He turned back to the table. Started gathering his work. Unhurried. His back to Neil. The curls against his neck. The line of his shoulders under the shirt.
Neil stood there. Notes meaningless.
He walked out.
The crack came the following Thursday. Second week of October. Rain hammering the windows.
As Neil walked into the staff room at quarter to eleven, Rory alone by the counter. His travel mug on the worktop, a paper cup beside it with Neil written on the side in biro, both untouched. His face wrong. Nothing a stranger would catch. He was standing, holding onto a coffee he wasn't drinking and a second one he hadn't handed over. But the energy was off. And when he looked at Neil, the half-smile didn't arrive.
‘Coffee?’ Flat. Offering by rote.
Neil hesitated. The staff room was empty. The rest of the building absorbed into mid-morning lessons. Rain against the windows in irregular bursts.
Neil took the cup. Drank from it without looking at him.
Then, against every protocol he'd spent weeks building: ‘You alright?’
Rory's hand stilled on the pot. His eyes found Neil's, surprised, almost, to be asked. Then he let out a long breath and kicked the base of the counter. Not hard. But he needed to hit something.
‘Between the mural deadline and the new Year 7 class being a nightmare and trying to keep tabs on Kieran while he figures out what comes after sixth form…’ He ran both hands through his hair, pulling it off his face. ‘One of those weeks.’
‘Kieran. Yours?’
‘Brother. Year 13. Started September.’ Rory poured coffee, drank half standing, and leaned against the counter. Tighter than the usual lean. ‘Good kid. Smart. But he's eighteen and he's got a girlfriend now, Carol, and the combination of hormonesand freedom and me trying not to be his dad while basically being his dad is...’ He stopped. Shrugged. ‘A lot.’
Basically being his dad.
‘Our mum wasn't…’ He stopped again. Started over, choosing his words with a care Neil hadn't heard from him before. ‘She wasn't able to look after him. Dad was long gone. So it was me or the system. I was twenty-two. Kieran was eight.’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Yeah. Barely knew how to feed myself, let alone a kid. First year was chaos. Proper chaos, not the interesting kind I was recommending to you in the reprographics room. The kind where you burn every meal and the fire brigade knows your address.’
‘How many fires?’
‘Three. One my fault. One was Kieran's science experiment. And one was the toaster, which I maintain was a manufacturing defect.’
‘Was there an inquest?’
‘For the toaster. The toaster died. I held a small funeral. Kieran read a eulogy.’ The smile came back, thinner. ‘Second year was less chaos. By the third I'd worked out you could batch-cook bolognese and freeze it and that counted as parenting.’
‘That does count.’
‘Tell that to the social worker who opened my fridge and found six containers of bolognese, a bottle of vodka, and nothing else. She wasn't impressed.’
‘What happened?’
‘She came back a month later and the fridge had vegetables in it. I'd bought a cookbook. Fifteen-Minute Meals. Changed our lives. The recipes were took forty-five minutes minimum. But having instructions gave me something to follow. I didn't know how to parent. I knew how to follow instructions.’
Neil's chest ached.That's exactly what I do.The folders. The colour-coding. The systems built not because they were efficient but because they were followable.
‘There were weeks I nearly rang social services myself,’ Rory said. Staring at the counter now, not at Neil. ‘Because I thought he deserved better. Someone with their shit together. Someone who didn't have paint on their clothes and an overdraft and a fridge full of bolognese and alcohol.’
‘But you didn't ring.’
‘No.’ His gaze dropped. The paint in the creases, the permanent stain that soap couldn't reach. ‘Because the alternative was a stranger And I'd rather be a shit guardian than let my brother be raised by someone who didn't know he's afraid of the dark but pretends not to be, or that he won't eat peas unless they're mushy, or that even now at eighteen he needs the landing light on until he falls asleep.’
The landing light. The peas.
