Vince and Joy Read Free Page B

shit.’
    She slammed the door closed behind her and leaned against it breathlessly, taking a moment to catch her breath before heading for the mirror.
    ‘Shit,’ she said again, examining her pasty face with disgust and wiping away kohl smears from under her eyes with the back of her index finger. She lifted her arms and stared in horror at the dark hairs growing obliviously from her armpits. She lowered her head and took a little sniff. Gross. She hoped he hadn’t noticed. She’d kept her arms glued to her side throughout the whole painful encounter, acutely aware of the fact that she hadn’t bothered to put on any deodorant this morning.
    She thought back to their awkward conversation and felt a slug-like trail of dread slither down her spine.
    ‘Shit,’ she hissed to herself. ‘
Shit.’
    That bloke. Vince. God. Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. Just the best-looking bloke she’d ever seen in her life. Tall and cool and handsome. Handsome in an old-fashioned way – strong jaw, mellow eyes, beat-up-looking. And those scars. Joy loved scars.
Smouldering,
that’s what he was. Like James Dean, like Humphrey Bogart, like Marlon Brando.
    And Joy had blown it, hadn’t been able to think of anything to say. Apart from that stupid question aboutwhy his stepfather was his stepfather. He must have thought she was a cretin.
    She moved from the bathroom to the living area at the front of the caravan and peered gingerly between the lurid orange curtains that smelled of dust and other people. The mother was locking up her little green Mini. Joy watched her with interest. Trim and petite in tight cotton shorts, a pink sun top and plimsolls, she looked about twenty-five years old. Her hair was a dyed ash blonde, cut into a neat helmet around her fine-featured face, and she wore a pair of Raybans on a string around her neck. Joy had never before seen a mother as girlish and unbroken as her. She looked light-hearted and carefree. She didn’t look capable of having borne a child as tall and broodingly masculine as her son. She didn’t look capable of having borne
any
child. Her hips were too narrow; her step too light.
    The door of the next-door caravan opened and the stepfather emerged. He looked like B. A. Robertson, without the chin. His hair was dark and shiny, curling around his collar and over his ears, with a small fringe swept across his forehead. He wore a chambray shirt tucked into tight jeans only a shade or two darker than the shirt, and a heavy-buckled belt. Joy saw a hint of tattoo on his dark-haired arms and a rough stubbled chin that looked as if you could strike matches off it. He was tall and broad and macho. Lots of women probably fancied him, she pondered, thought he was a real
hunk.
Not Joy’s type, though. Too hairy, too obvious, too old.
    She watched the mother and the stepfather interacting with interest. They were still new to each other – youcould tell that from the way they touched each other and circled each other. They were in love. It explained the mother’s girlish gait.
    Joy was fascinated by other people’s families, always had been, ever since she was a child. She’d loved watching the other kids meeting their parents at the school gates at the end of the day, wanted to see what other people’s mothers were wearing, what cars they drove, how they greeted their children. She compared hairstyles and nail polish and heel size. Even now she didn’t really feel like she knew someone until she’d met their parents. And even now, at nearly eighteen years old, she still compared other people’s parents to her own.
    She looked up again as the front door opposite opened and Vince emerged. She studied him minutely now that she wasn’t being taken unawares. He looked as if he slept with French girls and smoked American cigarettes, as if he could win a fight and write a poem all in the same afternoon.
    Joy ran a fingertip down the bare underside of her arm and felt goosebumps erupt across her flesh like a