Life Class

by Allan, Gilli

  ‘I’ll come in with you if you want.’

  ‘I’m not a child. I don’t need my fucking hand held!’

  Stefan refused to react to his rebuff. ‘I just thought, it might be a good idea to get a check-up myself while I’m there. You never know,’ he added with a half-smile.

  Dominic did not respond, just hunched his shoulders even more. Stefan noticed his chin crumpling, his mouth twitching down at the corners. Please don’t let him cry, he thought, knowing how Dom would loathe a witness to his distress. His fragile pride was all he had. Regaining control of his face muscles, the youth said, ‘I’m not fucking going. It’s a stupid idea. Anyway, it’s too late.’

  Stefan nodded. How to tell him? ‘You are later than I said. But in fact … um … it’s a drop-in on a Thursday. No need for an appointment.’ Had Dominic known earlier, Stefan suspected he wouldn’t have got out of bed till half past five in the afternoon. As it was, they were still in with a chance of leaving before midday.

  ‘Why? Oh, I get it. You didn’t think I’d agree to come at all unless you said you’d made an appointment?’

  ‘Something along those lines.’

  ‘So …’ Dom scuffed the metal of the veranda with his trainer. ‘Like, you tried to trick me?’

  ‘Let’s just say I was exerting a bit of pressure.’

  ‘You don’t have much faith in me, do you?’

  ‘I probably have more faith in you than you have in yourself,’ Stefan said.

  Dom tossed back his hair again. ‘Got a smoke?’ he asked, as he passed Stefan and clanged down the steps, making for the car. Relieved, and at the same time touched by the boy’s assumed nonchalance, Stefan followed him, expression bland, and reached for the pack of cigarettes.

  ‘Get your nicotine hit now. You’ll not be allowed to smoke there.’

  It took less than half an hour to get to the hospital, but it seemed to take nearly as long to find a parking spot. Leaving Dominic in the car, Stefan walked around the sprawling site to locate the clinic. It was a separate prefabricated unit with a dedicated area for parking. It began to rain heavily and he ran back to the car. He threw himself into the driver’s seat with a grunt, splattering raindrops across his passenger as he slammed the door.

  ‘I’m re-parking. There are a few spaces next to the clinic. This isn’t the weather for a ten-minute stroll.’

  Dominic made no response. The tension radiating from him was palpable.

  ‘Look, I understand how you feel.’ Stefan started the engine and drove around the site again. ‘But the thing to remember is that everyone’s here for the same reason – the people who come in for check-ups, the doctors and nurses too. If there’re no patients, there’s no work for a clinic full of specialist staff to do.’ Able to slot the car into a space directly outside the one-storey structure, he engaged the handbrake. ‘No one’s going to be shocked or surprised. They’ll ask you, but you don’t have to be explicit.’

  ‘What about you?’ Dominic interrupted.

  ‘Like I said, I’ll come in with you and get checked out too, unless you’d rather be on your own. In that case I’ll just wait in the car.’

  Dom was shaking his head, his lips compressed. For a moment, Stefan wondered whether he was turning down the offer or waging some inner battle. Was he still debating whether or not to go through with this? Abruptly, Dom pulled up his hood, unbuckled his seat belt, and was out of the car before Stefan could find out.

  Chapter Eighteen - Dominic

  Did Stefan think he was going to do a runner? For just an instant, he’d looked worried. Before slamming the car door, Dom leaned in to reassure the old man.

  ‘Don’t worry. Rather go it alone.’ As he moved away Stefan called after him.

  ‘It’ll be a long wait. Have you got …?’

  Dom turned and, continuing to take a few backward paces, patted his bulging pocket. ‘Supplies,’ he confirmed with a nod.

  The room he walked into would have been bland and unmemorable if there’d not been spit and stick paper chains looped lopsidedly across the ceiling. And then there were the posters on the walls – some about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases, some about birth control, and others a predictable combination of the two. The woman behind the desk looked up and smiled.

  ‘Have you an appointment?’

  ‘I thought … I was told …’ Dominic stumbled. At first he’d thought she looked kind and friendly. Her hair was a soft, pinky ginger colour, her cheeks were powdery, her eyes – magnified through her glasses – were bright. But suddenly, he felt scrutinised by those bright eyes, judged and found wanting by a woman probably younger than his mother. Not that he’d laid eyes on his mum for at least five years and wondered now if he could pick her out in a crowd. Blonde and lardy, she’d seemed older than other boys’ mums. One of the last things he remembered was her dragging him round to his waste-of-space sister’s. A stinking pit in a tower block, where Tash was living with a druggy in a vest, called Jake something. And he’d had to stay there all night, clammy with cold, hunger, and fear, and listen to them shout at each other while his mum went off and did whatever she did.

  His shoulders raised, his hands plunged deeper into his pockets. ‘Isn’t it a drop-in today?’

  ‘It’s both,’ the receptionist answered, still smiling. Perhaps she was OK after all. ‘We do issue a few appointments on a Thursday, but people drop in as well. Would you fill in this form? Here’s a pen. When you’ve completed it, return it to me and then I’ll give you a number.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Dragging his hand from his pocket he grabbed the form and pen and, assuming a casualness he didn’t feel, sprawled down onto the upholstered bench. Another bench on the return wall abutted his; set between the two was a low table piled with magazines. Glancing at them, Dominic saw a few devoted to celebrity gossip, some to high fashion, others to cars or motor sports. A few were about posh houses and antiques. Seemed like a cross-section of people was expected to visit this place, so why didn’t they supply the latest Kerrang! or White Dwarf? Any distraction would be better than looking at the document he’d been given.

  He read it through once, then read it again. After asking his name and age, it was a simple tick box form. The questions were no better, yet probably no worse than he’d expected.

  When was your last sexual contact?

  Recently? More than a month? Six months? A year?

  Was it consensual?

  Hetero contact, same sex, or both?

  Use of condoms? Other contraceptives?

  Which? Always? Sometimes? Never?

  Partners? How many? How often? Which orifice?

  Drug user? Which? How often? Intravenous? Shared needles?

  Contacts abroad? Which countries?

  Symptoms? How severe? General state of health? Illness?

  And so on.

  A hot, buzzing sensation had started in his head. He didn’t want to be here. The pen felt big and awkward in his hand, as if writing were suddenly an unfamiliar activity. OK, maybe he didn’t write much, but he was used to holding a pencil, he told himself, gripping the pen harder. What had Stefan said? You don’t have to tell them anything you don’t want to. He read through the form again. Easier said than done. His first impression was that he didn’t want to answer any of it.

  He pushed his hood back and scratched his head. There had to be questions he could answer without feeling exposed. He went through it again and with a puff of relief singled out those he could answer without hesitation. He’d never been abroad in his life, let alone in the past year, so he entered a confident black cross in that box, and another to the supplementary question about having sex abroad. And, no, he wasn’t an intravenous drug user. So, no, to the supplementary, about sharing needles. No. He wasn’t ill. No. He didn’t have symptoms, not that he’d noticed, anyway.

  When it came to the other questions, his resolve faltered. Did he have the nerve to answer them honestly? He had no problem doing what the form desc
ribed, but it was another thing telling the world about it. And could he answer accurately? Even if he had the bottle to be totally up-front with these people, how could he begin to calculate how many? How often? He didn’t keep a log. He didn’t tally up the numbers at the end of a week. Anyway, he was going to stop. He’d promised. But there was a new computer game he wanted, and a set of miniatures. And he’d been planning to buy his own stash of art equipment and not keep blagging it off Stefan.

  A woman came in from outside; like him, she was welcomed with a smile and given the form. Dominic watched her out of the corner of his eye. She was black, modestly dressed, wearing glasses, no make-up, and her hair – beaded with drops of rain – was pulled back severely. As she went to sit down, she smoothed her skirt straight beneath her then sat neatly, knees pressed together, back straight, only unbending to pick up the nearest magazine to use as a rest on her lap. A fine chain with a cross – one of those ones with a little man on it – fell forward from the collar of her blouse. Head bent, pen poised, she read through the form. Her hand began to move rapidly down the column of questions and their supplementaries, filling the boxes with assurance. OK, she looked older than him, perhaps in her mid-twenties, but she had a lot more self-possession. Dominic was impressed and a little shamed. Then she glanced up at him. He looked away, but not before noticing the stunned emptiness in her glassy eyes.

  Everyone had a different story. Perhaps it was easier to answer the questions if the trouble you found yourself in wasn’t really down to you. So, no easy let-off for him, then. Why was he making such a big deal of this? Why did he care about filling in this poxy form? No one here knew him from Adam. And it wasn’t as if the activities he engaged in ever troubled his conscience at the time. He wasn’t ashamed. He needed money and had something to barter. What was the big deal? The only concern was for his health, which was why he’d agreed to come here. Not that he was worried; he’d no wish to live into old age. He couldn’t imagine it. Why would anyone want to live beyond forty?

  He looked back at the questionnaire. What was the point in agreeing to come in here if he wasn’t at least going to try to be honest? Otherwise he should get up and leave. Stefan couldn’t force him to go through with this. He envisaged him out in the car. There was no way he would be waiting patiently. Wouldn’t he be glad of release from this self-imposed duty? No. Dominic knew what would bring the other man relief – him going through with this and getting the all-clear.

  The woman at the desk spoke. She didn’t direct the comment to either of them in particular. ‘If there are questions you’re not sure of or are hard to answer, leave them blank.’ Now he decided she looked a bit like his foster mum, the one who’d first taken him on after he’d been put into care. What was she called? Deidre? Daphne? One of those names, anyway. He hadn’t liked her. She’d been an old bag. But when he recalled how he’d been behaving at that time, so full of rage and incomprehension, perhaps she’d done her best. In any event that placement hadn’t lasted long, and he’d soon found himself back in the care home.

  ‘When you talk to the nurse she’ll help you with anything that needs clarification,’ the receptionist added. The black girl had put back the magazine. Was she about to stand? He was here first! Faced with the possibility of losing his place and making Stefan wait even longer, he jumped up and approached the desk. He was given a number.

  Chapter Nineteen - Dory

  It was open and fully staffed but no one had dropped in to the Sexual Health Clinic so far this Christmas Eve morning. To compound her inactivity there had been a delay in getting the test results over from the hospital’s main lab, so the job she would usually have got on with, in the absence of screening patients’ slides, couldn’t be done. At midday, Dory decided to walk into town to buy extra Christmas treats for Fran and Peter. Anything was better than twiddling her thumbs while her brain skittered between dread and exhilaration.

  It was hardly surprising, given the time of year, that she’d had no word yet from the estate agent. But what really plagued her was the fact she’d even made the offer in the first place. Why on earth had she done it? It was insane. Even if he accepted it – and that was a big if – there would be hoops to jump through over the barn’s change of use. Had she any hope of getting the requisite planning permission for running a business? And then there was the adjoining property. Would Grace be a cooperative neighbour? What were their legal rights and duties in respect of one another? The house might not be huge but it was much too big for one person and needed loads doing to it. And then there was her sister! ‘Insane’ would be the least of the comments she was likely to make. It was a daunting undertaking.

  Typically, it had started to rain heavily while she was in M&S and she’d had to carry her bags back one-handed, her umbrella gripped in the other, trying to fend off the ice-cold rain. Yet, despite this distraction, she was struck by a sudden sense of familiarity when she approached the clinic and saw the car parked next to hers. Odd. Uninterested in cars, Dory usually struggled to differentiate a BMW from an Audi from a Jaguar. She had to juggle keys, bags, and umbrella to get her boot open without letting rain trickle down the back of her neck, and yet this sense of recognition niggled. A memory popped up of the last time she’d been aware of her own car in close proximity to a beaten up ‘estate’ like this.

  What a weirdly surreal experience that had been. Lost in remembrance of meeting the boy in the garden and then … Since coming face to face with the grown-up man in the same location, an unceasing turmoil had been going on inside her head. It would add another bizarre coincidence to then find themselves parked side-by-side outside the clinic barely a fortnight later. Still, working here, there was always the risk of seeing someone you knew. Dory had specialised in this field of medicine for so long she’d overcome any personal awkwardness, but it was impossible not to empathise with friends and acquaintances who’d expected to visit the Sexual Health clinic – whether private in London, or NHS here – anonymously.

  It was only after she’d stowed her purchases in the car, including a box of overpriced crackers which her sister had doubtless already supplied, that she realised the sudden deluge had abruptly ceased and the sun had come out. Relieved, Dory lowered her umbrella and slammed the boot. She averted her eyes from the glare off a puddle and found herself looking towards the neighbouring car again. Surely not? And yet it was. Stefan was slumped to one side, head supported on his hand. Dory didn’t know him well enough to interpret his pained expression. Was he plucking up the courage to go in and get himself screened, or was he simply waiting?

  Until a few moments ago she’d been banking on not seeing him before the start of the new term in January. Coming face to face at work had the potential to be a double whammy of embarrassment. That her offer for his house was substantially lower than the asking price would have given her no concern had she not known him. It was one thing being hardnosed with a stranger, but with someone you not only knew but were growing to like? Hell! He was only her art teacher! And it wasn’t as if he was unaware of the drawbacks of the house. On that strange afternoon, his own gloomy assessment had been one of the qualities that had endeared him to her. He certainly wasn’t a salesman. If he went about trying to sell his art in the same way, it was no wonder he wasn’t having much success.

  Then again, whatever impression he gave, his expectations might be wildly unrealistic. All she could do was hope he would understand that it was nothing to do with him personally – it was a negotiating position. Buying property was too big a deal to let sentiment get in the way. Luckily, Stefan seemed not to have noticed her.

  Chapter Twenty - Fran

  A physical jump, like an electric shock, jolted through her. Fran shrieked.

  ‘What on earth is wrong with you these days?’ Peter asked as he came through the door. ‘You’re like a cat on a hot brick roof.’

  Fran’s eyes remained fixed on the computer screen. One hand had involuntarily clutched to her chest, the other, curv
ed over the mouse, swiftly moved the cursor to close the window. The words that emerged from her mouth were equally automatic.

  ‘It’s either “Cat on hot bricks” or “Cat on a hot tin roof.”’ Peter had a tendency to muddle his clichés. She’d never got to the bottom of whether it was deliberate.

  ‘I stand corrected,’ he agreed mildly. ‘Still doesn’t explain why you screamed and nearly shot off your chair when I came into the study. It is my study too.’

  ‘I didn’t even know you’d come back. Did you pick up the turkey?’

  ‘It’s in the kitchen. I expected to find you there, making stuffing or sausage rolls or something. Should have realised you’d be in cyberworld!’

  Fran’s heart rate was slowing down. Relieved his tone was gently mocking rather than suspicious, she clicked on the document she’d glanced at earlier.

  ‘It’s a bit addictive …’ A petition entitled Garden Grab filled the screen. ‘Anyway, I’m well ahead with my preparations for Christmas this year … Dory’s only here for Christmas Day, and it’s going to be just the two of us for the rest of the time.’

  ‘So why do we need a bird that size? We’ll be eating it till Easter.’

  ‘Oh well. I suppose the butcher assumed I’d want the same size as usual.’

  ‘Assumed? What did you tell him?’

  What had she told him? She shrugged.

  ‘You’re too obsessed with all this computer stuff to concentrate on anything else,’ Peter said. ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘I opened Live Mail to see if we’ve had any emails from Mel. Then there were … others … I had to reply to. I looked up Mel’s Facebook page, not that she’s been keeping that up to date. Since then I’ve been doing some work. Collating the petition on the –’

  ‘Everything all right?’ he interrupted, beginning to wear his ‘too much information’ face.

  ‘What?’ ‘With Mel.’

  ‘Oh, she seems a bit fed up. Aden’s talking about –’