Page 30 of Lessons in Life

Fabian

Can you meet me down in Beddingfield village straight after school?

Robyn

I can, but it won’t be straight after school. I’ve to go look for a kid down on the estate in Little Micklethwaite first.

Fabian

OK. Shall I come with you?

Robyn

See how the other half live, you mean? What’s up? Why d’you want to meet me?

Fabian

Tell you when you get here.

Robyn

Best if you drive over to school and follow me down. Am free in 45 minutes.

* * *

Exactly fifty minutes later, having left teaching notes for Petra Waters, who had been roped in to take my last class of the day, as well as remembering to send round a note to cancel my weekly extra-curricular dance class for the Year 7s and 8s, I gathered my bags and made for the main door.

‘S’OK, Robyn.’ Sally, one of the school secretaries, knocked on the glass window of the office before sliding it back.

‘What’s OK?’

‘Blane’s back at home. He’s turned up there. You don’t need to go after all, Mason says.’

‘Oh, I’m on my way now, Sally,’ I tutted. ‘I’ve sorted my last class and cancelled my after-school session.’

‘Well, Mason says?—’

‘Tell Mason you missed me, that I’d already left.’ And, with a cheery wave over my shoulder, I made good my escape, heading into the chilly damp January afternoon. Very tempted to go straight home to see Sorrel, or at least take Fabian down to The Green Dragon for a quick one before he headed back to Harrogate, I decided I was a professional. I’d have to report back to Mason as well. He wouldn’t be too impressed if he knew I’d left school early in order to find Blane, only to spend what was left of the afternoon down in the boozer with my lover. Besides, I genuinely wanted to find out what Blane had been up to; where he’d been all night. And, nosy old so-and-so that I was, I wanted to see for myself this mother of his who didn’t appear to be doing the best job of looking after her recalcitrant son. Seeing Fabian’s silver 911 parked behind my own little red Honda, I waved, jangled my keys in his direction and intimated that he should follow me to the address I’d taken from the class register.

10

The area of Little Micklethwaite around St Mede’s High School reminded me of a decaying tooth no one appeared to know how to pull. With the exceptionally pretty villages of Beddingfield and Upper Merton to its left and right, the streets I now drove through held an air of almost embarrassed shame, the area’s rich history and tradition, built on the woollen textile industry of the previous centuries, long gone. Any attempt to convert and utilise the solid Yorkshire stone-built mills, turning their vast internal space into single units advertising their new usage as body repair shops, pine stripping, welding services and the like, had in turn given up the ghost, surrendering makeshift shutters to the elements and an excess of graffiti. A long row of nineteen-seventies-built concrete shops, which had replaced the original pretty cottages, the greengrocer and bakers, which today would surely have been listed and preserved, was now made over to the ubiquitous takeaway, betting shops, a laundrette, the heavily protected post office and community centre – which didn’t appear to be used by anyone in this broken community. Even the charity shop seemed to have given up in despair. I drove on towards the vast 1950s council estate.

I’d lived in some dives in London – Hammersmith and Soho – but Soho particularly, while often dirty and unkempt, was at the same time colourful and vibrant with a rich tapestry of thriving businesses and life. These streets, which the majority of St Mede’s kids walked through to get to school, were soulless, colourless. Lacking hope. Lacking a future.

Waze on my phone directed me along a road of bungalows for the elderly where there were dire warnings of Keep off the Grass (what grass?), Keep Dogs on a Lead (apparently the pit-bull-type animal that was now peeing up against another broken-down sign hadn’t yet learned to read) and other signs with their commands long-obliterated by new commands of Fuck Off Filth. With no police presence that I could see, they appeared to have done just that. Something that looked suspiciously like the logo for the EDL was the only colour in an endless sea of brown and grey concrete amidst a profusion of stuffed-to-the-brim black binbags.

Checking in my rear-view mirror that Fabian was still behind me, I pulled up outside Blane’s block and cut the engine, locking the Honda’s door and walking back to where Fabian had now parked between a large white Transit and a rusting, abandoned caravan.

‘Stay here,’ I said.

‘I’m not letting you go in there by yourself,’ Fabian said through the open window of the Porsche.

‘Why did you want to meet me anyway?’ I asked. ‘Are you wanting to go out to eat? You’re a bit early. Mind you, I’m starving; I ended up with half a Mars bar at lunchtime.’ My stomach growled a reminder.

‘You really should start eating properly,’ Fabian began. ‘Make sure you eat the whole thing next time.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Look, I won’t be long.’

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