Stand by Me

by S. D. Robertson

  This amused Elliot, who knew for a fact that Peter had never had a girlfriend in his life.

  ‘Oh, that’s good.’ Lisa smiled, batting her eyelids like she’d been doing it for years. ‘But would it be all right if we looked here a little bit longer first? It sounds stupid, but I’m afraid that if we go now, someone else might come along in the meantime and find it. I love it so much.’ She looked down at the ground, playing her role with aplomb. ‘And it’s all I’ve got left to remind me of poor Nana since she died.’

  Thus she convinced Peter to continue. The search carried on for so long that Elliot felt his own crouching knees start to seize up, forcing him to silently shift into a seated position. He was beginning to wonder where Lisa was going with this when suddenly everything changed.

  One minute she was standing over Peter, smiling sweetly and encouraging him to continue. The next she pounced on him from behind, wrapping her right arm all the way around his neck to her left bicep, and pressing down on his head with her left hand. Her face was pure concentration and aggression, while Peter’s eyes were wide with shock and fear.

  ‘What the hell?’ he whined, struggling to free himself but not getting anywhere.

  ‘Every move you make to get away, it’ll get tighter,’ Lisa said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Why are you—’

  ‘Quiet. You don’t speak unless I say so, right?’

  She must have increased the tightness of her grip at this point, because now Peter’s eyes looked ready to pop out of his beetroot face.

  ‘Right?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied in a tiny, terrified voice.

  ‘This should make things crystal clear,’ Lisa said as she jerked herself and her captive to one side and then pushed his face down towards the ground, causing him to yelp.

  ‘Come over here, El,’ she called, looking in his direction.

  Elliot jumped to his feet and walked over, not knowing what to say or do. When he got there, he saw that Lisa was holding Peter’s head above the pile of dog muck she’d warned him about a few minutes earlier.

  ‘Anyone coming?’ she asked, keeping her eyes locked on Peter.

  Elliot looked up and down the lane. ‘No.’

  ‘Doesn’t smell nice, does it, Peter?’ She inched his head closer to the foul mess.

  He shook his head. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Listen, there is no lost bracelet. Do you know what this is really about?’

  Elliot felt awkward standing there in the middle of the lane, watching this bizarre drama unfold. He had no idea that Lisa was capable of this and part of him wanted to tell her to stop; to let Peter go. He looked so pathetic, trapped like he was. Surely she wouldn’t really lower his face into the dog dirt, would she?

  Peter mumbled something inaudible in response to Lisa’s question, which led to her squeezing his neck even tighter and him letting out another yelp.

  ‘So we can understand, please,’ she said.

  ‘Elliot,’ he whined. ‘What I did to his glasses.’

  ‘Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. So what do you have to say to my good friend here?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he spluttered, snot dripping out of his nose and his mouth drooling.

  ‘I don’t think he heard you. You’ll have to speak up. Or maybe you’d rather have a mouthful of—’

  ‘Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘And you’ll never do anything like that to him again, will you?’

  ‘No, no. I promise. Never.’

  She turned to Elliot. ‘Up to you. Do we accept his apology, or shall I keep on going? Maybe we should make him buy you a new pair of specs.’

  Elliot shook his head. There was no way Peter would be able to afford to replace his glasses. Besides, even if he could somehow raise the cash, it would only create a difficult situation with Elliot’s mum, who thought he’d lost them. She’d end up questioning where the money had come from and – well – it wasn’t worth the hassle.

  ‘No, I think he’s had enough.’ He couldn’t believe it, but somehow he felt sorry for Peter, despite what he’d done to him. He looked so scared and helpless. Plus they had been friends once. Just because Peter had chosen to forget that fact when he was so desperate to impress Johnny and Carl, it didn’t mean Elliot had to be the same. He was better than that.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Lisa said. ‘Maybe I should give him a taste of this dog muck, all the same.’

  ‘No, please!’ Peter cried out, wriggling and shaking in a last desperate attempt to get free.

  ‘Do you really want me to squeeze tighter?’

  He stopped.

  She patted his head. ‘Good boy. Now I’d like to hear you say sorry to Elliot one more time.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Like you mean it.’

  ‘I do! I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Stay well away from him, okay? Otherwise, I’ll be back for you. And next time there’ll be no letting you off.’

  As quickly as she’d grabbed him in the first place, she let him go, flinging him to one side like a rag doll. ‘Get out of here.’

  And he did. He ran off as fast as his shaking legs would carry him, only slowing down when there was a safe distance between them. He turned around at this point and it looked for a moment like he might shout something at them. But when Lisa raised a hand and made as if to come after him, he had second thoughts and carried on going.

  Neither Lisa nor Elliot said a word until he was out of sight, at which point they both burst into laughter.

  ‘Where on earth did that come from?’ he asked her, open-mouthed. ‘You were like Rambo meets the Terminator or something. How did you know—’

  ‘I went to judo every week where we used to live,’ she said. ‘They ran classes at my old school on Saturday mornings. I started at like five years old and I was pretty good.’

  ‘No kidding. You were vicious. I didn’t think you had it in you. What was it called, that move or whatever you used on him?’

  ‘I had him in a choke hold. I’d get into trouble for using it like that, to be honest. You’re only supposed to use it in self-defence outside competitions and training, but – well, I was never going to hurt him. It got the message across, anyway.’

  ‘You can say that again. So are you going to carry on with judo here?’

  She shook her head. ‘Doubt it. I stopped about six months ago. It was time for a change.’

  ‘Would you really have pushed Peter’s face into the dog muck?’

  ‘Of course not. That would be disgusting. It wasn’t part of the plan, but after I spotted it, I improvised.’

  Elliot chuckled. ‘You had a plan?’

  Lisa rolled her eyes. ‘Well, kind of. I sized Peter up and decided I could probably take him. I maybe ought to have asked you first whether he knew any martial arts, as then he might have been able to escape. But I took a gamble and it paid off. He’s not the kind of person who’s likely to try to get revenge, is he?’

  Elliot shook his head. ‘I doubt it. He’ll probably want to forget the whole thing ever happened. I don’t expect he’ll tell anyone that you got the better of him like that.’

  ‘Because I’m a girl?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Elliot replied with a grin. ‘But since you did, then yeah. Thanks for standing up for me. It means a lot.’

  ‘That’s what friends are for.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back one day.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. There’s no need.’

  Elliot took Lisa’s hand in his and, looking her in the eyes, he squeezed it. ‘I will, though. I don’t know how yet, but I definitely will.’

  CHAPTER 14

  NOW

  Sunday, 22 July 2018

  ‘Wow, this is delicious.’ Lisa raised her glass of wine and proposed a toast. ‘To our visiting chef. It’s wonderful to see you again after so long. You’re very welcome to come around here and cook for us whenever you like. Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers,
’ everyone said in unison.

  ‘You’re too kind,’ Elliot added. ‘It’s my absolute pleasure to be here and I’m delighted to cook for you all.’

  A moment later Ben grabbed his throat with both hands and jerked to his feet, making a guttural choking sound as his chair tumbled backwards on to the kitchen floor.

  Lisa jumped to her feet, the terrified look on Ben’s face filling her with panic. Her pulse was racing and she screamed something unintelligible, even to her, as her arms reached desperately across the table to her son. But before she or one of the others had a chance to respond, Elliot was standing behind him, circling his arms around his stomach. He administered a series of upward thrusts with a fist below Ben’s chest until the piece of beef lodged in his throat popped out on to the table.

  The sound of Ben gasping for air filled the room – and time started again. Lisa looked at the deathly pale, saucer-eyed faces of her husband and daughter before remembering to breathe again and, finally, rushing to her son’s side.

  ‘Are you okay, love?’ she said, as Mike and Chloe also leaned in, both repeating the question and looking equally shocked.

  Ben replied with a slow nod of his head, making a thumb sign with one hand, as he rubbed the top of his chest with the other and cleared his throat several times, gradually catching his breath.

  ‘He’ll be right,’ Elliot said, patting Ben on the back before returning to his seat. ‘He just needs to chew on his meat a few more times in future, rather than trying to gulp it down whole.’

  ‘Thank goodness you were here,’ Lisa said, remaining at Ben’s side and keeping her eyes fixed on him, part of her refusing to believe it was over; fearing he might start choking again. ‘You used the Heimlich manoeuvre, right? That was incredible, El.’

  ‘I only did what anyone else would have done. Glad to help.’

  Later, after Chloe and Ben had disappeared up to their bedrooms and the three adults were drinking coffee in the lounge, Lisa brought up the choking incident again.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough for what you did,’ she told Elliot. ‘I keep thinking what might have happened and, well, you saved his life. How did you get to him so quickly? It was like you were there, helping him straight away, while the rest of us were still processing what was going on.’

  He shrugged. ‘Right place, right time, I guess.’

  Mike, who’d been quiet ever since, was staring at his mobile. Eventually he looked up and asked if Elliot had performed the manoeuvre before.

  He nodded. ‘I have, believe it or not. This is the second time. The first was a bit more hectic. It took a lot more goes until it worked. So much so that I feared I was going to lose him at one point.’

  ‘When was that?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘About twelve months ago. I was working late, alone with a colleague, and he started choking on some pizza we’d ordered. I had been shown what to do once, years earlier, on a first aid course, but theory and practice are very different. You have to get your hands together in the right place and go pretty hard with the thrusts. Ben might be a bit sore tomorrow, but that’s better than the alternative, right?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘I thought Heimlich was only recommended as a last resort these days,’ Mike said in a flat voice. ‘Aren’t you supposed to start with back slaps, working up to that if necessary?’

  ‘Are you kidding, Mike?’ Lisa snapped. ‘You’re seriously going to start criticising Elliot’s technique after he saved Ben’s life. Is that what you’ve been looking up on your mobile for the past however long? You’re unbelievable.’

  ‘I’m just—’

  ‘Well don’t. I didn’t see you doing anything to help.’

  ‘I didn’t see you doing anything either.’

  ‘Come on, guys,’ Elliot said, clearing his throat, his hands kneading the sofa cushion. ‘You’re both in shock, which is totally understandable. I, um—’

  Before he could finish, Mike let out an angry sigh, stood up and left the room. As Elliot and Lisa stared at each other in stunned silence, they heard the front door slam shut.

  Lisa rolled her eyes. ‘Sorry about that. Mike’s not in a good place at the moment and it doesn’t take much to set him off. He had no right—’

  ‘Don’t worry. No offence taken. So what’s going on with him? How do you mean he’s not in a good place? I thought the start of the summer holidays was every teacher’s favourite time of year.’

  ‘That’s the thing.’ Lisa paused to have a drink from her coffee mug. ‘Mike isn’t a teacher any more. He was doing well. He was a deputy head with excellent prospects, but that didn’t work out. Now he’s, um, in between jobs.’

  ‘You’re joking. I had no idea. Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘It’s complicated. Things happened and … Mike’s still very raw. The point is that he probably finds you a bit of a threat, what with your successful business and glamorous life in Australia. I imagine that’s why he said what he did.’

  She could have told Elliot this before. There had been plenty of opportunities. But the truth was that she hadn’t wanted to tell him. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed or ashamed about her husband no longer having a job. It was more that she didn’t want her old friend, who was doing so well, to see how imperfect her life was now. And Mike’s joblessness – as well as the awful career-wrecking allegation that had led to it – was at the core of the family’s problems.

  She’d always intended to tell Elliot eventually. God knows, it would certainly explain a few things, like Mike coming home blind drunk in that taxi on Friday night. But she’d knowingly put it off as long as she could.

  It was like that school reunion she’d attended a few years ago, at a point in her life when things had been going smoothly. All the people in attendance had done their utmost to show everyone else how well things had turned out for them, papering over the cracks; in several instances, these started to show through once the booze was flowing. A case in point was Joanne, who used to get the bus to school every day with Lisa and Elliot. She’d shown up looking fabulous, crowing about how she was making stacks of cash in some high-flying business role in London. Three hours later, Lisa had found her sobbing in the toilets, cheeks lined with mascara. She’d confessed how unhappy she was after years of trying and failing to have children, only for her long-term boyfriend to leave her for a twenty-year-old, who’d since fallen pregnant.

  At the time, Lisa hadn’t understood why people felt the need to hide the truth; why they cared so much what people they hadn’t seen in years thought. But she’d been in a position of strength then. She and Mike had both been content at work and happy as a couple. The kids had been younger and less sulky. Ben and Chloe had still enjoyed doing family things, rather than spending so much time in their bedrooms, glued to their mobiles, which they guarded like state secrets.

  Then that little shit had come along and poisoned everything.

  El had always been a good listener. It had been one of the first things she’d liked about him all those years ago: an unusual trait in a boy, which had no doubt been fostered by Wendy. From what Lisa knew of him as a thirty-eight-year-old, it was a quality he’d retained. So she decided that now was the right time to tell him what had happened.

  For her the nightmare had begun when she’d received that phone call from a shell-shocked Mike. Just thinking about it now, so long after the event, still made her stomach churn. Lisa took a deep breath before she started talking.

  Liam Hornby.

  Lisa had heard Mike moan about him on several occasions. He was a troublemaker. This wasn’t unusual, though. There were certain kids from her own school that she complained to Mike about too. Every school had its problem children. Most classes had one, although of course the level of the problem could vary considerably.

  Liam Hornby was definitely in the top tier of troublemakers. He was a problem that needed dealing with on a weekly, if not daily, basis. So by the time he decided to take things to the next level
, turning Mike and his whole family’s lives upside down in the process, his was a name with which Lisa was only too familiar.

  It was very unusual for Mike to call her at work. When she saw his number pop up on her mobile as she was chatting to Sandra over coffee in the staffroom, she feared there must be a problem with Ben or Chloe.

  ‘Hello? Is everything all right, love?’

  ‘No,’ he replied in little more than a whisper. ‘The shit’s hit the fan.’

  ‘What do you mean? Are the kids all right?’

  ‘Yes. It’s nothing to do with them.’

  ‘What is it, then? You sound so serious. You’re scaring me.’

  And then came that name. ‘It’s Liam Hornby. He’s accused me of attacking him.’

  What had happened, as Mike recounted it to her, was that Liam had been sent to his office after he’d badly stung another pupil with some nettles. It appeared that he’d brought these into school with the specific intention of hurting someone.

  Mike had been called away for a moment and had made the mistake of leaving Liam alone there. When he’d returned, just minutes later, the boy had ransacked the room, throwing files and paperwork all over the place, knocking his computer off the desk and even urinating all over the carpet.

  A furious Mike had started yelling at him, for everyone nearby to hear, at which point Liam had smashed his own face down on to the desk, breaking his nose and spraying blood all over the place. Mike, frozen in horror at the nightmare scene unfolding before him, hadn’t been quick enough to stop Liam darting out of his office and through the main entrance, leaving school. Mike had immediately sent the caretaker and another male member of staff after him, but they hadn’t been able to catch up. Next thing, as Mike was trying to make sense of what had happened, he’d received a phone call from Liam’s father, screaming blue murder. His son had turned up at his work in tears and covered in blood, he’d said, claiming that Mike had smashed his head into a desk. Mr Hornby had pledged to do everything in his power to ensure Mike ‘went down’ for what he’d done, informing him that he’d already called the police.

  Of course Mike had tried to reason with him; to explain what had actually happened. But Mr Hornby had hung up on him.