Doing It Read Online Free PDF Page B

bra up.
    ‘History was cancelled. What are you doing home?’
    ‘English was cancelled,’ said his mum, and laughed. Her laugh sounded like china dropping to the floor. Dino walked through and opened the front-room door. His mum was standing there on one side of the coffee table and on the other was Dave Short, a teacher at his mum’s college. He was smoothing down – or perhaps wiping – his moustache. Dave taught technology, Dino remembered.
    ‘Was technology cancelled too?’ he asked. To his surprise, Dave Short blushed as pink as a boy. Dino blushed back.
    Dino spent a lot of time that evening in his room trying to think of nice things like Jackie or football or a good film, but all his mind would show him was his mum sucking Dave Short’s moustache, in vivid, spitty close-up. The image was ghastly beyond belief. What was going to happen? Was his family going to break up? Did his little brother Mat have any idea what was going on? His mother was old, how could anyone want to kiss her? Did he have to tell his father? Did his mother know that he knew, did she suspect – or had he fooled them both completely?
    As for Dave Short – I could blackmail the bastard, thought Dino, and at once, he realised that he was on to a good thing. Dave Short was a balding man with a dense, badger-coloured moustache and a fair amount of badly placed fat on his stocky little frame; utterly repulsive, the last sort of man you’d want as a stepfather. So repulsive, in fact, that Dino couldn’t believe that his mum actually wanted to be doing sex things with him at all. Probably
he
was blackmailing
her
! So that was it! Blackmail! The bastard!
    His mother needed rescuing.
    Then he thought about the way she’d kissed him. Perhaps she did want to be doing sex things with him after all.
    That just meant he could get both of them. Why not? The bitch was trying to ruin his life. Just because she was his mother …
    But first that bastard Short. He sat down at his desk and began to compose a blackmail note. He got through a couple of drafts before he was called down to tea.
    Knives and forks rattled on the plates, but Dino was miles away, thinking about money. Soon he’d be rich. He’d be able to get a car, at least. Maybe life would be
better
because his mum was having an affair, not worse.
    As the word ‘affair’ rebounded in his head he looked guiltily up. No one seemed to notice he was thinking the unthinkable. For a moment, he became acutely aware of his ability to think things with no one knowing what he was doing. Deliberately, he began to conjure up the filthiest thoughts he could manage about Jackie – and they really were pretty filthy. No one seemed to notice. It was bizarre that you could sit there innocently eating mash next to your little bruv while your head was immersed in the most depraved filth man could dream up. It was disturbing but fun, until his mind began, quite against his will, to imagine the same filthy thoughts about his mother.
    Bad mistake. He felt ill with anxiety and disgust. At that very moment, Dave Short might be eating his dinner with his family and thinking the exact same kinds of things about his mum – and he’d be
enjoying
it! Even worse, maybe his mother was thinking filthy thoughts about Dave Short. Sitting there, all alone in the middle of his family, Dino blushed a bright, bright red.
    ‘What’s up with you, wet your pants?’ asked Mat. Mat was only nine. Dino sneered at him and looked away.
    He began thinking about all the money he was going to earn again, when his dad’s voice interrupted him.
    ‘… going away for the weekend.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Me and your mum are going away for the weekend.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘We don’t know yet.’
    ‘What for?’ asked Dino.
    His dad laughed. ‘What do you mean, what for? To go away for the weekend, that’s what for.’
    ‘You’re so dumb, Dodo,’ sneered Mat.
    ‘Mat,’ said his mother mildly. ‘We haven’t been away together on