MY PHONE RINGING brought me back to myself.
“Sir?” It was Erin. “The neighbour on the other side saw a girl running off in the opposite direction. A teenager, long blond hair, denim shorts and white T-shirt.”
“Lena. Of course.”
“Yeah, sounds like it. You want me to go and pick her up?”
“Leave her for today,” I said. “She’s had enough. Have you managed to get hold of the owner—of Henderson?”
“Not yet. I’ve been calling, but it’s going straight to voice mail. When I spoke to him earlier he said something about a fiancée in Edinburgh, but I don’t have a number for her. They may even be on the plane already.”
I took the cup of tea in to Josh. “Look,” I said to him, “we need to get in touch with your parents. I just need to let them know that you’re here, and you’re OK, all right? I don’t have to give them any details, not right now, I’ll just tell them that you’re upset and that I’ve brought you here to have a chat. That sound OK?” He nodded. “And then you can tell me what it is that you’re upset about, and we’ll take it from there.” He nodded again. “But at some point, you are going to have to explain the business about the house.”
Josh sipped his tea, hiccupping occasionally, not quite recovered from his earlier emotional outburst. His hands were wrapped tightly around the mug, and his mouth worked as he tried to find whatever words he wanted to say to me.
Eventually, he looked up at me. “Whatever I do,” he said, “someone is going to be upset with me.” Then he shook his head. “No, actually, that’s not right. If I do the right thing, everyone is going to be upset with me, and if I do the wrong thing, they won’t. It shouldn’t be like that, should it?”
“No,” I said, “it shouldn’t. And I’m not sure you’re correct about that. I can’t think of a situation in which doing the right thing will make everyone upset with you. One or two people, maybe, but surely if it’s the right thing, some of us will see it that way? And be grateful to you?”
He chewed his lip again. “The problem,” he said, his voice trembling again, “is that the damage is already done. I’m too late. It’s too late to do the right thing now.”
He cried again, but not like before. He wasn’t wailing or panicking; this time he cried like someone who has lost everything, lost all hope. He was in despair, and I couldn’t bear it.
“Josh, I must get your parents here, I must,” I said, but he clung to my arm.
“Please, Mr. Townsend. Please.”
“I want to help you, Josh. I really do. Please tell me what it is that’s upsetting you so much.”
(I remembered sitting in a warm kitchen, not my own, eating cheese on toast. Jeannie was there, she sat at my side. Won’t you tell me what happened, darling? Please tell me. I said nothing. Not a word. Not a single word.)
Josh, though, was ready to speak. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. He coughed and sat up straight in his chair. “It’s about Mr. Henderson,” he said. “About Mr. Henderson and Katie.”
Thursday, 20 August
LENA
It started as a joke. The thing with Mr. Henderson. A game. We’d played it before, with Mr. Friar, the biology teacher, and with Mr. Mackintosh, the swimming coach. You just had to get them to blush. We took turns trying. One of us would go, and if she didn’t succeed, then it was the other person’s turn. You could do whatever you liked, and you could do it whenever you liked, the only rule was that the other person had to be present, because otherwise it wasn’t verifiable. We never included anyone else; it was our thing, mine and Katie’s—I don’t actually remember whose idea it was.
With Friar, I went first and it took about thirty seconds. I went up to his desk and I smiled at him and bit my li
p when he was explaining something about homeostasis and I leaned forward so that my shirt gaped open a bit and bingo. With Mackintosh, it took a bit more work because he was used to seeing us in our swimming costumes, so it wasn’t like he was going to go mad over a bit of skin. But Katie got there in the end, by acting sweet and shy and just a little bit embarrassed when she talked to him about the kung fu films we knew he liked.
With Mr. Henderson, though, it was another story. Katie went first, because she’d won the round with Mr. Mac. She waited until after class, and while I was packing away my books really slowly, she went up to his desk and perched on the edge of it. She smiled at him, leaning forward a bit, and began to speak, but he pushed his chair back suddenly and got to his feet, taking a step backwards. She carried on, but halfheartedly, and as we were leaving, he gave us a look like he was furious. When I tried, he yawned. I did my best, standing close to him and smiling and touching my hair and my neck and nibbling my lower lip, and he yawned, really obviously. Like I was boring him.
I couldn’t get that out of my head, the way he’d looked at me like I was nothing, like I wasn’t interesting in the slightest. I didn’t want to play anymore. Not with him, it wasn’t fun. He just acted like a dick. Katie said, “Do you think so?” and I said I did, and she said all right then. And that was that.
I didn’t find out that she’d broken the rules until much later, months later. I had no idea, so when Josh came to see me on Valentine’s Day with the most hilarious story I’d ever heard, I messaged her with a little heart picture. Heard about your bae, I wrote. KW & MH 4eva. I got a text message about five seconds later saying DELETE THAT. NOT JOKING. DELETE. I texted back, WTF? And she texted again. DELETE NOW OR I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL NEVER TALK TO YOU AGAIN. Jesus, I thought. Chill.
The next morning in class, she ignored me. Didn’t even say hello. On our way out, I grabbed her arm.
“Katie? What is going on?” She virtually shoved me into the loos. “What the fuck?” I said. “What was that about?”
“Nothing,” she hissed at me. “I just thought it was lame, all right?” She gave me this look, one I’d been getting from her more and more, like she was a grown-up and I was a child. “What made you do that, anyway?”
We were standing at the far end of the bathroom, under the window. “Josh came round to see me,” I told her. “He said he saw you and Mr. Henderson holding hands in the car park . . .” I started laughing.
Katie didn’t laugh. She turned away from me and stood in front of the basin, looking at her reflection. “What?” She pulled her mascara out of her bag. “What exactly did he say?” Her voice sounded strange, not angry, not upset; it was like she was frightened.