by cass green
‘I’m wondering about that,’ I said. ‘But I feel like I ought to speak to Jackie about it once she’s read my report on what happened.’
‘Well,’ said Zoe as she began to retrieve the pile of exercise books she’d been marking from the table in front of us. ‘I’d get on with it. This all seems to be escalating a bit quickly, doesn’t it?’
Jackie was not one to hang about, as it happened. I was summoned to come and talk to her at the end of the day.
I made my way down to her office, in the relatively new part of the school that had been added just last year. Even the carpets were better here, and I could smell proper coffee coming from her assistant Elaine’s office.
‘Elliott!’ said Elaine, a friendly, smiley woman in her early sixties. ‘You’ve got a meeting with Jackie, yes?’
‘Yep.’ I took a seat in one of the armed chairs just inside the door. Even though I was a thirty-two-year-old married teacher, sitting here still had the effect of making me feel like I was about to get a massive bollocking from a grown-up.
Which, as it turned out, wasn’t a million miles away from what happened.
Jackie didn’t beat about the bush. She told me straight away that she was ‘very concerned’ to see me talking to Tyler that morning and wanted a full account of what had been said to him.
I hesitated, and the moment seemed to stretch for ages between us.
Once I explained about the possible intimidation I’d been experiencing, she’d surely see I had good reason to ask about his dad’s whereabouts. But it was still not really on for me to question an eight-year-old child when he was at the centre of a complaint against me. How could I avoid it, though?
For the second time that day, I found myself relating the story of being forced off my bike, and then the brick through the window.
I was clenching my fist as I related the final bit, shaking a little with the indignation of it all, and the memory of Anya’s terrified face in the moonlit bedroom.
Jackie sat back in her chair and let out a deep sigh when I finished. She was twisting a Biro in her fingers, her expression sombre.
‘Elliott …’ she said quickly, then stopped. Then, ‘You still haven’t answered my question. What did you say to Tyler on the way into assembly this morning?’
For a moment I felt myself flailing. Heat crept up my neck and stained my cheeks. I felt about ten years old in that moment.
‘I just …’ I started and had to swallow the saliva that flooded my mouth, ‘I asked him where his dad was today. His dad usually drops him at school.’
Jackie’s face was set as she looked back at me. ‘And you think it was a good idea to ask about that when you are currently in dispute with his father?’
I was suddenly awash with outrage.
‘I’m not the one having a dispute!’ I said, far too loud, and I saw Jackie wince. ‘He has completely fabricated an argument and might, right now, be waging a campaign of intimidation against me! Or did you miss that part?’
I knew as soon as I’d spoken that I’d handled this all wrong. Jackie was now looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before on her face; a cold mix of anger and something else – sorrow? Disappointment?
‘Look,’ she said, with a sigh, leaning back in her chair. ‘If you really think Mr Bennett is behind anything that has happened to you outside of the school, then you must go to the police and report this. All I’m concerned about is what happens on school premises and the health and safety of my pupils, and yes,’ she raised a hand to block me from saying what I was about to say ‘… my staff too. But while this is going on, you absolutely must not speak to Tyler about anything other than school business. You do see that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, all the fight having leaked away now. ‘Yes, I’m sorry, Jackie. I shouldn’t have spoken to him this morning. I’m just finding all this quite stressful.’
She managed something approximating a smile. ‘You’re a good teacher, Elliott,’ she said, ‘and you have the makings of an excellent one. Just don’t blow it by allowing this whole thing to get out of hand, okay? And make sure you report what has been going on.’
So, I did.
After school I walked to the police station on the other side of town and I reported both the incident on the bike, the brick through the window, and the complaint at school. I was processed by a harassed-looking middle-aged policewoman – who had evidently just spilled coffee on her pale jumper, judging by the angry expression and the cloth she was dabbing ineffectively at the stain the entire time we talked.
She wrote it all down, with the other hand, and told me she would be in touch with any information that she had to pass on. She didn’t seem overly interested.
I walked home, the exhaustion of the last few days pooling like sand in my limbs. But once home again I forced myself to take my sad, broken bike down to the bike shop in town to be mended. It wasn’t doing anything for my spirits, being without a means of getting around.
By the time I was home for the evening, I’d walked miles and felt both emotionally and physically battered.
I flopped down on the sofa in front of Pointless and within minutes my eyelids were getting heavy. I’d just have five minutes …
The next thing I knew, my phone was chirruping from somewhere and combining with the EastEnders theme tune. My mouth tasted like an old welly and my neck was aching from having slept at an unfamiliar angle.
I grabbed the phone and it fell onto the floor. It stopped ringing and I picked it up to see it was Anya who had been calling.
It rang again and I answered quickly.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘where are you?’
‘I’m at Mum and Dad’s.’ Her voice sounded thick and muffled, like she was ill.
‘You didn’t say you were going over.’ I couldn’t stop the grumpy tone from worming its way into my voice.
‘I know,’ she said quietly. ‘Spur-of-the-moment decision.’ There was a pause. ‘You’re welcome to come too, of course.’
I thought for a minute. I very much did want to be cooked a lovely meal by Julia and not to spend the evening alone. But without the car it was a pain to get to Lathebridge, which she knew. She’d have come all the way back from London on the train, picked up the car from the station, then essentially driven past Casterbourne to get to her parents’ house. Without mentioning it.
‘What’s going on?’ I blurted out.
She gasped a laugh on the other end of the phone.
‘What do you mean, what’s going on?’
‘I don’t know.’ I sat up straighter and rubbed a hand through my hair, which was sticking up all over my head. ‘I just feel like you’re being really weird and distant right now. Things have been strange between us since the festival.’
‘For God’s sake, Elliott.’ She was hissing now, clearly not wanting her parents to hear. ‘You get pissed and almost injure me and I’ve been ill! Then we have bricks through the window in the middle of the night, and you accuse me of being weird for not wanting to be home! Maybe I feel safer here!’
I was blindsided by this. She’d managed to sidestep the question and make me feel guilty all at once. And she hardly ever used my full name like that. I felt childishly chastised.
‘Well,’ I said as a huge wave of tiredness hit me. ‘Are you staying the night there?’
A heavy sigh on the other end of the phone.
‘I think I probably am.’
‘Right,’ I said briskly. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then. Give my love to your mum and dad.’
‘Love back from them,’ she said, her voice small now. ‘See you tomorrow.’
When I came off the phone I sat in the darkening room for a few minutes. It felt like nothing in my life was under control right now. Work was stressful, I had made a weird and inexplicable enemy … and now Anya was becoming increasingly distant.
I thought back to the day I got the festival tickets, earlier that summer, I’d sailed down the hill on my
bike, bathed in sunshine, feeling like the King of the World. It felt so long ago now.
IRENE
As Irene looked through the window at the thickening jumble of buildings, she tried to remember the last time she had been to London, or even on a train.
Was it when she brought the boys to go to Madame Tussauds all those years ago? It hadn’t been an easy day in the end. Liam couldn’t stop bouncing excitedly in his seat. There had been his incessant questions (‘Will we see Gazza? And Lineker?’ ‘Will the wax people in the Chamber of Horrors come alive?’). Michael had got annoyed that Liam was kicking his seat and they’d ended up scrapping and knocking over Irene’s cup of coffee, so it went all over her magazine and ruined it. She could still recall the disapproving looks from other passengers as she shouted at the boys to behave.
When they got there, the queues had been so long that the boys had bitterly complained about the wait. She couldn’t even remember much about the exhibition in the end, beyond Michael teasing Liam about being scared in the Chamber of Horrors and Liam bursting into noisy tears.
She smiled now as she thought about it. Always so noisy and stressful with those kids. She never had a moment to think.
Now that’s all she had.
Irene had had to get up very early to get the first train into London, then she had to navigate her way across the city on the underground at rush hour to get to Victoria station. As people had shoved and pushed their way onto the trains, she had felt almost suffocated by the sensations, the smells, and the proximity to others. Her heart had felt like it might give out on her with the stress of it all. But when she got to Victoria and bought herself a cup of tea and a toasted teacake for the second journey, she’d experienced a jolt of exhilaration at herself. It was like she had been wrapped in her own net curtains for months, like some sort of insect in a cocoon. She wasn’t that old, she told herself now. Look at Helen Mirren. She was the same age as Irene and she didn’t sit around watching the hours and the years slip by, did she?
As she took the last bite of her teacake, cool now and soggy, but still a treat, she experienced a pang of guilt at her thoughts. After all, this wasn’t a jolly day out to the seaside. She was looking for Michael.
The police hadn’t been interested, when she had paid them a visit after going to his flat. As far as they were concerned, a middle-aged man who hadn’t checked in with his mother for a couple of weeks was clearly not a cause for concern. She had been quite hot with shame when she exited the police station that morning. She had tried to say to the very young constable that she just knew something was wrong, that a mother knows this kind of thing, but his expression had been quite embarrassed at this and she had understood she was shouting into the wind.
When she emerged onto the platform at Casterbourne, the bright clear day was starting to turn. Irene shivered and buttoned up her coat as a cold breeze seemed to envelop her, and then began to make her way out of the station.
She had printed a photo of Michael and intended to show it to people in the places where he had picked up those receipts.
The town centre was busy with people having an early lunch. She made her way, following the map outside the station, to the town square. Seagulls shrieked and wheeled over the war memorial, where litter was scattered about in a most disrespectful way, to Irene’s mind.
She located the café first.
Billy Joe’s was what Irene thought of as a Greasy Spoon. Garishly coloured pictures of plates of bacon and eggs and pies and mash adorned the walls and the air seemed thick with grease. The clientele was mainly men in work clothes, tucking into huge plates of bacon and eggs, who paid her no attention as she made her way to the counter.
A man with oily hair tied in a ponytail and several rings in his ears was taking orders, while a very overweight woman with unnaturally black, short hair skilfully attended to the bacon that curled and sizzled on the hotplate, along with wobbling, rubbery-looking eggs and brittle fried bread. Irene felt her stomach twist with nausea at all the grease. Nerves were kicking in now.
‘Help you, love?’ said the man and Irene attempted a reassuring smile. How on earth did she introduce this topic? You saw people doing things like this on telly, but it felt very strange in real life. She hoped he wouldn’t laugh. She couldn’t bear it if he laughed.
‘Yes please,’ she said, deciding to just come out with it. ‘You see, I’m looking for my son.’
The man frowned and smiled a little as he eyed her and picked up a tea towel, which he used to wipe his hands. His name badge read: ‘Keith’.
‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘What’s he gone and done then?’
He didn’t seem to be taking this all that seriously, Irene felt, so she fumbled in her handbag for the photo, which she had printed out onto a sheet of A4 paper. It showed Michael a few years ago when he had bought a new suit for a wedding he was going to with Linda.
He was smiling rather awkwardly in it, but you could see his face quite well, and especially his distinctive colouring.
‘I think he might be in trouble,’ Irene forced herself to say as she thrust the sheet of paper at the man. He took it from her, frowning now, and she felt a satisfaction that he seemed to have picked up on the gravity of the situation.
‘He has a bit less hair now,’ Irene said apologetically as the man studied the picture. He turned to the woman who was now plating up food onto several plates at speed. Her name badge read ‘Tina’ and her pinny was splashed all over with stains. She had small eyes that were close together and greasy with make-up.
‘Teen,’ he said, holding up the piece of paper. ‘Ever seen this guy in here?’
Tina sighed and turned to look before shaking her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘sorry. Don’t know him.’
Irene had known it was a long shot but still the disappointment cut deep as Keith handed back the sheet of paper, with a sympathetic smile.
‘Sorry, love,’ he said. ‘Do you know any more about where he might have gone?’
Irene felt tears stinging her eyes and looked down to hide them as she put the paper back in her handbag.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘But he had lunch here. I found the receipt.’
‘Oh? When was that then?’ said Keith and Irene told him the date, which was etched onto her memory from endlessly studying the receipts.
Keith made a face. ‘Wish I could help you.’ Then, ‘Wait a minute.’
He looked past her into the café and suddenly shouted so loud that Irene flinched and almost dropped her handbag.
‘Oi! This nice lady is looking for her son. I’m going to come round and show you all and anyone that can help her gets a free coffee, okay?’
Irene smiled as Keith winked at her and held out his hand for the picture again.
He then made his way round the café showing each of the customers. One by one they looked at the photo, then at Irene, then shook their heads and returned to their lunch.
An old man sitting in the window, which dripped with condensation, was last. He had a yellowish-white beard and thin hair across a pink scalp. There were the remains of a sausage sandwich on the plate in front of him.
He studied the picture for a long time before turning to Irene and speaking.
‘I’m not certain, but I think it’s him,’ he said, in a surprisingly posh voice. ‘The one in the paper.’
‘The paper?’ Irene had stepped forward and had to stop herself from grasping the man’s sleeve. ‘What do you mean, in the paper?’ she said, her voice high-pitched.
He frowned and looked a little sheepish now, darting glances from the newspaper on the seat beside him to Keith before replying.
‘The man they found. By the cliffs.’
ELLIOTT
I took a beer from the fridge and drank it quickly while I rooted around for something easy to eat. I ignored the seabass fillets and the vegetables, the bunches of fresh herbs.
Tonight, I wanted fat and salt. In London I’d have called for a takeaway but
here there were a limited number of places that delivered, and I had no intention of going outside again.
Carrying a fresh beer, I piled a plate with cheese, ham, thick slices of bread and butter with a whole family-sized bag of balsamic vinegar Kettle Chips. What I was really craving was Monster Munch, but there was little chance of finding those in our cupboards.
Then I slumped down on the sofa and found a football match on Sky Sports. I wasn’t really concentrating on the game though. My thoughts kept ping-ponging between Lee Bennett and Anya.
I pictured the scene over at their house. Patrick probably leaving the women to it, knowing that his daughter needed something he couldn’t provide tonight.
You and me both, mate, I thought bitterly.
Maybe she was just scared of being here. Of what else might happen in the depths of the night.
I’m not the most macho bloke in the world but there was something about all this that tapped into a deep, primal place. Like I couldn’t protect my woman in our cave. This actually made me snort a laugh through my nose as I imagined the look Anya would have given me had I voiced this thought out loud to her. I’d never have lived it down. Didn’t mean it wasn’t a little bit true, all the same.
I presumed the police would go around to speak to Bennett, which made my stomach ripple with discomfort. Hard to imagine this was going to lead to a calming of this situation, but it had to be done. I pictured Tyler’s round, fearful eyes as he took in the uniformed people on his doorstep.
I knew all too well what that felt like.
I didn’t really remember the night my father was finally removed from the house because those nights merged into one: the hard raps on the door, then boots thundering into the house. Tall blue monsters who shouted and knocked things over. That’s how it seemed to me.
Our lives were so immeasurably better with Mark Little out of them. That was why I couldn’t understand Mum’s reaction the day we heard he was dead.
I came in from school to find her whey-faced and red-eyed at the kitchen table.
