Page 1 of Secrets and Seashells at Rainbow Bay
One
‘Yes, Mrs Greening, I quite understand; really I do. I’ll certainly speak to Charlie about this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.’
I stand up and excuse myself from the room, feeling as though I’ve gone back in time twenty years, and I’m once more the pupil, summoned to the headmistress’s office for misbehaviour that was notalwaysmy fault.
‘Come on, you,’ I say to my nervous-looking son as he waits outside the office on a long wooden bench. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘Exactly how much trouble am I in, Mum?’ Charlie asks as we walk through the school gates and out on to the street.
‘At the moment, not too much.’ I see him grin with relief, so I hurriedly continue, ‘But, if you hang around with the sort of boys you are at the moment, then I’ve a feeling it could get much more serious in the future.’
Charlie looks down at his scuffed trainers.
‘You’re ten years old; you’re too young for me to be worrying about this sort of thing. I’d have expected you to at least be at secondary school before I got called to the headmistress’s office because she’s concerned that the sort of people you’re making friends with could be affecting your behaviourandyour schoolwork.’
Charlie pauses by the bus stop and looks up at me hopefully.
‘Sorry,’ I apologise, ‘no money for the bus today. We’ll have to walk. Anyway,’ I carry on as he sighs, ‘it’s a lovely afternoon; it will do us good and we can have a nice chat on the way home.’
Charlie rolls his eyes, but I pretend not to notice.
‘So, what’s going on?’ I ask as we set off along the road together. ‘Who are these boys that Mrs Greening is so worried about you being friends with at school?’
Charlie shrugs.
‘Charlie?’ I prompt.
‘They’re not at my school,’ Charlie says eventually in a low voice.
‘So who are they, then?’ I ask, starting to worry even more. You hear such horrific things these days about gangs and . . . I shake my head; I don’t even want to think about my little boy involved in anything worse. ‘Why aren’t you spending time with your friends from school?’
Charlie shrugs, and kicks at a tin can rolling along the pavement.
‘Come on, love, you can talk to me, you know you can; we’ve always been a team, haven’t we, you and me?’ I nudge him playfully, trying to lighten the mood, and he smiles ruefully up at me. ‘That’s better. Now pop that can in the bin instead of kicking it around. There’s one just over there.’
Begrudgingly Charlie picks up the tin and tosses it into the bin. ‘The reason I hang around with those boys is because they live on our estate,’ he says quietly as he returns to my side.
I desperately want to take hold of his hand like I used to when he was little, to protect him and cosset him away from any trouble he might be in. But I know those days are sadly now long gone, and I have to deal with this in a mature way. Charlie is growing up – faster than I’d like, and I just have to get used to that.
I put my hand firmly in my pocket.
‘Go on,’ I encourage him.
‘All my old school friends live in the posh area of Hamilton, don’t they?’ Charlie continues. ‘Where weusedto live. And you won’t let me go all the way back there on my own after school,willyou?’ He looks at me accusingly.
So that’s it. I breathe a huge sigh of relief. No drugs or gangs – for the moment, anyway. Just the simple case of a ten-year-old boy whose mother won’t let him travel back to the place they used to live.
‘You could always ask some of your friends to come to ours after school?’ I suggest helpfully. ‘Maybe their parents could drop them off in one of theirmanycars.’
‘Tried that. Their mums won’t let them come. They say where we live now is dangerous.’
We turn a corner and walk past the row of shops that we often pass on our way home, and I’m saddened to see yet another has closed its doors and boarded up its windows. Already some colourful graffiti has appeared to decorate the newly erected boards.
‘That’s ridiculous. The Spencer estate isn’t dangerous – it’s just not a cosy little close or an exclusive avenue, that’s all.’ My mood is swiftly changing from anxious to irritated.Bloody stuck-up parents with their four-by-four cars and their triple-glazed five-bedroom houses. There’s nothing wrong with where we live. Fair enough, it might not be the prettiest area, or the most sought-after, but the community spirit is high, especially in the block of flats we live in.
Charlie shrugs. ‘That’s what they said. Maybe I should have changed schools when we moved instead of staying at my old one. That way the kids I went to school with would be the same ones I saw after it.’
I’d wondered whether keeping Charlie at his old school was going to work when we’d had to move to our new home, but I’d wanted to keep the upheaval in his life to a minimum.
