The Making of Mia (3 page)

Today, however, was the start of her brand-new life: A-level results day. Jo couldn’t face going back to the school ever again,
so Amelia had promised to phone with her results. She couldn’t wait – in a few hours she could properly start thinking about
how her life was going to be at university, and Jo resolved that today she would start her diet. By the time term started
she would not only have lost some of her extra weight, but would be ready to meet new people – the people she would be friends
with for the rest of her life. She grinned to herself. The next few years were going to be fantastic.

The phone in the hall began to ring, and Jo was about to
jump out of bed when she heard her mother answer it. As the voice of her hard, brittle mother relaxed into conversation Jo
tensed up – why didn’t her mother understand how important it was to keep the line free? Jo tried not to panic and hurled
herself into the hallway to give Elaine Hill a dirty look. Jo’s mum – who was dressed in velour jogging bottoms and a faded
Joe Bloggs T-shirt – turned away from her daughter and laughed into the phone, murmuring something distinctly sexual. Jo grimaced.
She was on the phone to one of her men-friends then, most probably the one who sometimes gave her money for the final demands
piling up by the front door.

Jo stepped into the bathroom, where she pulled off the long shirt that doubled as a pyjama top, and heaved herself into the
bath. Suddenly missing the school’s top-of-the-range power-showers, Jo made sure the plastic shower attachment was tightly
gripped to the bath taps with rubber bands and let the sorry trickle of water wash over her body. As Jo soaped herself she
kept her eyes on the flaking enamel of the bath that seemed to get worse every time she washed, and when that became too depressing
she squeezed them tight, desperate to think about anything but her looming grades and how she should have forgotten about
Saint
for a month or two while she revised.

In her fantasy Jo became a model in a shower-gel commercial – all leggy with cascading dark hair that shone like glass as
the water glossed over it. Jo shook her head, and as her hair touched her back she felt like the girl she knew she was, inside
her extra padding. She could be sexy, she could be flirtatious, and she imagined the make-believe cameraman finding her irresistible.
As he began to wink at her, Jo turned the other way, flashing her bottom at him while imagining him telling her she was beautiful.
Jo began to smile despite her shower starting to run cold, and just as she was working
out if the cameraman looked like George Clooney or Russell Crowe in
Gladiator
, her mum’s pissed-off voice broke through the daydream.

‘Joanne, your posh friend’s on the phone for ya.’

For a second Jo was disappointed that she’d turned back into a sad, overweight teenager holding a grubby white shower attachment
over her head, but she chose not to let it bother her. It was results time.

‘Amelia? Hello, is that you?’ The moment she said the words Jo felt stupid, as nobody apart from Amelia ever phoned her. She
squirmed under the small threadbare towel that didn’t hide her body properly.

‘Yah, Jo, hi,’ Amelia said perkily down the phone, and in the background Jo could hear squeals of delight coming from her
former classmates. Obviously everyone had done well.

‘So …?’ Jo was frantic, and couldn’t be bothered with small talk. There would be time for that later.

‘Three As and a B,’ Amelia said proudly, and Jo welled up with pleasure – she was going to Edinburgh! Except … she had only
taken three A-levels. Jo’s brow furrowed slightly, and she realised there was silence at the other end of the phone. Suddenly
she understood.

‘Ames, that’s brilliant, well done,’ Jo gushed, hoping her disappointment wasn’t showing. Amelia deserved good grades. She’d
worked hard.

‘I know!’ Amelia squealed. ‘Would have been top of the year but Susie got
four As.’ Jo’s grin faded and anger threatened to spill out. How had Susie – the girl who spent every evening organising
her clothes – passed? Had she plagiarised her essays? Jo didn’t think Susie was that smart. It was a backhander from her father,
most probably. Jo sniffed. Who said money couldn’t buy happiness?

‘So what about me?’ Jo held her breath – she could barely stand it.

Amelia cleared her throat and Jo instantly knew it was bad news.

‘Just tell me. It doesn’t matter.’

‘You got a D in English Lit,’ Amelia began, and Jo made a small choking noise. Amelia hurried on, anxious to make Jo feel
better.

‘But you got a C in General Studies, and a C in History of Art, too.’

Jo was stunned, and she could feel the blood draining from her face.

Amelia rushed on. ‘I spoke to Mrs Wickham and she says you can appeal if you want to, but there’s not much chance of your
grades changing. I think she’s a bit annoyed that Bedales beat us in the league table, to be honest. We beat Scabby Abbey
again, though …’

Jo stared blankly at the grubby wood-chip wallpaper. She’d got all Bs in her essays … and all her teachers – even Miss Montgomery
– had predicted top marks for her. Something had gone wrong … badly wrong. Jo couldn’t bear to be on the phone any longer.

‘Thanks for letting me know, Ames, I appreciate it,’ Jo said as politely as she could, but before she could get off the phone
Amelia interrupted her.

‘Oh, hang on, Dominique wants a word,’ she said, before lowering her voice. ‘Maybe she wants to make amends for always being
such a cow.’

Jo’s heart dropped even further. The last thing she wanted now was to speak to one of her former dorm buddies. Jo forced a
bright smile and hoped she’d sound as breezy as possible.

‘Domi, hi, how are you?’

There was the slightest pause at the end of the phone before Dominique spoke, and Jo could hear her walking away from the
others, her stiletto heels making a hollow clicking
noise on the waxed wooden hall floor.

‘Very well, thanks, Jo … and it’s good to talk to you – I wanted to say goodbye, as we’re probably not going to ever see each
other again. After all, it’s not like we run in the same social circles, is it?’

Jo stopped smiling as soon as she heard the cold tone of Dominique’s voice.

‘Fine,’ Jo said bluntly, all pretence at social niceties gone. ‘Goodbye, then.’

Jo was ready to hang up the phone, but Dominique’s voice came through the receiver loudly. ‘But before we do say goodbye,
I was wondering what marks you got,’ she said in a nasty tone that implied she knew just how badly Jo had done.

Jo’s hand gripped the telephone so hard that her knuckles turned white. She didn’t speak.

‘Cat got your tongue, Jo? Never mind – the list is up on the wall anyway, and I can see for myself …’ Jo imagined Dominique
trailing a manicured finger down the list of names, as she let out a tinkling laugh.

‘Oh, dear, Joanne,’ she said patronisingly. ‘Maybe you should have taken my advice after all and actually done a bit of revision!
I did tell you that reading all those magazines wasn’t going to help your career, and I was right, wasn’t I?’

Jo slammed the phone down as hard as she could, but before she could take a few deep breaths and calm down, she spotted her
mother staring at her with thinly veiled disgust.

‘Well?’ she asked impatiently as she started rinsing some dishes in the sink.

Jo shook her head, and refused to meet her mother’s eyes.

Elaine Hill snorted and kept on washing up. ‘About time you realised you ain’t posh like your little friend,’ she muttered,
and she plunged her hands deeper into the oily
suds. ‘You can go on the dole and start paying me rent,’ she directed at her daughter with a sharp glance and Jo felt sick.
She looked at the small kitchen with the peeling 1970s wallpaper and grease-stained oven, and she felt despair quickly consume
her. University had been her one chance to escape, but without the grades – or the money – the reality of getting there was
impossible. It was a dream, just like everything else good that happened to her.

Jo sat down in the corner of one of her favourite places in Peckham – Frank’s Café – and her nose twitched appreciatively
as she sniffed the air. Frank’s had not changed in years, and its all-day breakfasts were the stuff of local legend. Jo loved
it in here; despite St Christopher’s trying to rub off her rough edges, she always gravitated back to the café on school holidays.
Jo was just sitting down at a small table near the back when Rose – Frank’s wife – spotted Jo while serving fried breakfasts
to some burly builders reading the
Sun.
Rose’s tired face lit up, and she gave Jo a wide grin.

‘Frank, Frank!’ she called out to her husband, and Frank, the Italian owner, came out of the kitchen wiping his hands on his
apron. Frank and Rose were in their late fifties but they loved working in their café, an institution on the high street to
those in the know and invisible to those who rushed past on their way to the centre of London in their cheap suits.

‘Joanna!’ Frank said, grabbing Jo by her shoulders and kissing her on the cheeks. ‘How is our little bright spark, eh? Packing
her bags for university where she will find another café, no?’ Jo grinned at Frank and his wife. They never failed to cheer
her up.

‘Oh, Frank, I messed up,’ Jo began and she played with the salt and pepper mills on the plastic red and white checked tablecloth.
‘I didn’t get the grades and no university that does my course will take me.’

Frank turned to his wife in mock horror, as Rose, unburdening herself from the plates she was serving, came over.

‘Joanna, you are a smart girl, how could this happen?’

Jo shook her head. No words could explain it. She wasn’t really sure herself.

‘What we will do is this – we give you a good breakfast to fill you up and then you tell us everything, OK?’

Jo looked up at Frank and Rose and felt a wave of appreciation. It felt like it had been a long time since anyone apart from
Amelia had been kind to her.

‘Thanks, I’d like that, but I’m on a diet. I’ll just have a coffee. I don’t want to get any fatter, right?’ Jo joked sadly.

Rose looked at her husband, who took Jo in hand. ‘Today you’ve had some bad news, so you eat, and then you think. Tomorrow,
tomorrow is the day you diet, although I think you are beautiful as you are.’

Jo grinned and nodded, and the couple rushed back into the kitchen while Jo stared despondently at a ring of sticky coffee
on the tablecloth and tried to ignore the sounds of Radio coming from behind the counter. She had fucked up, she knew that,
but it had never crossed her mind that she might need a back-up plan. Jo had planned to lose weight, go to university, get
a brilliant degree, and when she was twenty-one she planned to go to journalism college. A couple of years on she’d be writing
for the glossies, and from there it was only a matter of time before she was in charge. Jo planned it so that by the time
she was thirty she’d be running a magazine. The only problem was that she wasn’t going to get that degree after all. And she
had gone from knowing what she was going to do in years to come, to not knowing what she was going to do tomorrow.

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.