LITMIR.BIZ

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little more London than the local one, but I still didn’t know him.

      ‘I don’t think so, Mr Bennett,’ I said. He made a snorting sound, then muttered something under his breath. All I caught was, ‘for you …’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

      Bennett did a sort of ‘nya nya’ thing, then shook his head and walked off without saying anything else to his son. Tyler’s thumb had snuck into his mouth during this exchange, something I hadn’t noticed him do before. I attempted a friendly smile.

      ‘Come on, buddy,’ I said. ‘I’m no happier than you are that the holidays are over. Let’s go in.’

      As I got to the building I turned, and my heart seemed to jolt out of its place. Bennett was standing across the road, staring right at me.

       ELLIOTT

      I felt on edge all morning after that encounter. I’d dealt with aggressive parents before, as I said, but there was something about him that had really chilled me. There had been the hint of a smile there, like he’d been contemplating actions further down the line that he would enjoy very much, and I wouldn’t. And why did he think he knew me?

      At breaktime I looked out for Clare, Tyler’s class teacher. I wanted to know whether she had ever been on the other end of the Tyler paterfamilias’s displeasure.

      She wasn’t about – maybe on playground duty. I went to make myself a coffee. There was a sink full of dirty mugs. With a sigh I cleaned one as best I could with hot water and something that had once been a dish scourer, then decided to be the bigger person and do the lot. I was up to my elbows in suds when Zoe appeared next to me.

      ‘You’re really good at that,’ she said in an earnest-sounding voice. ‘Would you like to be our Sink Monitor this week?’

      I mouthed, ‘Piss off,’ at her and threw a bit of foam. She laughed and flicked it away.

      ‘So …’ I said after a moment. I grinned and waggled my eyebrows.

      Her cheeks flushed.

      ‘What?’ she said.

      ‘Tell me all about Tabitha then,’ I said, nudging her in the side. She looked down, failing to hide the way her eyes instantly lit up.

      ‘What do you want to know exactly?’ she said, getting out one of the clean cups and reaching into her handbag for one of her horrible green teabags that tasted of garden mulch.

      ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’ve kept so quiet about it, I don’t know anything. I feel like …’ I bit off the end of my sentence.

      ‘What?’ she said, serious now. It was my turn to blush.

      ‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘It just seems weird not to tell me.’ I stopped, then said quietly, ‘That …’

      ‘That I’m a lesbian?’ she said at the top of her voice. Several heads shot up from the various battered chairs around the room. Mary Martinson, who had been a teaching assistant here for about a thousand years as far as I could tell, was staring with her mouth actually open from the sofa in the middle of the room, a plastic bowl of salad in her lap.

      I didn’t really know what to do. I hadn’t intended to force Zoe to out herself like that in the middle of the staffroom. I made myself a cup of coffee I no longer wanted. I could hear her breathing heavily next to me as she reached for the packet of Value ginger nuts that some kindly soul had left for all to eat.

      I must have looked as awkward as I felt. Zoe touched my arm. I looked at her and she said, ‘Why would I?’ in a quiet voice.

      ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s none of my business. But I thought it might just have come up in conversation, like, I dunno, I talk about Anya.’

      Zoe nodded and gestured for me to come over to a quieter bit of the room with her. There were only a couple of minutes left of break and I had things to do, but this felt important, so I followed, with my unwanted coffee.

      ‘I don’t know why I did that just now,’ she said, taking a sip of her tea. She flashed me a quick, vulnerable smile. ‘I’m still kind of finding my way, in all honesty.’ I waited, and she continued. ‘I was with a bloke for years. Bit of an arsehole. One day I’ll get shitfaced and tell you all about it.’ She puffed out her cheeks and sighed, then continued, in an even quieter voice. ‘I didn’t expect to fall in love with a woman, but it seems I have.’

      When she put down her mug I gave her a little mock punch on the arm.

      ‘Sensible decision,’ I said. ‘Women are lovely. Blokes are hairy, horrible things.’ Her loud laugh turned heads again.

      ‘I knew I could rely on you for a deep, philosophical conversation,’ she said. ‘Thanks for helping me work through this complex issue.’

      ‘Anytime, doll,’ I said in my best old-time American accent.

      She laughed and then her expression turned serious again.

      ‘And you?’ she said. ‘Everything okay with you guys?’

      I looked back at her, puzzled and not a little discomfited.

      ‘Me and Anya, you mean?’ I said. ‘Why?’

      She looked flustered and gave a slightly forced laugh. ‘Oh, nothing, nothing,’ she said. ‘Just with leaving early and all.’

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘She was just under the weather, no biggie.’

      ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Right,’ then, with a bright smile, ‘Anyway, things to do, kids to corral!’

      I didn’t manage to see Clare until afternoon break because I was on lunchtime playground duty.

      I watched Tyler for a bit at lunchtime. He was part of a football game that mainly involved screaming at the top of his lungs and denigrating the prowess of his team mates. I found myself wondering again about his home life so, when I saw Clare in the staffroom, I asked if I could have a quick word.

      Clare was a small, serious woman in her forties. She had a couple of kids and a husband who, as far as I could gather, did as little as he could in their upbringing. She often seemed to be sighing at her mobile phone and generally had a careworn sort of air about her.

      We sat down on the sofa. She peeled the lid of a tub of yoghurt and began to spoon the contents into her mouth in small, neat movements.

      ‘So,’ I said, ‘tell me about Tyler Bennett’s dad.’

      She made a face and then said, ‘What do you want to know?’

      I told her what happened that morning at the school gates. She sighed and put down her yoghurt and spoon.

      ‘Well, he’s an ex-soldier,’ she said. ‘His name’s Lee. Emily, Tyler’s mum, died of breast cancer.’

      ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know.’

      ‘Hmm.’ She fixed me with a serious look, and her next sentence came out in a rush. ‘I probably shouldn’t pass this on,’ she said, ‘but he’s an ex-offender. I think there were some issues with the mother after he came back from Iraq. Possibly PTSD or something like that. But whatever went on, they had got over their differences when she got sick.’

      ‘Right,’ I said thoughtfully.

      ‘I do find him a bit prickly,’ she went on. ‘But I think he’s just trying to cope on his own, so I generally cut him, and the boy, a bit of extra slack. Can’t be easy for them.’

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘Can’t be easy at all.’

      As I made my way back to the classroom I thought about poor little Tyler and the big tough man who was trying to be both mum and dad in that sad household.

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