If he thought his ordeal was behind him when he came back to school three weeks later, he soon realised he was sadly mistaken.
After his ‘fall’, which is how both his father and the school referred to it now, he’d told the janitor who found him at the bottom of the bell tower that he had lost his balance and although the man had looked sceptical, the school seemed happy to accept his explanation without further questions.
‘Could I go to a local school now?’ He’d asked his father. ‘There are people from the village and I’d be closer to home and—’
‘Impossible.’ His father had blustered. ‘I work away too much and there’s nobody here to look after you.’
‘I’m thirteen.’ He protested. ‘I don’t need looking after.’
‘Not up for negotiation. It’s inconveniencing me enough you’re back now.’
It took some time before his injuries had healed to the extent he could return to St Mark’s. After breaking his right leg and fracturing his left arm, he was still on crutches.
His father sent his luggage to school separately at the weekend and he got the six o’clock train back down on the Monday morning, preferring to do that as opposed to arriving the night before to get ‘re-accustomed’, as his father had suggested.
There were still four months to go until the end of the academic year so he was sent back to the same class as before the accident, Form 3A.
On that first morning back and after registering at the school office, he hobbled into the classroom and felt cheered that the first person he saw was Kelvin. Even better, there was a spare seat next to where Kelvin now sat.
As he made his way across the classroom, the hum of conversation dropped and all eyes focused on him. When he was a few steps away, Kelvin picked his bag up from under the desk and placed it on the vacant chair next to him.
At that moment Mr Sherwin came into the class and instructed a boy at the front to vacate his seat.
‘Now you don’t so he didn’t have as far to limp,’ the teacher said in a jolly manner.
At break time, he made sure he stuck close to Kelvin when the class emptied. He moved much slower because of his leg and tapped Kelvin on the shoulder.
‘What do you want?’ Kelvin snapped when he turned around.
‘I just… I just wondered if you were around at lunchtime?’
Kelvin looked around the busy corridor and swallowed.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not around during break time or lunch time or any time for that matter. Get it?’
He nodded, flabbergasted. Kelvin walked away but after a few paces, he turned around again, his angry expression now regretful.
‘The Panthers gave me a choice,’ he said in a low voice, his eyes darting around to check who might be watching. ‘I took the coward’s way out. I’m sorry.’
And then he was gone.
During the first couple of weeks back, he slowly caught up with his schoolwork again. Mr Sherwin had sent work home throughout his time off and that had helped him ease back into his lessons again.
In fact, lesson time was easy. Breaks and lunchtimes and the evenings were by far the worst.
He had spotted the Panthers gang marauding around the school grounds and he knew, from their shouts and nudges, that they had spotted him, too.
It was exhausting, constantly being on one’s guard. He never relaxed, not even at night when he slept in a dorm quite apart from where the Panthers and the other older boys boarded.
But their reach was long.
One night he climbed into bed, his body aching and heavy, longing for the temporary release of sleep, to find his bed soaking wet. When the other boys started laughing and someone snapped on the lights, he saw his saturated sheet was stained yellow. The urine had soaked through to the mattress.
During the day he was on high alert, never walking anywhere before checking out the surroundings. Once he was out in the open, journeys took three times as long, a combination of his injured leg and the fact he stopped often to check behind him and all around him, especially in places where people could easily hide.
This constant surveillance, paired with his physical injuries, exhausted him.
Despite this vigilance, on his third day back, the Panthers ambushed him when he turned the corner into the quad.
‘You really must be more careful and watch where you’re going,’ one boy said, standing so close their shoulders touched. ‘Clumsy oaf, falling down the stairs like that.’
Sniggers from the rest of the group.
His heart pounded harder when the tall, blonde boy pushed his way to the front.
‘I want to know why you came back at all.’ He pushed his face closer. ‘Why didn’t you just curl up and die, or run away like a coward… like your mother?’
He lifted his chin in disdain and for a moment, the boy braced himself to throw his body weight back, certain he was about to be headbutted.
But after a guttural noise, a large blob of gob hit his left cheek, just below his eye.
Every day after that, the tall boy spat on him, sometimes without saying a word. As the first couple of weeks went on, he found himself relieved at the act because he knew, after that, he could get on with his day.
But at the end of lessons, anxiety gripped him like an icy hand around his throat the second the bell sounded. He felt sure that on several occasions, he’d seen Kelvin glance sympathetically in his direction.
It was difficult, on crutches, to skulk around until most people were back in lessons and to use the longest routes around the school to avoid the busiest areas. At the end of his first week back, he was last out of history class. He made his way steadily down the corridor, keeping his eyes on the double doors at the end. The corridor was dim and his crutch made a tapping nose on the tiled floor.
As he drew closer to the exit, he suddenly felt disorientated, unsure of which way to walk. He stopped and leaned against the wall, shaking, gasping for air. His crutch fell to the floor with a clatter as his heart hammered with sickening irregularity against the wall of his chest.
It was his first panic attack and one of many. That night he telephoned his father.
‘I’m struggling, Father. They’re giving me a hard time here.’
He heard his father speak to someone in the background.
‘Sorry, I’m still at the office. What did you say?’
‘Could I come home, find another school? I’m struggling here, not quite fitting in, I’m afraid.’
His father’s laugh was hard and hacking.
‘The school maketh the man, mark my words. If you give up when the going gets tough you’ll achieve precisely nothing in life.’
Someone spoke again at his father’s end.
‘It’s just… I didn’t tell you everything, about the accident, I mean. It wasn’t really what I said… a fall, I mean.’
‘My meeting’s about to start,’ his father interrupted. ‘Look, you’re due for an interim home visit in a weeks’ time. We can chat then.’
It was true the principal had agreed he could take a few weekend home visits for a while, to help ease him back into the routine following his long absence.
‘Bye, Dad,’ he said faintly but the silence told him his father had already ended the call.
Things did improve slightly when he discovered a surprising oasis in the middle of all the danger; he found a new passion for the library.
His previous aversion to reading disappeared almost overnight when he began to devour books, his favourite being in the non-fiction genre, during the difficult lunchtime period and often after school.
He found he was particularly enthralled by books about World War II, in which he knew his great-grandad, an army doctor, had served his country. He sat for many hours in the relative peace and warmth, feeling safe amongst the myriad of bookshelves.
Mrs Dunmore, the school librarian, soon got to know him by name and made a point of setting aside any new books she thought might pique his interest.
One day, he spotted a book on Mrs Dunmore’s desk. He stared at the title. Still in its plastic shrink wrapping, it had been marked for immediate return to the publisher. An elastic band secured a white note that bore Mrs Dunmore’s handwritten words: ‘Unsuitable for this age group. Do not resend.’
While she was stamping and categorising new books over the other side, he sauntered by the desk and slipped the book inside his rucksack.
He’d been skipping eating tea in the main hall for a few days now. He soon got used to the hunger pangs and he didn’t mind the solitude. At home, he’d been used to his father retiring to his study until late – no interruptions allowed, his father always said, ‘unless your hair is on fire’ – he sat alone, in the lamplight of the lounge and read the book from cover to cover.