After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,14

she was nervous or angry. He would have liked to have run off then, left his mother to deal with it herself. ‘I think you’re trying to tell me your boy had a nosebleed, Mrs Collard.’

‘Yes, well, fine, but it was your boy, and we’d like him to sorry.’

‘To a-polo-gise,’ Mrs Farrow corrected.

His mother clutched his hand and he tried to slip it out from her grasp. The shame, he could taste it.

Mrs Farrow gave them a prim smile and called out behind her, ‘Darren! Come down here, please. I need you to assist Mrs Collard with her enquiry.’

Leon’s mother shifted feet. He noticed the bluebirds that were painted round the porcelain number 23 that was stuck to the Farrows’ front door. There was a lumping down the stairs and Darren appeared, his nose a strawberry like Leon’s.

Mrs Farrow put her arm round her son’s shoulders. Darren caught Leon’s eye and looked at the floor with a small smile. ‘Now then, Mrs Collard.’ She spoke slowly and loudly. ‘As you can see, any brutalisation that my son visited on your boy was returned doubly. I’d have thought you’d have more pressing issues to think about these days.’ Darren smiled wider at Leon and Leon looked away, knowing Darren was on the brink of laughing.

‘You shouldn’t let your son hurt my little boy.’ Leon’s mother turned to face Darren. ‘Say you are sorry.’ But her voice was softer, as if she’d just then become very tired. Darren looked lost for a second but, looking up at his mother, he gained strength and his smile returned.

‘My boy say sorry to you?’ Her voice rang shrilly in the settling air. ‘Mrs Collard, are you quite retarded? Do you know there is another war going on? Do you know about the Communists, or do you just keep to your own news? My eldest is out there now, waiting to be shipped off. What are you doing? Sitting in your cake shop taking money from the people who put you up when your own country decided they’d had enough? Well, I think that’s rich. It’s you who ought to be apologising; it’s your son who ought to be thanking my boy for letting him stay in his country.’ Leon’s mother had lost the pink of anger, and seemed very small and grey on the doorstep. A neighbour watched lazily from under a sun hat on the other side of the fence. Mrs Farrow was still talking when Leon’s mother turned them both round and started off down the pathway, firmly holding Leon’s hand.

‘Yes, yes, off you go. And if you have a change of heart,’ Mrs Farrow carried on, ‘we’d be more than happy to hear your apology. That’s if you can say the word. Flaming clog wog.’ The door shut and Leon managed to free his hand from his mother’s grip. He reckoned Darren was probably watching from a window, laughing at the sight of him being yanked along. His face boiled. They walked home not talking or touching; even when his nose began to bleed again they both just let it.

The next day at school, Darren had been talking. Briony Caldwell piped up at him as he crossed the playing field, ‘Youse might be the first kid to get a hairy face, Collard, but yer mummy still holds yer hand to cross the road! Does she wipe yer bum too?’ Of all people, Briony Caldwell. Darren smirked from afar.

Amy Blackwell caught Leon’s eye and she held a pencil under her nose and crossed her eyes. For a moment he thought she was doing an impression of him, and he was about to turn away scowling, but then she smiled and he realised she was playing up Briony. Briony noticed too and stared hard at Amy. Amy stuck a finger up at her behind a piece of paper. Only Leon saw, it was only meant for him to see, and it made his breath shallow in his chest.

Someone lobbed a toilet roll at him.

‘Eye ties don’t use toilet paper, they use their hands!’ shrilled Darren happily. ‘He uses his mum’s hand!’

The class erupted and Leon rolled his tongue into his cheek and willed his face not to become red, kept the hidden finger of Amy Blackwell in his mind, the pencil moustache, the crossed blue eyes.

Something was going on with his parents. A few times he’d come home to find a stale silence, his parents avoiding each other, or they might be having a