Page 48 of Don't Tell Teacher

Mr Cockrun smiles tightly. ‘Well, that is your right as a mother. But most of the parents here feel grateful their child has a school place.’

After I’m shown out the back entrance, I wander down the country path in a daze.

I think of Olly and everything he put us through. How fear can keep you from seeing the truth. And how the counsellor warned us that children with troubled pasts can become victims all over again.

Is someone frightening Tom into silence?

My phone bleeps and I see a text message.

Oh God. Olly’s mother, Margaret. She’s asking to see Tom. We haven’t met up since the move. It’s been months. Too long, really.

Tom loves Olly’s mum and so do I.

Margaret is very understanding about what we’ve been through, because she went through something similar with Olly’s father. She was on our side in court. She knows Olly needs help. And she and Tom are best friends when they get together, laughing and gossiping.

I’d better arrange a visit.

Lizzie

The intercom buzzes. It’s Olly’s mother – coming for her weekly visit.

When I met Olly, I assumed he was from a typical snowboarding rich-kid family.

But it’s not true. Olly’s family are ordinary. His mum lives in East London and works as a cashier on Bethnal Green Road. Her partner is a cab driver.

I’ve never met Olly’s real dad, but I know he was a heavy drinker. Olly thinks he lives in France now, but he doesn’t know for sure.

Olly and I used to bond over our messed-up parents. Two kids with hard upbringings. He always made me feel my mother was worse than his father. That I was more messed up. I used to believe him.

I don’t any more.

Olly grins at the intercom. ‘All right, Mum! I’ll come down.’

He heads out of the flat, and a moment later I hear the clatter of Margaret coming upstairs.

‘And then they tried to charge me an extra fifty p for one of those little plastic things of butter, so I said …’

‘Come on in, Mum.’ Olly’s accent changes when his mother is around, losing its clipped edges. It’s another unsettling reminder that sometimes I don’t really know who he is.

I wonder where he got his other accent – the more refined one he uses with his snowboarder friends. When he started university? Or with the Olympic squad?

‘Hi, Margaret.’ I give an awkward wave.

‘Hello, love.’ Margaret is all smiley blue eyes, happy beneath a straw-yellow dyed fringe. ‘How are you feeling? I brought you some ginger biscuits for the morning sickness.’

‘She’s fine now,’ says Olly. ‘She hasn’t been sick in weeks.’

‘Oh, you men don’t understand how it comes and goes. She might be fine one minute, in the loo the next. I’ll leave the biscuits here. Just in case. So, what have you two been up to this morning?’ Margaret looks around the flat. ‘A bit of tidying up?’

Olly and I look at each other, this morning’s fight stomping around the room like an elephant.

‘Yeah, just trying to clean the house up a bit,’ says Olly.

It’s true – Olly did clean the bathroom earlier. Before collapsing on the sofa in pain. I dithered in the living area, unsure what to clear and where to clear it.

If I put things in the wrong places, Olly shouts.

‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ Margaret says, giving me a big wink. ‘Wish his dad had been a modern man. The only help I ever got was a telling off if dinner was late. And sometimes a clip around the ear.’ She hesitates. ‘I’ll say this for your stepdad, Olly. At least he’s never laid a finger on me.’

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