The flat did not resume. The kitchen had the shape of a room in which a phone call had happened and no one said the thing the phone call was about.
Later that evening, when Freddie was asleep and the flat was the particular kind of quiet that had nobody else in it, Neil returned to the essays.
He wasn’t marking. He’d finished hours ago, before Diane rang. The green pen was still on the table. The stack of Year 9 Romeo and Juliets sat at his elbow, ticked and commented and dated.
He pulled one from the middle of the pile. Turned it over. The back was blank, the school letterhead faint in the top corner. St Bede’s High: English Department. A lined page asking to be used for something other than what it was for.
He pressed the nib to the paper and wrote _Dear Dad_ at the top.
Then sat looking at it.
_Dear Dad._ Two words that had never belonged to him, not as an address for a letter, not as the start of a sentence that went anywhere. He’d never written to his father in his life. There’d been no reason; they lived twelve miles apart and saw each other at Christmas and on birthdays and that was the shape of it, and the shape had been drawn by somebody else.
He crossed out _Dear Dad_ with two hard green lines. Wrote _Dear Neil_ underneath. Then, smaller: _aged fifteen_.
That one he could write.
_I don’t know if you’ll read this. I don’t know if I’m writing it to the boy who gave up the drawing or to the man who’s trying to get it back. I think I’m writing it to the part of you that was told to stop looking._
_You were right to look. You were right about the shoulders. You were right about the word disgraceful and the drawer and the silence. You were right, and you were fifteen, and the room was bigger than you. That’s all. The room was bigger. It isn’t now._
The pen was shaking. He wasn’t sure whose hand it belonged to.
He didn’t sign it. He didn’t re-read it. He folded the Year 9 essay in half, green-pen side in, and walked it across the kitchen to the recycling bin under the sink. Hesitated with the lid open. Then put it back in his pocket instead.
On the Friday, Neil walked past Mrs Webb’s office heading to Year 9 second period. Her door was open. She was on the phone. She was saying, in the voice she used for conversations that were not going to be reported anywhere: ‘...and I appreciate your concern, Mr Prentice, but I would ask you, with respect, to be very precise about what you are raising as a safeguarding concern and what you are raising as a personal view. Because the two are different things and this office is only authorised to deal with one of them.’
A pause. The voice on the other end of the line, inaudible but pitched to a tone Neil recognised from his own years of parents’ evenings: the tone of a sentence already regretted.
‘Good. Then I’ll make a note, Mr Prentice, that your concern has been withdrawn. I’d suggest, again with respect, that if youwant to raise a further matter you put it in writing to the governing body and I will ensure it is responded to through the appropriate channel. Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon.’
She put the phone down and looked up and saw Neil in the doorway.
He had not intended to be in the doorway.
The look lasted under a second. She did not beckon. She did not nod. Back to her computer screen she went, composure intact.
Neil walked on.
Later, in the staff room at quarter to three, Sue Dhillon sat down opposite him with a cup of tea and did not look at him and said, to her own tea: ‘Howard Prentice rang the office this morning. Sophie Prentice’s dad. He was asking questions. Janet in the office said the word _inappropriate_ was used three times. I don’t know what about. I know Webb was in that office for three quarters of an hour and when she came out she was drinking her coffee a degree colder than usual.’ Sue stirred her tea. ‘I don’t think it was about nothing.’
‘No.’
‘No.’ Sue looked at him for the first time. ‘You let her handle it, love.’
The phone vibrated. Mum.
He let it ring three times. On the fourth, he picked up.
‘Neil.’ Her voice. The neutral register.
‘Mum.’
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘You’re not.’
‘Good. I wanted to... I’ve been meaning to ring. Since the party.’ A pause. ‘I wanted to talk about your situation.’
