Odd Child Out Page 12

  She picks up her desk phone, hits a button.

  “Could you look at the schedule and see what Mr. Jacobson is doing currently, please?” she asks. “He’s the boys’ form tutor,” she explains to us, her hand over the receiver. There’s a pause as she listens to the response from the other end of the line, and she hangs up. “I’m afraid he’s busy in the gym.”

  “How about we go to him?” I suggest. “We only need a few words.”

  She takes us to the gym, heels clip-clopping smartly as we cross the campus. The grounds are manicured and attractive.

  We find Mr. Jacobson overseeing some boys on the squash courts.

  “Thank you,” I say to the headmistress when she introduced us. “I don’t think we need to take up any more of your time.”

  There’s a moment where she hesitates, but she takes the hint and leaves us.

  We sit on a bench. Boys charge around the courts in front of us, visible through glass walls at the back of each court, and our conversation has to compete with squeaking trainers and the rhythmic thwack of the squash balls hitting rackets and walls.

  I take a punt with my first question.

  “The headmistress suggested that there might have been some friction between Abdi and Noah on occasion, and I wonder if you can tell us a bit more about that?”

  I wait for a furrow to appear between his eyes, but it doesn’t. Instead, with a sigh, he takes my bait.

  “It was a bit of silliness,” he says. “Came down to jealousy, I think. Noah was away from school for a couple of months last year, and on his return he didn’t cope very well with the fact that Abdi had made a new friend while he was away.”

  “How did it come to your attention? Did something happen?”

  “It was drawn to my attention because the school nurse reported that Noah was unusually tearful. They worked it out, though.”

  “How?”

  “I had a chat with all three of the boys involved separately, and then all together. It settled down. It was a good outcome. If I’m honest, we weren’t sure if Noah would have the emotional maturity to make it work. With his history it’s been hard for him to develop alongside the others, but Abdi’s a generous boy and the new friend, Imran, is a good kid, too, so they worked it out.”

  Something happening on the squash court catches his eye and he gets to his feet and yells: “Use the corners! Don’t just hit it back into the middle. Boys! You have two minutes left. Use it!”

  “Is it possible to have a word with Imran?”

  “You’d have to ask the head’s office about that, but I don’t see why not. Won’t happen today, though. He’s not in.”

  “Did Noah or Abdi fraternize with anybody else?”

  “What you’ve got to understand about those two is that they’re nerdy boys, you know. Abdi could have been a very good badminton player, but he spent most of his time playing chess or in the IT suite with Noah. They shared a sense of humor, they were both into graphic novels, things like that.”

  “Did the other kids accept that? Were either of them bullied?”

  “Not that I was made aware of. We have a very strict anti-bullying policy here.”

  I wonder how well Mr. Jacobson actually knows these boys. He talks about them as if they’re a slightly different species, and I wonder if he’s one of those teachers who prefer the sporty kids. He has cauliflower ears and a rugby forward’s physique. He’s an alpha, like Ed Sadler. It wouldn’t surprise me if this school specializes in turning them out.

  A buzzer sounds, and within seconds we’re standing in the middle of a flow of teenagers, boys and girls.

  “Sorry!” Mr. Jacobson shouts. “Is that all?”

  On the way back to the car Woodley says, “Almost every kid in that school is white.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I wonder how Abdi feels in that environment.”

  “Depends how they treat him, I suppose. I think the story about the friendship issue being resolved sounds too good to be true.”

  “What makes you think he was lying?”

  “I think he believed what he was saying. I expect our Mr. Jacobson sat the boys down, metaphorically banged their heads together, and figured that he’d done enough. They were probably smart enough to tell him everything was fine if he checked up on them again.”

  “He’s a big bloke.”

  “Yeah. I’d tell him everything was fine if I was a nerdy fifteen-year-old.”

  It’s got me thinking.

  “Any progress on getting an appointment to speak with Noah’s therapist?”

  “I’ll contact the Sadlers first thing,” Woodley says.

  “No. Contact the hospital directly. Let’s see if we can get a conversation without the parents’ involvement. A subjective opinion of Noah would be useful.”

  It’s a very long shot, because I expect the Sadlers will have to be notified, and I’m not even sure the therapist will tell us anything at all, but I think it’s worth a try.

  Nur Mahad needs to sleep after his night shift, but he can’t. He and Maryam sit together in their kitchen at the small table. Between them is the iPad.

  He knows that the recording has destabilized Maryam, and he’s afraid for her.

  She has two fears that overshadow all others.

  The first is that their past will revisit them, and the second is that her children will become strangers to her in this country. Her fears are at the root of her complex relationship with Abdi. He delights his mother at some moments, but she finds it hard to love him at others, and it’s been that way since she entered the UK with him bound to her body.

  Her inability to bond with him meant that Nur and Sofia spent many hours holding the baby and playing with him, because Maryam often felt unable to. When they first settled in the UK, she took to her bed, swathed in depression for a long time and gripped by what Sofia once told Nur she thought was PTSD.

  For her, Abdi represented the transition from one country to another, the journey from war to peace, and all of the hope and fear. He was also an unknown quantity: the boy who shouldn’t have been born after all the miscarriages, and the fact of him was too much for her to handle at first. It had got better as he got older and began to shine and to smile. He cracked open her heart, eventually, but if she’s honest, a small part of Maryam has remained wary of him.

  What she can’t forget is that Abdi saw her faint at the Welcome Center. He was standing just a few feet away from her when it happened.

  She fainted because she looked into the face of a man she thought she knew from a long time ago. The effect of seeing him was instant: Her legs gave out, her consciousness departed. When she came around, the man was gone, and nobody else seemed to have noticed him or thought him remarkable. She thought the incident had passed until now. Because Abdi has recorded himself talking to Ed Sadler about a man who sounds similar.

  But she can’t understand how Abdi’s made the connection that could break them apart.

  “Do you think he overheard us talking last week?” Maryam asks Nur.

  She’s referring to the nightmare she had on the night she fainted. How the man returned to her in a dream and she woke in terror. Nur comforted her and they whispered into the night, discussing the incident, rationalizing that Maryam couldn’t possibly have seen the person she thought she had.

  “I’m sure he was asleep,” Nur says. “I’m sure.”

  “I can’t remember if we said too much. What did we say?”

  “We were careful. I’m sure we were.” He can’t remember exactly what they said either, only the terror in his wife’s eyes when he woke her from the nightmare and reminded her that they were safe, and then the long minutes it took for her heart rate and her breathing to slow.

  Maryam has a feeling they said enough, but she keeps this to herself. Nur murmurs more reassurances into the silence: “It will be all right. Don’t be spooked.”

  He yawns, once, twice.

  “You need to sleep,” she tells hi
m.

  Usually Nur naps in Abdi’s bedroom when he’s done a night shift, but as that’s not possible today, he settles down on the sofa. He falls asleep quickly and Maryam places a blanket over him.

  In the kitchen she looks at the iPad and then plays the recording again. When it’s finished, she makes a few swipes and jabs across the screen.

  She deletes it.

  She doesn’t want it to exist. It feels too much like a bad omen.

  What were you doing?” Abdi said as we crouched on the steps beside the cathedral. “That was really stupid.”

  Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 10: Do something reckless. On purpose. Dad was surprisingly okay with this one—I think because he’s super reckless—and I don’t think he thought I had it in me to do anything this mad.

  If I’d had the strength to, I would have said, “Shut up!” to Abdi, but I was still gasping for breath.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” he said. “You should be at home.”

  “No! Come on. Please, let’s just go. We’re nearly there.”

  When I finally caught my breath and stopped trembling, we carried on down the steps and crossed over the road into Millennium Square, where the lights were bright and the gigantic mirror ball that is a planetarium inside looked amazing. We sat down for a bit because I was still panting. It felt much safer there.

  “Noah . . .”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Really, I am.”

  I had a packet of dextrose tablets in my pocket. I ate three and offered him the packet. His fingers felt chilly when he took it from me. It was time to move.

  “We should be taking photos!” I said. “We should make a record of our expedition.”

  We took selfies with my phone in front of the planetarium, in front of the water feature even though it was turned off, and then with our arms around the Cary Grant statue.

  As we walked out of the square I said to Abdi: “Close your eyes.”

  He gave me a look, but I insisted. I took his hand.

  “I’ll lead you,” I said. I pulled him around the corner and then got behind him and walked him forward with my hands on his shoulders until he was in just the right place to get a glimpse of it.

  “Open your eyes,” I said.

  Pero’s Bridge didn’t disappoint.

  Billowing fog clouds hung over it as if by magic, lit with white lights. It was like something out of a fairy tale. Together we walked out from between the buildings on the dockside and it was awesome, just how I imagined it would be. As the tops of the clouds melted away into the night sky, more appeared from below, so when we stepped onto the bridge we were continually shrouded. Visibility was reduced to a few feet.

  It was a special art installation that Mum had told me about. I’d seen pictures of it on Google, but these didn’t compare to the real thing. I hadn’t been able to visit it because I’d been in treatment, and I knew it would be removed in a day or two. It made me think of how my dad described being in the mountains in Nepal. “Shrouded in fog,” he’d said. I loved that.

  “Wow,” Abdi said.

  “See! Isn’t it worth it?”

  The fog was disorienting and I lost my balance a little. Abdi grabbed my arm and guided me to the side. We stood there together and everything drifted in and out of view, changing all the time. You could almost taste the misty particles in the air around you, and the fog looked like big puffs of smoke against the darkness.

  I was so glad we hadn’t just come in the day, like everybody else. This was so worth it.

  Abdi got out his phone, but he said he didn’t want a fog selfie.

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “I’m calling my dad to pick us up. You look really sick, Noah.”

  “Don’t!”

  I had a crushing feeling of disappointment. First, because Abdi wasn’t into it the way I wanted him to be, and second, because I realized this wasn’t quite the right place for us to sit and have our drinks. I didn’t know before that there was a nightclub on the waterfront, but I could hear the music and see people hanging around outside it. The plan wouldn’t work properly if people saw us. Anybody seeing me with a beer would know I was underage. It could ruin everything.

  We would have to move on, find somewhere a bit more private by the water. It wouldn’t take long. Not going through with it wasn’t an option at this point.

  I saw Abdi tapping the screen of his phone, and I took hold of his arm to stop him. The phone fell and skittered across the floor of the bridge before dropping off the edge and into the water.

  We both stared down at where it had fallen. We could glimpse the black water where the wisps of fog were lightest. The phone was gone.

  “I’m really sorry!” I said. “I’ll get you a new one.”

  He was blinking back tears, which wasn’t like him at all.

  “It’s just a phone,” I said.

  “Give me yours.”

  “No.”

  “Give it to me!”

  Around us the fog kept billowing, but it didn’t feel so fun now. It was claustrophobic, and all the energy and excitement I’d felt earlier disappeared. It was time to get serious.

  “Abdi,” I said. Often it worked to plead with him. I could rely on him to do the right thing.

  “No! I’m tired of everything we do always being about you. I’m so tired of it. Give me your phone or call your parents yourself. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  I felt very angry with him.

  “Phone them,” he said. “Or I will.”

  I took my phone out of my pocket, held it front of him, and then threw it as far as I could. There was loads of fog billowing around us, and the phone arced up high and disappeared into it. It went so far we didn’t even hear it land in the water. It was an awesome throw.

  “What the hell?” Abdi stared at me like I was crazy. He shook his head and started walking away, toward home.

  I went the other way.

  I looked back after a few seconds, but I couldn’t see him through the fog. I kept walking anyway. On the other side of the bridge was a cobbled area that stretched all the way along the edge of the harbor, and coming off it, opposite the end of the bridge, was a dark alleyway. I stepped into it and leaned against the wall. The bricks felt icy cold against my back and my legs were tired, but I told myself I had to fight through it even though frustration made tears prickle my eyes. Tonight wasn’t going to be perfect anymore, but I was determined to salvage it as best I could. It wasn’t an option to fail. We would move on, find a quiet place, and finish the night properly.

  I heard Abdi shout my name. I stayed completely still and waited until his voice got closer.

  When I was sure he’d be able to see me, I stepped out of the shadows and walked down the alleyway as fast as I could, away from him. It was almost black in there, but dim light from a window high above fell in a jagged rectangle onto the cobbles ahead of me, showing me the way.

  “Where are you going?” he called.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Noah! Stop messing with me!”

  It was an angry shout, and I heard his footsteps pick up pace behind me.

  On the way back from the school Woodley and I stop off at the floating harbor and watch as our dive team comes up empty-handed in their search for the phone, frustration evident in their body language even before they’ve stripped off the masks and wet suits.

  A small crowd of bystanders watches, phones at the ready in case anything social media–worthy gets dragged up. They’re out of luck.

  “Visibility’s really bad, and then you’ve got some currents here,” one of the divers tells me. “Plus, the frequent movements of the boats in and out could easily have dislodged a phone and allowed it to drift along the bottom and sink into the silt somewhere outside the search area.” Water drops hang from his eyelashes and the end of his nose.

  When Woodley and I arrive back at HQ, he heads off down the road to revisi
t the scene, looking out for any CCTV that we might have missed and seeing if anybody is around.

  There’s a note on my desk from the tech team to say that the iPad’s been collected by one of our team and they’ve had a look at it. They’ve attached a printout of Abdi’s school emails.

  I pick up the phone and call them. “What about the audio recording?” I ask. “You were supposed to retrieve that.”

  “We didn’t spot one.”

  “Did you check if it had been deleted?”

  Silence from the other end tells me they didn’t. I sigh loudly enough to make sure he can hear.

  “Do it ASAP, will you?”

  I take a look at the emails.

  Mostly they’re straightforward communications about homework between Abdi and his teachers, nothing unusual, and some mass mailings from the school administration.

  Only one exchange catches my attention. It consists of four emails sent between Abdi and a teacher by the name of Alistair Hawkes. He includes three titles as part of his electronic signature: Barker Scholarship Coordinator, Head of Year 11, and Teacher of Biology. It’s the first that interests me most.

  The first email is from the teacher to Abdi: “Please could you come and see me at lunchtime to discuss a piece of work that you haven’t delivered to Mrs. Griffith. I’ll be in my office between 1:30 and 2:45.”

  Abdi replies very quickly: “I’ve given the work in and Mrs. Griffith is looking at it. I’m working to see if I can improve it.”

  Mr. Hawkes bangs back a reply: “That’s not the message I’ve got from Mrs. Griffith. Let’s talk about this in person.”

  A few hours pass before Abdi replies again: “I have given the work to Mrs. Griffith now, but I’ll come to see you. Will this affect my scholarship?”

  There’s no response from the teacher. I have to assume they continued the conversation in person, because Abdi sent his last message just half an hour before the proposed lunchtime meeting.

  I show the emails to Woodley. His eyebrows rise as he reads.