Just this.
He was already lying.
6
THE STUDIO
A week of controlled demolition.
Nothing had collapsed.
That was the problem.
At school, they reverted. The nods returned, courtyard, corridor, the four-second exchanges that had been currency for weeks and now carried the freight of a Friday night neither mentioned.
Neil taught. Marked. Took notes in meetings. The performance held. Underneath, his body replayed the sofa, the kiss, the hands, the sounds Rory'd made, in a loop that rendered everything else irrelevant.
On Monday he stood at the whiteboard explaining active versus passive voice, and the word active triggered a flash, Rory's hand wrapping around both of them, the grip, the specific slick pressure of two cocks in one fist, and he lost his place. First time in years. He stared at his own handwriting. The ball was kicked . He couldn't remember what came next. The class waited. Twenty-seven faces and one gap where Jake Hargreaves had been sent to the head for an incident involving a protractor and a dare.
‘Sir?’ Lily Adders. Front row.
‘Fine. Yes. Passive voice.’ He tapped the board. ‘What's wrong with this sentence?’
‘It doesn't say who kicked the ball,’ said Toby Marsh. Quiet, from the corner. His second voluntary contribution in three weeks.
‘Go on, Toby.’
‘It hides the person. The ball was kicked. By who? You have to wait. Like whoever kicked it doesn't matter as much as the ball.’
‘That's exactly right. Passive voice hides the agent.’ He wrote WHO DID IT? on the board. ‘Every sentence you write, ask that question. Who did it? Who's responsible? Don't hide them.’
He did.
On Tuesday, Freddie brought home a painting from art. A tree, six colours, roots thick at the base, a word painted into the trunk in unsteady purple letters: BRAVE.
‘Mr Cavanaugh said we could paint a word in the roots because the big mural's going to have words too. So I picked brave because it's the best word.’
‘It's a good word.’
‘Rory says brave doesn't mean not being scared. It means doing it anyway.’ The frank, searching look of a child repeating something he sensed mattered. ‘What are you brave about, Dad?’
He didn't answer properly.
He never did.
‘Parking in Tesco's on a Saturday.’
‘That's not brave. That's just driving.’
‘You've never tried to park in Tesco's on a Saturday.’
Freddie considered this. ‘Mr Cavanaugh said he was brave about looking after his brother when Kieran was little. He said being brave about people is harder than being brave about things.’
‘He said that in art class?’
‘Lily was upset. Not my Lily, the Year 10 Lily. And Mr Cavanaugh was talking to her. And I was listening. I'm a good listener.’
‘You're an exceptional eavesdropper.’
