Simon Lelic - A Thousand Cuts

‘For Sophie? You said she was nine. Isn’t that what you said?’

‘She’s nine but she’s getting older. Children do that, Inspector. ’

There was scorn in his tone, which Lucia ignored. She tapped a fingernail against the side of her cup.

‘It’s changing status,’ Elliot’s father continued, less aggressive now. ‘The school is. Did you know that? They’re talking about private funding, more autonomy. It’s on some government scheme.’

‘Scheme?’ said Lucia. ‘What kind of scheme?’

‘A pathfinder scheme, they call it. A public-private partnership. The school: it’s one of the first. So it’s the best that’s available to us and it’s going to get better. And it will be more selective. It will be able to pick and choose. If we took Elliot out, there’s no guarantee we’d be able to get Sophie in.’

Lucia shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘They’re siblings. If the brother is in already, they have to admit the sister.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Lucia said. ‘What I mean is, I don’t understand why you would want to. Academically, it’s a good school. Fine. But your son was attacked. He was beaten and cut and he was bitten. Why would you want to send your daughter there as well?’

Elliot’s father raised his hand to the bridge of his nose. She noticed that his eyes, already bloodshot and ringed by shadow, were glistening now. He screwed them tight, then stretched them wide. He brushed away the single tear that escaped.

‘We thought… ’ he said and stopped. He cleared his throat. ‘We thought, after what happened. I mean, the boy who died, the boy that teacher killed. He was one of them, wasn’t he? I know, I know: no one saw anything. But everyone knew about him, didn’t they?’

‘Donovan,’ Lucia said. ‘Donovan Stanley.’

Elliot’s father nodded. ‘We weren’t going to at first. Send him back, I mean. But after what happened… We thought that would be the end of it.’

‘You thought he would be safe.’

He nodded again, emphatically. ‘And when we looked at the alternatives, Inspector. The other schools. Some of them… You just wouldn’t. You just couldn’t. And there was Sophie of course. We had to think of Sophie.’

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‘Cuts. Bruises. Nothing he might not have got from playing football.’

‘Did he play football?’

‘No. He didn’t. But that’s not the point.’

‘What is the point?’

‘The point is, it was nothing serious.’

‘So you did nothing?’

‘No! Christ. What do you take us for? Of course we did something.’

‘What? What did you do?’

‘We spoke to Elliot, for one thing. We spoke to the school.’

‘What did Elliot say?’

‘Nothing. He wouldn’t say anything. I mean, he said he fell over.’

‘And the school? Who did you speak to at the school?’

‘We spoke to the headmaster. I did. I told him what we thought was happening. I asked him to keep an eye on Elliot.’

‘And what did the headmaster say?’

‘He said I shouldn’t worry. He said, in his experience, all kids get into arguments at Elliot’s age. All kids have their little scuffles.’

‘Scuffles.’

‘That’s right. But he said he would keep an eye on things. He said he would ask his staff to keep an eye on things.’

‘And what happened?’

‘I don’t know. Not a lot, I guess. Things didn’t get much better but they didn’t get any worse. They didn’t seem to anyway. We didn’t know about the text messages.’

‘And later? What about later?’

‘Later?’

‘After Elliot was attacked.’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘What did the headmaster say then?’

‘Nothing really. I mean, what could he say? What could he do? There were no witnesses, Inspector. Remember?’

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He was on his feet. There was nothing to prevent him leaving yet he lingered. His hands clasped the back of his chair. Lucia noticed the skin around his fingernails. Strips had been gnawed away, leaving tracks of exposed flesh and traces of blood.

‘There’ll be publicity,’ Lucia said. ‘The press, the reporters. They’ll latch on to this. They’ll latch on to you.’

Elliot’s father nodded.

‘Because of the school mainly,’ Lucia said. ‘Because of what happened.’

‘The teacher. The shooting.’

‘That’s right. You should warn your wife. Your daughter too.’

‘I will,’ he said. ‘I have.’

Lucia bobbed her head. She waited. Still Elliot’s father did not move.

‘It will die down eventually,’ Lucia said. ‘If they can’t find an angle, if they can’t find a link. They’ll move on to something else.’

‘Yes. I expect they will.’

‘But if I can help. In the meantime. I don’t know what exactly. But you know where I am.’

‘Thanks. Thank you.’

Lucia stood. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Really, I’m most desperately sorry.’

Elliot’s father cleared his throat. He patted his pockets. He scanned the table. ‘Right then,’ he said. And he left.

The room was dark again, this time because the shadow of the building opposite had reached outwards. It had worked its fingers through the gaps in the blind and wrapped the furniture and the floor and the walls in its grip.

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Lucia sat alone. She held out the mobile phone in front of her, her thumbs resting on the keypad. She scrolled.

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She imagined Elliot, seated in the same room as his family but wrenched by the words on the screen into a place of loneliness and terror.

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She tried to decide what she would have done in his place. She tried to decide but she realised that in fact she had already decided. Like Elliot, she had chosen to trust in denial, to confide only in herself, to try to cope with what others inflicted upon her without help of any kind.

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And why? Because the help that was on offer was no help at all. Elliot had been wise to the reality in which he was caught. His parents were well meaning but ineffectual. His friends, if he had any, were probably just as well meaning but weak. There was the school of course; just as for Lucia there was the chain of command. But like Lucia, Elliot had known better than to even try.

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Samuel Szajkowski had tried. He had tried more than once. That he had tried was perhaps the only thing that might have slowed his soul on its descent.

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More than alone, Elliot had been forsaken. Why should he have had to ask for help? Why had help not been forthcoming? It was no secret, after all. Those who had the power to intervene: they knew. Why was the onus always on the weak when it was the strong who had liberty to act? Why were the weak obliged to be so brave when the strong had licence to behave like such cowards?

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It wasn’t over. She would not accept that this was over. Fuck Cole. Fuck Travis and the whole fucking school. It wasn’t over.

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The room was dark but it was not late. There was still time. For what Lucia had in mind, there was still time.

A blog.You know what a blog is, right?

Well my mum doesn’t and she must be almost as old as you. She’s got no idea. She thinks I’m being foul when I say it. She tells me to chew on soap. I’ve got one, you see, and I write on it most days. I write about animals mostly. Birds and that. Things I see. I haven’t told anyone at school about it though. I don’t use my real name either. Jesus. Can you imagine? I call myself Firecrest. It’s a bird. It’s stupid, I know. Please don’t tell anyone, will you?