Page 15 of The Flowers of Bay C
He glowers up at me, eyes narrowed. ‘Youcan’t do a thing.’ His voice so drips with resentment that I flinch.
‘Jake, please, what is it? Is it someone at school?’
‘You could say that.’
I grab his iPad. I know in this moment that I shouldn’t do that, that fifteen-year-olds need their privacy, but I do it anyway. I grab it and I find the Instagram post and see the picture and the comments. It’s one of those meme things Jake is always showing me, but this time it is a picture of Jake’s head badly photoshopped onto the body of a skinny, frail old man and the word ‘FAIL’ in big shouty letters stamped across the image. And then the comments,etching themselves into my brain so sharply I know they will never peel away.
2010alex:so that happened
charlotte2011:what happened?
gamer_boyunseen:so you know that thorpe park trip? We lost it cos JF skipped school again and so yr 10 got it instead
charlotte2011:how is that fair???
2010alex:that’s how it works. U have to get like 99% attendance to win the trip, sirs been yabbering on about it all yr
gamer_boyunseen:yeah and if it weren’t for him we’d be going. We should do something
taylorrules:why didn’t he come into school? Was he ill? Cos that seems a bit mean tbh
gamer_boyunseen:nah it was his stupid mum again shes always sick shes like one of them hypochondriac people, u know. Hes always skipping school cos of her and so we keep missing out on the class attendance things like we did last yr too remember?
taylorrules:yeah but it’s not really his fault
2010alex:how’s it not his fault, he’s 15 not 5
gamer_boyunseen:we should sort him out
The tears push at my eyes but freeze there as they always do. Jake sits on his bed, picking at his fingernails and ignoring my gaze. His mouth quivers just a tiny bit and I want to go, to take him in my arms and tell him that I love him, to tell him it will all be okay.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say.
‘Not your fault.’
But it is my fault, isn’t it? It’s my fault that Jake sometimes misses school because I’m so sick I need him to keep me safe or I can’t take him if the bus doesn’t come. It’s not my fault the schoolhas a ridiculous system that penalises students who are absent for any reason at all, but it is my fault that I can’t always manage to get Jake there, like a good parent should.
I bend down and take his hand, but he slaps me away and turns his back on me. I know that I shouldn’t have pushed, that I shouldn’t have looked on his iPad. I know it is something he just has to deal with. Just another layer of guilt for me to take away and feed into the recurring script scrolling through my mind. Useless mum. Useless me.
???
I gaze at him now, remembering how he was with me and gritting my teeth. Don’t push, Penny. Not this time. Don’t press him so hard he runs away.
‘Well,’ I say. ‘You know where I am if you need me.’
He looks up at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Mum.’
Jodie is watching us, staring without apology.
‘What d’you want?’ he says, rolling his eyes at her.
‘Nothing,’ she says, in an eerily precise parody of his ownnothingfrom a moment ago, a kind of exaggerated adolescent grunt. His mouth curls up at the corners.
I look over to Barbara’s corner. ‘Does she never get visitors?’ I ask Jodie.
‘Not while I’ve been in, and that’s over a week now.’
‘That’s so sad.’
