Joanna needs a job, she will start working here tomorrow, yes?’

  Rose nodded enthusiastically, and Jo began to weakly protest but the couple refused to let her back down.

  ‘You will be here tomorrow morning at five o’clock, Joanna,’ Frank said as Jo blanched at the early start, ‘and you will start the rest of your life.’

  Frank turned to his wife and grinned, showing her his yellow nicotine-stained teeth. ‘Joanna will be like the daughter we never had!’

  Life at the café was hard. In the mornings Jo walked to work just as the sun was rising, and she spent hours in the kitchen, signing for the deliveries and preparing food for the early morning rush at six. Counters needed to be wiped down, the floor swept and mopped, and the kitchen had to be sparkling. Jo found that even before the first customers walked into the café she was exhausted. Being at boarding school on a scholarship had been a breeze compared to this.

  Slowly, though, Jo began to get used to the hours and slotted into her new working life. The job was physically tough, and her thighs were rubbed raw at the end of the day, but the small amount of pay she earned slowly began to build in her bank account. Suddenly, her life seemed a whole lot better than it had been for years – she had a job, some savings, and while she didn’t have friends, most people in the café seemed to accept her for who she was – an overweight, lonely teenager trying to make ends meet. Frank seemed irritated by her, though, glowing red when she stood near him and catching her eye whenever Jo looked towards him. Jo didn’t know what she was doing wrong.

  ‘I thought you wanted to be a magazine writer, Joanna,’ he said to her one Friday evening, as Jo was tidying up the front counter of the café and he was locking the door.

  Jo shrugged, opened the till to bank up the cash, and began to count the notes.

  ‘You have given up on your dream, then, eh?’

  Jo looked up at her boss sharply, and then went back to making piles of ten-pound notes, counting and then recounting them until she realised that she’d lost track of her sums. She sighed. ‘I’ve got a plan. I’m going to save up enough to retake my A-levels at the local college and then – when I pass – I’m going to journalism college. I’m going to skip university completely. I think I’m good enough to be able to.’

  Frank stared intently at the teenager behind his counter and smiled.

  ‘Jo, it will take you years to save up enough to do that. This is not a good idea, no? And what does this say to Rosa and me? Are you saying that this job is only a means to an end, that our business, that we have built up with love since before you were born, is a meal-ticket until you want out?’

  Caught off-guard, Jo didn’t understand. ‘But I thought you gave me a job so I could find my way? Wasn’t that the plan?’

  When Frank didn’t say anything, Jo suddenly felt as though she was in the wrong, but she didn’t know why. ‘You know I love working for you and Rosa, Frank, but I want to work on magazines … it’s all I’ve ever wanted.’

  Frank remained silent and Jo felt uncomfortable. But then he smiled.

  ‘Rosa and I have talked, and we have decided we want to train you up to take over running the café. Rosa, she gets tired, but you, you’re young, and we love you like you are one of our own.’

  Jo felt her heart drop. As much as she liked Frank and Rose, there was no way she wanted to give up her dream of working on magazines to run a greasy spoon.

  Frank sat down on a chair and gestured to Joanna to join him, but just as she went for a chair opposite him he reached out for her and pulled her on to his lap. The physical contact of a man jolted Jo, and she froze in shock as she let Frank move her on to him.

  ‘Oh, Joanna, I’ve watched you grow into a beautiful young woman, but you still have your head in your childlike fantasies. Now, I know it is hard but I think you need to accept that you’re not going to be able to go to journal
ism college.’

  Jo began to squirm on Frank’s lap and felt uncomfortable. She felt his hot breath on the back of her neck and when Jo tried to stand up she found that Frank’s grip was surprisingly strong.

  ‘As you have no father figure in your life, I feel it is my duty to tell you these things. I know it is hard, but I think you accept this as fact, yes? This way, you can settle here and be a proper part of the family. I think you knew deep down this was your best option, and I have also been seeing how you look at your Frank. You like it here, eh?’

  Jo tried to use her elbows to push herself from Frank, but it didn’t work.

  ‘I’ve been watching you for years, feeding you food and watching you grow into a ripe, beautiful young woman. Little Joanna, sweet Joanna, I think you want more from me than a job, yes?’ Frank’s voice was thick with longing as he spoke, and Jo could feel an erection through his apron. Frank began to stroke Jo’s hair, and then his hands moved down to her shoulders, and then her breasts.

  The sudden, overt sexual contact jolted Jo, and she moved her body violently in an attempt to get away from Frank’s rough hands. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she yelped.

  Frank turned Jo on his lap and started kissing her to stop her talking. For a moment Jo froze, and she could feel Frank’s garlicky, smoke-flavoured tongue force itself into her mouth. With a surge of strength Jo pushed herself off Frank’s lap and when she was free she ran to the door. She had forgotten that Frank had already locked it.

  ‘Joanna, little Joanna, you love your Frank, yes?’

  Jo was outraged. ‘No! Not like that!’

  Frank walked towards Jo, undoing his apron and then unzipping his trousers. ‘Oh, but I think you do, Joanna,’ he said in a whisper, as Jo’s eyes darted around the café for the keys to the door. When she spotted them on a hook by the pay-phone she pushed past Frank, grabbed them, and then fumbled with the lock until the door opened freely.

  Jo stared incredulously at Frank with his trousers around his ankles and she realised she could never come back to the café again. A feeling of sad inevitability washed over her, but before Jo could linger on yet another notch in her run of bad luck, the pile of bank notes on the counter caught her eye. With as much courage as she could muster, Jo walked over to them, nervously put them in her pocket, and turned to look at Frank for one final time. His erection had gone limp in his hands, and he no longer looked threatening, but pathetic. Jo threw the door keys at him, and they hit Frank hard on his chest. As he doubled up in pain, Jo pulled the door open and felt fresh air on her face.

  ‘Fuck you, Frank.’

  ‘He actually got his dick out? Are you serious?’ Amelia yelped down the phone in disbelief. ‘He offered you a “management” position in his shitty café and then thought you’d want to have sex with him? Are you kidding me?’

  Jo bit her lip and tried not to smile. ‘Don’t make it sound so funny,’ she said with a shudder, as she recounted the tale to her best friend and shifted in her seat. Her arm was aching from holding the phone up to her ear, and once again she was grateful that Amelia always phoned her back. At least her mother couldn’t yell at her about the phone bill along with everything else.

  ‘Look, you must be feeling pretty lousy, but why don’t you come down here for a couple of days?’ Amelia stared at her toenails – wet with Chanel polish – and tried not to move her feet. ‘The holiday that Daddy promised me for passing my exams is on hold – Granny fell over and broke her hip and Mummy’s at home nursing herself with vodka over the price of the hospital bills. I’m dying for a bit of girlie fun.’

  ‘Won’t I be in the way of you and Charlie?’ Jo asked, feeling awkward. Apart from revelling in Jo’s clumsy first kiss with Frank, Amelia’s favourite subject at the moment was her new boyfriend, and the various different sexual positions he introduced her to. Every time she started to talk about her love life, Jo felt incredibly uncomfortable. Gloss magazine may have provided a detailed guide on how to help him make you come, but Jo felt out of her depth talking about real sex with real people. She smiled to herself: she’d stick to the stuff of trashy novels for now.

  Amelia snorted. ‘Don’t be stupid. Besides, Charlie’s bar is having a party and it would be the best time for you to come over. Sounds like you could do with a laugh.’

  ‘But …’ Jo was momentarily floored by the thought of socialising. ‘But what would I wear?’

  Amelia smiled sneakily as she imagined making Jo over. ‘Don’t worry about that … Just leave it to me.’

  Chapter Three

  When Amelia pulled into her sweeping circular driveway the next day, Jo’s wariness about fitting in intensified. Throughout the train ride from Waterloo to Winchester Jo had lost herself in a new issue of Marie Claire, but during the forty-minute drive through the depths of the Hampshire countryside Jo’s stomach had filled with butterflies. Now they were outside Amelia’s pile she felt sick. She was definitely outside her comfort zone.

  The Gladstone-Denham gothic country house was the stuff of people’s dreams: it was an imposing tall building with dark grey pillars and intimidating gargoyles, and to Jo it felt like a nightmare, especially when she thought of Amelia’s judgemental mother inside. Jo slammed the door of the beat-up Beetle and followed Amelia to the side entrance nervously, looking at the Victorian doorbell that read: ‘Servants.’ Her palms were damp with sweat.

  ‘We don’t use the front door unless we’re having dinner parties,’ Amelia explained as she entered the house, and Jo tried to look blasé as they walked across the cool grey flag-stones into the big kitchen. Amelia’s mother was sitting at a scrubbed pine table with the Daily Mail in front of her, and as she looked up Jo felt her eyes assessing her. Jo swallowed hard and forced herself to smile. Amelia’s mother looked like she was a member of the Royal Family.

  ‘Joanne, isn’t it?’ Sarah Gladstone-Denham asked politely, and Jo nodded meekly. As Amelia turned on the kettle to make them a cup of tea, Jo struggled with a kitchen chair and ignored Amelia’s mother’s visible wince as she sat down. Despite Sarah’s reservations the fragile pine chair held her weight and Jo fidgeted awkwardly, trying not to stare at the huge rosy pearls round Sarah’s neck and the rocks of diamonds and rubies on her impressive engagement ring.

  ‘You have a beautiful home,’ Jo said, hastily trying to start a conversation. ‘Apart from St Christopher’s I don’t think I’ve ever been in such an old building.’ An image of her mother’s 1960s council flat popped into her mind, and Jo felt even more nervous. The flat was practically the same size as Amelia’s kitchen.

  Sarah smiled, showing her perfect white teeth, and Jo was reminded of the Cheshire cat. ‘Thank you, it’s been in the family for two hundred years and we recently renovated it. Now, Amelia tells me you’re from London,’ she said, glancing at her daughter, who was rummaging around in a bottom cupboard looking for biscuits. Her hipster jeans rode down her bottom as she bent over and Sarah frowned at her black thong on display. ‘Do tell, what part of the city do you live in?’

  Jo hesitated and glanced at Amelia, who was blithely unaware of her friend’s discomfort. ‘Oh, just South London, you know, nothing special.’

  Sarah straightened her back. ‘Battersea?’ she asked, enjoying Jo’s discomfort. Jo shook her head. ‘Wandsworth? Barnes? Putney?’

  As Jo began to look miserable, Sarah let out a little laugh and hoped she wasn’t being too unsubtle.

  ‘Gosh,’ she said innocently as her daughter came to the table with a teapot, cups and saucers. ‘Where on earth do you live, then?’

  Jo looked at the delicate Wedgwood china cups and saucers and smiled to herself – a real one rather than a forced grin. She’d not seen a set since she’d been at school and they reminded her that she was just as good as her friend – or that she at least knew how to hold a cup and saucer correctly. Fuck it, she thought. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Jo felt amusement bubbling up inside her and wondered what Sarah Double-Barrelled Name wou
ld do if she told the truth. Banish her back to the slums, or tell her she was sleeping in the servants’ quarters? Jo laughed to herself. Sarah would never be rude to her face. It wouldn’t ‘do’.

  Jo took a sip of tea, quietly cleared her throat and decided it was time that Sarah officially knew her beloved daughter was friends with the working class.

  ‘Officially I live in Peckham,’ she said happily, thinking of home with its violence, litter and dirt. ‘But really I’m closer to Camberwell, which is great because of the cheap food I can pick up in the Turkish shops.’ Sarah looked visibly affronted, as if Jo had just sworn, but she remembered herself and her face returned to what she called ‘pleasant’. Amelia struggled to collect herself as she tried not to giggle at her friend’s daring.

  ‘James – Amelia’s father – believes that some of those big old Victorian mansions may be worth a thing or two in a few years,’ Sarah began, struggling to continue the conversation and grasping at something – anything – that could put her back on track. ‘Of course, the so-called council would have to get rid of those awful hippies using the places as squats. I blame Tony Blair, personally …’

  Jo didn’t say anything and took a gulp of hot tea.

  ‘I expect your parents are quite savvy about things like that,’ Sarah continued, thinking, suddenly, that it was quite possible that Jo had rich, bohemian parents who chose to live life in the slums to be subversive. In fact, there had been an article about that in the paper only recently. Sarah’s mood brightened considerably as she wondered if she had seen anyone with the surname ‘Hill’ in one of her society magazines. She vaguely remembered reading about someone in Hampstead called ‘Hill-Richards’, and she was just about to ask if Jo was related to her when Jo dealt the fatal blow.

  ‘I’ve never met my father as he beat my mum up when he found out she was pregnant with me, and we live in a flat on a council estate.’ Jo’s words landed heavily and Sarah’s mouth dropped open. She suddenly heard Jo’s inner-city accent through the expensive boarding-school polish and felt annoyed. What was Amelia up to with this obese working-class girl? Rebelling, most probably. As the thought of Amelia defying her needled, Sarah excused herself to tend to the rose garden. Jo spotted Sarah giving Amelia a pointed look as she walked out of the kitchen, and Amelia fell about laughing as soon as she left.