by cass green
Irene steeled herself once again and knocked gently on the door. Nothing happened for a moment and so she did it again with more confidence this time. The music, if that’s what you could call it, abruptly stopped.
The door opened, and a very overweight woman peered blearily out at Irene. She was somewhere in middle age, with hair in pale-coloured dreadlocks held back by a red scarf. Her skin bore the look of a lifelong smoker and there was a sweetish smell that even Irene recognized wafting out of the flat. It no doubt explained the slightly unfocused look in her eyes.
‘Can I help you, darling?’ she said in a surprisingly high-pitched, girlish voice.
‘I’m looking for my son, Michael,’ said Irene. Suddenly she found she was close to tears. Her knees were hurting, and she was gasping for a hot drink. All she wanted was for someone to say, ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Michael’s fine.’
The woman looked at her and something Irene couldn’t place passed across her face. Maybe something had happened between her and Michael. Irene couldn’t help herself immediately hoping he had used protection and then being disgusted with herself for even thinking like this.
‘I haven’t seen him in two weeks,’ said the woman, frowning now. ‘He hasn’t been answering any of my messages.’
‘Oh.’ Irene felt herself sagging and leaned a hand against the doorframe.
She hadn’t wanted it to be anything other than a silly old bat with too much time on her hands worrying about nothing. But this strange person now looked as worried as Irene felt.
‘Look, you’d better come in,’ said the other woman.
ELLIOTT
It was probably thinking about all that childhood stuff earlier, but when I got to the school playground, my eyes seemed to fix on Tyler Bennett straight away.
Tyler was one of those kids it was very hard to like, even though I wasn’t meant to say that. He was a three-foot-high block of truculence, with a sulky face and the ability to be ever the wronged party in a dispute.
He was standing now just inside the school gates with a mutinous expression, clearly waiting for someone. The bell was just about to go so I wandered over to him. He greeted me with the sort of look dogs give when they suspect someone is about to take their bone away.
‘Alright, Tyler?’ I said. ‘What are you doing? Bell’s about to go.’
He ignored me and peered out of the gate, little brow so scrunched his eyes almost disappeared.
‘Are you waiting for something?’ The bell rang out clearly.
‘C’mon, mate, time to go in.’ I touched his shoulder and he reacted as though he had been hit, pulling his arm away violently.
‘Woah!’ I said, taking a step back. At that exact moment, as if conjured up from nowhere, a huge, bullet-headed man appeared at the gate, brandishing Tyler’s school bag and breathing heavily.
‘What are you doing?’ said the man, presumably young Tyler’s progenitor.
‘I’m not doing anything,’ I said reasonably, because I’d met plenty of parents like this one. ‘I was just telling Tyler the bell’s gone.’
‘Did you touch him just then?’
I stared at the man for a second. ‘I tapped him lightly on the shoulder in a friendly way,’ I said, my face entirely straight. ‘Because the bell had gone.’
‘That true, Ty?’
Tyler shrugged. After an agonizing moment’s pause he added, ‘S’pose,’ and I was ridiculously grateful to the little sod for not making this worse just for sport.
‘Right,’ said the man. ‘Well, he was waiting for me, wasn’t he?’ He moved closer to his son, as though making a point, before handing the bag to Tyler, whose gaze was flitting between us in wide-eyed fascination. The man’s eyes narrowed further and he said, ‘Wait, do I know you?’
‘I’m a teacher at your son’s school, so I imagine you may recognize me,’ I said, giving the man a broad smile. His type hated that. You can really wrong-foot aggressive people with a bit of sunshine. I should have stopped there, but my annoying weekend, a residual irritation with Anya for abandoning me, and the toxic swill of my thoughts earlier all conspired against me. Before I turned away, I found myself muttering, ‘You have an excellent day, now.’
The man’s cheeks darkened. It was unnerving to see aggression painted even more boldly on his face.
‘You’ve got a real attitude, do you know that?’ he said, his voice a low rumble that got me in the gut, just as it was intended to.
‘I can assure you I haven’t, Mr, uh …’ My brain flailed for Tyler’s surname before it came to me. ‘Mr Bennett. I’m just trying to do my job and get your son in for the start of the new term.’
The man was frowning now, staring hard at my face, and then a malicious grin broke out over his.
‘I know who you are,’ he said.
I formed my mouth into a pleasant smile. ‘Well, as I said, I work here.’
‘Nah,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not from here.’
Did he? I couldn’t think how. His accent was a little more London than the local one, but I still didn’t know him.
‘I don’t think so, Mr Bennett,’ I said. He made a snorting sound, then muttered something under his breath. All I caught was, ‘for you …’
‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.
Bennett did a sort of ‘nya nya’ thing, then shook his head and walked off without saying anything else to his son. Tyler’s thumb had snuck into his mouth during this exchange, something I hadn’t noticed him do before. I attempted a friendly smile.
‘Come on, buddy,’ I said. ‘I’m no happier than you are that the holidays are over. Let’s go in.’
As I got to the building I turned, and my heart seemed to jolt out of its place. Bennett was standing across the road, staring right at me.
ELLIOTT
I felt on edge all morning after that encounter. I’d dealt with aggressive parents before, as I said, but there was something about him that had really chilled me. There had been the hint of a smile there, like he’d been contemplating actions further down the line that he would enjoy very much, and I wouldn’t. And why did he think he knew me?
At breaktime I looked out for Clare, Tyler’s class teacher. I wanted to know whether she had ever been on the other end of the Tyler paterfamilias’s displeasure.
She wasn’t about – maybe on playground duty. I went to make myself a coffee. There was a sink full of dirty mugs. With a sigh I cleaned one as best I could with hot water and something that had once been a dish scourer, then decided to be the bigger person and do the lot. I was up to my elbows in suds when Zoe appeared next to me.
‘You’re really good at that,’ she said in an earnest-sounding voice. ‘Would you like to be our Sink Monitor this week?’
I mouthed, ‘Piss off,’ at her and threw a bit of foam. She laughed and flicked it away.
‘So …’ I said after a moment. I grinned and waggled my eyebrows.
Her cheeks flushed.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Tell me all about Tabitha then,’ I said, nudging her in the side. She looked down, failing to hide the way her eyes instantly lit up.
‘What do you want to know exactly?’ she said, getting out one of the clean cups and reaching into her handbag for one of her horrible green teabags that tasted of garden mulch.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’ve kept so quiet about it, I don’t know anything. I feel like …’ I bit off the end of my sentence.
‘What?’ she said, serious now. It was my turn to blush.
‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘It just seems weird not to tell me.’ I stopped, then said quietly, ‘That …’
‘That I’m a lesbian?’ she said at the top of her voice. Several heads shot up from the various battered chairs around the room. Mary Martinson, who had been a teaching assistant here for about a thousand years as far as I could tell, was staring with her mouth actually open from the sofa in the middle of the room, a plastic bowl of salad in her lap.
I didn’t really know what to do. I hadn’t intended to force Zoe to out herself like that in the middle of the staffroom. I made myself a cup of coffee I no longer wanted. I could hear her breathing heavily next to me as she reached for the packet of Value ginger nuts that some kindly soul had left for all to eat.
I must have looked as awkward as I felt. Zoe touched my arm. I looked at her and she said, ‘Why would I?’ in a quiet voice.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s none of my business. But I thought it might just have come up in conversation, like, I dunno, I talk about Anya.’
Zoe nodded and gestured for me to come over to a quieter bit of the room with her. There were only a couple of minutes left of break and I had things to do, but this felt important, so I followed, with my unwanted coffee.
‘I don’t know why I did that just now,’ she said, taking a sip of her tea. She flashed me a quick, vulnerable smile. ‘I’m still kind of finding my way, in all honesty.’ I waited, and she continued. ‘I was with a bloke for years. Bit of an arsehole. One day I’ll get shitfaced and tell you all about it.’ She puffed out her cheeks and sighed, then continued, in an even quieter voice. ‘I didn’t expect to fall in love with a woman, but it seems I have.’
When she put down her mug I gave her a little mock punch on the arm.
‘Sensible decision,’ I said. ‘Women are lovely. Blokes are hairy, horrible things.’ Her loud laugh turned heads again.
‘I knew I could rely on you for a deep, philosophical conversation,’ she said. ‘Thanks for helping me work through this complex issue.’
‘Anytime, doll,’ I said in my best old-time American accent.
She laughed and then her expression turned serious again.
‘And you?’ she said. ‘Everything okay with you guys?’
I looked back at her, puzzled and not a little discomfited.
‘Me and Anya, you mean?’ I said. ‘Why?’
She looked flustered and gave a slightly forced laugh. ‘Oh, nothing, nothing,’ she said. ‘Just with leaving early and all.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She was just under the weather, no biggie.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Right,’ then, with a bright smile, ‘Anyway, things to do, kids to corral!’
I didn’t manage to see Clare until afternoon break because I was on lunchtime playground duty.
I watched Tyler for a bit at lunchtime. He was part of a football game that mainly involved screaming at the top of his lungs and denigrating the prowess of his team mates. I found myself wondering again about his home life so, when I saw Clare in the staffroom, I asked if I could have a quick word.
Clare was a small, serious woman in her forties. She had a couple of kids and a husband who, as far as I could gather, did as little as he could in their upbringing. She often seemed to be sighing at her mobile phone and generally had a careworn sort of air about her.
We sat down on the sofa. She peeled the lid of a tub of yoghurt and began to spoon the contents into her mouth in small, neat movements.
‘So,’ I said, ‘tell me about Tyler Bennett’s dad.’
She made a face and then said, ‘What do you want to know?’
I told her what happened that morning at the school gates. She sighed and put down her yoghurt and spoon.
‘Well, he’s an ex-soldier,’ she said. ‘His name’s Lee. Emily, Tyler’s mum, died of breast cancer.’
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Hmm.’ She fixed me with a serious look, and her next sentence came out in a rush. ‘I probably shouldn’t pass this on,’ she said, ‘but he’s an ex-offender. I think there were some issues with the mother after he came back from Iraq. Possibly PTSD or something like that. But whatever went on, they had got over their differences when she got sick.’
‘Right,’ I said thoughtfully.
‘I do find him a bit prickly,’ she went on. ‘But I think he’s just trying to cope on his own, so I generally cut him, and the boy, a bit of extra slack. Can’t be easy for them.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Can’t be easy at all.’
As I made my way back to the classroom I thought about poor little Tyler and the big tough man who was trying to be both mum and dad in that sad household.
I felt sorry for him. But I didn’t like the sound of ‘ex-offender’ and the implication of domestic violence.
It was a little too close to home.
IRENE
There was a ginger cat lying across the middle of the carpet. It wore a grumpy expression and gave a silent, shivery mewl as she stepped over it and looked for somewhere to sit down.
A quite astonishingly ugly dog – a pug, perhaps; Irene didn’t really ‘do’ dogs – wandered over and made snuffling noises while pawing at her foot. It was almost spherical, neck wrinkles spilling onto its fat little body.
‘Come on, Elvis,’ said the woman, and scooped the animal up, ‘you need to be on good behaviour for our visitor.’
The room was dimly lit, some kind of Turkish rug slung over the window. It didn’t fit, and daylight streamed from the sides. Otherwise the room was lit by a series of lamps. There was a sofa so low to the ground, Irene worried about getting back out of it again, covered in a pale orange sheet and piled with cushions. Most of them had colourful prints that Irene thought of as Moroccan.
On various surfaces were remnants of half-melted puddles of candles. Along with the sweet drug scent, Irene could smell garlic and some sort of musky perfume from the woman.
‘Can I get you anything to drink? You look a bit peaky,’ said the woman, in that girlish voice. The dog panted in her arms, ham-like tongue lolling, giving it an even more unappealing look.
Irene carefully lowered herself onto the sofa, which gave even more than she’d expected. She tried to cover up her discomfort by smoothing her skirt over her knees and fixing the woman with a dignified stare. She wanted to decline the offer, but she really could do with a cup of tea. For a moment she worried that the woman might only have strange druggie tea, then said, ‘Yes please. Do you have tea?’
‘Only PG Tips, I’m afraid,’ said the woman and Irene felt relief flooding her veins.
‘Then yes please,’ she said.
The kitchen was behind a beaded curtain and Irene could see the woman (Rowan, was it?) collecting cups from a tree mug as the kettle boiled.
When she came back into the room, she was also carrying a few misshapen biscuits on a plate, along with Irene’s drink. Irene took the slightly chipped mug, which seemed clean enough, and eyed the strange biscuits now on the coffee table, which was otherwise covered in copies of a magazine called Spirit and Destiny and an almost full ashtray.
‘Have a biscuit,’ said Rowan, taking one herself and biting into it with a loud crunch. ‘They’re made from hemp and flax seeds. Really good for you.’
Hemp definitely sounded druggie. And this person looked very much like the sort who wouldn’t wash her hands after touching an animal. Irene declined, even though her stomach was rumbling, and took a sip of her tea. It was strong and milky, just how she liked it, and she could feel it restoring her almost straight away.
‘I’m Rowan,’ said the woman. She was looking at Irene in that way people do when you get to a certain age; as if you’re daft. The dog settled onto her lap and regarded Irene with the occasional nasal wheeze, like it had a head cold.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Irene and was taken aback to see the bright eagerness on Rowan’s face now.
‘Oh, did he talk about me then?’ she said. ‘Michael?’
‘Sorry, no,’ Irene said quickly. She hadn’t intended this to be cruel but the other woman’s mouth turned down at the sides.
Oh Michael, she thought. This isn’t your sort of person. She wondered if that was why he went away. Had he got in too deep with this woman?
‘He’s talked about you a lot,’ said Rowan, blowing on her tea. Hers was in one of those impractical teacups with a huge circumference and a tiny handle. Ste
am curled up from it and she seemed to cradle it more for comfort than from a desire to drink. ‘Very warmly.’
Irene couldn’t help the rush of pleasure at hearing these words. It wasn’t something she would have assumed at all. Sometimes she thought she was an annoyance to her eldest son. She didn’t trust herself to speak and instead nodded and took another sip of the tea.
Rowan watched her carefully. Irene got the strange feeling that the other woman knew exactly what she was thinking. Michael wouldn’t have liked that. He was always private.
‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘he said that you’re the strongest woman he has ever known.’
Irene put the mug onto the table too briskly, so that the tea almost slopped out of the top. She mashed her trembling hands together in her lap. Impossible to hold onto any reserve now.
‘Did he really?’ she managed, emotion coagulating in her voice.
Rowan leaned forward and clasped her own hands together, as though praying. The dog slid off her lap and went into the kitchen, where Irene could hear it lustily slurping from a water bowl.
‘He really did.’ She paused. ‘Look,’ she said and gave a deep, wheezy breath inwards, ‘I know all about … well, Liam going missing.’
‘Oh,’ said Irene. ‘That’s not quite what …’ She picked up the cup again for something to do, even though she no longer wanted the tea. It felt strange to say he was ‘missing’ but wasn’t that word painfully on the money in so many ways? There was a long, strained silence. Then she said, ‘Where is Michael, Rowan? Where has he gone?’
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said Rowan. ‘I think he’s gone looking for him.’
‘What makes you say that?’ This came out too sharply, but Irene couldn’t help it. It touched on the same painful well of hope that allowed her to get out of bed each morning. ‘Has he heard from him?’
Rowan blushed now, unexpectedly, and stared down at her cup. It was very bizarre. She didn’t seem like a woman easily given to embarrassment. Then she looked up and there was something in her eyes that Irene felt herself drawing away from.
