After school, Harrison ran onto the football pitch with the others and started warming up.
‘Knee raises! Higher… higher!’ Mr Porter yelled, demonstrating raises that were almost level with his chest. ‘Faster… faster!’
Harrison scowled as he reluctantly applied more effort. Mr Porter was just showing off to the mums again. At the end of footie practice, they all surrounded him, asking questions, staring into his eyes.
It was annoying, and embarrassing.
Fortunately, Harrison’s mum had never been one of those mothers. She didn’t usually stay for the whole after-school game, but she always got there in time to see some of it and to pick him up safely.
Harrison looked around the edge of the field as Mr Porter instructed them to pick up the pace. There were lots of adults here watching; some of his teammates had the support of both parents. But it was mostly the dads who came to cheer them on as they trained.
Harrison thought about his own dad, who would never be coming here or anywhere else to watch him play footie again, thanks to that stupid, cruel disease. He pushed himself harder still, trying to focus on the burn in his thigh muscles instead of the ache in his heart.
He liked George, he did. And he really liked Romy; she was OK for a girl. But George could never take the place of his dad. It annoyed him when Kane and his mum sucked up to him.
Yes, George had saved Kane’s life at the park, but how many times did you need to thank someone? Marcus Pett’s dad was a fireman, and according to Marcus, he saved people’s lives every week, because that was what firemen did, wasn’t it? It was their job.
Would George or Marcus’s dad go around saving lives if it wasn’t their job? He doubted it. Admittedly, George was off duty that day at the park, but if doctors or firemen saw someone was in trouble, they had a duty to help. Everyone knew that.
His own dad had sorted out I.T. problems for a job, but that didn’t make him any less brave. When it came to dying, he’d kept smiling, and when he held Harrison close, he whispered in his ear that it was his job now to look after his mum and brother.
Harrison wanted to make his dad proud. He wanted to step up and be a man, but it was hard. Since George had come on to the scene, he had been waking up in the early hours with a tight, prickly feeling in his chest. He worried that his dad would think he should have stopped his mum somehow falling in love with George.
He sucked in air, feeling a bit faint, just as Mr Porter’s shadow loomed over him.
‘I said you can stop now, Harry!’ he boomed.
Harrison stopped his manic knee raises and looked around. Everyone else had obviously stopped some time ago. The other boys clustered together and sniggered behind their hands. The adult spectators shrugged their shoulders and grinned at each other.
Heat rushed into his cheeks, and he felt a bolt of heat shoot up into his chest like white-hot lightning.
‘What are you all staring at?’ he screeched, a wave of temper enveloping him in a steaming red mist as his eyes swivelled wildly around the field. ‘Get lost! All of you!’
Mr Porter stepped forward and blocked his path like a man mountain, raising both hands in the air like stop signs, but Harrison dodged around him and ran full pelt back to the changing rooms.
He knew that one of the dads who helped Mr Porter run the team would follow him in, try to talk him down and back onto the pitch. They always did that when someone got upset if they’d been sent off for a bad tackle.
But Harrison was having none of it.
He stuffed his school uniform into his training bag, zipped it and snatched it up off the bench. Then he hot-footed it outside again, narrowly avoiding Linford Byers’ dad, who was striding towards the changing rooms.
‘Harry… hold up!’ Linford’s dad called, but Harrison kept running.
He didn’t know where he was running to. He just knew that anywhere was better than this.
Once he was out of the school gates, he dashed through a series of alleyways, emerging two roads further on. He stopped running then, dropped his bag and leaned back against a red-brick wall, sucking in breath. It crossed his mind that if he suffered from asthma like his brother, he’d probably need resuscitating now.
The awful feeling he’d experienced that day at the park when he saw his brother’s blue face and rolling eyes fluttered up through his chest. He did feel grateful to George for what he’d done for Kane; it was just that…
A small metallic-brown car crawled down the street and slowed to a stop in front of him. The passenger-side window rolled smoothly down and a lady in a headscarf and sunglasses leaned across and beckoned to him. It was hard to see her face properly. He looked up at the sky and wondered why she needed the glasses when it was a dull winter day.
‘Harrison, isn’t it?’ She smiled before he’d even replied. ‘Jump in. Your mum has had a bit of a disaster in yoga class and has asked me to pick you up. I’ll explain as I drive.’
Harrison hesitated for a moment. The warning that had been drummed into him since he could walk played on repeat in his head.
Never get into a car with a stranger.
But this was a woman who said she knew his mum, not a creepy-looking old bloke offering him sweets.
Lately, his mum had seemed more scatter-brained and confused than usual. And he’d overheard his grandma and Aunt Steph talking about her in the kitchen the other day, of course. They were worried about her too and he’d overheard his mum and George saying there had been some kind of fall-out because of it.
So it made perfect sense that there had been a problem and she’d had to send one of her yoga ladies to pick him up.
He bent down further and looked into the car again so he could take a closer look but she looked down to glance at her watch and it was hard to see her face.
Harrison stepped forward and opened the passenger-side door.