So, I forced myself to keep away from her sleeping form, huddling into the duvet, trying not to think about how soon it would be before I had to get up again.
I reached for sleep, telling myself to clear my mind. I counted down in eights from four hundred, a trick I’d read on some website for insomnia, and got all the way beyond zero, but my mind still buzzed and sparked like a faulty strip light. I kept thinking about Lee Bennett, and Anya’s weird mood lately.
Almost inevitably, however much I tried to yank them back to the present, I found my thoughts drifting back in time.
Mum, sitting in her favourite chair, fags on one arm and a glass of lager on the table next to her, gusts of husky smoker’s laugh at The Vicar of Dibley.
Our windows had got broken a couple of times, on the estate. But we didn’t summon twenty-four-hour glaziers who charged two hundred quid an hour. We boarded it up until a man who knew a man came and sorted it as a special favour to Mum.
When the alarm went off, it felt as though I’d only been asleep for minutes. Parts that hadn’t ached previously now hurt – elbows, the other knee, and, weirdly, my neck. Anya had to leave early to get into London and when I came out of the shower she was almost ready to leave. She was drinking a cup of coffee and staring out of the window.
She was dressed in a silky blouse and black trousers, her glossy red hair in a ponytail and a slash of bright red lipstick standing out against her pale, freckled skin. For about the millionth time I wondered what on earth I did right to end up with someone like her.
It was only after she had gone that I remembered my broken bike. I’d intended to leave with her and get her to drop me at school. I didn’t know anything about buses here. It took a good half an hour to walk and I was meant to be in early today for the weekly staff meeting.
I was sweating profusely by the time I got to school.
The meeting was almost over as I came into the staffroom and I caught Zoe’s eye. She pulled a doomy face and sliced a finger across her neck.
‘Elliott,’ said Jackie Dawson, our head teacher. ‘So glad you could join us.’
I smiled sheepishly. ‘Sorry. I had an accident on my bike.’
I knew it was a mistake the second the words left my lips because I saw Jackie’s eyes sweep over my sweaty, but clean, light blue shirt and grey trousers. I didn’t look remotely like a man who had just taken a tumble onto a road.
‘I mean,’ I added quickly, ‘I came off it last night and, er, it took me longer to get to school this morning.’ I found myself holding up my scratched palms as proof.
Jackie liked me, but for some reason this morning her expression was cooler than I would have expected. She nodded after a moment and said, ‘Okay, well I’m sorry to hear that. But can we have a quick word before you go off to your class?’
‘Sure,’ I said and something uneasy twitched inside me.
Meeting over now, staff scattered to collect belongings and down the dregs of drinks.
I followed Jackie to her office, which was down a corridor in a part of the school. She gestured for me to close the door and my worry increased.
Jackie had been the head here for ever, as far as I could tell. Late fifties with curly brown hair, she had a mumsy softness about her appearance that belied how tough she really was.
‘I won’t keep you, Elliott,’ she said. ‘But I have to tell you that a parent has made a complaint against you.’
I let out a heavy sigh.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I bet I can guess who. Tyler Bennett’s dad, by any chance?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Look,’ I went on, leaning forward in my seat. ‘It really was nothing. This guy just took against me, I think.’ I paused. ‘Didn’t like the cut of my jib.’
Jackie was blank-faced. ‘He said you pushed Tyler and then you were rude to him.’
A hot blast of outrage. ‘That’s ridiculous!’ I said. ‘I didn’t even touch Tyler.’
As I said it, I remembered this wasn’t strictly true. But it was such a gentle push to his shoulder, so it hardly counted.
‘Are you sure?’ said Jackie, her expression now softer. She wasn’t enjoying this any more than I was.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Absolutely. It’s something and nothing.’ Part of me wanted to tell her about the bike incident and the brick. But that just made Bennett’s allegation sound as though it had more merit, so I kept quiet.
She looked relieved. ‘I knew it would be, Elliott, but unfortunately we have to follow procedures, as you know, when this happens. I’ll get you to write up exactly what occurred and I’m going to have to inform LADO too.’ She was referring the Local Authority Designated Officer, appointed to look into any issues to do with safeguarding.
This was such bullshit. What a waste of time for everyone concerned.
Trying to quash the weariness I was feeling from my voice, I said, ‘Of course. I’ll get onto it.’
I had a strong desire to slink out of the office and go straight home but I forced myself to head down to my classroom. My hands were throbbing and my back hurt. Today was not shaping up well so far.
Halfway down the corridor I saw Zoe, who made that face again.
‘You okay?’ she said.
‘Yeah. Tell you about it later.’
I got my class started on their English project, which this term was all tied up with a Viking theme, hence the visit to the museum. They were writing letters to their families at home as Viking settlers.
Ryan Reece, the class wag, shouted out, ‘Sir? Do Vikings rape and pillinge?’ to which I gently put him right on the word ‘pillage’ and got round any tricky issues by telling them that some historians felt their bad boy reputation had been exaggerated a little.
It was hard to focus though, that morning. I kept thinking about the complaint that Lee Bennett had made. Writing it all out was just going to be a drain on my time. And what for? It was such a pointless sort of disagreement, over nothing. I was angry with myself too. I knew that if I hadn’t been sarcastic with him, he wouldn’t have taken such grave offence.
It was something that used to occasionally get me in trouble at school, this need to make the smart comeback, both with teachers and other pupils. I knew that I did it, yet somehow I still never managed to rein it in. This was the first time I’d had a complaint like this though.
While the class had a rare five minutes of quietly getting on with their work, I opened a document and started to make a note of what had happened yesterday morning. I felt uneasy when I remembered what I said to Jackie, that I hadn’t physically touched Tyler at all. Was it too late to say so now? I made a decision. I’d include it in the report and deal with the fact that I remembered differently when I gave it to her.
The other thing I intended to do was find out what sort of car Lee Bennett drove. Because if he was in such a strop that he was prepared to knock me off my bike for it, I might have an even greater problem than I first realized.
At the end of the day I lurked in the playground on the guise of checking an outdoor display of bamboo fencing that last year’s upper school had made. Tyler was late coming out and I wondered if he had been given a telling-off as he crossed the playground, all slouch and sad-sack trousers. His thick, pale ankles with pooled off-white socks ended in a pair of non-regulation trainers. He held his trendy but impractical messenger bag so low that it scuffed along the surface of the playground.
I pretended I was looking around but kept one eye on the gate for any signs of Lee. And there he was. Standing just outside and smoking a fag, which he extinguished and chucked onto the pavement. His expression didn’t change when he saw his son,