‘MR HARPER,’ SAID the headmaster. ‘You come with me.’
I looked at my friends and saw four faces staring back at me like I was the Chosen One. I was being torn away from them and it was becoming apparent that it was me who was going to take most of the fall for Bertie. Which was, of course, the way it should have been.
My brain was blazing. I now felt exactly like I had when I was fourteen. I was the same person, all those months of hard work had gone out the window as I regarded the world with cold eyes. I felt the headmaster by my side and whereas I should have felt intimidated, I actually felt nothing.
I was taken out of the office and into the room next door, a room that I had never seen the inside of before. It was a conference room with a big meeting table and a load of high-backed chairs all around. Sat at the far end like the Godfather was a fat woman wearing a blouse that was absolutely horrendous. I took an instant dislike to her. Not because of her clothes but because of the way she looked at me. She looked at me like I was a victim.
‘Richard,’ the headmaster said calmly. ‘This is Miss Bowler. And I’d like you to have a little chat with her.’
I thought she might have been a detective. The headmaster went to close the door behind me.
I sat down at the far end of the table, keeping my distance from Miss Bowler, still having no idea who she was.
She grinned at me and I thought her mouth was going to rip apart at the edges.
‘Hello,’ she said, her voice all waterlogged and flabby. ‘I’m Sylvia.’ Her voice was horrid and she had a terrible double chin. I’m not at all judgemental ordinarily, but something about this woman really gave me the creeps. ‘Do you know why I’m here?’ she asked.
I shook my head.
‘Elucidate,’ I said sharply. It was a bit too acerbic for me. The monster was growing inside.
Her eyes narrowed when I said that.
‘I’m here to help you,’ she hissed.
‘Are you a counsellor?’
‘Yes. I’m a psychotherapist.’
I sneered inwardly.
‘How many A levels have you got?’ I said cuttingly.
She fixed my gaze. I’m never this confrontational and I could feel myself breaking new ground. But I didn’t like it, I wasn’t being a nice boy.
‘I don’t have any A levels because I got my degree as a mature student,’ she said, thinking that she had regained her composure. She should have regained her salad.
I smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll never get any A levels either because we do the baccalaureate here. Because we have a lot of American kids, you know?’
‘Yes.’
It was obvious that I had offended her because I had let her know loud and clear that I was laughing at her idiocy. I tried to make it up.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘How can I help you?’
But my remarks had struck a nerve.
‘You make fun of me because I didn’t have the opportunities you have. But let’s take a look at facts. No, I don’t have any A levels but then, you killed an innocent creature.’
She sort of had a point. Apart from I hadn’t physically killed Bertie.
‘Look, I didn’t mean anything by asking about your credentials.’ I was on a roll. ‘I’ve read some Freud,’ I lied.
‘What did you think?’ Her guard was up. She was being exceedingly unprofessional.
I shook my head.
‘I haven’t really read any of that stuff. It’s not science, is it? I mean, in a hundred years’ time, people will look back at people like you in the exact same way that we look back now on the people who thought the world was flat. You think you know it all but you don’t. People will laugh at you because your evidence doesn’t follow the rigours of the scientific method.’ I cursed myself for saying it because I didn’t really mean it and also because I was being very rude. I immediately apologized and asked if we could start again. I also lied and told her that I didn’t really think such awful things about psychotherapy and that I sometimes said things to show off. She liked that because I was scratching beneath the surface.
‘Tell me what happened on Saturday morning.’
I went through the story of Bertie, telling her that it was just an accident.
When I was finished, Sylvia looked at me with condescension.
‘Tell me about your parents.’
I sighed a little and went through the story just to keep her happy, making sure that she knew that I had fully forgiven them for what they had done.
‘Thank you,’ she said at last. ‘Listen, I’m going to the coffee machine. Would you like anything?’
‘I don’t like tea or coffee,’ I said.
‘What about a can of Coke?’
‘Oh, my parents don’t like me drinking carbonated drinks,’ I lied again. I like lying to people for whom I have no respect because it’s funny.
She left the room and I was on my own. I considered, but only for a second, what I had said about my parents. About how I had forgiven them for my humiliation. I have forgiven them. I never tell them, but I love them. Normal teenagers never tell their parents that they love them, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t.
Sylvia returned and waddled back to her chair. She was carrying a plastic cup of coffee, from which rose a snake of steam.
‘Would you like to hear what I have to say about you?’
‘Sure,’ I said. I really did want to hear. It would be amusing for someone of my intellect to hear someone of her intellect judge me.
‘I think that you have forgiven your parents. But you haven’t forgotten. You think that your fellow pupils still look at you and make fun of you behind your back because you were once part of a broken home.’ She looked at me as though she was clever. She thought she had impressed me.
In fact she had done the opposite. She was plain wrong. I freely admit that my parents’ temporary separation did mess me up, but not any more. The scars will always be there, of course, but scars don’t actually hurt, do they? I decided that this woman had embarrassed herself for long enough so I started to make fun of her. I looked at the desk, pretending that she had struck a chord. I was play-acting. I can guess what you’re thinking. You might be thinking that I was being arrogant, but I wasn’t. Consider who was wrong: me, because I was being cynical, or her because she thought she had all the answers? I absolutely admit that I was being very, very horrible to Sylvia but then I didn’t ask for help, and she didn’t know me, so why did she think that she could just waltz into my life and ‘cure’ me of whatever it was I had? I know I was being harsh, but I didn’t care.
‘It’s OK, Richard, I’m here to listen.’
She really did say that, I’m not making it up. And do you know what she did next? I was dumbfounded. She took an orange ball from her bag, got out of her seat, put the orange ball on the table in front of me, walked back to her seat and sat down. Let me just reiterate: this was an orange ball, not a piece of fruit. She then looked at me and said something so incredible that, as soon as she said it, I couldn’t wait to tell my friends so we could have a good laugh at the stupid fat bint.
She said,’ Peel the orange, Richard.’
‘I’m sorry?’
She made the motions of somebody peeling an orange. ‘Peel the orange.’
I had to nip this in the bud straight away.
‘Look, Sylvia, I have to tell you this.’ I picked the ball up. ‘This is an orange ball. I don’t know what you mean, but I’m not going to pretend to peel a ball as if it’s a piece of fruit.’ I couldn’t exactly have said it any clearer.
She wrote something down in her book.
I put the orange ball back on the table.
‘We’ve had a good talk today,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you next week.’
She went back to her book. This was the end of this session.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ I asked.
‘Of course you can, Richard.’
‘Um, this is awkward, but, you know you said you’ll see me next week?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does that mean that, sorry, that I’m . . . not . . . going to get in trouble for killing the bird?’
‘I’ll see you next week,’ she said.
I left the room and the headmaster was waiting outside.
‘Take this home with you, Mr Harper,’ he said. He was holding an envelope. I took it from him and tried to look timid.
‘Sir,’ I said. ‘How’s Craig?’
‘His parents are coming to collect him. He’ll be fine.’
I smiled a little.
‘Can I just say something?’ I said.
‘What?’
I looked at the floor.
‘You know I’m sorry about Bertie, don’t you, sir?’
I was serious that I was sorry about Bertie being dead – of course I was sorry, I’m not disaffected. But that didn’t change the all-important fact of the matter; that, although I was sorry about Bertie, when I said I was sorry to the headmaster I only said it because I was making fun of him.