Like This, for Ever

54




Tuesday 11 March

‘BARNEY!’

Barney stopped at the door of the changing room and turned to face his PE teacher. ‘Well played today,’ said Mr Green as he caught up with the line of boys. One by one they disappeared inside the changing room, leaving Barney and Mr Green alone in the corridor.

‘Thank you, Sir.’

‘Some good passing. You’re a generous player, you don’t hog the ball.’

Barney smiled. He’d tried, once, to explain that it was watching the patterns the ball made on the field that gave him the buzz, far more than the ability to put the ball in the back of the net, and the recipient of his rather long-winded explanation had glazed eyes before he’d finished his third sentence. He hadn’t tried since. Let people think he was a generous player.

‘I was wondering if you wanted to join the élite training squad on Tuesday and Thursday evenings,’ Mr Green said.

Mr Green’s élite squad was made up of the best players in their school, the adjacent secondary school and several other local schools. Jorge, Lloyd and Harvey were all part of it, Sam was desperate to be asked.

‘Thank you, Sir, I’ll ask my dad.’

From beyond the changing-room door came the scuffling, banter and high-pitched giggling of several young boys in a confined space, free of clothes and supervision. Mr Green hammered on the door. ‘Quieten it down, you lot,’ he yelled.

The noise abated fractionally, then picked up again.

‘It finishes at eight, which is quite late,’ said Mr Green, who was leaning against the door, one arm outstretched. ‘But I can drop you off afterwards. I usually go on to the gym after football and I drive very close to your house. It won’t be a problem.’

‘Thanks. But my dad might be able to pick me up,’ said Barney. ‘He doesn’t work in the evenings any more.’

‘Really? I thought you told me he always worked late on Tuesdays and Thursdays?’

Barney shook his head. For the last couple of weeks, since Oliver Kennedy had briefly disappeared, his dad had been coming back at his usual time and spending the evening at home. He’d rearranged his tutorial responsibilities, he’d explained, when Barney had questioned him. ‘Not for a few weeks now,’ he said.

‘Mr Green, it might not concern you that the boys in your care have ripped the hooks off the walls in there, but my English class and I are finding it rather difficult to concentrate.’

Mrs Green had appeared from the nearest classroom and had the look on her face that usually meant she’d been watching you talking for several minutes when you should have been finishing off your maths. Only this time, Mr Green was getting the brunt of it.

‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Green,’ he replied. ‘I know how you hate your normal routine to be disturbed.’

Uh-oh, something wasn’t right between those two. Normally when teachers addressed each other as ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ they did it in a half-jokey way, as if they were really saying, Yes, we both know we don’t normally talk like this, but we’re pretending as we’re in front of the kids and actually it’s a bit of a laugh, isn’t it? These two weren’t joking at all; Barney could almost see the words coming out of their mouths like little silver darts. Stab, stab, stab. Barney hadn’t much experience of married behaviour, but even he could spot the undercurrents of a row.

‘I’d better get changed, Sir,’ he said, stepping forward, ready to go past Mr Green and into the changing room. In fairness, it was pretty loud in there.

‘And I’d better nail the hooks back on to the wall,’ said the PE teacher, following him in without another word to his wife.

Barney was the last in the changing room, some five minutes after the second-last boy to leave. It was always a mistake, being one of the stragglers. If he were first to finish, which he usually tried to be, it was relatively easy to walk out of the door, but if the room was almost empty then no matter how hard he tried, he absolutely could not leave it without tidying up. Never a pleasant experience, picking up sweaty, muddy socks, even underpants sometimes, and putting them in the right places, but better by far than spending the rest of the day with the mess preying on his mind.

By the time he finished, it was at least two minutes after the bell had gone: he was going to be late for his last class of the day. Barney hated being late almost as much as he hated mess. One last look round the room, a last sock to be folded, hands washed and he was out.

The door to his classroom was half open; he got to it and stopped. Mrs Green was in there, alone, talking on her mobile phone. Barney caught her last words, just as she heard him at the door.

‘I’m not sure I can wait much longer,’ she said, and then, ‘Promise me?’ She turned on the spot, phone clamped to her ear. ‘Gotta go,’ she told the caller and cut off the call. ‘Hi!’ she said to Barney.

Barney opened his mouth to say sorry, wondering why, of the two of them, Mrs Green was the one who looked guilty. Actually, not so much guilty as sad.

‘Were you tidying the changing room again?’ she asked him.

No one was supposed to know he did that. He couldn’t remember telling anyone at school he did that. He always waited till everyone was gone. He shrugged.

‘I need my science folder,’ he said, glancing across the room to his desk.

‘Better hurry up then,’ she said.

Barney crossed the room, grabbed his folder and made for the door again. Mrs Green watched him every step of the way. She often watched him. Sometimes in class, if he glanced up suddenly, he saw Mrs Green watching him, just staring at him, not in an angry way, in fact a bit like the way his dad looked at him sometimes. He never saw her looking at any of the other children in the same way. Just him.

‘Barney,’ she said, as he was about to disappear. He turned back.

‘If Mrs Lafferty tells you off for being late, tell her I asked you to stay behind.’

‘Thanks, Miss,’ said Barney, because it would be impossible to explain that it was the being late, not the telling off, that bothered him.

‘Although I guess it’s the being late that bothers you. Go on, you funny boy. Get a move on.’