And then Lisa Meyer walked into the lobby downstairs, and I realised she could probably crush Charles Brayford under the heel of one of her knee boots. Lisa Meyer is American. She’s very small, five feet tall at most. She is wearing a dark grey Vivienne Westwood suit and the soles of her boots are red and unmarked. They are either brand new or she has only ever worn them indoors, and perhaps once on the short stretch of pavement between her taxi and her office. The other possibility I’m considering is that the ground is afraid of her too. The first thing she says to me is, Alex, I’m Lisa. They will fuck with you at their peril.
When I blurt out my answer to Charles Brayford, her face betrays no irritation. She leans over slightly, so our shoulders are touching, and puts her hand on my arm. She has a wedding ring, I notice, but no other jewellery. Her skin is cool and dry.
Alex, she says, softly but loud enough for all four of us to hear. You don’t need to reply to these kinds of questions. They are designed to antagonise and upset you. Why would you give anyone the satisfaction of achieving that goal?
Charles Brayford flushes with annoyance. Adam, who is sitting next to him, says nothing, but his eyes betray him. He agrees with her.
Mr Brayford, says Lisa Meyer, turning her basilisk gaze upon him. You seem to be forgetting that my client has experienced the loss of a loved one in brutal circumstances. She is neither on trial here, nor will she be on trial during your client’s hearing. She is, let me remind you, here out of courtesy to you and affection for your client. You will, I am sure, wish to repay that courtesy with some of your own. If not, my client’s free time is not limitless, and she will have to put it to a more constructive use.
Charles Brayford loosens his tie slightly. If I were wearing a tie, I would be doing the same thing.
Let’s reconvene in two weeks, Lisa Meyer continues. When I have had more time to familiarise myself with the details of your client’s case. Your assistant can call me, Mr Brayford, to arrange the most convenient location.
No-one is in any doubt that the most convenient location will be Lisa Meyer’s office.
Adam begins to get up, but as she passes him, she adds, We’ll see ourselves out, leaving him half-sitting, half-standing, looking foolish. As I hurry after her, wondering how someone so small can cover the ground so fast, Adam nods at me, and smiles.
* * *
The day after I got that letter, I walked up to Rankeillor as usual. I wasn’t sure how I would cope with the kids today. Not just with the older group, but with any of them. I had spent the night reading and re-reading it, and crying. I was taut with fatigue, but I was too angry, still, to feel tired. I suppose I’d thought that at the point when its entire text was committed to my memory, it might lose some of its power. But not so far.
A few weeks after Luke died, my mother had asked me why, since I was so angry, I didn’t shout and scream. The honest answer is that it wouldn’t have helped. I’d spent years working with actors who externalised every emotion into noise and gestures, and it didn’t help them. They were just as neurotic, just as strung out as ever. Why don’t you smash a few plates? she’d asked. Because then I’d be exactly as upset as I was before, and I would also have broken plates, I told her. How would that be better?
I’d texted Robert to ask if he minded if I came in late. I didn’t have any classes first thing on a Thursday. I usually had one class of what Robert called ‘littlies’ at eleven o’clock, but they were on a day-trip that day. So I arrived at about eleven fifteen, I suppose. As I opened the huge front door of the Unit, its black paint coated with a thin patina of dirt from the recent rain, I sensed that the atmosphere was different. There was a fizzing sound from the kids, like you get from opening a shaken-up can of lemonade. A can of juice, as they call it here.
Something had happened. I headed up to the staffroom to get the gossip, but it was empty, which was strange. Brown-ringed mugs were clustered on the table, in defiance of the sign over the sink telling users to wash up anything they used because the cleaners weren’t paid to do our chores for us. I walked back down the stairs, past Robert’s office. I thought about going in, but I could hear he was on the phone, and from his weary, exasperated tone, the call was not one he was enjoying. I crept past, and went down to the basement.
When the children came in, twenty minutes later, Robert was with them. To be precise, he was with Ricky. Robert looked exhausted. His usually pristine hair was ruffled, his shirt was creased and his tie was askew. The bags under his eyes looked puffy, and I found myself wondering if my eyes were also swollen. I’d stopped looking in mirrors since Luke died. It made me blanch to see my eyes look so haunted, and hollow, like that Munch painting. I hadn’t had my hair cut in months, because the prospect of looking at my own reflection for an hour was so unappealing.
Anyway, I couldn’t face talking to a stranger, which would inevitably happen if I went to the hairdresser’s. And I couldn’t deal with perky, can-I-help-you shop assistants. I couldn’t deal with sullen, why-should-I-help-you-I-didn’t-ask-to-be-born ones either. Generally, I had stopped talking during any kind of transaction. I used self-service tills because I’d lost the ability to make small-talk, and so I avoided every situation where that might come up. It’s surprising how quickly you start to look like what my mother might describe as ‘a state’ if you want to avoid speaking to people.
Recently, though, vanity was beginning to reassert itself. I would feel bad that I couldn’t remember when I’d last brushed my hair. Or I would catch a glimpse of myself reflected in a window and see that my jumper was bagging round my elbows and hips, because I’d stretched it out of shape. I’d started to perform high street hit-and-runs: I’d walk over to Princes Street, or the St James Centre and find something to wear that I didn’t have to think about at all.
I bought carbon copies of clothes I already wore: grey cardigans, inky-blue jeans, vests that came in twin-packs – black and white, turquoise and navy, pink and maroon – that I would layer, to fight off the Rankeillor basement gloom. No wonder Victorian widows used to wear black crepe, I thought. It performed a valuable twin function of declaring to the world that you were prone to sudden bouts of weeping, and it meant you didn’t have to think at all about what you were going to wear for months. It was a better system than wearing black for a funeral and then trying to work out how the hell you should dress afterwards.
I rubbed my eyes, in the hopes that if they were red-rimmed, this would now look like the cause.
‘Hello, Alex,’ Robert said, tiredly.
‘Is everything alright?’
‘Everything is spectacular.’ He sighed, glaring at Ricky. Ricky shrugged and walked over to his chair. ‘Richard needs to be accompanied to and from all his classes today, Alex. Perhaps you might take him up to life skills on the second floor after his lesson with you is finished?’
‘Of course I will.’ I wanted to ask what was going on, but he couldn’t tell me while the other kids were there.
‘If you and Richard bump into Donald Brooks on your travels,’ he added, ‘you might encourage Ricky to turn the other cheek. Or go the other way. Or anything that means I don’t have to call the police, or social services, or the children’s courts, or anyone’s parents. Again. If that’s alright with everyone?’ His eyebrows had rocketed up to their maximum height.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘And Alex? Come for dinner tonight, please. Jeff has bought enough food for an army, and since the soldiers are out of town at the moment, you’ll have to do.’
‘OK,’ I repeated. It was always best to agree with Robert when he was stressed, or when food was involved.
He nodded, gave Ricky the baleful eye, and left, shutting the door with slightly more vigour than it really needed.
‘Robert is obsessed with soldiers. He’s so totally a bender,’ Jono announced to the room.
‘That’s a pretty charmless thing to call someone who cares about you as much as Robert does,’ I snapped at him.
&nbs
p; ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking startled.
I looked over at Ricky, who was examining his grimy fingernails with considerable care.
‘Should I even ask what happened this time?’ I was trying to sound stern, or at least world-weary, but it was hard to maintain when Ricky was such a model of dejection. He was so skinny, and like most redheads, his skin was translucently pale. When he was angry or upset, he sometimes blushed a clashing crimson, but more often, like today, he just seemed to grow paler still. Bluish-purple veins mapped his temples. His oversized clothes only made him look smaller and more pitiful. I found myself again trying to picture him in combat gear, but the image wouldn’t form. Shouldn’t you have to be a minimum height and weight to be a soldier? Shouldn’t your veins be hidden from view?
Ricky looked up from his hands, and shrugged. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, but glared at the floor somewhere in front of my feet. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he began.
Mel gave a loud sigh, and crossed her arms. ‘That’s bollocks, Ricky. We all saw you fighting.’
‘Snitch,’ muttered Jono.
‘How exactly is it snitching when Alex is the only person who missed it?’ Carly asked, as Mel shot a furious look at him.
‘Sorry, isn’t it Alex she’s currently snitching to?’ he asked, mouth curling in contempt.
Annika tutted. ‘Yes, because otherwise it’ll be a good forty minutes before she finds out from one of the teachers or any of us, and that will make…’ She paused for exaggerated thinking time, and struck a furrowed brow. ‘Oh yes, that’s right. No difference at all.’
‘So, a fight? Again?’ I asked Ricky. ‘With Donnie Brooks?’
‘Aye,’ he said, quietly.
‘Did he start it?’
At this, he finally looked at me. He was chewing on his lower lip. If a casting agent had asked him for a reluctant teenager, Ricky would have aced it. ‘Naw, miss. I started it. Well, he started it. But I threw the first punch.’
‘And the last one,’ said Jono, approvingly. He reached over and bounced his fist gently off Ricky’s arm.
‘The last one wasn’t a punch,’ said Carly.
Ricky shrugged and nodded. ‘It was more of a stamp,’ he said. His accent sounded broader today, and I wondered if it always shifted when he was upset.
‘You stamped on Donnie Brooks? On an important part of him?’ I tried to keep the alarm out of my voice. I didn’t want to add to the cacophony of tellings-off he must have already received.
‘Not really. Just his leg. I was aiming for his head, but he moved too fast.’
‘He’s like a whippet,’ said Jono. ‘Donnie, I mean. He’s small, but he’s wily.’
‘Well, that’s probably something we should be grateful for, if it means Ricky didn’t stamp on his head.’
‘If you’d met Donnie, you wouldn’t say that,’ Jono said. Ricky nodded.
‘Can we agree to differ on this point?’ I asked them. ‘I would very much prefer it if you didn’t stamp on any body part of any student. Or any person, in an ideal world. Partly because I don’t want anyone to get hurt, and partly because I don’t want you – either of you – to be in trouble.’
Ricky shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’
‘So how did he start it?’ I asked.
‘Donnie’s brother stabbed Ricky’s brother in the lung,’ Jono replied, in a more matter-of-fact tone than most people would have chosen.
‘Oh my God,’ said Carly. ‘Is he OK?’
‘He’s in the hospital wing,’ said Ricky.
‘Donnie’s brother stabbed your brother? But isn’t your brother in prison?’ Mel hardly ever asked people to repeat information. It was a point of pride for her: she didn’t want anyone to think she hadn’t heard properly. But Ricky’s feud with Donnie required detailed attention. ‘How did it happen? Was he visiting someone?’
‘Naw,’ Ricky sighed. ‘He got remanded there over the weekend. Kicked some tourist in on the Mile at the weekend. Right outside the polis station, too. Donnie’s brother is practically retarded.’
‘So he got put in the same jail as your brother? I’m sorry, Ricky – I don’t know his name. And please don’t say “retarded”, even if it’s tempting.’
‘Malcolm, miss. Yes. And then he stabbed him yesterday. Mal’s lung collapsed. He said it was actually pretty bad.’
‘I imagine it was. I think a collapsed lung is generally regarded as pretty bad, for what it’s worth.’
How the hell had Ricky’s grandparents not spoken to him about this? I tried to remember Robert’s dictum that there is no point blaming the parents, because you can rarely change them. But I struggled to quell my irritation that if they ever paid any attention to their grandson at all, he wouldn’t turn up at the Unit without enough clothes to keep him warm, and he wouldn’t be prey to other kids and their stupid, heartless bullying.
Ricky looked grateful. ‘That’s what I thought, miss. But then Donnie…’ He trailed off.
‘Donnie cornered Ricky in the yard at break,’ said Jono, jerking his head towards the window at the back of the room. ‘And said Mal was a fucking poof, or he wouldn’t have had to go to hospital for one lung.’
‘And so you hit him?’ I asked Ricky.
‘Yes, miss.’
‘And now you have to be escorted round the Unit for the rest of the day?’
‘Till the polis get here. Yes, miss.’
‘The police are coming? Really? Over a playground fight?’ I felt like a petulant motorist caught speeding who demands to know why the arresting officer doesn’t have anything better to do. Were there so few real crimes taking place in Edinburgh that they had time to get involved in a squabble between two minuscule boys who were already in a unit for children with behavioural problems? Wasn’t that enough?
‘Donnie called his mam,’ Jono said, shortly. ‘Like the greeting little cunt he is.’
Now Robert’s phone call made sense. Rankeillor had its fair share of scraps and fights, but they rarely involved the police. Generally, the kids saw it as weakness to involve any authority figure in their lives at all. And given how much time most of them had already spent talking to policemen, social workers and enraged teachers, that was hardly surprising. I couldn’t condone Ricky’s attack on Donnie Brooks. But it did sound as though he’d been ambushed this time.
‘Can anyone make an educated guess on how long we’ll have before the police turn up?’ I asked them.
‘They won’t be here for a couple of hours,’ said Jono. The others all nodded. ‘Donnie’s not even in hospital, really,’ he added. ‘It’s only Outpatients. That’s a lot gayer than a collapsed lung.’ Ricky nodded. ‘He’ll be back by lunchtime, I bet.’
‘Well, then I think we should use today to talk about the violence we do to others to avenge our family members, shouldn’t we? In honour of the fact that Ricky is about to be questioned by the police for avenging his brother?’
‘Alright,’ Ricky said. ‘I mean, if you want, miss.’
‘You don’t seem very cross, Alex,’ said Mel.
‘Cross with Ricky?’
‘Cross with any of us. Like Robert is, I mean,’ she said, hurriedly, as Jono turned to glare at her again.
‘I’m not cross. Why should I be?’
‘Because we keep fucking up?’ Ricky said. ‘Well, I do.’
‘I don’t think you keep fucking up. Yes, today you fucked up. I think you probably know that beating up another student isn’t the best way of being a good brother. And I don’t want any of you to get into fights. No-one does. But I’m not going to shout at you or tell you that you should know better, because how would it help? I wish you’d chosen to react differently, but I’m sure you do too.’
Jono opened his mouth to disagree, then shut it again.
‘Good choice,’ I said to him. He nodded. ‘Let’s get back to work. Aren’t you cold, Ricky? Where’s your hoody?’
‘I dunno,’ he said, looking around him, and under his chair, as though it might
be hiding.
‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘They must have taken it back.’
I was just about to ask him who would have taken it back, when I remembered I’d told him it had been left here by someone a few weeks ago. Except, of course, it hadn’t been. Someone had stolen it.
2
DD,
I can’t go to London tomorrow. Robert busted me for skipping Fridays. Well, he didn’t really bust me. He was nice about it and everything. He gave a little speech about how important it is that I show up at Rankeillor every day and make the most of my potential. I’m not even sure if I have potential, but Robert thinks we all do. He loves talking about potential. Sometimes he says it so many times that it starts sounding like gibberish. You stop hearing everything else around it.
My dad used to have a cartoon on his fridge door, which his then-girlfriend gave him. It said, ‘What we say to dogs’ at the top, and there was a panel with someone saying, ‘Come on, Ginger. It’s time for you to have some food and then we’ll go for a walk. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Ginger?’ And underneath there was a second panel, which said, ‘What dogs hear’, and it was the same speech bubble, but inside it just said, ‘Blah blah, Ginger, blah blah blah blah, Ginger.’ I don’t know why he thought it was funny. He hadn’t even noticed that it was clearly meant as a dig at me: I can’t hear, the dog can’t hear. That was the girlfriend I mentioned before, from last year. She was a complete cunt.
Even so, that’s exactly what it’s like when Robert gets into his speech-giving mode. Blah blah potential, blah blah blah, potential blah.
So I can’t really skip out tomorrow, or Robert will think I don’t care what he says. And I do. So I’m going to compromise, like our life skills teacher says we should. She might be right about this, even if she is annoying. I’m going to do some research on Alex instead. Whatever I find out, I’ll report back here.
God, I hope it’s not raining tomorrow. I definitely can’t get through a whole Friday there without a cigarette. Well, maybe I could. I’m not addicted or anything. I just like smoking. My dad smokes, actually. He says it isn’t an addiction, it’s punctuation. That’s quite funny, for him.
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