Page 13 of Second Story

I have a few firm words with myself then.

Stop thinking about him.

I need to.

Have to.

Must, if I’m going to build professional relationships here—a bridge, like that little kid now constructs across a sandpit. Only my bridge will need to stretch all the way from here to a London courtroom, so I get honest in a hurry, and as candid as he’s been with me.

“I almost gave up, too.”

“On finding your way to Glynn Harber? We are a little off the beaten track.”

I hesitate, not sure whether to keep going. “No.” I clear my throat. This still emerges hoarsely, because all da Silvas are big men who never admit to weakness in the ring or outside of it. I guess it’s good that I stopped trying to live up to my surname and stature the minute I cried in front of medics, begging them to make my pain end. There’s nothing like that kind of helplessness to help a hard man crack like a nut under a hammer. This man having been through something similar makes it easy to admit, “I don’t mean that my satnav sent me in the wrong direction. I mean that I lost myself for a few years before this happened.”

I check that no kids are watching through the fence around that outdoor classroom, then push up the sleeves of my jacket. My own scars are just as visible as his, if for more sulphuric reasons. The years have lightened them from their first black, red, and ugly purple. Nothing will ever change what was leftonce that nightmare sloughed off. “I’d already strayed from the straight and narrow. Done enough petty crime to get a DTO.” He nods as soon as I expand on those initials. “A Detention and Training Order.”

“Like several of our students. Our children. You were how old, Joseph?”

“Fourteen, the first time. I was a repeat offender, and all my time in custody ever did was give me kudos with the wrong people when I got out. I had a tag on my ankle and clout with the top boys on our housing estate, or I thought I did. That’s when I really got lost, which is why I don’t only work for the courts with teens caught up in the same kind of gangs that fu—” I moderate my language. “That chewed me up and spat me back out looking like this.” I rub a palm across one of my permanent reminders. “I hold workshops wherever gangs are prevalent.” Where aren’t they lately? “My two roles are interlinked. Part of an initiative to stop kids getting sucked into drug distribution.”

“A police initiative?”

I’m no cop. I leave that to the officers Josh and my dad work alongside, but I don’t think this padre sees my head shake. He’s too busy studying what I usually keep covered, and he doesn’t need a fully mobile face to show concern for burns I’ve learned will only attract the real weirdos on Grindr. I do have to clear my throat again to allow, “I don’t have the best track record with law enforcement.”

My real beef is with the justice system. Yeah, it’s needed. It also needs more nuance, which he gives me the time to explain.

“Arresting me didn’t solve my problems. Locking me up made them worse, not better. Thought I was a big man until someone bigger decided I might be competition.” That’s the only reason I can think of for my climb up a crime ladder ending with no warning. “I escalated right up until I was nineteen, and…”

I rub over skin that used to turn as gold as Isaac’s is year-round. I’d tan during summer breaks full of Josh and me diving through waves on Portuguese beaches. The last time I swam in the sea with him, my nerve endings were still so messed up I couldn’t even get goosebumps at the Atlantic’s coolness. Now I feel the ghost of them prickle when this school padre gazes.

Not at my scars.

Not into my eyes either.

He stares straight into my soul.

“And then, Joseph?” he asks softly. “After you were injured?”

That’s a polite way to describe me getting put in my place by men right at the tippy-top of a gang hierarchy I bought into as my only way to feel successful. I shake my head, still struggling to find the right words to describe the lost years after. Finally, I manage to tell him, “I had a while of barely treading water until I heard about a job at my old school for an education and welfare officer.”

“Can’t have been easy.”

“To get that job with my track record?” Hindsight lends me plenty of conviction. “Kinda think it made me the perfect candidate to reach kids like me. Even with a long list of police cautions and worse on my record, I fought for that spot and then spent years playing detective.” I snort. “Must be genetic.”

“How do you mean?”

“Because my family work in police-adjacent roles.”

“Doing?”

“Dad was a traffic squad technician. A mechanic. My brother is an analyst. Thought he’d end up as a tech millionaire but he switched to digital forensics. Now the only millions he finds are laundered.” I don’t enjoy revisiting those early days of waking up to a world of pain for me and shame for them. Didn’t matter if they never said so. My eyes worked fine. I saw it. “At leastme doing detective work of my own meant I could put in early interventions.”

One eyebrow rises. I answer his unasked question.

“When I used to be a hands-on welfare officer, a kid’s lunch box being empty once could be accidental. Twice signals bigger potential issues.” I scan the sparkling windows of this impressive building. “Don’t imagine you have much of that problem.”

He puts me in my place, if gently. “Most of our boarding students have a free place here.”

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