That evening, I set out early for Robert’s. I’d remembered the girls’ advice and stopped off to get my hair cut on the way. The hairdresser had gone for fifties chic: a prom dress, purple-framed glasses and an up-do with a perfectly curled fringe. She asked me what I wanted mine to look like, laughing as she pulled a comb through the knots. We settled on ‘better’, and I left her to it. She cut my fringe back in and bobbed the rest, leaving inches of straggly brown clumps on the floor. She ran straighteners through it, so it looked swishy and neat. As she flipped up a mirror to show the back of my head, I couldn’t help smiling. It was, I agreed, much better now. Come back another time for the colour, she said, helpfully. I nodded, and almost meant it. Perhaps I would.
Robert lived out past Rankeillor, past the Commonwealth Pool. By the time I’d walked there, it was almost half past seven. I loved Robert’s house. Everyone else I’d ever known in Edinburgh lived in a flat. They had huge ceilings and windows, but they were contained in one floor of a townhouse. But Robert and Jeff had a whole building of their own. The front door was massive, painted bright yellow with a black door-knocker right in the centre. The grey stone bricks had none of the dreariness of other buildings: they were just the supporting act for the mighty door.
As I knocked, I felt suddenly embarrassed. What if it was a terrible haircut? Robert opened the heavy door with a loud grunting sound and stood silhouetted in front of the bright yellow hall, its wooden floors protected from encroaching egg-yolk by elegant white skirting boards.
‘Alex, look at you!’ he shouted, so loudly that a woman walking past on the pavement jumped. ‘You look gorgeous. Did you get that done just now?’ He took my coat and scarf, and brushed tiny hairs off my shoulders. ‘Of course you did. I’m honoured.’
‘It was overdue.’
‘Oh, it was, it really was. Jeff, come and look at Alex.’
Jeff sprang out into the hall, followed by the smell of onions, tomatoes and cumin. His cropped grey hair matched his eyes, and he was completely calm. No-one came for dinner with Jeff and found a frazzled host. He always cooked like he was being filmed for a TV series. He owned a restaurant on the other side of town, though he’d hired another chef several years ago to take over the brutal day-to-day cooking. All Jeff’s skills were now used to orchestrate dinner parties of incredible complexity for Robert and their friends. Jeff was the only person I knew who would serve a ten-course tasting menu in his own home.
He also had the most intemperate attitude to kitchen gadgets, and you brought him one, or mentioned them with anything other than withering scorn at your peril. Jeff would produce molecular food the day all the other food ran out. The best thing to take him, I had learned, was cheese or other treats from Valvona and Crolla, the fancy deli over in the New Town. So I handed him the box of Scottish cheeses that I’d bought at their shop on Multrees Walk earlier. It contained two I’d never heard of, which was usually a good sign when buying for Jeff.
‘You look lovely, Alex. Really well,’ he said, glancing at my hair before peering at the cheese. ‘And these look marvellous. Thank you so much.’
‘He does like your hair, Alex,’ Robert said, rolling his eyes. ‘He just prefers cheese.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. And it was.
The kitchen was immense, more a performance space than a room for cooking. Robert headed towards their huge bench dining table, which was lined with imperial purple chairs. The work surfaces were packed yet pristine, just like you hope they would be in a restaurant. Jeff never spilled anything, or left bits on chopping boards that fell off and littered the floor. His kitchen looked better when he’d finished cooking than mine did when it had just been cleaned. There were piles of prepared vegetables, shiny steel pots and pans, all waiting to become the focus of Jeff’s attention. Bowls of salted almonds, chilli-stuffed olives and tiny hard-boiled quails’ eggs were already on the table, alongside a wooden board of flatbreads that I knew Jeff must have baked that afternoon. It boded well for leftovers.
Jeff handed me a glass of white wine, without asking. He always chose the wine you would drink, because he believed that most people, left to their own devices, decide on a wine because they like the name, or the picture or the writing on the bottle. It used to drive him mad when his restaurant customers picked the wrong wine to go with their food, so he never put anyone else in a position where they might irritate him. I’d brought a Sauvignon Blanc, which the deli guy reckoned would work best with the cheeses, but that had disappeared into his gargantuan fridge, to be paired with something more appropriate another time.
‘It’s a white Rioja,’ Jeff said, as he watched me taste it.
‘Lovely,’ I said, truthfully. I never ate or drank anything as good as whatever Jeff gave me.
‘It’s the only thing I’m serving with tapas at the moment,’ he added.
‘That seems reasonable.’ I turned to Robert, ‘Did you get through the day in one piece?’
He sighed, and over by the cooker Jeff shook his head slowly, as if the end of the world was nigh and everyone kept failing to heed his warnings.
‘He could have done without it, Alex,’ he muttered, though his mutterings, like Robert’s sighs, were designed to be heard by the back row.
‘He’s not wrong,’ Robert said, reaching over for a quail’s egg, from which he picked off tiny speckled triangles of shell before dipping it in black pepper. ‘Those boys will be the death of me, Alex. They really will. Donnie Brooks isn’t such a bad child, really. And Ricky is sweet, when you can get his attention. But put them in the same building and chaos ensues. And it’s not even interesting chaos. It’s so bloody…’ He exhaled. ‘Predictable.’ Having coated the egg with a new pepper shell, he put it in his mouth.
‘Where did things get to this afternoon?’
He swallowed. ‘Ricky has a date in youth court. We’ll almost certainly lose him. I don’t see how he can avoid a young offenders’ institution this time.’
I felt a dull thud of sorrow hit me in the stomach. ‘Oh no. Really? That doesn’t seem fair,’ I said. How would he manage in such a hostile environment? And surely the path to a soldier’s life had just got one step closer. But perhaps he had been right all along, and the army was the best place for him. It was better than an institution.
‘Things never are fair, for boys like him. We don’t always win these battles, Alex. But don’t be downcast.’ Robert suddenly changed gear. ‘You’re doing a great job with them all, you really are. Even Jono seems to be flourishing in your classes, a sentence I confidently expected never to issue. And as for Mel, you’ve transformed her.’
‘You think so?’
‘I really do. She was such a mess when she arrived at the Unit. A total disaster. Destructive, and, worse, self-destructive. But under your tutelage, she’s turning into a very thoughtful girl. I always knew she had it in her, but I didn’t expect to see her develop so quickly. I’m delighted, honestly I am.’
‘She was a nice kid from the get-go. Well, nearly from the get-go. She’s always been the most engaged.’
‘But that’s your doing. You know, last year,’ he lowered his voice and looked from side to side. He wouldn’t tone down a performance just because there were only two people in the audience, ‘last year, we thought we might lose her altogether.’
‘From Rankeillor?’
‘From everywhere. She made an attempt on her own life, you see. Slit her wrists. Well, just one wrist, but that’s hardly preferable.’ The secrets of his filing cabinets were spilling out with wine.
I put down my glass before I dropped it. Then I picked it back up, and took a large gulp. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Of course you didn’t. Why should you? It was a classic cry for help. Her mother had a new partner Mel didn’t get on with, her father was more absent than usual with a woman who upset her, and then she and Carly had a row about something. It was Carly who found her, in the girls’ toilets. She called an ambulance even before she’d found a mem
ber of staff. She’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer – forgive the choice of metaphor – but she doesn’t panic when it’s a crisis,’ he mused.
‘Mel tried to kill herself at Rankeillor? Are you serious?’
‘Yes. And if Carly hadn’t been so quick off the mark, she might have managed it.’
‘I had no idea, Robert. She seems so…’ I couldn’t find the word. Functional? Normal? Happy?
He topped up my wine. ‘Yes, she does. I agree. She never talks about what happened, either. She obviously decided to try and put it behind her. Though she certainly hasn’t always been so controlled.’
‘No wonder Carly got so upset when we did Alcestis,’ I said.
‘A young woman sacrifices herself because she thinks her loved ones will be better off without her? Yes, I can see how that might have reminded her too closely of Mel,’ he said.
‘But Mel was fine talking about it. And Jono. But he must have known that she…’
‘Yes, he would have known, I’m sure. But this is what you’re supposed to be doing, Alex. Helping them to find ways of talking about terrible emotions and difficulties, without focussing on their own lives all the time. You’re doing exactly what I was hoping you would. That’s why they respond to you. Mel had a clean slate with you. You came in without knowing her history, and you treated her like any other young person. As a consequence, she’s behaving like one.’ He broke off as Jeff began piling tiny dishes of sausages and potatoes and beans on the table.
‘Tapas,’ he said, superfluously. ‘I never thought it would take off in Edinburgh, but there you go.’
‘Wow.’ Thanks didn’t quite cover it, with Jeff. You needed to include admiration. We talked about nothing but the food as we ate: it was the least it deserved. After a while, I asked about the restaurant, which was still thriving over in the New Town. ‘How many nights a week do you go in now?’
‘Never,’ Jeff said. ‘I do Monday mornings, to discuss the weekend just gone, and Wednesday mornings to discuss the one ahead. But they could manage fine without me. If I went away for a couple of months, the restaurant would be just splendid.’
‘Are you thinking of going away for a couple of months?’ I caught Jeff and Robert eyeballing each other, and realised that something else was going on. I looked down at my plate, and Robert changed the subject.
‘There’s a new production of King Lear at the Festival Theatre next month, Alex – would you come?’ He was speaking too loudly. I tried to bring him down a level.
‘Of course. I’d love to. I’ll stop off and get tickets on my way in to work tomorrow if you like.’
‘Well, that would be ideal,’ Jeff said, clearing plates away from the table and shooing away my offers of help. ‘You two go together, and then I won’t have to.’
‘I can get three tickets,’ I protested.
‘But I can’t sit through another crazed king wandering about on a blasted heath, Alex. Not even if I get a tub of ice-cream at half-time.’
‘Fair enough. I’ll book for two.’
Robert excused himself and walked out of the kitchen.
‘Don’t mind him,’ Jeff sighed. ‘He knows I hate Shakespeare. It’s lucky he’d finished doing it by the time I met him or we’d never have got together, honestly. How many puns can a man sit through for love? Not many, in my view.’
He came back for the serving dishes and stacked them up his arm, like a waiter, or a juggler. He took them to the kitchen and left them piled on top of the dishwasher. Then he sat back down with me.
‘Ach, I’m sorry he’s in a mood now. It’s because I mentioned us going away, and he doesn’t want to talk about it.’ He put air commas round the last six words.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I want to retire, Alex. With Robert. I mean, I want both of us to retire. I want to travel a bit, before these Scottish winters mean my old bones won’t allow it.’
‘You’re not even sixty.’
‘I’m not even fifty-eight, thank you, young lady. But, honestly, why not? We’ve both worked hard for a long old time now. And the business runs itself, really. Kenny is completely on top of it. He has been for years.’
‘But Robert doesn’t want to leave Rankeillor.’
‘He just won’t see it. Rankeillor would be fine without him too. He’s not indispensable. Well, he is, but only to me.’
‘I don’t know. He’s the soul of the Unit. I know that sounds melodramatic.’
‘It certainly sounds like bad sci-fi,’ he said.
‘But I mean it. The Unit might not exist if Robert wasn’t there. He keeps it all going through force of will.’
‘I know, Alex. I really do. But using that willpower is eating him alive. Dealing with the children and the parents and the social workers and the police and the counsellors and the youth courts and all of it. It’s just too much for him now. You can see how exhausted he looks. He used to look like that by the final week or two of each term, but now it’s before he’s even halfway through.’
‘I don’t think he could bear to see it crumble without him, though.’
‘It doesn’t have to. He’s not the only person who could run it, is he?’
There was a creaking sound above us as Robert came back down the stairs, and Jeff broke off.
I stayed for crema catalana, but the atmosphere remained awkward, so as soon as Jeff suggested coffee I made an excuse about being tired, and left early. The rain had given up for the night, so I walked back instead of waiting for a bus. The Festival Theatre was still open, but the box office was closed. I’d try again in the morning. I was so preoccupied, thinking about Mel and Carly and the possibility of Robert retiring, that I was putting my key into the front door at New Skinner’s Close before I realised what Jeff had been suggesting.
3
They were down to four.
‘Where’s Ricky?’ I asked, though I knew what the answer would be.
No-one had said anything about him leaving when I was up in the staffroom at break. The basic skills teacher had lost her purse, and we had all tried to help her find it, before she’d had to cancel her credit cards when it became clear that it was gone for good. Even on the Unit, Ricky had been forgotten.
‘He’s not here any more,’ said Mel. ‘He’s been chucked out.’
‘He hasn’t,’ Jono snarled at her. ‘He didn’t get chucked out, Alex.’ He turned back to me.
‘No,’ Mel sighed. ‘He’s in a young offenders’ institution, so I suppose he’s just otherwise engaged, is he?’
‘His court date.’ I remembered Robert mentioning it the other night.
‘It’s only for a couple of months,’ Jono said. ‘He’ll come back.’ Even he didn’t believe it. Ricky’s chair was still in the middle of the front row, as though we could summon him back by refusing to admit he was gone.
‘I’m so sorry. Have you spoken to him? Is he OK?’
Jono shrugged. ‘He texted. Says it’s not as bad as last time.’
I nodded, not wanting to give away the fact that I didn’t know he’d been in an institution already.
‘Well, I think we should probably decide what we’re going to read next, shouldn’t we? Then when Ricky comes back, we can tell him about it, and he’ll catch up easily.’
Though Annika’s eyebrows shot up above her glasses and I could see she was considering telling me what a pointless delusion this was, she said nothing.
‘Is there a play any of you would particularly like to do next?’ Last time, I’d let Carly choose, so it was someone else’s turn.
‘What’s your favourite?’ Mel asked. I thought for a moment.
‘I like the Oresteia,’ I told her. ‘It’s about families – parents and children and how they cope with one another. And it’s about revenge and retribution.’
‘Is it good?’ asked Annika.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Take a look.’
I handed out copies. Mel had already turned it over and was scouring the back cover.
Jono began flipping through the pages. ‘Do you really want to read this? It’s gibberish.’
‘The choruses are difficult, that’s true. But the story is brilliant. We could just skip over the choruses, since they’re the hardest bits, and they don’t add much to the play.’
‘Good,’ said Mel. ‘I don’t like the chorus.’ She went rather pink as she said this.
‘Lots of people don’t,’ I reassured her. ‘If you were watching the play instead of reading it, the chorus would sing and dance and that would make it more exciting. But they are a bit much when we’re just reading it. So, let’s look at the first play of the trilogy – Agamemnon. What do you know about him?’
There was another silence.
‘He’s the king of the Greeks,’ said Mel.
Carly began ferreting about in a bilious pink pencil tin she’d pulled out of her bag.
‘Good, yes. Anyone else? He won the Trojan War: did you know that?’
‘With a horse?’ asked Jono.
‘That’s right. They snuck the warriors into Troy inside a wooden horse. That’s how the city falls, in the end.’
Carly had found what she wanted in her case, and was using it to file her nails carefully. Her emery board appeared to have at least six different surfaces. I wondered if nails could ever really achieve so many distinct levels of disrepair. She looked up and saw my face. ‘I can concentrate on both, Alex. Honest.’
‘Do you know what he does when he’s won the war? Jono, you must have fought plenty of wars on your Xbox – what does a general do when he wins the war?’
‘Kills everyone,’ he said. ‘Rapes the women first.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Or after.’
‘Gross,’ said Carly, admiring an index finger before she started on her thumb.
‘Agreed. It is pretty much what Agamemnon does, though. He picks one woman to be his slave, and takes her home with him. Her name is Cassandra. Does that name mean anything to anyone?’ They all looked blank. ‘Cassandra rebuffed the attentions of the god Apollo, so he cursed her.’
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