by Phil Earle
‘No,’ I lied, clenching and unclenching my fists to stop them fizzing.
‘Because if she is, you need to do something about it. Or we do. You can’t let one person get in the way of you progressing. Not when they have no interest in learning themselves.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
I could feel my voice getting quieter, the bumping of my heart against my ribcage. I didn’t like the digging, wasn’t in control any more of where it was going. The fear loved it, started hanging on to me as my thoughts unravelled.
‘Of course it matters. You need to do something about it. Talk to her. Sort it out. Or let us do it for you.’
‘You have met Donna, haven’t you?’
‘I’ve seen her in every school I’ve been at, or variations of her. And you can’t allow yourself to be scared of her, you really can’t. It’s not worth it. You’re not scared of her, are you, Daisy?’
It wasn’t a difficult question, or even a profound one. But for some reason it was all he needed to ask. Because it was true, I wasn’t scared of her. I was scared of everything. And I was suddenly so overwhelmingly tired of feeling like it.
A gasp of sadness burst into my throat, taking me by surprise, pushing its way past my lips as a tear escaped from my eye.
Stupid. How could I be so weak?
He was on to it in a flash. Hardly surprising, as it was a pitiful sight, full of weakness.
He turned towards me, tucking his left leg underneath the other on the bench.
‘Hey now, what’s all this about?’
‘It’s nothing. I’m just tired, that’s all. It’s been a bit full on, what with everything.’
‘And what is everything, Daisy? What is it that’s getting to you?’
I shook my head, blowing deeply to calm myself down, aware of my heart speeding up.
‘It’s fine. You can tell me. Really you can. Whatever it is, I can guarantee you it’s not as bad as you think. It never is.’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Then you have to speak to someone else. You can’t hold these things on your own. It’s not fair to expect that of yourself. If you can’t tell me, then tell your dad. Let him help you. Maybe he could come into school to see Donna’s folks, set them straight on whatever’s going on. I could even talk to him if you want.’
‘I appreciate it, but there’s no point. Dad’s not … comfortable with stuff like that. He’s not the talking type.’
‘But he’s your dad.’ There was surprise in his voice that told me he didn’t like the sound of this. ‘If something is bothering you, he’d want to know, wouldn’t he?’
‘He’s got his own stuff going on. Anyway, there’s some things he just can’t deal with. It’s not the way he’s made, you know?’
‘Can you talk to him about your mum?’
All the tension in me leaked out at her name, at how simple the problem was to him. All I had to do was talk to Dad. It really was that simple, but it was also the one thing I couldn’t do.
‘Not about that, sir, no. I want to, and I’ve tried, but I can’t. It’s too difficult.’
‘Why is it difficult? He’s your dad. He must miss her too.’
‘That’s just it,’ I moaned. ‘I don’t know how he feels. She’s this unspoken thing in our house. What I do know I’ve had to drag out of him and it kills him to talk, I can see it does. Anything else I found out, well –’ I thought about the report and what it told me – ‘I had to go searching for.’
He smiled at me sadly, his hands reaching gently for my shoulders, the same electric current rippling down them as when he touched me before.
‘God, that must be so difficult. Believe me, I know.’
‘You haven’t seen how he looks at me sometimes. It’s as if every time he lays his eyes on me, all he can really see is her, my mum. And all that does is break his heart all over again, that and make him hate me.’
I felt a whoosh of air escape from me as that final sentence left my mouth, a sentence that left me off balance and giddy, teetering into him, my forehead resting on his chest and my ridiculous tears soaking his shirt.
His arms snaked round my back and pulled me gently into him, his words in my ears.
‘That’s crazy. Why on earth would he hate you? You’re his daughter. You’re all he’s got. Why on earth would he possibly hate you?’
I pushed my head further into his chest, so far that I feared I might knock him over. This was it. The last moment I could turn back. But I had to do it, even if it meant muffling the words so that if he did hear them, he wouldn’t be able to push me away immediately.
‘Because I took her away from him. I killed her. It’s all my fault.’
My words bounced around the tiny gap between us.
I’d done it, spoken the words out loud that I feared the most, the words that had been stuck in my brain for what felt like forever. I couldn’t control it any more, it was out there, and I had to accept the consequences.
I felt my shoulders jerk as the tears struggled out of me and I braced myself, ready for him to push me away in disgust.
But he didn’t. In fact he didn’t move away at all. At first he whispered softly in my ear, telling me that everything was OK, that he understood. And as he told me, his upper body swayed slightly, taking me with him, rocking me like I was a baby.
I felt confused, convinced that he hadn’t heard me, or understood what I’d said. I’d just told him that I’d killed my own mother and all he could do was coo in my ear. I had to put him straight before it made me any angrier.
I pushed my head back, trying to break his grip around me, forcing him to look at me.
‘Did you not hear me?’ I yelled in his face. ‘I just told you I killed her.’
‘And I heard you,’ he said, his eyes not leaving mine as his left hand stroked my hair. ‘But I don’t believe you.’
‘But you have to,’ I spat. ‘I’ve been trying to find a way of telling someone for months. I’ve read the report. It told me what I did. I can show you. You’ll have to believe me!’
‘It’s OK, Daisy. I hear what you’re saying. But I don’t have to read anything to know what’s true. And I know you don’t have it in you. That’s not you.’
I felt my body tense, the anger surge in me, and instantly I wanted to hit him, to hit him like I wanted to hit Donna. But he wouldn’t let me. He just held on and told me again and again, ‘That’s not you.’
I don’t know how many times he told me. It could have been five, it could’ve been fifty, but at some point something snapped and I couldn’t listen to him any more.
‘How is it that you think you know me, eh? How is it that you can sit there and tell me that I didn’t do what I said I did? You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know how old I was when I did it, or how I did it. You don’t know anything!’
But no matter what I threw at him, he didn’t lose his temper or his grip. It was just the same expression locked on me, the same calming arm around my back, the same hand smoothing my hair.
I had only one thing left. Just one bullet that I could fire at him to prove he knew nothing, and without thinking I pulled myself out of his grip and ripped the sleeve of my right arm up past my elbow.
‘Do you see this?’ The anger in me was so loud that I looked at my scarred, scabbed arm for the first time with no feelings of repulsion. ‘This is what I’m capable of. Can you see it? Well, can you?’
He nodded, his expression not changing for a second.
‘Yes, I can see it.’
‘Good. So don’t tell me I’m not capable of hurting someone. If I’m capable of doing this to myself, how do YOU know what I could do to anyone else?’
‘It’s all right,’ he said, and gently pulled my sleeve down. I tried to draw away, but somehow, with no force on his part, he wouldn’t let me. He just buttoned my cuff and held on to me.<
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I struggled at first, but with little effect, and instead of the anger tears returned instead. Huge raking sobs that came up from my boots.
His quietening noises returned, soothing enough to fall into a rhythm with my crying, which slowly, slowly eased.
My head ached. Ached with the crying, with the size of the confession and the confusion of his acceptance.
But it was nothing compared to the confusion that followed as he pulled away from me and wiped away the tears before, slowly and deliberately, closing in to kiss me.
Chapter 11
Some of the best kisses in films are unexpected. Believe me, I’ve watched enough of them to know. I’ve seen kisses that caused fireworks to go off, the heavens to open or flowers to bloom as lips met.
But there was no romantic moment when Mr Hobson decided to kiss me, even though I’d daydreamed for weeks about how it might feel. After all, he was the person who finally understood me, the one I could trust to lay it on the line to.
For a split second I felt warmth, a relief that maybe I was worthy of someone’s affections, but that was quickly replaced by the bizarrest of thoughts.
His name.
I had no idea what it was. Only that it started with T.
So he was Mr Hobson. Or sir.
And this realization shocked me back to reality.
All the other lads that I’d kissed, I didn’t just know their names, but who they’d got off with before me. I knew their sisters or brothers. Some of them I’d known since I was five, had got changed in front of them before PE classes at primary school.
But with him? All I knew was that he was my teacher, that he was at least ten years older than me, that he liked films and that his mum was dead.
Other than that, nothing.
It wasn’t bothering him, though. His hands were wrapped around my back and neck, pulling me even closer into him.
He felt too close.
Which was ridiculous, as that’s generally the idea when you’re kissing someone.
But his lips weren’t soft any more and his hands weren’t gentle.
I could feel the stubble around his mouth rubbing on my chin, a million miles away from the bum-fluff lads my age sported, and it felt alien, uncomfortable, wrong.
I tried to ease my mouth away from his, to force a word out, although what that word was going to be, I had no idea, but his grasp remained strong, his right hand sliding underneath my hair to the nape of my neck.
Squeezing my hands against his chest, I levered the tiniest of spaces between us, pulling my head back until I could smell his breath, growing staler by the second.
He opened his eyes as my lips left his.
‘What’s the matter?’ he whispered, a look of bemusement on his face, which confused me right back, making me wonder for a second whether anything was wrong after all. But as soon as his lips forced themselves back on to mine, it was wrong all over again.
‘Don’t, sir.’ The words escaped to the side of his lips, and he gulped, trying to swallow them before he had to listen to what they said.
I prised my head away still further as he advanced, offering him my cheek, my neck, anything but my lips.
‘Please, don’t.’
‘What’s the matter?’ he mouthed, a trace of irritation in my ear.
‘I don’t know. Nothing, maybe.’ Why I said that I had no idea, as there was plenty wrong, but all I could think of was his first name.
‘Then it’s OK. There’s no one about. Let me look after you. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s why we’re here.’
He was right. That was exactly what I wanted.
But not like this, or here, or from him.
The only arms I wanted round me were Dad’s, and I’d pushed them so far away lately that he was nowhere in sight.
I felt my weight falling backwards as he guided me towards the bench and started to panic as the force of his grip strengthened.
His calmness seemed to have been replaced by a frantic look as his eyes danced up and down the river, assessing who might be watching.
His right hand traced its way from my shoulder and down my arm as he tried to steer me around, but as it made contact with my cuts, I felt a strange sensation.
Instead of recoiling in pain it seemed to galvanize me, shock me into seeing that I had to get him off me, and quick. Again, I squeezed my arms between our bodies, but his will was stronger than mine, his breathing too.
I started to panic as I realized what I had got myself into, and my initial reaction was to shout at myself, to ask how I could have found myself here, with him.
But all my mind did was shout right back –
This is what you wanted, isn’t it? It’s no good wishing for something then complaining when it happens! Suck it up. You’re the one to blame.
It was right, this was happening because I’d allowed it to.
I could’ve not waited outside school, or told him I wanted to be on my own when I walked down the path that first time. He was here because I asked him to be. It was no one’s fault but mine.
But all the laying of blame didn’t get me away from him or home safely. And if I was to manage that I had to get myself straight.
I bent my head to the left, craning to see down the path, desperate for a dog-walker, jogger, anyone to come into view, but there was nothing, no one.
I wanted to scream in frustration, but then I realized that he didn’t know we were on our own still. He was so intent on devouring my neck that he couldn’t possibly have been keeping watch as well.
It was all the encouragement I needed and I took a gulping lungful of air before bellowing straight into his ear, ‘There’s someone watching us, over there on a bike!’
Mr Hobson jumped back, his body spinning as he searched for who I’d seen.
In the time it took him to establish there was no one there and to shake the ringing from his ears, I stumbled away from him in the direction of home.
At first, for a glorious moment, I thought that was it: that I’d scared him enough to turn and sprint in the opposite direction. But the slapping of my footsteps were soon matched by his as he bounded up beside me.
‘Daisy,’ he yelled, his voice a mixture of desperation and surprise. ‘Daisy! What’s wrong? Where are you going?’
I couldn’t work out why he was confused. Didn’t he know what had just happened was wrong?
‘Please, sir. I need to go. I need to get home.’
‘You need to stop and steady down, that’s what you need to do.’
‘What do you mean “steady down”? I can’t steady down, not after that. Not after what just happened.’
He lifted his arms in surrender, his gaze rock solid, unblinking.
‘I know it’s taken you by surprise. I was hardly planning it myself, was I? It’s not like I go around making a habit of it, you know.’
His words threw a new scarier doubt in my head. Until he said it, I’d never have thought it could have happened before with someone else. But now the seed was there and was taking root.
How many times had it happened before?
How many schools did he say he’d temped in?
Had it happened in every school he’d been to?
Fear must have been scratched into my eyes, as instantly he saw it, his face every inch the wounded party.
‘Daisy, please. PLEASE! It’s me, the same person you’ve been talking to these last few weeks. The one person, I think, that you’ve felt able to talk to lately.’
His eyes were imploring, although he’d finally stopped stepping towards me.
‘I’m sorry if the kiss freaked you out. I don’t know why I did it. It just happened. I felt like it was what you wanted, that you wanted me to do it. You did want me to do it, didn’t you? I didn’t get it wrong, did I?’
Thoughts swarmed round my head, scattering an
y sense that tried to form. He was the one person I’d talked to lately, and I had thought about him doing it, but now it had happened it felt wrong.
I tried to remember what I’d said before he’d leaned in, what exact words had fallen out of my mouth, but there was nothing except a fear that I must have told him to do it.
‘What is it, Daisy? What are you thinking about? You can tell me.’
A snort of nervous, confused laughter erupted from my mouth, followed by the words, ‘I don’t even know your name.’
It sounded lame and juvenile, like some underage kid in a club who’d just copped off with a stranger for the first time.
He cast a glance over his shoulder, as if telling me was more dangerous than what he’d already done.
‘It’s Tom,’ he said. ‘Well, Thomas, but Tom, you know.’
There was a Tommy in our English class. The class he taught. He was three months to the day younger than me. I knew that because I’d got off with him last year on his birthday.
This memory shocked me. Reminded me of how wrong all this was. I should still have been thinking about lads like Tommy Grant or Rob Stearn, scheming about how to get together with them, not leading one of my teachers down some shady footpath. What sort of person was I to find myself here, to have made someone think this is what I wanted?
Peering past Mr Hobson, I could see the left turn that led me back to the road, towards our house and Dad, and all I could think about was getting there, closing the door and hiding behind Mum’s sunburst until all this went away.
‘Did you hear me? I said it’s Tom.’ His smile was still in place, but it was fading at the corners. ‘Daisy? Are you all right? I’m losing you again …’
‘No, it’s fine, I’m fine. It’s just … the time. It’s getting on. Dad will be expecting me and that.’
The mention of Dad wiped the curve of his smile away, and as I tried to move a step closer to home, his hand instantly grabbed at mine.
‘No, don’t go yet.’ It was an order, not a request, and the tone seemed to shock him a touch as he tried to grin once more. ‘Not till we’ve sorted this out.’
‘Sorted what out? There’s nothing to sort out. It’s fine, sir, really. It’s my fault. I should just keep my mouth shut.’
