The Whisper Man(29)

“You will.”

After they headed off, I waited some more, until I was the only parent still standing there. Finally, Mrs. Shelley beckoned me over. I walked across, effectively summoned.

“You’re Jake’s dad?”

“Yes.”

Jake stepped out to me, staring down at the ground and looking small and subdued. Oh, God, I thought. Something had happened. That was why we’d been left until last.

“Is there a problem?”

“Nothing major,” Mrs. Shelley said. “But I still wanted a word. Do you want to tell your father what happened, Jake?”

“I got put on the yellow square, Dad.”

“The what?”

“We have a traffic light system on the wall,” Mrs. Shelley explained. “For naughtiness. As a result of his behavior today, Jake’s the first of our children to move up to yellow. So not an ideal first day.”

“What did he do?”

“I told Tabby she was going to die,” Jake said.

“And Owen too,” Mrs. Shelley added.

“And Owen too.”

“Well,” I said. And then, because I couldn’t think of anything more sensible to add: “We are all going to die.”

Mrs. Shelley was not impressed.

“That is not funny, Mr. Kennedy.”

“I know.”

“There was a boy here last year,” Mrs. Shelley said. “Neil Spencer? You might have seen about him on the news.”

The name rang the vaguest of bells.

“He went missing,” she said.

“Oh, yes.”

I remembered now. Something about the parents letting him walk home on his own.

“It’s all been very unpleasant.” Mrs. Shelley looked at Jake and hesitated. “It’s not something we like to talk about. Jake suggested that these other children might be next.”

“Right. And so he’s … on yellow?”

“For the next week. If he moves up to red, he’ll have to go to see the headmistress.”

I looked down at Jake, who appeared utterly miserable. I didn’t much like the idea of him being publicly shamed on a wall, but at the same time I was frustrated with him. It seemed such an awful thing for him to have said. Why would he have done that?

“Right,” I said. “Well, I’m disappointed to hear about this behavior, Jake. Very disappointed.”

His head sank lower.

“We’ll talk about it on the way home.” I turned to Mrs. Shelley. “And it won’t happen again, I promise.”

“Let’s make sure it doesn’t. There’s something else too.” She stepped closer to me and spoke more quietly, even though it was obvious Jake would still be able to hear. “Our teaching assistant saw him at lunchtime, and was a little concerned. He said that Jake was talking to himself?”

I closed my eyes, my heart properly falling now. God, not that as well. Not in front of everyone. Why couldn’t things be simple?

Why couldn’t we just fit in here?

“I’ll talk to him,” I said again.



* * *



Except that Jake refused to talk to me.

I tried to coax the information out of him on the way home, gently at first, but after being met by repeated stony silences, I lost my temper a little. I knew it was wrong even as I did, because the truth was that I wasn’t really angry with him. It was just the situation. Irritation that things hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. Disappointment that his imaginary friend had returned. Concern about what the other children would think and how they would treat him. Eventually I fell into a silence of my own, and we walked alongside each other like strangers.

Back home, I went through his book bag. His Packet of Special Things was still there, at least. There was also some reading to do, which I thought looked a little basic for him.

“I mess everything up, don’t I?” Jake said quietly.

I put the papers down. He was standing by the couch, head bowed, looking smaller than ever.

“No,” I said. “Of course you don’t.”

“That’s what you think.”

“I don’t think that, Jake. I’m actually very proud of you.”

“I’m not. I hate myself.”

Hearing him say that was like being stabbed.

“Don’t say that,” I said quickly, then knelt down and tried to hug him. But he was completely unresponsive. “You mustn’t ever say that.”

“Can I do some drawing?” he asked blankly.

I took a deep breath, moving away slightly. I was desperate to get through to him, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen right now. We could talk about it later, though. We would talk.

“All right.”

I went through to my office, and touched the trackpad so that I could look back over the day’s work. I hate myself. I’d told him off for that, but if I was honest, they were words I’d thought about myself quite a lot over the last year. I felt them again now. Why was I such a failure? How could I be so incapable of saying and doing the right thing? Rebecca had always told me that Jake and I were very much alike, and so perhaps the same thoughts were going through his head right now. While it might be true that we still loved each other when we argued, it didn’t mean that we loved ourselves.