Hide & Seek-Chapter Five

It was the kind of day so hot you could see air wobbling up off the black road. We trudged past Parimal and his mum by Noddy’s van at the school gates. They stared into their ice-creams. You could tell they weren’t really looking. Parimal’s ran like sour milk onto the path. It was the Friday after the Friday after the Sunday we lost Daniel. An awful lot of days. Maybe, like some other people, they were having trouble seeing us. Or maybe they felt embarrassed we’d caught them scoffing Noddy’s, which we weren’t supposed to on account of Miss Burton had a homemade ice-cream stall in aid of the trampoline.

Balloons and bunting fluttered in the trees. The other side of the school the steel band played, Hap Hap Happy Holidays. Pa stood, eyes closed, under the hot sun. A moan came out of him. Must have forgotten it was Sports Day.

‘Pa.’

You could see the shall-we-shan’t-we in his shoes.

‘Pa. Miss Bliss will be waiting, Pa.’

He looked at me, blank-eyed, pushed his hands deep into his pockets, leaned forward and launched himself like he was marching into a blizzard. I caught him by the bike sheds where Steven Hickey and Rowan Field shook tins for library books. They stopped shaking as we walked by. Rowan bent down, adjusted his Nikes, the sort you pump with air to make them fit. Steven rubbed his nose and blinked up at the sun.

Pa said, ‘Hello, Steven.’

‘Ah, hello there, Dr Pickles,’ he said like he’d only just spotted us.

Then, starting with his neck, he turned red all the way up to his eyebrows. I’d never seen anyone do that. He didn’t say hello to me, but that was all right because he was in top class and I wasn’t. The second we got past them they started whispering.

It might have been our clothes they were on about. Pa had on his gardening cords, his winter shirt, his dad’s old heavy cardigan. I was in my tracksuit bottoms and my wedding shirt I’d got out of the dirty washing.

I watched our reflection growing bigger in the sign that said, ‘Mandela School. A Safe and Happy Place to Learn.’ Reminded me of those history pictures of soldiers coming back from the war. Hunched and unhappy, leaning on their pals, bits of them bandaged or missing, their uniforms torn. Looked like they needed their mummies, not like heroes at all.

School’s locked on Sports Day. So we had to turn left at the sign, walk around the school, along the path that edged the playing field where happy families in summer shorts and vests and stuff were having fun.

Over where the band was playing, people swayed. The tannoy buzzed.

‘Would all sack race contestants gather BEHIND, repeat BEHIND the line.’ Mr Donald was in charge.

Dan believed he’d win the sack race. I was glad because it wasn’t cool to have a brother who was completely crap at sport.

‘What you do is, right,’ he said, so excited I thought he’d have a wheezing fit. ‘What you do is, you stick your feet right into the corners of the sack.’

That old trick.

I really had perfected a Top Secret Technique, for the three-legged race. Me and Peter had been practising it like mad. What you do is, right, forget that stuff about keeping your leg tight against the other person’s, and saying, Right Left Right Left Right Left. Forget your legs. Just hurl yourselves forward at the shoulders. Let the legs do their thing. It’s brilliant! Unbeatable! We reckoned it would even beat Cameron and Fergus McNally who won every year because they’re identical twins and so they’d originally had only one brain.

‘SACK RACE conTESTants. NOW, please.’

William Plumb ran in the wrong direction, his mum tripping after in stupid high heels.

‘But I needs to go now,’ he shouted back at her.

‘You’ll have to go in the trees, then, or you’ll miss it.’

It wouldn’t matter. Dan said William Plumb was crap at sack racing. He ducked under the willow trees just behind where Mousy Miss Burton, sun block on her nose, slopped out organic ice-cream. She had four varieties, all of them horrible. That’s why they had to make the rule about Noddy’s.

‘SACK race PEOple, NOW,’ yelled Mr Donald. You wouldn’t think it was meant to be fun.

William Plumb scrambled out from under the trees and pulled his shorts up. His mum tugged leaves and stuff out of her hair. Pa plodded on. A man nearly pushed us off the path. He’d yank that girl’s arm out if he wasn’t careful, that smelly girl from Dan’s class.

She said, ‘I told you we’d be late.’

He said, ‘Don’t. Tell. Me. Nuffink. Gel,’ like he was a villain off EastEnders.

She broke away, ran for the starting line, passed My Sissay sprinting in from the field, all pink and panting in her flashing-light trainers.

‘I won the sixty metres, Harry! Won this!’

Gold medal, champion’s ribbon attached. So what?

Over her shoulder, far away at the starting line, thirty-two kids in sacks wriggled like maggots. Thirty-two minus Dan, in fact. Minus that girl as well, probably. I felt a bit sorry for her. One whole entire minute before the start of each event Mr Donald disqualified latecomers whatever their excuses so they’d be grateful to him in adult life. Her, me and Daniel, all in Leonardo House, making zero contribution to points this year. Pity, that.

‘I said BEHIND the LINE, Stanley Pacheko.’

Pushy little Stan, down the back with the big boys when he should have been up front with Dan, checking and hollering that Dan wasn’t aboard.

‘It’s for you,’ said My. ‘Take it.’

I’d forgotten she was there, and now I remembered I could think of nothing to say. Between us stood an invisible wall made of kryptonite, wide as the school, high as the sky. On her side kids ran races, won medals. On my side little brothers disappeared. She shoved both hands through the wall – you’d think she’d break her wrists off – pushed the medal into my hand, and ran, red lights flashing all the way to the ice-creams.

‘Sweet of her,’ said Pa.

I had no pockets, stuffed the medal down my sock.

Maybe a note had gone round telling people to be nice to me like when Bradley Parker’s dad fell off the scaffolding and we all wrote saying sorry your dad’s dead even though Bradley wasn’t in our class and no-one liked him anyway.

‘On your MARKS, get SET.’

Crack! Pa jumped so fast, seemed like the gun had shot a bullet through him.

Thirty little maggots wriggled up the field. We watched, as if from a far, cold planet, heard happy voices urge them gently on and Oscar Harding’s mother shrieking,

‘Jump, Oscie! Jump!’

That girl had actually made it. She was doing really well, might even win it. I don’t know. Before the end Pa sulked off. I caught him by the staff room window, saying, ‘Excuse me, please,’ to that girl’s dad who flicked at his lighter, blocking the path with his rude elbows, his back turned on the field. Didn’t give a monkey’s that his kid had maybe won the sack race. Not a monkey’s. She should have disappeared instead of Daniel.

The band was doing Island in the Sun. Parents wiggled their hips. Some looked quite cool. Kylie Kelly’s mum jerked her hands above her head and really started grooving. Big mistake. Kylie saw us, giggled, slipped behind her mum. You could have hid a bus back there.

Kylie had her Einstein house sash on, which was a laugh, her being so thick and everything. On her letter to Bradley, Kylie drew a coffin on a cloud.

‘It’s floating up to heaven, Miss.’

‘I think Brad might find this a little – disturbing,’ said Miss Bliss.

‘But, Miss, it took me ages to do the colouring.’ In little dots, with all her felt pens, she’d spelled out ‘Daddey’ on the lid.

We reached my classroom door. Miss Bliss opened it and drew us in. It felt dark and cool and quiet in there. Smelled of kids and old bananas. She had on a yellow summery dress, the kind a girl might wear. She said, ‘Hello stranger,’ knelt down, held me by the arms, studied me, not, So, you’re the boy, a nicer kind of look. If I could I would have jumped into her eyes.

She seemed different from before. Maybe it was the being up close to her that did it. She had, you know, like she was starting a moustache. I smelt her sweat. Not stinky. Warm and safe. Her knees creaked as she got up to shake Pa’s hand. She held it, called him Dominic, took special care with all her words, as if Pa was a bomb, one clumsy move might set him off. I can’t remember what she said just then but it was kind.

Pa’s gaze drifted off towards the window.

‘I have Daniel’s artwork here, as well as Harry’s, to save you traipsing about,’ said Miss Bliss, a bit too loudly. ‘I’ve brought a bag for you, Dominic. Don’t worry about returning it.’

Pa moved towards the window like a robot.

Crack! The gun for big girls’ relay. Pa’s head bumped the Hoberman Sphere Miss Bliss had hanging from the ceiling. He looked almost his normal height again.

Miss Bliss said to his back,

‘It’s brave of you to come today.’

Pa shrunk. ‘To be honest, we forgot.’

He didn’t watch the relay. He’d locked his eyes on one happy section of the crowd where mums and dads fussed kids who’d done the sack race.

‘Miss Duncan wants you to know that Daniel did another admirable term’s work,’ she said. ‘He’s loved at this school, I’m sure you know that. He’s in my prayers. I know you Pickleses don’t believe …’

Acid chewed my innards.

‘As for this one, I was going to say I’ll really miss him.’

Go on, Miss, say it.

‘But I’m going up a class too. There’ve been some changes to accommodate Ewan Pratt’s suspension. So, Harry, you’ll have to tolerate me for another year.’ She touched my cheek. ‘I will give you all the support that I can.’

People had been saying stuff like that since Legoland. Not to me, though.

Pa sloped back like someone hypnotised and loaded artwork in the bag. Miss Bliss went on about my satisfactory progress in maths – I could do bases and everything, my brilliant English, my splendid art.

‘There’s an example on display,’ she said.

My egg-shell mosaic of a lion, glistening. Sixty-one individual pieces, that took, two coats of varnish. A masterpiece.

Pa zipped the bag.

Miss Bliss told the top of his head, ‘It’s all here in the report.’

The most fantastic report ever in the history of school reports, with Miss Bliss’s impossible to read, Emanuela Balisciano, at the end.

Pa took it, scrunched it, crammed it in his trouser pocket.

A cheer went up. You couldn’t tell who’d won the big girls’ relay. Einstein, head to head with Mrs Pankhurst at the tape.

Three-legged boys lined up in the distance as Miss Bliss saw us out. I looked for Peter in the crowd. Shame he’d miss his medal. He’d be all right about it. He’d understand that no way could I just carry on like Sports Day mattered.

It wouldn’t be right, would it? Not unless there was an emergency. Say, someone from Leonardo relay team broke his leg and they needed a fast, last minute replacement, really urgent, and there was nothing else for it and Mr Donald put out a special request over the tannoy for an emergency substitute to save the day for all the parents, well, then I might run, if it was OK with Pa. I had my trainers on, as it happened. Otherwise, just for the three-legged race, it wouldn’t be right, would it? I didn’t like to check with Pa in case it was so not right that only thinking it meant I didn’t care enough about Daniel.

‘I want to watch, Pa.’

‘OK. Whatever.’

He put the bag down, seemed to sink into the ground with it, dragged a slow hand across his face. Looked like his dad last time we saw him, only Grampy was ninety-two, and lying down and dead.

The McNally twins, smug as could be, did practice trots before the start – to intimidate the opposition. Piggy had paired with Brian, the skinniest boy in the world.

‘BEHIND the line, repeat, BEHIND the line.’

Brian was bent over, messing with the tie or something.

Crack!

Piggy flopped over Brian and landed with a snap. Cameron and Fergus shot off like always, surged towards us. You could believe they still had one brain between them.

Back at the start, Brian screamed and rolled about, clutching his leg.

Parents roared and whistled.

Two dads hauled Piggy off.

That’s not what people were shouting about.

Up the field, a tight, strong, pumping machine hurled themselves forwards, gaining on the twins.

First time in Mandela history anyone had got close to them.

Cameron swung round, lost his timing, tipped Fergus off balance.

Cameron tripped and recovered and tripped and they were blaming each other before they crashed into the ground.