Joe is clutching my hand now. ‘I do have some feelings, you know. I made a mistake, and I’m sorry. But it helped others – all of those other victims.’
I pull my hand out of his. People are looking at us from the adjoining table. I throw down a twenty-pound note to cover our drinks and walk off, through the square.
‘It’s Tom. He’s in trouble.’ Even now, some weeks later, my mother’s taut voice, sprung with fear, haunts me. I hear it in my dreams. I hear it when I wake up. And I hear it when I’m meant to be concentrating in meetings, even though I know that that particular ‘Tom emergency’ has been sorted.
Until the next one.
Ed and I had rushed down to Devon of course. It was just after that shock encounter with Carla at the gallery. I left quick, sharp messages of instructions to my secretary and junior partners while Ed drove, his mouth set in that thin line which said, ‘For God’s sake, can’t you forget about work while we sort out our son.’
I know what he meant. I’ve told myself the same thing over and over again, especially when I see another woman with a son of Tom’s age walking past us in the streets or queuing up for Madame Tussauds.
But Tom would never stand like that in a line. He would be worried about whether our feet were in the ‘right’ position. He would be asking the woman behind us why she had a mole on her chin and how long it had been there and why she hadn’t had it removed. Children like Tom don’t always realize when they’re being rude.
It would cause an awkward explanation on my part and a stepping away on the part of the imaginary woman with the mole. Naturally it’s difficult having an almost-teenager who behaves like a toddler. But I can deal with that.
It’s the violence that’s not so easy. Take this scar on my forehead. It’s from when Tom once accidentally hit me with a saucepan. I hadn’t put the offending item back in its ‘proper’ place in the kitchen, so he charged past me to put it right. And that mark on Ed’s arm? That’s because Ed once tried to play football with his boy, but Tom’s poor spatial awareness skills (which can sometimes go with the label, apparently) made him frustrated.
So he bit Ed.
We’d been trying our best to ‘put strategies of structure in place to address challenging behaviour’ (according to one rather useful piece of online advice). But as he’d got older and bigger – even taller than me, despite his age! – he got worse. More violent. And now the time had come to do something about it. That much was clear when, after a five-hour dash to Devon that night, we had an emergency meeting at our son’s school the next morning.
‘He flew at his teacher with a pair of scissors.’
The head’s exhausted tone – usually more sympathetic – made me realize we’d reached the end of the line. Tom had been allowed to go to the local school, despite his special needs; partly because of our local connections (I had been there too, and Mum is on the board of governors), and partly because we’d argued that we wanted him to be in mainstream schooling. If he was with others ‘like him’, Ed and I had argued, Tom wouldn’t have any role models to help him improve.
‘We’ve tried, but we simply can’t cope with this behaviour any more.’ The head spoke as if Ed and I had picked up the scissors ourselves.
‘But she’s all right, yes?’ Ed was just about controlling himself.
‘That depends,’ said the head curtly, ‘on whether you count five stitches as being acceptable.’
‘Tom was hurt too,’ snapped Ed.
‘That was self-inflicted.’
I’m used to arbitrating between clients. Between clients and barristers too. But when it comes to my own family, my skills seem to fly out of the window. Stick to the facts, I told myself, just as I told my clients. Stick to the facts.
‘Can you tell us exactly what happened?’ I asked. ‘Mum told me there had been an argument in Geography.’
Those disapproving eyes swivelled back to me. ‘The children were asked to cut out maps. Tom was fussing about his outline. He said he needed more time to get it right. The teacher told him that his was perfectly acceptable and that they needed to finish before break-time. There was an argument, during which he picked up the scissors and nearly stabbed her. Luckily she stepped to one side and they went into the desk.’
‘Hang on. You said she needed stitches!’
‘She did.’ The head was regarding Ed as though he was no better than Tom. ‘She fell in her attempt to avoid the scissors and hit her head.’
‘He didn’t cut her then? It was an accident.’
‘That’s not the point.’ The head’s voice was rising. ‘It could have been fatal.’
‘So that explains it!’ My relief sang out. ‘It wasn’t because he wanted to hurt her. He was hurting inside because his outlines weren’t right. Don’t you see?’
There was a shake of the head. ‘No, Mrs Macdonald, I don’t.’
‘You know Tom needs to get everything right. It’s part of his condition.’
‘That’s as may be, but I won’t accept any kind of abuse towards my staff. You’re lucky we didn’t call the police.’ The head stood up, indicating the interview was at an end. ‘I’m sorry, but you must remember what the educational psychologist said the last time this happened.’
Briefly, I thought back to the day Tom had got too near a girl in the playground. (Problems with personal space again.) She’d pushed him away and he’d pushed her back. She’d fallen awkwardly and cracked her wrist. Full blame, rather unfairly in my view, had fallen on our son.
‘It’s another example of his behaviour.’ The head was sounding weary now. ‘We can’t keep Tom here any more. It’s time to consider a special school. One that can deal with his … his issues. In the meantime, Tom is suspended.’
Of course, Mum stepped in. She’d been through ‘challenging behaviour’ before with Daniel. This time she would get it right. ‘We’ll look after him at home until they sort something out,’ she insisted when we returned, drained and worried after the meeting.
‘Where is he now?’
My mother bit her lip. ‘Upstairs. He’s pushed something against the door so I can’t open it. But he’s talking, so I think he’s all right.’
A cold shaft of terror caught at my heart. I could see him climbing out of the window. Cutting his own wrist with scissors. Hanging from the ceiling …
Together Ed and I raced up the stairs. ‘Tom, it’s Mum. Are you all right?’
No answer.
‘Tom.’ Ed tried again. ‘We understand what happened at school. Just let us in.’
He could try all day, but Tom wouldn’t give in.
‘I don’t want to talk.’
Ed tried again. ‘Do you know that your teacher has had to have stitches?’
‘She didn’t have to,’ he retorted quickly. ‘She shouldn’t have fallen.’
Her fault for falling. My fault for upsetting Daniel at the end. Ed’s fault for not telling me about the trust. Joe’s fault for killing Sarah.
Who knows where blame really lies? It’s never as simple as it seems.
Desperately, Ed and I attempted to keep our lives together while sorting out Tom’s educational future at the same time. It wasn’t easy to find a school that could deal with Tom’s needs. But, once more, an online help group, along with the consultant, pointed us in the right direction. Some parents, we later found out, take ages to find ‘the right education package for children with autism spectrum disorders’. We were lucky.
There was a ‘good school’ (according to reviews) about an hour from my parents. It offered flexible boarding, which would take the strain off us all, yet also made us feel guilty. But something had to be done. So we both went down to visit it. There were children like Tom. But many were more challenging. One teacher was wiping faeces off the wall of a corridor as we passed. The smell clung to us, suffocating us in the knowledge that this was the world we were condemning him to.
‘How can we send him to a boarding school?’ wept Ed on the way back. The traffic on the snarled-up motorway appeared to reflect our own personal impasse.
‘You went to one.’
‘That was different.’
‘Yours was posh, you mean.’