Vince and Joy Read online

  ‘What happened to Geoff and Diane?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people who own your caravan.’

  ‘No idea,’ she said. ‘Mum and Dad are renting it off someone or other.’ She pulled her hands out from under her and turned them upwards in a gesture of ignorance. She obviously didn’t care about Geoff or Diane, or whose caravan she was staying in. He was officially the most boring man in the world.

  ‘Right,’ he said as silence descended again. Joy rustled the pages of her magazine and Vince felt a deep blush developing in his chest area.

  ‘So,’ he said, his hand rising subconsciously to his scars again, ‘I’ll see you around then?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I guess you will.’

  Her eyes were already dropping to her magazine. He’d lost her. But then, mused Vince, as he took a cache of carrier bags from his mother and mounted the stairs to the caravan, he’d never really had her. Of course he hadn’t. He was Vincent Mellon. Or Melonhead, as he’d been known at school. He’d been stupid to think that some operation, some bit of surgery, was going to change that. He couldn’t talk to girls when he was ugly, and he couldn’t talk to girls now he was supposedly ‘good-looking’ either.

  When he came out two minutes later, the deck chair was empty and the girl called Joy was nowhere to be seen.

  Vincent Mellon had been born with an underbite. It hadn’t really shown up until he was a few years old, but from that point on he’d resembled a very small, hairless bulldog. As he got older it transpired that Vince didn’t just have an underbite – he didn’t have a small but charming imperfection that added character to his face – but that his bottom jaw protruded so far ahead of his upper jaw that he couldn’t actually chew properly. Anything that required being fed into the oral orifice and bitten through – a doner kebab, for example, or a custard cream – was out of bounds. Things needed to be cut up and transferred into the very back of his mouth, bit by bit, with a fork or spoon. Not only that, but because of the misalignment of his upper and lower teeth two of his molars had started to erode as well, and eventually anything chewier than a tender piece of chicken had become virtually impossible to deal with.

  Vince’s underbite, in other words, was not just an aesthetic blight and a total embarrassment; it was also a significant physical disability. Which was why after years of treatment and check-ups, the NHS had finally paid for him to have corrective surgery last year. Too late to save his schooldays from being a complete washout, or to do anything about that fact that he was still a virgin at the age of nearly nineteen, but just in time, he supposed, to give him a chance in hell of getting a girl to French kiss him before his twenty-first birthday.

  No girl had wanted to kiss him with the underbite. No girl had even wanted to talk to him with an underbite, unless they really had to. And by the time he’d had surgery, he’d left school, hence severing the only contact he ever had with girls.

  The surgery itself had been a nightmare: months of agony, of mouth braces, pureed food and painkillers. He’d made a recluse of himself, unable to face the world looking like Jaws and feeling like a cripple.

  Oh, my goodness,’ his mum had squeaked when the final braces were removed two months ago. Oh, my God, look at you. Look at you. Oh, heavens – you look so… handsome?

  Vince had stared at his new reflection in the mirror and tried to make sense of what he was looking at. He saw hazel eyes in shadowy sockets and he saw the soft wide boxer’s nose he’d inherited from his dead father. And just below the nose he saw a whole load of new stuff: a strong, solid jaw, a full shapely mouth with lips that met and a good-shaped chin. He’d pulled his lips apart and stared in awe at his teeth as the upstairs set finally made the acquaintance of their downstairs neighbours. Then he’d turned his head slightly to view his new profile. His lips had an almost regal curl to them and his nose now formed the peak of his facial contours, instead of his lower jaw. He no longer looked like a bulldog. He looked like… like…

  ‘You look just like your dad,’ his mum had said, finally peeling her hand away from her mouth. ‘Just like him. It’s… uncanny. It’s like, like…’ Then she’d started crying.

  Vince’s dad, Max, had died on his motorbike when Kirsty was eight and a half months pregnant with Vince. Vince had seen his dad only in photos, a big, strong, long-haired man in jeans and leather who seemed so far removed from him in every way that he’d never even considered the possibility that he might look like him.

  He’d tried to bring Max’s face to his mind in the consulting room that day, tried to mentally superimpose it over his own. But he couldn’t. All he could see was a tall, skinny bloke in a black polo neck with a face that didn’t quite look familiar, an image he would never be able to reconcile with that of his macho, moustachioed dead father.

  Vince had vowed that he wouldn’t go to Hunstanton again after he left school. Last summer was the last time, he’d promised himself. He was booked in for surgery this time last year; had envisaged that come the following summer he’d be far too busy having sex to come back here with his mum and Chris. But it hadn’t quite worked out like that. His social life, if anything, had diminished since the surgery as he’d lost touch with his school friends. And here he was, five days off his nineteenth birthday and stuck on a bunk bed in a damp old caravan with his mum, her husband and a chemical toilet. Still, on the bright side, he’d just bought himself a Sony Discman and five new CDs, the sun was shining and there was a beautiful girl next door. A really, really beautiful girl.

  All he had to do now was miraculously turn into an interesting, sexy, vibrant and irresistible man whom said beautiful girl might have even the slightest interest in talking to and this experience might turn out OK after all.

  Two

  ‘Shit,’ said Joy, dashing back into the caravan and fanning her face with her magazine, ‘shit, shit, shit, shit, 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 about why 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 l
ike 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 – you could 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 field of detonating mines. Then she heard the familiar rumble of her father’s car as it bounced its way over the pockmarked gravel and mountainous speed humps towards their caravan. She sighed and let the curtain fall.

  ‘Hello, love.’ Joy could hear her mother wheezing lugubriously from the other end of the caravan.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  And what time did you eventually emerge?’ her father said, following spryly behind.

  Emerge, thought Joy, with annoyance. She hated the way her father said that. Emerge.

  She shrugged at him and fiddled with her crucifix.

  ‘People next door,’ he said, resting some musty-smelling packages on the dining table and indicating the next-door caravan with a jerk of his silvery head.

  ‘Yes,’ said her mother, leaning against the kitchen counter while she drew some breath, a light but insistent sweat trickling from her hairline and disappearing into her heavy brows. ‘Have you seen? Can’t quite work out what they are though – a family or what.’

  ‘Ugly bunch,’said her father, unfurling a parcel of old newspaper and string, and pulling out something made of brass that looked like yet another coal scuttle. ‘You missed an excellent morning’s antiquing,’ he held the brass thing to the light and smiled at it with satisfaction. ‘Lots of super little shops up at Burnham Market. And we had a marvellous pub lunch.’

  ‘Have you eaten, love?’ said her mum, finally having regained enough puff to make it to the other end of the caravan and collapse in a lump on the seat opposite Joy. She was wearing one of the tight dresses she always insisted on wearing in the summer, constructed of a heavy cotton with a belted waist and cap sleeves that ate into the thick flesh of her upper arms and restricted her movements. As if her rheumatism, her asthma and the five stones of excess weight she carried with her weren’t restrictive enough.

  Joy glanced down at her mother’s poor ruined legs, at the red shins marbled with bluish spider veins and the angry ankles that spilled from her Sunday supplement shoes like pie crusts. Poor Mum. Summer was a nightmare for her. The heat, the pollution and the need to expose the ungainly, unloved body she was happy to keep under wraps the rest of the year.

  And then she looked at her father, cool and slim in his crisp white polo shirt and beige slacks, seemingly designed for the hot weather. It was almost as if he was taunting his wife with his ability to remain unravaged by time and the elements.

  They’d had her late in life – her mother, Barbara, had been forty; her father, Alan, forty-two.

  ‘So, what are your plans for the afternoon?’ said her father.

  Joy sighed. Plans. There it was – another of his special words designed purely to irritate her. What plans did he possibly think she might have stranded here in a dingy caravan on the outskirts of Hunstanton? She shrugged, and scratched her upper arm.

  She had no idea where they’d found this godforsaken, manky old sardine can. Even in comparison to some of the other eyesores on this site this one was shockingly ugly. The interior was brown and unappealing, with knobbly nylon stretch covers on everything, and why her parents had thought for a second that bringing her to this sad, mildewy box on the very edge of the brash north Norfolk coast to spend two weeks cocooned away with a pair of twittering geriatric parents was going to help heal the still-raw wounds of the past few months was a mystery to her. In all honesty, she suspected it was a mystery to them, too. But they were still sensitive, still desperate to remain ‘upbeat’ no matter what. They would, she knew, enjoy this holiday by hook or by crook, however uncomfortable or unappealing they found their surroundings. There would be no negativity in this family, no moaning, no complaining. And she’d comply because it was all her fault, because after everything she’d put her parents through the least she could do was smile and pretend to be having a good time.

  And as she peeled back the orange curtain again and saw the shadowy movements of the intriguing family next door she thought to herself that with any luck she might not even have to pretend.

  Three

  The Nelson’s Arms was heaving with sunburned, shell-suited couples, and the beer garden was full of their children clambering around a multicoloured climbing frame and sliding down the enormous red tongue of a large plastic clown’s head.

  Chris put a round of drinks down on the table and sat down.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, holding his pint out to Kirsty’s white wine and Vince’s Guinness. ‘Here’s to the summer and to a cracking holiday.’

  ‘Hear! Hear! said Kirsty.

  ‘And here’s to our Vincent finally offloading his sodding cherry. With any luck.’

  ‘Chris!’

  ‘Well, what was the point of going though all that pain and suffering if you’re not going to make the most of it? You haven’t got for ever, you know. You’re nearly nineteen, it’s summer and you’re surrounded by gorgeous women. Go for it!’

  Vince looked around the pub in mock disgust, at the married couples and lardy teenage girls wearing cheap Chelsea Girl tops and stonewashed denim jeans. He threw Chris a withering look. ‘Gorgeous women?’ he said. ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh, the night’s yet young. It’s not even six o’clock yet. You never know who might turn up.’

  ‘Chris, mate, this isn’t St Tropez. Gorgeous women are not attracted by the bright lights of Hunstanton Pier.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, picking up his pint and winking at Kirsty. ‘What about that lass next door?’

  Vince felt himself flush, and buried his face in his Guinness. ‘What lass?’

  ‘You know what lass. That pale, winsome thing in the crucifix and all the black clobber on. You know’

  ‘What – that girl from Geoff and Diane’s caravan?’

  ‘Aye, that’s the one. She looks right up your street. Looks like she’ll be into that depressing stuff you like. And she had a nice pair of legs on her, too. Did you see her, K? Little Miss Goth.’ Chris turned to his wife. She shook her head and laughed.

  Vince tutted, and raised his eyebrows at Chris. Vince was going through his Goth phase when Kirsty had first met Chris five years ago, and Chris couldn’t accept that he’d moved on and that nowadays he was more of a… well, he didn’t really know what he was any more but, in Chris’s mind, Vince would for ever be a Goth.

  ‘Well, whatever, she was a cracker, and she looked like she wa
s up for the job.’

  ‘Oh, Chris, leave him alone,’ Kirsty chastised affectionately.

  ‘Yeah, Chris – leave me alone,’ said Vince. But he was feigning indignation because the truth was that he didn’t really mind Chris ribbing him. It was the nature of their relationship and had been ever since Chris had first come into his life, when Vince was fourteen years old.

  *

  Kirsty had had other boyfriends before Chris. She’d worked for years as a receptionist at the Belling Factory at Ponders End where the men outnumbered the women by twenty to one. She called it the Ponders End Knocking Shop, but, even though she was chased round the office day after day by men in suits and wedding rings, Kirsty preferred men who worked with their hands, so it was the guys from the shop floor that she ended up dating.

  Vince had known that Chris was going to be something serious before he even met him. Mum had gone on about him for ages, on and on about this new guy from Sheffield.

  ‘Oh, that bloke I was telling you about, Chris, the one from Sheffield, well, he went to see Omen 3 last week – said it was crap.’

  ‘Oh, you know that Chris from Sheffield, he’s got a new car – Golf GTI. Bright green it is, with spoilers and alloy wheels.’

  ‘That Chris from Sheffield – he’s got a mate who used to be a plumber. Said he’d ask him to pop round and sort out the boiler.’

  She’d talk about his girlfriend as well. ‘Chris’s girlfriend’s had her hair done brown, apparently. Weird thing to do, go brown.’

  ‘Chris’s girlfriend’s mum’s down from Sheffield – I think it’s getting to him a bit. She sounds like a right old battleaxe.’

  ‘Looks like things are getting a bit tense between Chris and his girlfriend.’

  By the time the girlfriend with the brown hair and the battleaxe mum had been dispatched and Chris was finally available, it felt as if Vince had been hearing about him for years and had known him for ever.

  He wasn’t sure that they were going to get on at first. Chris liked soft rock and getting greasy under cars. His hair was just that bit too long; his trousers too tight. Vince, as a pale, melancholic teenage loner with an enormous chin and a taste for locking himself in his bedroom and listening to suicidal music, could not have been more different. But he’d warmed to Chris quickly. He liked the way Chris treated his mum with respect, phoned her when he said he would, always saw her home to her door, introduced her to his friends and family, never let her down. And he liked the way he made the effort to get on with Vince without ever trying too hard. He didn’t try to ingratiate himself. He respected Vince’s space and privacy. If he came upon Vince watching TV in the living room, for example, he’d pick up a paper and read it, only lowering it to address Vince once the adverts were running.