“Course not.” Jude tilted his neck. “It’s alright to need quiet.”
Alfie glanced up, their eyes meeting across the classroom. Then, as if he’d been holding the question in all day, he asked, “Do you still wake up thinking you can’t breathe?”
Jude’s chest tightened. Part empathy, part memory. “Yeah,” he said after a pause. “I do.”
Alfie looked around the room, gesturing vaguely at the clean walls, the fresh displays. “It’s weird. Being back. Everything looks… normal. Like nothing ever happened. Like they painted over it and moved on.”
Jude nodded. He knew exactly what he meant. The shiny new displays. The silent hallways. The way people clapped and called them heroes, then carried on as if trauma didn’t leave marks that fresh paint couldn’t touch.
But the fire had left marks. On them both.
And though the official report ruled it accidental, a part of Jude still wondered. Still turned it over in his head late at night. If the fire hadn’t been random. If it hadn’t justhappened. If it had been for him. Alfie.
And that, now, was even fiercer. Because it was exactly the kind of thing Callum used to arrange. A scare. A message.Silencing.
He cleared his throat, softened his tone. “Are you seeing anyone?”
Alfie blinked. “What, like… a girlfriend?”
Jude gave a quiet laugh, pushing his glasses up his nose. “No. I meant CAMHS. The mental health support. Or a school counsellor. Anyone you can talk to?”
Alfie shrugged. “My dad sorted something. Some woman. But I dunno… talking’s weird.”
“Sometimes it helps.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Alfie’s eyes narrowed, curious now. “Do you?”
Jude had to give the most honest answer he ever had, “Guess I should take my own advice, shouldn’t I?”
Alfie snorted under his breath.
Jude glanced towards the open classroom door where the corridor beyond had finally fallen quiet, then turned back. “I hear you’ve got a new place lined up.”
“Yeah.” Alfie slung his bag over one shoulder.
“That’ll be good for you. Fresh space. Clean slate.” Jude tilted his head, catching Alfie’s eye. “New family.”
“I ain’t calling FreddieDad.”
Jude chuckled. “I doubt he’s expecting you to.”
Alfie looked as if he might say something else, but the sharp knock of knuckles on the doorframe interrupted him.
“Mrs Turner.” Jude pushed off the desk, unfolding his arms on instinct.
The Headteacher stepped into the room, followed closely by the last person Jude wanted to deal with right then.
Warren Bailey.
But his stomach flipped all the same. Treacherous and pointless.
Hopeless and ill-timed.
“Could Mr Bailey and I have a word?” Mrs Turner gestured between them.
