‘What are you smiling about?’ asked Tina Holmes, the art teacher, who was seated across from him, drinking coffee from a pottery mug that she’d made herself, inscribing it with the words World’s Sexiest Teacher. Miss Holmes had taught Nelson when he was a teenager and once, when he was fifteen, had sat next to him while he was alone in the art room, placing her hand on his lap, perilously close to his penis, which had withdrawn into itself, seeking sanctuary in his pelvic area, like Ustym Karmaliuk retreating into his shell when he sensed the presence of a potential predator.
‘Was I smiling?’ asked Nelson, adjusting his face so it reflected his usual melancholia.
‘There’s nothing more irritating than a boy having some private joke with himself,’ she said. ‘It’s rude, it excludes others and I won’t stand for it.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Holmes,’ replied Nelson, who found it impossible to refer to any of his former teachers by their Christian names, not even Mr Salik, his erstwhile religious studies teacher, who was Muslim so didn’t have one.
‘So what is it, then?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said, taking a long slurp from her mug. ‘I’m not telling you not to smile. I just wondered why you appeared so cheerful, that’s all. You usually look as if you went to the theatre to see Hamilton but ended up at an understudies’ performance of Cats.’
‘Well, the thing is,’ said Nelson, feeling that he needed to tell someone, if only to legitimize the experience, ‘when I was on my way in, I was walking past the playing fields and—’
‘Have you been working out?’ asked Miss Holmes.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Have you been working out? You look quite … fit.’
Nelson swallowed and stared at her, uncertain how to respond.
‘Well, I did join a gym recently,’ he admitted. ‘But I got barred quite early on.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘It was a misunderstanding,’ he said.
‘Were you looking at other men in the changing rooms?’ she asked, leaning forward and smiling lasciviously at him. ‘Do men do that? Check each other out to separate the horses from the ponies?’
‘No,’ he said, looking appalled at the idea. ‘It was women that I was harassing.’
‘Oh yes? What did you do?’
‘I tried to speak to them.’
Miss Holmes laughed. ‘Well, that’s where you made your first mistake,’ she said. ‘You’re very nice to look at, Nelson, but you don’t help your cause when you open your mouth.’
Nelson stared at her, the memory of his unexpected goal vanishing now. He wanted to ask her why she needed to be so unkind, but that would take words and he knew that he would not be able to find any. Instead, he simply looked down at his hands and examined the lines on his palms, as if he’d learned how to read the future and was eager to discover whether he’d live a long life and, if he did, would he find happiness.
At the front of the room, the headmaster clapped his hands together and asked for silence. As conversations came to a halt and all faces turned in his direction, Nelson felt a stab of anxiety at the pit of his stomach. Announcements always made him nervous. They rarely held anything but bad news.
‘I’m afraid I have something rather unpleasant to report,’ said Mr Pepford, looking around at the teachers, who, unlike Nelson, brightened up whenever an unexpected event occurred. A resignation, a sacking, a death. Anything to liven up an otherwise tedious Tuesday. ‘We have a Code Purple in Year 10.’
There was a collective groan from around the room and Malachy Stout, the form tutor for that particular group, smacked his right fist down on the arm of his chair, causing one or two people near him to jump in surprise. ‘Fuck’s sake!’ he roared. ‘Fucking fuck’s sake!’
‘Yes, thank you, Malachy,’ said the headmaster. ‘We don’t need to make a bad situation worse with vulgar language, do we?’
‘Who is it?’ asked Miss Holmes.
‘Sarah Wilmot,’ said the head.
‘What, again? She’s only just back from having her last sprog.’
‘It seems that she has quite the maternal streak. She’s turning into the Mia Farrow of St Thomas’s.’
‘And which poor bastard has got her up the duff this time?’ asked Malachy.
‘That seems to be the subject of some speculation at the moment,’ the head replied. ‘There are a number of suspects in the frame but, as of this morning, Sarah has declined to name her seducer.’
Martin Rice burst out laughing. ‘Her seducer,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘We’re not in a Jane Austen novel, you know.’
‘So I think we should all be on the alert for a certain amount of tension in the Year 10 group over the days and weeks ahead,’ continued Mr Pepford, ignoring this remark but smiling in Martin’s direction to make it clear that they were still besties. ‘The boys are all denying their part in these unhappy events while insisting that they could not be the father as they always use prophylactics. It seems they want to assert their sexual prowess while taking no responsibility for the results of any congress.’
‘Why is it called a Code Purple?’ asked one of the newer members of staff, a young woman, turning to Nelson, who blinked back at her many, many, many times. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘You’re not having a stroke, are you?’
‘It’s called a Code Purple because we don’t know whether she’s having a boy or a girl yet,’ said Martin, leaning his head down between the two, the smell of nicotine causing Nelson to rear back in his seat. ‘Mix blue and pink together and what do you get? Purple. It’ll be Danny Thornton,’ he added, standing up now and shouting over everyone. ‘He’s been putting it about ever since his cousin got to Boot Camp on X Factor.’
‘Daniel is indeed one of the names in the frame,’ admitted Mr Pepford. ‘I’ve made a list of the usual suspects and Sarah’s parents have asked me to interview them one by one. But until we know for sure who the guilty party is, there’s nothing we can do.’
The meeting broke up with the teachers standing around and gossiping among themselves, and Nelson felt relieved when the phone rang in his pocket so he wouldn’t have to join in the chatter. He took it out and looked at the screen before making his way outside to the corridor. It was Achilles calling. He frowned. Achilles almost never phoned.
This, he decided, pressing the ‘Accept’ button, couldn’t be good.
HOW TO SATISFY YOUR HUSBAND
Achilles hadn’t heard a word from Jeremy Arlo since the previous evening at the Churchill Arms. That had been a near facsimile of many other first dates he’d set up, in that the older man had tried to behave as if there was nothing strange about their being together while remaining visibly anxious throughout their meeting. And while Jeremy had either been too polite or too frightened to suggest that anything more intimate take place, Achilles knew from experience that it was only a matter of time before the delicate subject of sex was raised, at which point he could pretend to be shocked and wounded by the misunderstanding while making a few financial demands to maintain his silence.