road and I was willing to bet that was where, like many of the local parents, he parked his car. I hurried across the playground to follow them, ignoring another parent’s attempt to catch my attention. I caught sight of Milly, a reception teacher, who was watching me for some reason, but I ignored her too and hurried out of the gate before I lost sight of them.
I was about to dash across the road when a white Range Rover, driving far too quickly, screeched to a halt by the yellow zigzags outside the school gates, about two feet from me.
A woman with oversized sunglasses and even bigger hair was glowering at me over the steering wheel, as if I was the unreasonable person in this scenario.
‘Hey,’ I called. ‘This is a school! You don’t drive like that on this road. You could kill a child!’
She made a ‘wanker’ gesture at me. I crossed the road and I find myself calling, ‘Yeah? Well you too,’ as she drove away.
A couple of parents clucked sympathetically at me, but I was too distracted to respond. I hurried into Caversham Road and cursed when I saw that I had missed them. Two cars were currently having a standoff, not wanting to give way, and there was a lot of angry honking and beeping. I swear half these families lived within a five-minute walking radius. We used to give out badges to reward children for walking to school but then we discovered that a small number were being encouraged to lie about it by their parents on the basis that they were otherwise ‘missing out’.
I quickened my pace just in case they were on the next road up. The pavement was thick with parents, buggies, and children of various ages and so I said, ‘’Scuse me, ’scuse me,’ as I made my way through them.
It suddenly felt imperative that I found them, and I began to run as the pavement became emptier. I turned the corner into the road at the top and almost collided with a man who was leaning against the wall there and making a phone call.
Of course, it was him.
Tyler was standing next to him, kicking at a stone with a scrunched brow of concentration.
Lee Bennett’s eyes widened, and he moved away from the wall with a fluid push from his foot.
‘Call you back,’ he said, then, more aggressively, ‘You looking for someone?’
‘No, I, er …’ My brain went blank. I couldn’t think of a thing to say and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. ‘I’m just …’ I waved my hand ineffectually as I fought for sensible words. ‘I needed to give a message to a … another parent.’
Bennett swept his arm around in an exaggerated gesture. ‘No one else here, mate,’ he said.
I decided I had nothing to lose. ‘No car today?’
He frowned and pulled his head back a little. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’
Face still burning, I turned away and could hear him say to Tyler, ‘You stay away from him. I don’t like him.’
Anya was late home that evening and I used the time to finish writing up a report for Jackie on what had happened with Bennett. I left out our uncomfortable exchange earlier that day because I had no idea how to explain what I had been doing.
I kept thinking about Tyler’s sad crumpled socks and pasty ankles. It made me wonder how I would have presented to the world at that age.
After the invitation to come in for cottage pie, Mrs Mack invited me in once or twice a week. She usually invented some sort of task that needed doing; replacing light bulbs or taking her rubbish down to the big bins at the back of the flats. But I didn’t mind.
She used to make me eat fruit when I went round there but there were usually plenty of biscuits too, or she’d made some sort of homemade cake. This was an entirely new experience for me and one I thoroughly approved of. One evening I brought back some scones for Mum but I got a bit of a strange reaction from her. At the time I concluded she was jealous of the time I spent next door. With my adult eye I can see that it was probably a lot more complicated than that. Maybe Mum felt that Mrs Mack was doing some of my mothering, whether she liked it or not.
Mrs Mack had her own son, a bloke called Douglas who lived in America and worked in a bank. She would show me pictures of him with his smiley, white-toothed wife and boast about how well he was doing. Douglas seemed fairly alien to me but even at that age I found it a bit sad that he never seemed to come and visit her.
One afternoon after school, she asked me to get something down from the top of her wardrobe. It was too high even for me, so I stood on a stool and reached over the tightly packed clothes that smelled flowery and old, just like she did. She was after a tin of photos.
‘Do you mean this one?’ I said and pulled out a wooden box about the size of a shoebox.
‘No!’ she said, sharply. ‘Put that one back right now!’
‘Why should I?’ I said, because I was stung, and it made me bolshie and mean.
‘Because I said so, young man.’ Mrs Mack’s voice was ice cold.
I, on the other hand, had flaming cheeks as I put it back and fumbled for the one next to it, a tartan tin with a picture of a Highland stag on it.
She must have seen my expression because her tone softened then. ‘Thank you, Elliott,’ she said, taking the tin from my hands. ‘I didn’t mean to snap. That one is just very private.’
I mumbled that it was okay, but it wasn’t really. You carry those sort of slights as bright, bitter humiliations at that age. You might be one and a half times the size of the other person, yet they still have the ability to cut you in two with their sharp words.
We went back through to the living room and she sat down in her favourite armchair. She had been intending to show me some of the photos, but I didn’t feel like it now.
She opened the lid of the tin with an expression of intense concentration and then noticed I was hovering by the door.
‘Are you just going to stand there like a long streak of bacon?’ she said. I would have smiled at another of her weird expressions under normal circumstances. They were often Scottish and nonsensical, like ‘Hold your wheesht.’ But something made me want to punish her a bit today for shouting at me. So I just shrugged.
She frowned.
‘Look,’ she took off her glasses, sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her voice was tight when she spoke again. ‘Has your mother no’ got anything she likes to keep away from prying eyes?’
I thought about Mum’s photo albums of her childhood and baby pictures of me, neatly stacked on the shelf by the telly. Anyone could look at those if they wanted and Mum wouldn’t care.
And then I got an almost physical thump of understanding. Mrs Mack meant valuable things. Jewellery, or money. I pictured a pirate’s treasure box, filled with gleaming gold coins and thick chains like the ones rappers wore, even though I knew it was more likely old lady jewellery or bank notes in there. The answer then was obvious.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We haven’t got anything like that.’
Mrs Mack made a dubious face and began to take out the pictures, placing them in a pile next to her on the sofa.
‘Well, I doubt that,’ she said, ‘but if you’re staying, come and sit down here. You’re giving me neck ache up there looking at you.’
I hesitated and then sat down. It was the only time I’d ever experienced a bit of tension in this house and I was glad to be given a way out.
Plus, I thought, later as I went home, I was flattered.
I had been allowed into her confidence.