1
THE ARTIST ARRIVES
The boy'shand was damp and small and gripped like a vice.
Neil let himself be pulled along the pavement, past the hedgerow and the broken railing where sixth-formers smoked after the bell, and through the school gates into the chaos of a first morning. Cars double-parked. Parents in clusters. A woman shouting Phoebe, your packed lunch at a retreating blazer. The September air, new shoes, anxiety, and deodorant that wouldn't survive first break.
Freddie vibrated beside him. Five years old and most of it energy, rucksack nearly as big as his torso, shoes polished to a shine that would last forty minutes. One shoelace already undone. A look on his face like someone about to storm a castle.
‘Dad.’ Freddie tugged hard enough to rock Neil's shoulder. ‘D'you reckon there's dinosaurs at school?’
Neil started to deliver a lecture on extinction timelines, caught himself, and said, ‘Maybe in the library.’
Freddie considered this with the seriousness it deserved. ‘Brilliant.’
‘Although,’ Neil said, ‘if there are, they'll be in the non-fiction section. Between D and E.’
‘What's non-fiction?’
‘True things.’
‘Dinosaurs are true things?’
‘Were. Past tense.’
‘What's past tense?’
‘Something that happened already.’
‘Like breakfast?’
‘Exactly like breakfast.’
‘So breakfast is non-fiction.’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘Brilliant,’ Freddie said again, and pulled harder. The rucksack bounced on his back. His laces trailed on the tarmac. Neil made a mental note, double knot tomorrow, and let himself be towed.
They stopped at the main entrance to let a woman with a double buggy through. Freddie studied the babies inside with the detached interest of a veterinarian examining specimens. ‘They're very small,’ he said.
‘You were that small once.’
‘Was I that bald?’
‘Balder.’
‘That's impossible.’
‘And yet.’
Freddie processed this affront to his dignity in silence. They reached the Year 1 entrance. Miss Greaves stood at the door with a clipboard and the calm that infant teachers either possessed naturally or faked with heroic commitment. She smiled at Freddie. Freddie grinned back. The performance of bravery was so convincing that Neil nearly believed it.
‘Right then.’ Neil crouched to Freddie's level, straightened the collar of his polo shirt, checked the rucksack straps. Adjusted them by three millimetres. Adjusted them back. Noticed a smearof something on the left strap, toothpaste, possibly, and decided this was not a battle worth fighting on the first morning.
‘You'll be grand.’
‘I know, Dad.’ The exasperation of the very young. ‘Can I go?’
