The Game (Tom Wood)

SIXTEEN





Andorra la Vella, Andorra

Peter Defraine loved school. He absolutely loved it. He had cried on his very first day because it was the first time he had ever been parted from his mother for any length of time. But that was ages ago and he hadn’t cried since. He was a big kid now. A very brave boy, as his mother often told him. He wasn’t quite sure why he was brave. It wasn’t like school was scary. It was fun. Lots of fun at break times when he played games with the other children, but also fun in the classroom, and not just when he got to draw pictures. Drawing pictures was the best.

Every day he enjoyed learning new words and how to spell them and how to write them down. Every afternoon he told his mother about the new words he knew and she was always so impressed by how clever he was. He was clever. He knew more words than anyone in his class and he knew the most multiplication tables. Some of his classmates pulled faces when he thrust his hand into the air to answer questions. He didn’t get why they did that.

It was almost home time and Peter sat on his chair with his bag packed in front of him and resting on the desk, as did all the other children, while they waited for the clock to tick round to three o’clock. Then they would be dismissed and everyone would rush out of the classroom and down the corridor and out the big doors.

When the teacher told them to go and the other children leapt to their feet, Peter slowed himself down because his table was near the exit and Eloise sat on the far side. They’d held hands once one lunchtime – but didn’t talk – and Peter had eventually got bored and gone to play football. Eloise’s friends had then told him she didn’t want to go out with him any more. He didn’t know they had been going out. He didn’t know what that meant. All he knew was that Eloise wouldn’t even look at him any more and left her place in the queue for the cafeteria and went to the back when he’d tried to play with her hair.

The other children rushed out. Peter slowly put his coat on and slowly looped the strap of his backpack over one shoulder and slowly put his chair on top of the table – why did they all have to do that? – and slowly headed for the door.

Eloise and her friends rushed past him and he was left alone with the teacher.

He felt Mrs Fuentes pat him on the shoulder, and she said, ‘Better luck next time.’

He didn’t understand.



Outside the sun was shining and Lucille Defraine waited for her son, hoping he would be wearing his coat like she asked him to. He argued he didn’t need one because some of his friends didn’t and he was just getting to that age when fitting in was starting to matter more than staying warm. She waited on the pavement outside with the other parents, in the same spot she always waited. She smiled when she saw Peter and he smiled back. He skipped over to her and she pulled him into a tight hug.

‘Ow,’ he said. ‘You’re squashing me.’

She kissed him on the top of his head. ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘You’re silly, not me.’

‘Any particular reason why you’re not wearing your coat?’

He looked away as if by not meeting her gaze she would forget all about it. He said, ‘I learned lots of new words today.’

‘That’s great, honey,’ his mother said, smiling to herself at her son’s attempt at cunning. ‘Why don’t you tell me all about them on the way to the park? But put your coat on first.’



Peter left his coat and tie and his bag with his mother and sprinted to the climbing frame. It was big and painted in bright colours. Peter loved to climb to the top. Some of the other kids his age didn’t climb all the way. They got scared. He didn’t understand what there was to be afraid of. He’d fallen off the climbing frame twice, once grazing both knees and both elbows and once hurting his ankle. He’d cried both times and again when his mother used stinging liquid to clean the grazes. That didn’t stop him going back on it. He didn’t remember what the pain felt like. He’d never fallen from the top before, but he was a whole year older now and it didn’t seem that far down any more. Sometimes he felt like jumping from the top just to see if he could, but his mother always knew when he was thinking about it and would shake her head and give him that look, and he knew he would be in big trouble if he did.

She watched him from one of the benches while she smoked a cigarette and drank coffee. Both smelled horrible. He didn’t know why she liked them. He knew from school that smoking was very bad and he told his mother as often as he could. She always agreed with him, but she still did it. It made her clothes stink. She never smoked inside their home though. She stood on the balcony with the door closed. How good could it be if she had to go outside in the cold to do it?

When he’d finished on the climbing frame he played with some of the other children on the swings, taking turns between pushing and swinging, and then on the roundabout, sometimes heaving and pushing to make it go faster and faster so the girls screamed and he fell away because he couldn’t run as fast as it could spin around, other times hanging on while others spun it, but he never screamed. It never went fast enough to make him scream.

Just like always, it was time to go too soon. Peter pretended not to hear his mother’s calls and instead chased one of the girls up the path and through a crowd of pigeons that all took flight in one big flapping mass.

‘Peter,’ his mother called again.

The girl ran off to her own mother and Peter turned to trudge back down the path.

‘You’d better hurry,’ a man said.

He was big and had short blond hair. He was old like Peter’s mother but not really old like Mrs Fuentes and sat on a bench with a half-eaten baguette of bread across his legs. Peter had seen him before, but he didn’t know where or when. He was smiling and looked a bit like a friendly giant from one of the story books they read in class.

‘You don’t want to make your mother late for work at the restaurant, do you, Peter?’

Peter didn’t know how the man knew his name. He didn’t ask because the man was a stranger.

‘You take care of yourself,’ the man said. ‘You’re a very special little boy. I look forward to seeing you again soon.’

Peter pretended not to hear and sprinted towards where his mother waited.