Peer Pressure (16 page)

“Damn.”

“Oh yeah, he beat the shit out of Phillips too.”

Rob smiled to himself. Jon noticed this and cocked an eyebrow in his direction. Rob decided to let him in on what he was thinking.

“She’d be worth taking a beating for.”

Jon nodded, before shaking his head a little, at Rob’s apparent naiveté.

“Think carefully about that last statement, Rob. A beating from a jealous husband is one thing. A beating from the educational system is quite another. You’ll be left with a permanent black mark on your record.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Oh, the big romantic, right? You remind me of me twenty years ago. Except for the hair.”

Rob smiled as he raised his glass to his lips and whispered,

“Bowie?”

“I told you, he was really cool.”

Notes for a Saboteur

One: Cancel Dinner Reservations

Two: Ruin Clothing

Three: Alter Mobile Number

Four: Start a Rumor

Five: Create Mysterious E-Mails

Six: If All Else Fails, Fake A Seizure

Jodie had taken the main six points as given to her by Laura and now considered the plan of action. With Rob and her mother scheduled for a second date that Friday, she had to act quickly. She didn’t see this as malicious. In fact, she didn’t see much at this point.

Perspective had left the building by this point and had been replaced by a longing to be in her mother’s shoes. This was the first time that Jodie had ever looked up to her mother, in any real sense. The first time she had studied or assessed her. Before, she had just been plain old mum. Mum in the kitchen, mum in the garden, mum when she needed

comforting, mum when she needed someone to talk to. But now she was something else, almost a contemporary. No longer mum, but Katy McPhee. Katy McPhee going out, Katy McPhee drinking in bars, Katy McPhee eating in restaurants, Katy McPhee in the bedroom.

Katy McPhee with Rob Peer.

“So, what do you think?”

Laura had that smug tone in her voice, as she and Jodie sat in Sean’s bedroom, on the edge of his bed, looking down at the piece of paper they had been working on for the last half hour. Sean had been filled in by Laura a few nights earlier and while he had already put half of the puzzle together on his own, thanks to the previous Friday night’s drama, the final pieces slotted into place. He didn’t feel the need to comment, his opinion, he felt, being irrelevant at this juncture. Of course, if he was perfectly honest with himself, he thought the idea was a little stupid, but wasn’t about to jeopardize the friendship he had slowly been building with Jodie over the last few weeks, so remained silent while the girls went about planning the next move in this first round of daughter vs. mother.

Instead, he preferred to quietly sit in the corner, strumming on his guitar.

Jodie gave the list another look over.

“You don’t think this seems a little elaborate?” she asked.

“Look at it this way,” said Laura, standing up and leaning against the window, “If one doesn’t work, you move onto the next.”

Sean shook his head. Laura noticed and gave him a shrug.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he replied.

“No, come on, what?”

Sean stopped strumming his guitar and looked left and right at both of them.

“Why are you even considering this?”

“Because she saw him first,” said Laura, pointing an index finger in Jodie’s direction.

Jodie nodded, concurring with her friend.

“She’s right. And my mother isn’t right for him.”

“Oh, and you’re a perfect fit?” he asked.

“She hopes, Ha!” snapped Laura, unable to help herself. Sean rolled his eyes.

“Nice, Laura. What I mean is,” Sean turned his attention back to Jodie, “why bother?

You’re going to be leaving next term anyway.”

Jodie smiled, raising the list in the air.

“And, I’ll have the whole summer with him.”

Sean shook his head and went back to his guitar.

“This isn’t going to work.”

Laura leaned across and ruffled Sean’s hair, before returning to the bed, and placing a reassuring hand on Jodie’s knee.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s old fashioned. I say if you want him, fight for him.”

“But, it’s your mother,” Sean added, “Does nobody else see a problem here?”

“They’ve only gone out once. And it’s not like she hasn’t gone through all this before.

Her last few boyfriends were wash outs, right?”

“Complete assholes,” Jodie nodded.

“But Mr. Peer isn’t an asshole. And neither is your mother,” said Sean, beginning to feel like the only adult in this situation.

“He’s also ten years younger than her,” said Laura, which she felt was the ultimate justification, before adding “and call him Rob.” Sean, however, didn’t see it that way

“So what, you’re eight years younger than him.”

“Girls mature faster than guys,” Jodie added, “which means Mr. Peer...I mean, Rob and I are pretty much equals here.”

“Except that he’s dating your mother,” Sean repeated.

Jodie shook her head,

“They’re not dating, okay?”

Sean raised his arms in exasperation,

“They’re going out again, aren’t they?”

“You don’t date until at least the third time you see each other,” said Laura, “Everybody knows that.”

Sean tried to process this, but came up decidedly short.

“That makes no sense whatsoever.”

Laura sighed in frustration,

“We don’t want it to make sense; we want to stop it before it gets to the point where it does make sense. That’s when you know they’re dating.”

Sean said nothing for a moment, before putting down his guitar and getting up out of his chair. Was this really female logic?

“I don’t think I want to know anymore. I’m getting a drink.”

And with that he left the room and headed downstairs.

Jodie went quiet for a moment, thinking things over, before turning to her friend and asking,

“Do you think he’s right?”

“He’s not in your situation, we can’t expect him to understand, bless him. He’s just looking out for you. Y’know, he talks about you a lot?”

“Unavoidable, I guess. I mean,” Jodie motioned out the window, “we see each other every day.”

Jodie looked across to her bedroom window and saw her mother, changing the bed sheets and straightening things up, blissfully unaware of the piece of paper in her daughter’s hand, a piece of paper that was beginning to feel heavier to Jodie by the second. Jodie sighed and crumpled the list up, discarding it to one side. Laura gave her a sympathetic shoulder to lean her head on.

“Well, this was a waste of time.”

Laura put her arm around her friend, reassuring her with,

“We’ll think of something.”

The girl’s sat there for a few moments, in silence, before the silence was broken by the distant sound of a mobile phone ringing. They both looked up, and across to Jodie’s room, where Jodie’s mother had stopped stripping the bed to answer her phone. A big, beaming smile slowly came across her face and she sat down on the end of Jodie’s bed to take the call.

Across in Sean’s room, Jodie suddenly felt a surge of jealousy, a surge which forced her to bend down and pick up the discarded piece of paper and un-crumple it. She looked over it one more time. As someone once said, all was fair in love and war.

1: Cancel Dinner Reservations

This was an easy one. Jodie knew that her mother was going to meet Rob at
Saigon’s
restaurant at seven pm tomorrow night. She found the number in the phonebook and rang them up to cancel the dinner. She may have gone a little overboard with explaining why she was cancelling the reservation — do people usually go into that much detail about having food poisoning? To add a little methodical cruelty to the proceedings, she rang the restaurant from Laura’s mobile, so as to kill any trail that might lead back to her in the event of suspicion.

2: Ruin Clothing

Katy had bought a new black dress especially for Friday night. So, armed with this knowledge, Jodie snuck home from school at lunchtime. She had thought about ripping it, but decided against it, feeling that it showed perhaps a little too much aggression on her part. It might have been her conscience getting the better of her. After all, with no one around to witness the crime what would it matter how she did it, except to herself? In any case, she went for the bottle of bleach under the kitchen sink. She then headed upstairs to her mother’s room and carefully took the new dress out of her wardrobe. Laying it on the bed she then took the cap off of the bleach, letting just two drops of the liquid fall onto the front of the dress.

Jodie then put the dress back into the wardrobe and, making sure that nothing else in the room had been disturbed, went back downstairs, putting the bleach back in its place under the kitchen sink, before returning to school, safe in the knowledge that in twenty minutes those two drops would become two white stains, rendering the dress useless.

3: Alter Mobile Number

This had proved trickier. Knowing that when her mother found the stains on her dress, she would quite rightly have to re-think her limited wardrobe options, she would no doubt want to phone Rob and tell him she might be a little late. Jodie’s plan was to make sure the call didn’t take place. The way she would do this was by going into her mother’s mobile phone contacts and altering Rob’s details by one number. But Jodie would have to act quickly, as doing this came with a very real fear of getting caught in the act. She decided to alter the number while her mother was in the shower.

4: Start a rumor

And

5: Create Mysterious E-Mails

were not applicable to this evening, but Jodie kept them at the back of her mind as she placed a tick beside each task she had done that day, then hiding the piece of paper inside her copy of Jude The Obscure, which she had yet to finish. After all, she felt, they might come in handy if the date remained successful. Whereas...

6: If All Else Fails, Fake A Seizure

...on the other hand, might come into play later that night if her mother and Rob ended up on the doorstep again.

When Katy came home from work that day, she was buzzing with excitement. Jodie kept a low profile, while she moved swiftly around the house, getting herself organized for her date. She had laid out her make-up and hair dryer, before jumping in the shower, happily unaware that downstairs her daughter was creeping through her handbag looking for her phone.

Katy allowed herself a longer shower than usual that afternoon, to help her get over the nerves that were coursing through her body. She was thinking about that evening, about what might happen, or not happen. About how much control she would allow herself and how much she was willing to give over to Rob. About how much fun she may or may not have. But really, she was more concerned that she looked good for him that evening.

She felt, for the first time in years, attractive, if only because Rob had asked her out again, despite the added pressure of teaching her daughter. It was the highest form of flattery she had had, at least flattery from someone that she wanted flattery from.

The panic set in when Katy opened her wardrobe and took out her new black dress.

Indeed, Katy didn’t even notice the stains at first, as she laid the dress on the bed and finished drying herself, her hair wrapped neatly in a towel. It was only once she had it on and studied herself in the mirror that she noticed the two white blotches near the waistline.

“Shit,” was the only expression that she could come up with, followed by a “goddamn it!”

Jodie could hear her mother rummaging through her wardrobe from downstairs, but stayed seated in front of the television, while the commotion continued upstairs.

“Jodie!” Katy called from the top landing.

“What?”

“Will you bring me my phone?”

“Sure.”

Jodie got up and walked through to the kitchen. She grabbed her mother’s mobile from her handbag, before pausing, and deciding to elaborate on her strategy, by shouting back to her mother,

“Where is it?”

“It’s in my handbag!”

Jodie then allowed another pause, to give the impression that she was looking for it, before walking through the hallway and up the stairs to pass the phone to her half-dressed mother. Katy returned to her bedroom and tried to phone Rob, to let him know that she might be running a little late. She clicked on his contact and it began to ring. Katy continued to search through her wardrobe as it rang, before a voice answered.

“Hello?”

It was a male voice, but an unfamiliar one.

“Hi,” Katy replied, “Rob?”

“No, this is Paul.”

Katy was confused, but thought that maybe it was a friend of his.

“Oh, sorry, is Rob there?”

“No, this is Paul.”

“So, you don’t know Rob?”

“No. Paul.”

This was clearly going nowhere.

“Oh, I’m sorry...I must have the wrong number.”

“That’s okay. It happens.”

Katy hung up, before looking at the read out on her phone. What the hell was going on? It was definitely Rob’s number, it said so. She had already called him on that number earlier that week, so what was the problem?

She looked at her watch.

“Shit!” She was going to be late unless she moved fast.

Discarding her obviously broken phone, she went back to her dress options. Ten years and only four dates in that time, had not been kind to her fancier clothing, most of her out of work wear verging towards the casual side of tracksuit bottoms. Fortunately, she had a backup plan: her favorite red dress, which while emphasizing her chest area maybe a little too much for a second date, did do wonders for her frame. And under the circumstances, with time definitely not on her side, it was just going to have to do.

Rob was waiting outside
Saigon’s
restaurant when Katy finally drove up in a taxi, twenty minutes late. He had a look of disappointment on his face as he helped her out of the car.