Peer Pressure (2 page)

The silence seemed to last an eternity. Mr. Pritchard walked slowly back towards the stationary cupboard and stood before Jodie. His hawk-like eyes peered intensely at her from over the rims of his spectacles. Jodie shuffled nervously, before attempting a smile at him, some sort of white flag of apology. She expected a stern talking to, or maybe even an order to go to the Headmaster’s office. Instead, Mr. Pritchard just closed the cupboard door, leaving Jodie in there.

It would give her time to think. Not that Jodie relished the opportunity. Indeed, in half an hour she would have a whole eight weeks to think, the last thing she had really had planned for her summer. She slid her back down the wall and sat on the cold, un-carpeted concrete of the cupboard floor. She felt something against her hand, and picked it up. As she did it began to glow. It was Mark’s iPod. Jodie sighed. Beyond the closed door she could already hear Mr. Pritchard beginning to explain the stages of liquid magma within dormant volcanoes. What was the point? In thirty minutes time, no one was going to remember any of it. She knew that the only thing going through any of those student’s heads was what had just transpired within this cramped, confined space.

Jodie knew she would have to work hard this summer to scrape off this painful memory.

That somewhere between the sharpeners and erasures her seduction had failed. She sat there and pondered. Was it her? Was it him?

But truth be told, she knew all along it was the iPod that did it.

Term time...

Jodie rolled her eyes as she poured a bowl of cornflakes. She didn’t do mornings and hadn’t really seen any time prior to ten-thirty in two months, a fact that elicited a deep sigh, followed by a question, posed out loud.

“Where the hell did the last eight weeks go?”

Her mother didn’t reply. She merely turned her attention back to the coffee pot and smiled to herself, thinking

“Try the last seventeen years”.

Katy McPhee was fifteen when she had Jodie. Now, seventeen years and a whopping three lovers later, she found herself facing another four months in an empty house. Oh, she’d see her daughter in the mornings and supper time, maybe catch a glimpse of her at weekends, but really, that was about it. She had never fully adjusted to the idea that Jodie had more of a social life than she did. She didn’t resent her daughter, far from it, but to her utter shame, she did find herself prone to jealousy.

You couldn’t blame her. She was thirty-two, slender and attractive. According to a dating website she set up a profile on, yet never actually used, her favorite color was blue (like her daughter’s eyes), she liked running, basketball, movies and un-complicated men.

In actuality, only one of these was true. She hated basketball, hadn’t been to the movies since Jodie outgrew the work of Walt Disney, ran only when being chased and Jodie’s blue eyes only served as a daily reminder of her ex-husband Tom. Tom married Katy a year after Jodie was born and managed to make their formative years together a living hell, before running off with a checkout girl who was the tender age of eighteen.

She left that part out of her profile, of course. Un-complicated men, however? That was right on the money. It might have even worked too, if she had taken the time to actually meet anyone from the website, but seeing as the idea had come from one of her best friends, Jane, who had five kids and a habit of cheating on her husband, Katy had always thought it had been a joke. Not a very funny one at that.

What rattled her more than anything was the sense that she had been left behind in some way, that women of her age were still out there clubbing and dating, having casual sex and throwing Ann Summers parties. She had tried meeting people in the past. The three that had seen the inside of her bedroom were more a means to an end, essentially a way to scratch an itch.

She was still a young woman in her prime and, unlike many women of her age, not a slave to her own biological clock. Indeed, once Jodie had appeared in her life, she had taken the clock and thrown it against the bedroom wall without even considering the snooze button.

First of all there was Will, whom she had met through her Mum and Dad.

He was nice. He was tall.

He was unemployed.

But on that particular night, nice and tall won her over. He wasn’t even that bad a lover and yet the evening felt sort of sullied by the fact that Katy had to pay for his taxi home in the morning.

It turned out that the dole only extended as far as two courses at Pizza Express these days.

Oh and a pack of three condoms, although Katy suspected he had had those on him before they had even made it to the restaurant.

Then there was Steven. He was more promising. A handsome, mature student, studying law at Aberdeen University, he had been an accountant for a Solicitor’s firm, before deciding to try and advance his career. Now, with only one year of study left and the promise of a position of importance at his firm, he seemed not only like a real gentleman, but a great catch for any single woman. It was just that, well, he had a rather strange habit in the bedroom. He liked to swear, a lot. Not the best of kinks when you have a teenage daughter trying to sleep or, God forbid, listen to what you were up to.

The third and most recent attempt had been Charles who, despite being charming, wealthy and impressively endowed, did decide post coitus, to pop to the bathroom without putting any clothes back on. Jodie was on her way back from the kitchen with a cup of tea, when they had bumped into each other. Katy had heard that he was healing well, although not interested in a second date.

All of which had led Katy to the conclusion that perhaps this was it: a two bedroom house, office job and Saturday’s with her sky plus box. Yet she never felt sorry for herself, or her situation. She wasn’t the first, nor would she be the last to have had a child at such a young age. And she was also aware that many of those women, in similar circumstances to her own, were shadows of the girls they had once been, that they hadn’t been given the opportunities or help that she had had. Above all, Katy understood the warmth and security of a loving family and a good home, two things she had been blessed with thanks to her own Mum and Dad, who had managed to secure her a house following her divorce from Tom. And if Katy had any life plan whatsoever at this point, it was to make sure that Jodie would never have to struggle like she had, that she would be there for her no matter what happened.

That included pregnancy, something she had thought long and hard about, especially by the time Jodie had come of age and started taking an interest in boys. In fact, she had spent so much time thinking about it that she had come up with solutions to any number of scenarios that Jodie might eventually have thrown at her.

Jodie would often grill her about such scenarios, trying to get a rise out of her.

“Mum, what if I told you I’d started smoking?”

“Well, I would just have to give your photo to every tobacco seller in Aberdeen. And yes, that includes the supermarkets!”

“Mum, what if I told you I’d started smoking crack?”

“Well, I would just have to kill your dealer.”

Jodie would then go for broke, trying not to smile.

“Mum, what if I told you I was pregnant?”

“Well, I’d just have to kill you!”

This would be followed by the two of them cracking up, something both cherished in each other.

No matter what else happened they could always laugh together. Because thankfully, the small age gap hadn’t really caused any complications between the two. They had a very typical mother daughter relationship and were very close, mainly because they both already knew the sting of being left by a man and not just any man: a husband and a father.

Jodie, of course, knew nothing of her mother’s feelings towards her when it came to boyfriends, nor could Katy have anticipated that Jodie had similar life plans of her own, none of which included becoming pregnant at seventeen.

They both shared many things in common, but chief among them was a romantic, old fashioned ideal of love. Had they known of this particular similarity, then maybe what was to transpire over the next ten months could have been avoided.

However, neither of them could have anticipated the arrival Rob Peer.

Two miles and several streets away, on the east side of the city, Rob Peer was drinking a very strong black coffee, his third cup of the morning. He hadn’t slept well the night before but had put his anxiety down to first-day nerves.

On the plus side, waking up at four a.m. did have its advantages; he had finished unpacking the various boxes that had been sitting in the hallway of his small, one bedroom flat for the last three weeks and had even managed to iron his shirts for the next four days.

He had allowed himself the pleasure of a long, hot shower and had attempted to eat some breakfast, a meal he rarely had much time or appetite for. He managed one slice of toast before giving up, his stomach not up to the challenge.

His sling bag was packed, all necessary paperwork was present, correct and signed. His mobile phone was charged, as was his iPod. He knew such timesavers would make this, his first week in a new job, far more relaxed and organized.

He knew it, even if every inch of his body was currently disagreeing with him.

He sat on his couch, switching between BBC News and ITV, wondering where his allegiances should lie. Truth be told though, his mind was elsewhere.

He was thinking not only about the day ahead, but of days passed. He thought of his graduation from teacher training two years prior. He could picture his parents’ faces, how proud they had been, how proud, in fact, they still were. He thought of all the advice that had been given to him that day and he desperately wished that he had paid attention to it.

He knew that at twenty-five, he was one of the youngest English teachers Brushwood Academy would ever have had, and that such opportunities for one so young were not afforded to just anyone.

Rob was graced with a keen intellect, which was often belittled by his appearance. He had the grace of youth, but an old soul, the looks of an athlete, but the mind of a bookworm.

And yet, when offered the position, he had been reluctant to take the job at first. He had suddenly found himself doubting his abilities. He felt that he needed more training, another year perhaps, and if he was completely honest with himself, more time to be a hell raising twenty-something, rather than a respectable member of an institution responsible for imparting wisdom to the youth of today.

Many of his friends back home were still social animals, strong believers in the holy trinity of ‘Grub, pub and club’, a mantra that had passed into legend on the streets of Edinburgh over the years. But that was the old Rob and this was a new city. He rarely saw his old friends anymore.

Those bonds forged in beer and music had started to break the moment Rob had decided to study English Lit, at the precocious age of sixteen and even the allure of stealing two cans from a pack of your friend’s Dad’s party pack couldn’t distract him from what he felt was his career ambitions. This feeling strengthened even more so once he took up his teaching placements. While his friends were out scouting for women or propping themselves up with a free hand as they urinated against a wall, Rob would sit at home, head in the books. Such thinking made him feel old. Fathers were teachers. Grandfathers even. Rob was neither of these and was beginning to get that ‘fish out of water’ feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was either that or last night’s curry.

His head was buzzing. Unable to focus on the news headlines, he left his coffee on a nearby table, and began to aimlessly pace around the flat. It was small, one hallway, a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom and lounge, the walls bare. It was a blank canvas, but Rob preferred that. It would allow him to put his own personal stamp on the place.

He had only been in the place two weeks and in that time had really only done the bare minimum of work to it: a couch, a double bed, a TV and, most important of all bookshelves. To call Rob a literature junkie would not have been an unfair assessment, except that he was far more picky than most. He loved books, and like any connoisseur, he had high standards. Yet, he wasn’t a snob. First editions and collectables sat on shelves next to paperbacks, with no real order or pattern to speak of. The alphabet had no place here. It was a mark of Rob’s personality: quiet order hiding utter chaos.

He wandered into his bedroom and stood in front of the mirror by the door. He glanced at his watch, before turning his attention to his own reflection.

Shirt? Check.

Trousers? Check.

Flies done up? Double Check.

Look of terror and inadequacy? Check, check and check.

Dark circles had developed around his eyes, a product of two hours sleep. At least his hair was behaving itself. He’d always thought he had been cursed with his Father’s Irish hair, which maintained a kink at one side that would make it unmanageably wavy at a certain length. The small cut on his neck, administered earlier by a Gillette and a shaky hand, had faded also.

Overall, he felt he’d done a decent job. At least he looked the part, he thought. Surely that was half the battle? The rest would be in the ‘welcome to teaching’ manual he would be handed as soon as he walked through the school doors, wouldn’t it? Christ, he hoped they gave him a manual! Something that would tell him what to expect, what protocol there would be.

For instance, he had never been too sure what, legally; he was supposed to do if a student picked a fight with him. He had seen what boys of fifteen or sixteen looked like these days. They were huge. If one hit him, was he allowed to hit back? Would the other teachers be on his side? What if a girl hit him? Rob’s mind was racing now. This was not a good start.

Outside, a bus drove by, making the window rattle, a unique feature of the property that his estate agent had, oddly, failed to mention. Rob’s focus shifted from his face to his unmade bed. He flopped down upon it, limply, facing the ceiling and exhaled the word