The Making of Mia (4 page)

‘So what you need to do is get a job to get away from your mother!’

Jo stopped crying and looked at Frank as if he were mad. ‘But who would employ me? I’m fat and ugly and stupid.’

Frank made soothing noises to Jo. ‘Yes, you are overweight, but all the best Italian girls have meat on their bones, with
my Rosa a good example. You don’t think she is ugly, eh?’ Jo shook her head as Frank continued. ‘And you are not ugly, you
have a bloom that older women want to buy in bottles. Why, if I was a few years younger …’ Frank looked Joanna slowly up and
down approvingly.

Jo sniffed. ‘But I am stupid. I failed my A-levels.’

Frank disagreed. ‘You, Joanna, are not stupid. You have A-levels, you’ve had a brilliant education. And you have fire, a drive.’

Jo went to argue, but Frank stopped her. ‘No, no, let me
finish. You have your dreams, and you have reached a hurdle. People don’t give up at these hurdles, and if they can’t get
over them they go round them to get to their dream.’ Frank reached over to Jo and touched her arm. ‘Little Joanna, I know
you can do this. You are special.’

Rose came back into the kitchen and pulled up a chair, and Frank stepped away from her and moved towards his wife.

‘Rosa,’ Frank said, looking at her, ‘Joanna needs a job, she will start working here tomorrow, yes?’

Rose nodded enthusiastically, and Jo began to weakly protest but the couple refused to let her back down.

‘You will be here tomorrow morning at five o’clock, Joanna,’ Frank said as Jo blanched at the early start, ‘and you will start
the rest of your life.’

Frank turned to his wife and grinned, showing her his yellow nicotine-stained teeth. ‘Joanna will be like the daughter we
never had!’

Life at the café was hard. In the mornings Jo walked to work just as the sun was rising, and she spent hours in the kitchen,
signing for the deliveries and preparing food for the early morning rush at six. Counters needed to be wiped down, the floor
swept and mopped, and the kitchen had to be sparkling. Jo found that even before the first customers walked into the café
she was exhausted. Being at boarding school on a scholarship had been a breeze compared to this.

Slowly, though, Jo began to get used to the hours and slotted into her new working life. The job was physically tough, and
her thighs were rubbed raw at the end of the day, but the small amount of pay she earned slowly began to build in her bank
account. Suddenly, her life seemed a whole lot better than it had been for years – she had a job, some savings, and while
she didn’t have friends, most people in the café seemed to accept her for who she was – an overweight,
lonely teenager trying to make ends meet. Frank seemed irritated by her, though, glowing red when she stood near him and catching
her eye whenever Jo looked towards him. Jo didn’t know what she was doing wrong.

‘I thought you wanted to be a magazine writer, Joanna,’ he said to her one Friday evening, as Jo was tidying up the front
counter of the café and he was locking the door.

Jo shrugged, opened the till to bank up the cash, and began to count the notes.

‘You have given up on your dream, then, eh?’

Jo looked up at her boss sharply, and then went back to making piles of ten-pound notes, counting and then recounting them
until she realised that she’d lost track of her sums. She sighed. ‘I’ve got a plan. I’m going to save up enough to retake
my A-levels at the local college and then – when I pass – I’m going to journalism college. I’m going to skip university completely.
I think I’m good enough to be able to.’

Frank stared intently at the teenager behind his counter and smiled.

‘Jo, it will take you years to save up enough to do that. This is not a good idea, no? And what does this say to Rosa and
me? Are you saying that this job is only a means to an end, that our business, that we have built up with love since before
you were born, is a meal-ticket until you want out?’

Caught off-guard, Jo didn’t understand. ‘But I thought you gave me a job so I could find my way? Wasn’t that the plan?’

When Frank didn’t say anything, Jo suddenly felt as though she was in the wrong, but she didn’t know why. ‘You know I love
working for you and Rosa, Frank, but I want to work on magazines … it’s all I’ve ever wanted.’

Frank remained silent and Jo felt uncomfortable. But then he smiled.

‘Rosa and I have talked, and we have decided we want to train you up to take over running the café. Rosa, she gets tired,
but you, you’re young, and we love you like you are one of our own.’

Jo felt her heart drop. As much as she liked Frank and Rose, there was no way she wanted to give up her dream of working on
magazines to run a greasy spoon.

Frank sat down on a chair and gestured to Joanna to join him, but just as she went for a chair opposite him he reached out
for her and pulled her on to his lap. The physical contact of a man jolted Jo, and she froze in shock as she let Frank move
her on to him.

‘Oh, Joanna, I’ve watched you grow into a beautiful young woman, but you still have your head in your childlike fantasies.
Now, I know it is hard but I think you need to accept that you’re not going to be able to go to journalism college.’

Jo began to squirm on Frank’s lap and felt uncomfortable. She felt his hot breath on the back of her neck and when Jo tried
to stand up she found that Frank’s grip was surprisingly strong.

‘As you have no father figure in your life, I feel it is my duty to tell you these things. I know it is hard, but I think
you accept this as fact, yes? This way, you can settle here and be a proper part of the family. I think you knew deep down
this was your best option, and I have also been seeing how you look at your Frank. You like it here, eh?’

Jo tried to use her elbows to push herself from Frank, but it didn’t work.

‘I’ve been watching you for years, feeding you food and watching you grow into a ripe, beautiful young woman. Little Joanna,
sweet Joanna, I think you want more from me than a job, yes?’ Frank’s voice was thick with longing as he spoke, and Jo could
feel an erection through his apron.
Frank began to stroke Jo’s hair, and then his hands moved down to her shoulders, and then her breasts.

The sudden, overt sexual contact jolted Jo, and she moved her body violently in an attempt to get away from Frank’s rough
hands. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she yelped.

Frank turned Jo on his lap and started kissing her to stop her talking. For a moment Jo froze, and she could feel Frank’s
garlicky, smoke-flavoured tongue force itself into her mouth. With a surge of strength Jo pushed herself off Frank’s lap and
when she was free she ran to the door. She had forgotten that Frank had already locked it.

‘Joanna, little Joanna, you love your Frank, yes?’

Jo was outraged. ‘No! Not like that!’

Frank walked towards Jo, undoing his apron and then unzipping his trousers. ‘Oh, but I think you do, Joanna,’ he said in a
whisper, as Jo’s eyes darted around the café for the keys to the door. When she spotted them on a hook by the pay-phone she
pushed past Frank, grabbed them, and then fumbled with the lock until the door opened freely.

Jo stared incredulously at Frank with his trousers around his ankles and she realised she could never come back to the café
again. A feeling of sad inevitability washed over her, but before Jo could linger on yet another notch in her run of bad luck,
the pile of bank notes on the counter caught her eye. With as much courage as she could muster, Jo walked over to them, nervously
put them in her pocket, and turned to look at Frank for one final time. His erection had gone limp in his hands, and he no
longer looked threatening, but pathetic. Jo threw the door keys at him, and they hit Frank hard on his chest. As he doubled
up in pain, Jo pulled the door open and felt fresh air on her face.

‘Fuck you, Frank.’

‘He actually got his dick out? Are you serious?’ Amelia
yelped down the phone in disbelief. ‘He offered you a “management” position in his shitty café and then thought you’d want
to have sex with him? Are you kidding me?’

Jo bit her lip and tried not to smile. ‘Don’t make it sound so funny,’ she said with a shudder, as she recounted the tale
to her best friend and shifted in her seat. Her arm was aching from holding the phone up to her ear, and once again she was
grateful that Amelia always phoned her back. At least her mother couldn’t yell at her about the phone bill along with everything
else.

‘Look, you must be feeling pretty lousy, but why don’t you come down here for a couple of days?’ Amelia stared at her toenails
– wet with Chanel polish – and tried not to move her feet. ‘The holiday that Daddy promised me for passing my exams is on
hold – Granny fell over and broke her hip and Mummy’s at home nursing herself with vodka over the price of the hospital bills.
I’m dying for a bit of girlie fun.’

‘Won’t I be in the way of you and Charlie?’ Jo asked, feeling awkward. Apart from revelling in Jo’s clumsy first kiss with
Frank, Amelia’s favourite subject at the moment was her new boyfriend, and the various different sexual positions he introduced
her to. Every time she started to talk about her love life, Jo felt incredibly uncomfortable.
Gloss
magazine may have provided a detailed guide on how to help him make you come, but Jo felt out of her depth talking about
real sex with real people. She smiled to herself: she’d stick to the stuff of trashy novels for now.

Amelia snorted. ‘Don’t be stupid. Besides, Charlie’s bar is having a party and it would be the best time for you to come over.
Sounds like you could do with a laugh.’

‘But …’ Jo was momentarily floored by the thought of socialising. ‘But what would I wear?’

Amelia smiled sneakily as she imagined making Jo over. ‘Don’t worry about that … Just leave it to me.’

When Amelia pulled into her sweeping circular driveway the next day, Jo’s wariness about fitting in intensified. Throughout
the train ride from Waterloo to Winchester Jo had lost herself in a new issue of
Marie Claire
, but during the forty-minute drive through the depths of the Hampshire countryside Jo’s stomach had filled with butterflies.
Now they were outside Amelia’s pile she felt sick. She was definitely outside her comfort zone.

The Gladstone-Denham gothic country house was the stuff of people’s dreams: it was an imposing tall building with dark grey
pillars and intimidating gargoyles, and to Jo it felt like a nightmare, especially when she thought of Amelia’s judgemental
mother inside. Jo slammed the door of the beat-up Beetle and followed Amelia to the side entrance nervously, looking at the
Victorian doorbell that read: ‘Servants.’ Her palms were damp with sweat.

‘We don’t use the front door unless we’re having dinner parties,’ Amelia explained as she entered the house, and Jo tried
to look blasé as they walked across the cool grey flag-stones into the big kitchen. Amelia’s mother was sitting at a scrubbed
pine table with the
Daily Mail
in front of her, and as she looked up Jo felt her eyes assessing her. Jo swallowed hard and forced herself to smile. Amelia’s
mother looked like she was a member of the Royal Family.

‘Joanne, isn’t it?’ Sarah Gladstone-Denham asked politely, and Jo nodded meekly. As Amelia turned on the kettle to make them
a cup of tea, Jo struggled with a kitchen chair and ignored Amelia’s mother’s visible wince as she sat down. Despite Sarah’s
reservations the fragile pine chair held her weight and Jo fidgeted awkwardly, trying not to stare at the huge rosy pearls
round Sarah’s neck and the rocks of diamonds and rubies on her impressive engagement ring.

‘You have a beautiful home,’ Jo said, hastily trying to start a conversation. ‘Apart from St Christopher’s I don’t think I’ve
ever been in such an old building.’ An image of her mother’s 1960s council flat popped into her mind, and Jo felt even more
nervous. The flat was practically the same size as Amelia’s kitchen.

Sarah smiled, showing her perfect white teeth, and Jo was reminded of the Cheshire cat. ‘Thank you, it’s been in the family
for two hundred years and we recently renovated it. Now, Amelia tells me you’re from London,’ she said, glancing at her daughter,
who was rummaging around in a bottom cupboard looking for biscuits. Her hipster jeans rode down her bottom as she bent over
and Sarah frowned at her black thong on display. ‘Do tell, what part of the city do you live in?’

Jo hesitated and glanced at Amelia, who was blithely unaware of her friend’s discomfort. ‘Oh, just South London, you know,
nothing special.’

Sarah straightened her back. ‘Battersea?’ she asked, enjoying Jo’s discomfort. Jo shook her head. ‘Wandsworth? Barnes? Putney?’

As Jo began to look miserable, Sarah let out a little laugh and hoped she wasn’t being too unsubtle.

‘Gosh,’ she said innocently as her daughter came to the table with a teapot, cups and saucers. ‘Where on earth do you live,
then?’

Jo looked at the delicate Wedgwood china cups and saucers and smiled to herself – a real one rather than a forced grin. She’d
not seen a set since she’d been at school and they reminded her that she was just as good as her friend – or that she at least
knew how to hold a cup and saucer correctly. Fuck it, she thought. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Jo felt amusement bubbling
up inside her and wondered what Sarah Double-Barrelled Name would do if she told the truth. Banish her back to the slums,
or tell her she was sleeping in the servants’ quarters? Jo laughed to herself. Sarah would never be rude to her face. It wouldn’t
‘do’.

Jo took a sip of tea, quietly cleared her throat and decided it was time that Sarah officially knew her beloved daughter was
friends with the working class.

‘Officially I live in Peckham,’ she said happily, thinking of home with its violence, litter and dirt. ‘But really I’m closer
to Camberwell, which is great because of the cheap food I can pick up in the Turkish shops.’ Sarah looked visibly affronted,
as if Jo had just sworn, but she remembered herself and her face returned to what she called ‘pleasant’. Amelia struggled
to collect herself as she tried not to giggle at her friend’s daring.