The Hiding Place(9)

“Hey, Marcus, you fucking pussy!”

The cry comes from a group of boys sauntering up the street behind him. Five of them. Year 11, I would guess. They walk toward the skinny boy with the fluid swagger of a gang. Passive-aggressive. The leader—tall, good-looking, dark hair—slings an arm around Skinny Boy’s shoulders and says something to him. Skinny Boy tries to look relaxed, but everything about his posture screams tension and nerves. The rest of the gang forms a loose circle. Preventing escape. Sealing off his route into the school or away from them.

I hang back a little. They haven’t seen me yet. I’m on the opposite side of the road. And of course they don’t know I’m a teacher. I’m just a scruffy bloke in a duffel coat and Converse. I could continue to be that bloke. It’s not officially school hours. We’re not even inside the school gates. And it’s my first day. There will be other days, other times, to sort out issues like this.

I reach into my pocket for my Marlboro Lights and watch as the gang force Skinny Boy against a wall. The nervy smile has fled. He opens his mouth to protest. Leader Boy presses an arm against his throat as one of the gang slips the backpack from his shoulder, and the rest fall upon it like a pack of feral dogs, pulling out books and textbooks, ripping out pages, stamping on his plastic-wrapped sandwiches.

One of them gleefully extracts what looks like a new iPhone. Why? I think. Why do parents send them off to school with this crap? At least in my day the worst thing a bully could steal would be your lunch money or your favorite comic book.

I look longingly at my cigarettes. Then, with a sigh, I slip them back in my pocket and walk across the road, toward the altercation.

Skinny Boy tries to grab his phone back. Leader Boy knees him in the groin and takes it from his associate.

“Ooooh, new. Nice.”

“Please,” Skinny Boy gasps. “It was a present…for my birthday.”

“I don’t think we got an invite to your party.” Leader Boy looks around at his cronies. “Did we?”

“Nah. Must have got lost in the mail.”

“Not a text, nothing.”

Leader Boy raises the phone high above his head. Skinny Boy reaches for it, but it’s halfhearted. He’s got several inches on his tormenter but he’s already defeated. It’s a look I recognize.

Leader Boy smirks: “I really hope I don’t drop—”

I grab his raised wrist. “You won’t.”

Leader Boy twists his head around. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Mr. Thorne, your new English teacher. But you can call me sir.”

A collective murmur runs through the group. Leader Boy’s face falters, just a little. Then he smiles, in a way I’m sure he thinks is charming. It makes me dislike him even more.

“We were just having a laugh, sir. It was only a joke.”

“Really?” I look at Skinny Boy. “Were you having a laugh?”

He glances at Leader Boy and gives a small, slight nod. “Just joking around.”

I release Leader Boy’s wrist—reluctantly—and hand Skinny Boy back his phone.

“If I were you, Marcus, I’d leave this at home tomorrow.”

He nods again, doubly chastised now. I turn to Leader Boy. “Name?”

“Jeremy Hurst.”

Hurst. I feel a small tic flutter by my eye. Of course. I should have realized. The dark hair threw me but now I can see the family resemblance. The hereditary glint of cruelty in his blue eyes.

“Is that all, sir?”

The “sir” is stressed. Sarcastic. He wants me to bite. But that would be too easy. Another day, I remind myself. Another day.

“For now.” I turn back to the others. “All of you, get out of here. But if I see you so much as drop a bit of chewing gum in the future, I’ll be on you like a bad case of chlamydia.”

A couple almost let slip a smile, despite themselves. I jerk my head toward the school gates and they start to saunter away. Hurst stands his ground longest, before finally turning and loping casually after them. Marcus lingers uncertainly.

“You too,” I tell him.

He still doesn’t move.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“You’d rather I let him get away with smashing up your new phone?”

He shakes his head wearily and turns away. “You’ll see.”





5





I don’t have to wait long.

Lunch break. I’m at my desk, writing up some lesson notes and congratulating myself on having got through the morning without boring my classes to death or throwing a student—or myself—out of a window.

As Harry quite rightly pointed out, it has been a while since I last taught. I admit I felt a little rusty. Then I remembered something an old colleague told me: Teaching is like riding a bike. You never really forget. And if you feel like you’re about to wobble or fall off, always remember that there are thirty kids waiting to laugh at you and steal the bike. So keep pedaling, even if you have no idea where you’re going.

I kept pedaling. By the end of the morning I was feeling pretty smug with my own success.

Obviously, this can’t last.

There’s a knock at the classroom door and Harry pokes his head in.