In the Falling Snow (28 page)

She stares at him. ‘Why are you doing this? Turning it into something that it isn’t. All I’m trying to say is that some of the parents are pretty damn useless, and almost all of them are time-poor.’

‘“Time-poor”? What does that mean?’

‘It means they’re too busy to put their kids first. They’re not our type of people.’

‘There you go again! “Our type of people?” Are you deliberately trying to wind me up?’

‘I can’t put it any simpler than that, so if you don’t like it you’ll just have to take it on the chin. I don’t mean anything offensive, and I’m certainly not defending that idiot Mr Hughes, but it’s unfair to suggest that there are not a few good teachers who are
trying.
All kids need some kind of help at home, but some of the kids in that school have no bloody supervision, and no wonder Laurie finds himself having to mix with delinquents.’

‘You know, Annabelle, sometimes I wonder what that clown Bruce turned you into.’

‘How dare you be so condescending!’ She looked around and then lowered her voice. ‘He didn’t turn me into anything. I’m telling you what I feel and if you don’t like it I’d prefer if you would at least credit me with enough intelligence to be able to form my own opinions.’

‘And they’re really your opinions?’

‘Yes, they’re
my
opinions.’

He leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. ‘Look Annabelle, I’ve known red-faced tossers like Bruce all my life, in their pink and black hooped rugby shirts, sitting on barstools pontificating about how we’ve carried the jocks for years despite the fact that they’ve got oil, and how we need our traditional friends, meaning New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, not these fair-weather Johnnies in Brussels.’

‘Don’t you think you’ve said enough?’

‘No, I don’t actually. Why don’t you credit
me
with some intelligence? I don’t want my son around arseholes like Bruce.’

‘Well as long as our son is in
my
custody then he’ll be exposed to my judgements on people, not just yours.’ She paused, then snorted in disgust. ‘You can really be an arrogant bastard when you want to be, can’t you?’

‘You’re entitled to your opinion.’

‘Thank you.’ Annabelle shook her head. ‘Was he that much of a threat to you?’

‘Who?’

‘Listen to yourself. It’s pathetic. You know exactly who I mean. Bruce. Or do I have to spell it out for you?’

His phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He was about to answer it when he thought he should check first with Annabelle, for he had no desire to further antagonise her. He reached into his pocket and held up his still vibrating mobile.

‘I don’t know who it is.’

‘Well, then you’d better find out, hadn’t you?’

Baron sounded hesitant and slightly unfamiliar with the telephone.

‘Keith? It’s you? I get your number from your father.’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Good, good, man. It’s all right, but I’m staying by your father’s place as he has some chest pains. I tell him that I will let you know, so that’s all. I’m just letting you know that I’m staying here tonight.’

He looked across at Annabelle, who was averting her eyes and making a clear effort not to listen.

‘I didn’t call you to make you take off time from work or anything. I know you is a big man in a big job.’

‘No, it’s no problem. I’ll come up in the morning. Just tell him that I’ll be up in the morning, okay?’

‘You didn’t hear me? I said I have it under control. You just go along with the work business.’

He waited until Baron hung up, then he switched off the phone and placed it on the table. Annabelle looked back in his direction. She glanced down at the mobile.

‘Are you expecting another call?’

‘I hope not. That was my Uncle Baron, one of my dad’s friends.’

‘Well? You never told me how it went up there.’

‘Well other things kind of got in the way, like picking up our son from a police station. But it was pretty much just as you might imagine it.’

‘A laugh a minute then.’

‘Exactly.’ He paused. ‘So what do you think we should do
about
the school? You’re happy for him to stay there with the hoodlum children of the time-poor parents?’

‘“Happy” might not be the best way of putting it.’

He tried hard to concentrate on his conversation with Annabelle, but he found it difficult not to worry about what exactly was behind Baron’s call. His father’s friend was saying all the right things, but for Baron to ask his father for his son’s number, and then take the trouble to actually pick up the phone and call, suggested to him that his father must be in some kind of trouble.

‘Would you like my help looking for a larger flat? I can look online while you’re away.’

‘Away where? Who says I’m going away?’

‘Well, excuse me, didn’t I just hear you say that you would “come up in the morning”?’

‘But only for a day or so at most.’

‘So I should just leave it then?’ He stared blankly at Annabelle. ‘Hello, Keith. Anybody at home? Do you want me to look online or not?’

‘Thanks, but I’m not sure how much money I have.’ He took a sip of his latte and then shook his head. ‘Renting in this city is tough, and it’s probably a lot more expensive than it was when I signed the lease on Wilton Road.’

‘Do you have any savings? And don’t look at me like that because I’m not prying.’

‘I’ll have to figure out the whole money thing. I’m just not sure what’s happening.’

‘Is everything all right?’ Annabelle looked quizzically at him, but he suddenly felt overwhelmed as he realised what his next move would have to be. ‘Well, are you okay? You seem to have gone mental walkabout.’

‘I’m fine.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Really, I’m fine, just a bit tired, that’s all.’

‘Another coffee?’

‘No thanks. Honestly, I’m fine.’

He watches as Clive Wilson edges his way back from the bar with a pint in his hand, and then his boss sits opposite him.

‘Cheers.’

He knocks his own glass against that of Clive Wilson and then takes a drink.

‘I might as well come straight to the point, Clive. I’m resigning, okay.’

‘What do you mean “okay”? It’s not okay with me. I told you, these things take time and this one’s a bit tricky. However, I can now see some light at the end of the tunnel. I’m pretty sure that Yvette is going to be transferred.’

‘Is that what she wants?’

Clive Wilson laughs out loud. ‘What’s it got to do with what she wants? It’s better for everyone if she moves on. It’s a sort of sideways shift, with a more senior title, and the girl seems okay about it. This might happen next week, and then we can see about your coming back. To tell you the truth, I could really use you around the place at the moment. It’s a bloody nightmare trying to understand all this new red tape baloney.’ He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a piece of paper, which he unfolds. ‘Listen to this. I just got this email directive saying that as service providers, we have to “recognise the needs of diverse communities and provide facilities that are genuinely multicultural, being aware that different facilities might be needed for people with specific religious, cultural, or dietary needs”. All this rubbish just in case I start getting hassle from a one-legged Muslim who likes burgers and feels like the council isn’t paying enough attention to his needs?’ He tosses the piece of paper on to the table. ‘What am I supposed to do with garbage like this?’

‘I’ve got no idea, Clive.’

‘Nobody really understands this guff, except you that is.’

‘Well, that’s not quite true, but I still think that I should resign.’

‘Are you thinking of your pension? You can only lose it if you get fired and that’s not going to happen.’

‘I’m thinking of what’s best for me.’

Clive Wilson picks up the email and folds it back into his pocket, and then he takes a long swig of his beer. ‘I don’t know what to say. Except, of course, you’ve blindsided me. What are you going to do?’

‘I’ve no idea, but I’ll think of something.’

‘Are you going to write that book of yours?’

He laughs now. ‘I don’t think so, Clive.’ He stands and points to Clive’s glass. ‘Another one?’

‘I’ll have another one. Why not?’ Clive Wilson hands him the empty glass. ‘But you are going to stay in the business?’

‘Social work?’ He smiles. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to do something different with my life. You know, before it all gets a bit monotonous and predictable.’

‘You mean like my life?’

He continues to smile, and he notices that Clive Wilson is looking perplexed.

‘So you think your life is monotonous, do you, Clive?’

‘Like watching bloody paint dry. Sometimes I think I should go out and get myself a young bird. Put a bit of spice back into things.’

‘And you think that’ll do the trick?’

‘Can’t hurt, can it?’

He stares at the computer screen and scrolls down the list of flats to rent in his area of west London, beginning with the three-bedroom flats, his thinking being that he can set up an office
while
he and Laurie can each have a bedroom of their own. The problem is the price of renting in London, which, as he feared, seems to have gone up significantly since he signed the lease for this one-bedroom flat. His rent is hardly cheap, but three years ago he was more concerned with the trauma of the break-up than he was with money. However, after a miserable week in the Travelodge, during which time it became clear that Annabelle was serious and had no intention of changing her mind, he convinced himself that this was an unexpected opportunity to begin anew, and he might as well seize it and pay the exorbitant rent. The recently decorated flat smelt of paint, and there were dustballs in the corner, and bits of sandpaper and twiglets of electrical wiring on the floor that the workmen had left behind. However, the space was his for him to reinvent himself as he saw fit, and although he remained somewhat confused and hurt by Annabelle’s rejection of him, he eventually made peace with his situation. But having his son move in with him is hardly a new adventure, more like an obligation that he knows he should fulfil, but without a job he is having difficulty figuring out how he can realistically make this work.

He quickly accepts the fact that he will most likely have to set up a work-station in his bedroom, and he scrolls down to the two-bedroom flats. While they are significantly cheaper, they are still prohibitively expensive and it occurs to him that maybe he should have tried to negotiate some kind of pay-off deal with Clive Wilson. However, given the manner in which they left things, it is now highly unlikely that his former boss would be receptive to any more overtures from him. He took Clive Wilson’s pint glass and crossed to the bar, where he ordered a lager. Once the barman had pulled the pint, and he had paid for it and received his change, he carried the pint of lager back to Clive Wilson and placed it on the table before him.

‘Where’s yours, Keith?’

He looked down at Clive Wilson. ‘So you’re really sorry that I’m leaving, are you, Clive?’

‘I told you, nobody understands all this gobbledy-gook about brand-repositioning better than you do. The new regulations make no sense, and the language is impossible. Anyhow, there’s still time for you to reconsider.’

‘Let me ask you, Clive. Do you know how to spell “hypocrite”? It’s not a hard question.’ Clive Wilson looked up at him with his hand eagerly gripping his new pint of beer. ‘Pride yourself on running a tight ship, do you? Well you need to look around yourself a bit for I’m not the only one who thinks that you’re a sad tosser. That’s t-o-s-s-e-r in case you’re still struggling with “hypocrite”. They’re both applicable.’

He turned and left before Clive Wilson could reply, but as he pushed his way through the crowd of briefcase-wielding after-work drinkers he knew that at least he’d done the decent thing and bought his boss a pint.

As he left the pub he saw a bus approaching, so he quickly dashed across the street to the stop outside the West London Internet Call Centre, a place that seemed to specialise in calls to Somalia, Bangladesh, or Pakistan. The girl ahead of him in the bus queue was wearing flip-flops as opposed to pumps. He remembers Yvette telling him that in London women’s feet get too dirty and calloused in flip-flops, but this girl, who was listening to some kind of bhangra music on her iPhone, seemed cheerfully oblivious to this fact. As the doors to the bus concertinaed open, and the line began to shuffle forward, he realised that for the first time since he left Bristol he was now officially unemployed.

He googles another rental agency and begins to scroll down their list of flats, but price remains the problem. Now that he no longer has a job, he will have to think again about this plan
of
Laurie moving in, for even large one-bedrooms appear to be beyond his pocket. Moving further out of London doesn’t appeal, for he has always been scornful of the suburbs and the commuting life, but at the moment the idea of knuckling down and getting another job is also unappealing. He should really start looking at social work job listings online, but he knows that he will be immediately pigeon-holed as an expert on inner city black problems, and be expected to spew sound bites to the media about how gun and knife violence are not black crimes any more than paedophilia is a white crime. However, when he points out to the press that Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets or white gangs in Essex are committing exactly the same gun and knife crimes, he will immediately be viewed as part of the problem itself. Some years ago, shortly after they left Birmingham and moved to London, he suffered his first, and only, instance of media backlash when he stood up at a national conference on drug trafficking and pointed out that a young teenager who had £10,000 in his pocket should not be liable to be arrested by the police, and have charges pressed against him, unless there was some direct evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Apparently, according to the
Daily Mail
, this made him an apologist for drug-dealing. Without even looking at the jobs that are available he knows that with his experience and complexion, and given the national push towards more racially polarised community monitoring, he will undoubtedly find it hard to land a job that doesn’t place him in the firing line of the press on race issues. What he finds even more galling is the fact that even the most senior job in this area is likely to pay him less than he was earning as an executive policy-maker with the local authority under Clive bloody Wilson.