Still Falling Read online

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘It’s just – some of the kids we’ve had – well, they’ve been handfuls. Drinking, stealing, mitching school. Drugs. Fighting. You name it.’

  ‘I wanted to go to the library.’

  ‘I think she feels – you’re educated and all. She feels a wee bit … you know …’

  ‘I have nine GCSEs,’ I point out, ‘not a flipping PhD.’

  ‘Och, aye, but Sandra and I – we’re more used to …’

  ‘I’ll get drunk and trash my room,’ I offer, ‘if it’ll make her feel more comfortable.’

  Bill laughs and for a long horrible second I think he is going to reach up and ruffle my hair or something. But he stands up. ‘We’ll all get used to each other, son. It’s early days.’ He looks round the walls. ‘I did them magnolia just to clean them up,’ he says, ‘but if you wanted a different colour …’

  ‘It’s fine. Thanks.’

  ‘There’s a good match on. Man U and Arsenal. We’ve got BT Sports.’

  ‘I don’t really follow football.’

  ‘Rugby, is it?’ I can see him trying to cover up the thought, snobby wee get. ‘Oh, well, kick-off ’s at three if you change your mind.’

  I don’t change my mind.

  Esther

  I spend too much of my weekend thinking about Luke Bressan. Some of the thoughts embarrass me. I lie on my bed, hugging Mac, my ancient cuddly dog, and listening to Taylor Swift. All the boys in her songs make me think about Luke.

  I try to distract myself with baking. I make gingerbread men, and their lovely spicy smell draws Mum into the kitchen, smiling in approval, which she hasn’t done much of lately. But when the time comes to decorate them I hesitate. That was always Ruth’s job: I baked, she iced. We had quite a production line going for Youth Fellowship socials and church cake sales. Back in my sad old life.

  Only, looking back, it doesn’t seem that sad. At least I always had somewhere to go and someone to be with. If only Mum and Dad weren’t at the same church.

  I know if I texted Ruth she’d be glad to hear from me – we never fell out or anything. It’s just – well, I didn’t know how to tell her I was dumping Jesus: I knew she’d want to analyse it all and probably pray – and I get enough of that at home. So I just kind of walked away, and I don’t really think I can just walk back again. Even though I miss her.

  The gingerbread men sit on the cooling tray all evening looking faceless and forlorn. I could bring them into school – Toby would love them – but it’d look pathetic and mumsy.

  On Sunday morning Mum and Dad go to church. They’ve stopped asking me to come. They’ve said they respect my misgivings, and doubt is part of faith, and they know teenagers often rebel against their parents’ beliefs. They’ve said I may think I’ve given up on God but God hasn’t given up on me. I think Pastor Greg must have given them a leaflet or something: What to do when your child won’t go to church.

  I might as well have been there because they relive every moment of the service just so I know what I’m missing.

  It’s quite a relief to get back to school on Monday.

  Luke

  I take my timetable out of my blazer pocket. RE. It’s the class before lunch and I’m hungry, and tired in that dozy, cotton-wool-headed way that is my medication’s way of reminding me it’s inside me, doing a not-wholly-successful job of stopping my brain going haywire. I’m half-tempted to skive, except that’d be playing into the hands of everybody who thinks someone like me won’t be able to cut it at a school like this, so I hack my way through a clump of shrill brats and find the right room.

  The crowd milling round outside the door looks familiar, and my chest flutters. We must do RE in tutor groups. In subject classes I can just be an anonymous new boy, but with this lot there’s no hiding from being the loser who lost total control of himself on the first day. It’s Wednesday now but they still eye me nervously, like I’m going to start frothing at the mouth and rolling round on the floor. Maybe even now they’re checking me out, wondering what the likelihood is of me getting them out of a boring RE class.

  But tutor group also means Esther. She isn’t here yet but when the teacher – that old baldy bloke who was praying for about sixteen hours in assembly on Friday – herds us into the room, I keep a seat for her. There’s the usual turning round and chatting, so it looks like people don’t take RE any more seriously here than they did at Belvedere.

  Esther dashes in, and her face floods with colour when she sees Baldy.

  ‘Sorry – um, sir. I had to wash paint off my hands.’ She holds up her hands as if for proof, but the teacher, sorting through bits of paper, hardly glances up, just tells her to sit down quickly.

  I catch her eye and she slides into the seat beside me. She has her hair in stubby pigtails and her cheeks are still red.

  ‘Now, lower six B,’ Baldy says in a voice totally different from his praying one, ‘Miss Carr is off today so it falls on me to be taking you.’ He beams round as if we should all be praising God about this. ‘Now, this term you’re doing Ethics.’

  On and on he drones. Something about the sanctity of life. He manages to squeeze in even more clichés than in his prayers. The classroom is boiling. A fly flings itself at the dusty window. My eyes prickle and the effort to stretch them open seems hardly worth it for this.

  Beside me, Esther looks equally bored. In fact she looks sort of distant. Not like herself at all. There are streaks of purple paint on her hands. I wonder what she’s painting and if it’s more revealing than her doodles. I have a sudden anger that she gets to draw and paint and I don’t – but giving up art was my own decision.

  Baldy waffles on about every person being unique and valuable and special to God. The boy across the aisle is texting. Jasmine and Cassie look at an iPad under their textbook. Esther is staring down at her notebook, her dark lashes semi-circles on her cheeks. They look soft, not sticky and mascaraed like most of the other girls’.

  ‘You! Yes, you – what’s your name?’

  ‘Me? Luke.’ Baldy doesn’t seem satisfied. ‘Bressan.’ Still looking at me expectantly. ‘Sir.’

  ‘And is it too much to expect a modicum of attention?’

  Well, yes, frankly, when what you’re talking about – last time I tuned in – is such a load of clichéd wank.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And you have joined us from …?’

  ‘Belvedere High,’ I mutter.

  Someone giggles.

  ‘Ah yes. Quite. Well, the standards of Belvedere High are not the standards of Mansfield Grammar. Permit me to point this out to you, since nobody else seems to have done so.’

  Bastard.

  Just to annoy him I focus raptly on what he is saying – euthanasia, or abortion or something. My head turns to concrete with the effort. There isn’t enough air to go round, and someone in front has farted. At Belvedere people used to fart out loud and laugh and wave it around but of course that doesn’t happen at Mansfield, where the standard of farting is so much higher.

  I prop my head on my hands. A yawn stretches out.

  ‘Mr Bressan!’ Baldy swoops down. ‘Am I boring you so much?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘So what is your opinion on this? I’m sure it’s worth sharing.’

  ‘My opinion? On …?’

  ‘Abortion,’ he snaps. Beady brown eyes bore into me.

  ‘I’m in favour.’ My voice comes out louder than I expected.

  Esther gives me a surprised look. A giggle punctuates the air.

  ‘In every circumstance?’

  I bet he is wishing someone had aborted me seventeen years ago. I haven’t exactly been keeping up with the discussion, but I’m not too dozy not to know he’s trying to catch me out.

  ‘Obviously not.’ I try to mimic his tone. ‘But if the mother doesn’t want it, yes. If she isn’t going to be able to give it a life.’ I do feel qualified to have an opinion on this.

  ‘She should have it adopted, not k
ill it,’ says someone behind me.

  Girls get involved, all smarmy voices.

  ‘Oh, but how could you give up your baby?’

  ‘Better than murdering it. At least it can go to someone who wants a baby.’

  ‘They don’t just get adopted, though.’ I recognise Jasmine’s confident voice. ‘I saw this programme about it. They get shunted around in foster care for years. By the time you get them they’re not even babies and they’re, like, traumatised.’

  I frown at my desk. This isn’t the way the conversation should be going.

  ‘Well.’ Baldy’s voice is very confident. ‘I know Social Services do their best.’

  He’s looking at me. I swear the bastard is looking right at me. And he’s the pastoral care bloke, isn’t he? That means he must know all about me. I can’t let him go there. In front of everyone. An anger I’ve sat on for months surges through me. Sweat pricks my palms. My chest tightens.

  ‘You know fuck all.’

  At first I don’t realise the words have actually come out of my mouth. Or that I’m standing up, hand curled into a fist. Breath huffs down my nose. Baldy’s face is a few inches from mine. I can smell his breath.

  Someone gasps. Baldy’s face patches red and purple. The air in the room kind of solidifies. It’s almost like the split-second before a seizure when everything feels different but you don’t get time to wonder why.

  But no seizure delivers me from this. I wish I could walk out, but there’s nowhere to go.

  Baldy recovers first. ‘Sit down, Mr Bressan.’ His voice is high-pitched but controlled. ‘As I said, the standards of this school are clearly not what you’re used to.’

  I sit down. I wait to hear what they’re going to do to me. Swearing at teachers happened every day at Belvedere – but I was always the good boy there. I don’t want to be the bad boy here. I just want to be invisible. Baldy tells us to make notes from Chapter 3, and everyone settles down. Esther hunches over her work and pulls her chair round so she has her back to me.

  Baldy escapes the moment the bell goes. He doesn’t speak to us again except to tell us to finish the notes. I bend down to lift up my bag and when I straighten up, Esther has disappeared too. People drift out, not looking at me.

  I lean back in my chair.

  Toby stops in front of me, his pinkish face very earnest. ‘I think Esther’s upset because you were so rude to her dad.’ His reedy voice is uncertain.

  I don’t get it. ‘Her dad?’

  ‘Yeah. Mr Wilson. Didn’t you know?’

  I shake my head. ‘Of course not.’ We know nothing about each other, really. But now – she must think I’m some kind of psycho.

  Toby gives me a sympathetic grimace. ‘I’ll go and find her and explain,’ he offers.

  ‘I should –’

  He hesitates, then seems to make up his mind. ‘We sometimes go to that new juice bar on the main road – turn right at the school gates.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I grab my bag and run.

  Esther

  Toilets – sixth-form centre – canteen – even library – zoom through my mind as places I can’t bear to be.

  And I mustn’t bump into Dad.

  My legs carry me out of the main building, round by the mobiles, down the back drive and right out of the gates. Straight onto the main road and into Jus, the juice bar where I’ve started hanging out a bit at lunchtimes with Toby when he’s not at chess club.

  I slip into a corner seat. A waitress with pink hair and a pierced lip takes my order. I’m too wired to choose, and she gets impatient, so I go for boring orange, even though Toby and I have been having a competition to see how many weird fruit combinations we can come up with. All the while my brain flashes messages: Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it!

  Yeah, like that’s possible. I keep replaying the scene: one minute a boring RE class, with that undercurrent of discomfort I always feel when I have to be in the same room as Dad in school, and the next something ugly and violent. Luke had looked like – someone I didn’t recognise. Someone who was about to thump my dad.

  ‘Esther?’

  I glance up. ‘Oh.’

  Luke’s hands stroke the top of the chair opposite. I try to forget the fantasies I’ve had about those long fingers. And the fact that I’ve just seen them curled into fists.

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  I hump a shoulder. ‘If you want.’

  He pulls out the chair and sits. His hair is rumpled, like he’s been raking his hands through it. I want to reach across the table and smooth it back, kiss his eyelids, run my finger over his lips.

  No. I don’t.

  The waitress comes up and Luke orders a carrot, ginger and apple juice. A detached part of my mind thinks, Toby’d like that, I must tell him. I have a sudden worry that Luke might be gay, like Toby. Maybe being able to choose cool fruit combinations under pressure is a gay thing. Not that Toby’s ever actually said it, even to me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Luke says.

  The cold inside me starts to melt. A tiny bit.

  ‘I … I didn’t know he was your dad.’

  ‘I thought you were going to hit him. Just – out of nowhere. It was horrible.’

  ‘I know.’ His juice arrives, sludge-coloured. He lifts the glass, then sets it down again. His lips are taut. ‘He – I suppose he touched a nerve.’

  I try to process this. What had it even been about? ‘So – are you, like, adopted or something?’

  He sighs. ‘I’m in foster care. I didn’t want people to know.’

  ‘Why not?’ I’ve never met anyone in care before. Well, Mihai’s adopted – he came here from Romania when he was three, but I suppose that’s different.

  ‘I just want to be the same as other people,’ he mutters. ‘Blend in.’

  I wrap my hands round the cold glass. ‘That’s going well, isn’t it?’

  He gives a short unamused laugh.

  ‘So how come you’re in care?’

  ‘Oh.’ He bites his lip. ‘My mum died.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ But I’m glad too. It’s such a respectable reason. I’ve seen the same TV programmes as Jasmine. I’ve seen the hopeless alcoholic parents and their flotsam and jetsam kids. I’m so glad that’s not Luke’s background.

  ‘How long – I mean when did she…?’

  ‘January.’

  The waitress bustles up again. ‘Do yous want anything else?’

  ‘When do we need to be back at school?’ Luke asks.

  ‘Oh – kind of in five minutes,’ I say regretfully.

  His hand uncurls itself from round his glass and lies on the table between us. One finger twitches. More than anything I want to stretch out my own hand towards it. January. That’s only nine months ago.

  ‘So what are your foster parents like?’

  Parents? Is that the right word? Or is it carers? This is a bit of a minefield and I definitely don’t want to touch a nerve like Dad.

  Dad’s head of pastoral care. He must have known. Then I think back to the scene in the classroom. Of course he knows. That’s why he let Luke off with it.

  I wonder what else he knows.

  I realise Luke’s talking. ‘Sandra and Bill.’ His face relaxes. ‘It’s fine. They don’t bother me; I don’t bother them. It’s a bit like being a lodger, I suppose.’ He somehow manages to make me feel childish and pathetic for still living with my parents at the age of sixteen. ‘Come on,’ he says, standing up. ‘We should get back.’ I think he might hold out his hand, and if he does I will take it.

  But he doesn’t.

  Luke

  Brendan leans back in the faux-leather sofa, making his small paunch more obvious. Let himself go a bit. Better not get hooked on Bill’s Saturday fry-ups if I don’t want to go the same way. We’re in a café for our monthly meeting. Brendan’s idea. I think it’s meant to make me feel blokey and matey and adult. It doesn’t make me feel any different but it makes him look like a sad bas
tard, having coffee with a seventeen-year-old boy. He’s too young to be my dad. Maybe he looks like he’s grooming me.

  Or maybe it looks like exactly what it is: try-too-hard social worker and monosyllabic teenager-in-care. Client. Service user. All those stupid words they use to make you feel like you’ve chosen to have Social Services creeping all over you.

  Still, I’ll say this for him: it’s a lovely café. All exposed brick and old photos. It’s called Coffee Spoons. I know that comes from a poem. I don’t suppose Brendan does.

  ‘So?’ he asks. His goatee beard trembles with anticipation.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Come on, Luke. The new school. Sandra and Bill. Everything.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Brendan raises disappointed eyebrows. There’s a bit of scurf in one. I scratch my own eyebrow.

  ‘It’s good. They’re nice.’

  ‘Luke – you got an A star for English GCSE. You didn’t get that saying good and nice.’

  I sigh and blow foam across the top of my cappuccino. What else is there to say? Sandra and Bill are doing a very satisfactory job. Why can’t he just tick a box saying so and leave me alone? He must have other kids to see.

  ‘I’m sure the new school must be – challenging?’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Luke. Please? Give me just a wee bit more?’

  I sigh. Then try. ‘It’s like a different planet. From Belvedere I mean.’

  He nods. Waits. Like he’s probably been trained to do.

  ‘They have music lessons. And prefects. And houses in Donegal. And they carry their oboes round the way people in Belvedere carried knives.’

  Actually there had been just that one incident with the knife in Belvedere. But I like to remind Brendan of it whenever he implies I’m a soft sap who can’t cope.

  ‘You can have music lessons. There’s a special project called Fosteri–’

  ‘I don’t want bloody music lessons.’ It’s enough coping with the normal lessons. But that is what I don’t want Brendan to know. Mansfield is the best school in town; I proved I could get in and now I have to prove I’m up to it. Even without Helena pushing and helping. I never think about Helena, so I rush on. ‘I just mean – they play rugby. It’s like Eton or somewhere.’