Vince and Joy by Lisa Jewell Read Free Book Online

without her portfolio. She didn’t realize she’d left the portfolio at home until the interview panel had asked to see it, at which point she burst into tears and ran from the room. She got on the wrong train at Fenchurch Street and ended up in Norwich. She didn’t have enough cash on her to buy a ticket back to London, so her mother had driven all the way from Colchester and brought her home.
    The following morning the postman delivered not one but three letters of rejection from her top three choices of university, and Joy decided that it would be better for everyone if she wasn’t around. This revelation cleared her head for the first time in a month, and it was with an amazing sense of clarity that she sat cross-legged on her bed and ingested twenty-three paracetamols and a third of a bottle of peach schnapps.
    Her mother found her half an hour later and rushed her to Colchester General, where they pumped out her stomach with salty water until she felt like a wrung-out flannel.
    In retrospect, Joy knew that she hadn’t really intended to kill herself. She’d known her mother would find her; she’d known she hadn’t taken enough. She just wanted to go home and forget that it had ever happened. But everyone involved took it very seriously – seriously enough to do something about it. She was admitted to a psychiatric ward the next day.
    The day after that she received a letter from Bristol University offering her a place on their Graphic Design BA degree course. Her mother wrote back on her behalf to explain why she wouldn’t be able to take it up.
    She couldn’t really remember much about the next few weeks. It was a blur of pills and questions. Somewhere along the line she must have told someone about her father and Toni Moran because by the time she finally came home, four weeks later, her father was a in a state of high contrition and everything felt different. Hence this holiday. Hence the atmosphere of forced geniality that hung over everything they said and did.
    It was Alan who’d put Joy in hospital. Alan owed them. And Alan was paying the price.
    When the pub closed at eleven-thirty, they instinctively turned in the opposite direction to the Nelson’s and the Seavue Holiday Home Park, and headed towards the seafront instead. ‘Word Up’ blasted from the open windows of a spartan nightclub over an arcade on the promenade. They crossed the road and passed the open doors of the club. Hard-faced girls in sunbleached denim stood outside, smoking full-strength Marlboros and drinking half-pints of cider. Burly boys in nylonbomber jackets drank beer from plastic cups and sneered at each other.
    They wandered across the soft, manicured grass of the seafront promenade, past the neat pavilion and towards a bench facing out towards the sea. A few shadowy seagulls circled overhead, their angry cries merging with the ghostly din of Cameo still echoing from the club. The beach was completely empty.
    They sat down in unison and breathed in the fresh sea air, and as the brine hit Joy’s lungs she felt herself swell up with happiness. She’d drunk too much and life had taken on a golden, blankety feeling she’d never thought possible. For the first time in her life Joy felt…
normal.
    She was no longer daunted by Vince’s good looks and brooding aura. Vince wasn’t what he appeared. He wasn’t cool and moody. He wasn’t intellectual or hard. He wasn’t intimidating.
    He was interesting and kind and funny.
    He was human and generous and thoughtful.
    He was awkward and a misfit.
    He’d missed out on great big chunks of his youth.
    He was just like her
    Joy had never met anyone just like her before. She’d spent her life trying to bend herself to fit to other people’s shapes. For years she’d contorted herself into tricky positions, like those people who could fold themselves into boxes, but walking out of the Nelson’s that evening with Vince had felt like stretching her legs after a long journey, like