Page 22 of Second Story

“Yeah. Isaac didn’t hang around. I’m pretty sure he packed up all their things and drove straight here. That was yesterday afternoon. Not sure he can have slept since it happened.”

“Thank you,” Luke says, then has a hurried conversation with Hugo about sleeping quarters and rescheduling. “Okay. That should work. I’ll go tell him that we’ll press pause on today. I can wait to hear him read when he’s rested.” This frown is so much softer. “Let both him and his brother have a soft place to land until they’ve had time to catch their breath.”

Christ, does Isaac ever deserve that.

I only know I’ve carried a weight of worry like I used to carry little Lenny on my shoulders when it lifts. “Can I tell him for you?”

That comes out too fast. Too keen. Too intense for someone who should only have a professional interest. I take a breath and slow my roll.

“I mean, I’d like to tell him that he hasn’t got off on the wrong foot here just because you’ve talked to me. I haven’t told you why Isaac and I connected. It isn’t pertinent nor my story to tell. Him believing that I’ve kept his confidences is. Can I send him back in to speak with you once I’ve reassured him?”

“Yes. Ask him to come up to my study after break time and please tell him not to worry. We can press pause for as long as he needs.”

And that’s what I mean to do after saying goodbye to both men, only I spot Isaac as soon as I exit the front door of the school.

He’s in the car park looking as scattered as the books in the back of his van when I join him there at its open side door. Those books had been neatly shelved when I last saw them. Now he kneels in the middle of gruffaloes, cats in hats, and hungry caterpillars a plenty. None of them seem to be what he hunts for, and his hand snagging in his hair spells the same desperation I saw in that bathroom. It gets me speaking up in a hurry.

“Hey. Need a hand?”

He freezes, and yeah, I block this side door, my shadow falling across him, but there’s no avoiding a repeat of seeing what was as clear as day through that library window.

I’m used to frosty receptions from teens on my caseload until they get to know me. My dad-joke game is usually strong enough to thaw them. Isaac isn’t a teen. He isn’t frosty either. He’s as bruised now as when I had to stop supporting his brother. Seeing this close-up reminder makes my usual joking fall flat. “We really do have to stop meeting like this.”

“Stop meeting? Thought you decided that for us a year ago.” He gets back to his task, head bent over a tote box holding more books. “And no, I don’t need any help from you.”

Of course he doesn’t. I’d be the last person he’d ask or let help, unless he was desperate. Like earlier, I can’t ignoresomeone who is stressed enough that his hands shake. “Listen, Isaac?—”

“No.” He almost shouts that, more evidence of him being rattled. He lowers his volume. “You listen. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but please don’t ruin this for me.” Isaac states his real priority. “Or for Len.”

“You’re trying to leave London for good for him?”

He nods tightly, flipping through book after book.I don’t get to give him news of his reprieve from interviewing. Before I can let him know, he says, “Anyone would leave after what keeps hap—” He cuts himself off abruptly, which I’d investigate in a heartbeat if his family were still on my welfare watch list. Isaac gives up digging through one tote to move on to another. “I’ll get him out of there if I can just find the right story to read.”

Him wrenching off another tote lid dislodges a bag that spills its contents out of the van doorway. A scrapbook falls onto car park gravel. I grab it and corral the cans of Red Bull that follow. A Kit Kat bar slithers out last, and he reacts as if I made a comment about Lenny’s diet. “He eats well. All the food groups. I take good care of him.”

“Of course you do.” I move quickly, reaching for that bag to replace the contents, then I pause at what is drawn on the scrapbook cover. A superhero wears a cape of shining silver so neatly filled in that I bet Isaac helped Lenny stay inside the lines. “That’s all I ever witnessed. You helping Lenny. And that’s what I just told the head teacher. Nothing else. Just that you’d be a safe pair of hands.”

That was true around a year ago when I last saw him. Isaac going all out for a job today, so far from home, suggests he hasn’t yet stopped trying. “And it’s all I wanted to be for you both.” Until I couldn’t. “I did check in a few times with Lenny’s old school until you moved him. Just because he couldn’t be on my caseload anymore doesn’t mean I forgot about him.” I set downthe bag I’ve refilled apart from the scrapbook, which I offer to Isaac.

He doesn’t take it from me, or make eye contact. He still kneels over a box of books. Still flips through them, movements fast and close to frantic. “Could have fooled me.”

Isaac repeats an action that, in hindsight, means I was right to pass his brother on to another officer and then switch schools before leaving the role for good. He shoves a hand through wild hair again, and my reaction is the same now as the very first time I saw him with it snagged around his fingers, tangled like how he must have felt inside at what was coming for his family.

And like the night before his mother’s remand hearing, I want to unravel those strands before he can pull on them any harder. I also want to make him face me so he can see he isn’t alone, and I could cup his jaw now to do that. Only for a second, like I did the last time I paid him and Lenny a home visit. Today, I clutch that scrapbook to stop history from repeating. “I didn’t forget Lenny. But I definitely would have been the last person you wanted to see again, right?” I can’t help snorting at that same old, same old. “Can’t say I ever wanted to see that reaction from you.”

“And yet here we are.” He’s still on edge. He must be to shoulder his way past me and get out of the van empty-handed instead of with a book to read out, then stalk away, leaving the side door wide open. He comes back just as quickly, and this glimpse of the Isaac I remember is killer.

He’s as soft as fuck, as gentle, like I saw him be with Lenny so often.

“But thanks.” He rubs his chest, eyes fixed on the centre of mine, where his hand had rested. “For helping me earlier. You didn’t have to do that. It was...” He looks about to say more. Instead, he takes Lenny’s scrapbook from me and returns it to the bag it fell from. “I… I have to go.” He slides the door closedperhaps harder than he meant to. It slams. So does my heart at seeing Luke Lawson at an upstairs window, watching Isaac walk away from me. He nods, and I deliver his message.

“Listen,” I call after Isaac. “You really don’t have to hurry. They said to take your time. And they want you to stay the night here. With Lenny. Read a story tomorrow. Or another time.”

Isaac turns on his heel beside a towering willow. “Why areyoutelling me?”

“Because I offered?—”

“No. I mean, why are you involved?” He’s so far from frosty. He’s bewildered. “Why are you here at all, Joe?”

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