by Mark Ayre
“And this,” he said, opening the last door and gesturing inside, “is the canteen.”
It was an unremarkable room, paling in comparison to Hogwarts’ Great Hall. Rather than four long matching tables, there were eight options, each acquired or donated at different times by different people with different tastes. Here was a black option taken straight from a dining room, here a standard white canteen table, here a circular oak table with a glass top so scratched it was no longer transparent.
The chairs were suffering the same condition. Big, small, office, dining, plastic, leather - James saw fifteen types in his first visual sweep of the room.
“Every day we offer a hot meal to anyone who needs it, providing they are under the age of eighteen - not that we draw a hard line.” George gave James a stern look, as though he had suggested otherwise.
“Each meal session is three hours - seven am until ten, half eleven until half two and four until seven, although we will always attempt to accommodate those who cannot make it.
Another stern look. James glanced at his watch. In ten minutes, lunch would begin. Already he could smell cooking food, although the canteen was not yet busy. In one corner sat a group of three boys in their early teens, chatting and laughing. Across the room was a girl a couple of years older and outside he saw a couple more girls, ages undeterminable from this distance. As they stepped into the room, all eyes turned to George, and James saw what they thought. Hero worship had never been more evident.
“We try to have two people manning lunch and dinner, one at breakfast. Lunch can get busy, so I’m sure Mac will be pleased to have you.”
James hadn’t noticed the girl behind the counter but now looked to her. Realised it was indeed the girl he’d met the previous night. He smiled at her and hoped his eyes didn’t show what he saw behind them. The imagined scenario of a spat with Mohsin. The swinging of a blunt instrument.
Bam. Headshot.
“Good morning, Macarena,” George said.
“Morning, George.”
Mac tried a smile, but her red eyes told their own story. She barely glanced at James.
“You have help today,” George said. ‘I know you’ve not got long, but could you show James the ropes and get him started?”
Mac said she could, and George patted James on the shoulder.
“Thank you for all your help. I’ll be upstairs in my office if you need me.”
As George departed James stepped around the counter, taking in the hot plates covered by dishes of pasta, veg, potatoes and other easy cook items, reminding himself he did not believe in fate. He and Mac were not pieces on a chess board being pushed together so he could talk about Mohsin and Charlie. He was here to help, that was all.
“Hi,” he said, but she was in no mood for pleasantries.
“We’ve not got long. I’d better show you what to do.”
The double doors James had seen when he arrived swung open, and a couple of laughing teenagers entered. One boy, one girl. He wearing a stained Slipknot tee. She a torn Iron Maiden one They circled towards the back of the room, and as they passed the girl sitting alone, Iron Maiden shoved Slipknot into her chair. To the girl’s credit, she kept her head down as the teens walked on, laughing their heads off.
Mac muttered something under her breath.
“What?”
“Seventeen,” she repeated. “A few more months and we won’t have to serve them anymore.”
A wave of guilt came over her, displacing the misery that had been there before.
“Pretend I never said that. Come on; we’ve not got long.”
James would have liked to ask questions about the teens that had so drawn her ire, but before he could, she had jumped into the lessons. Running him through the processes and workings of the equipment as the doors continued to swing, and more kids came in, forming an orderly queue as half eleven rolled around.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
They plunged into serving, and James had to learn fast. Dishing out food, cleaning plates, cooking more food, replacing empty pots. All in a cycle.
Most of this he did in silence, allowing Mac to take front of house. Many of the kids knew her, and she spoke as she served, showing a warmth and confidence he wouldn’t have guessed she possessed after their meeting the previous evening.
Everything seemed to be going well until those teens, who had arrived so early, rose, having sat laughing and talking for half an hour, and came to the counter.
James was washing dishes, back to the action, so only heard the clattering of a plate and raucous laughter.
“Hey mate, why you so clumsy?”
Turning, James saw a boy of around twelve standing with open hands and a tear in his eye. He stared at the floor and James could guess what had happened.
“Hey, he asked you a question,” Iron Maiden girl said, reaching around her mate and poking the boy in the shoulder. “You gunna answer?”
“Trina, leave him be,” said Mac, facing the girl. “Kieran, are you going to apologise?”
Trina and Kieran gave Mac a dirty look, turned to each other, and burst out laughing.
“Apologise for what?” Kieran said. “Not my fault he’s such a fucking klutz, is it?”
“You know full well -“
“You gunna serve us or what?” Trina asked, raising her voice to cut Mac off. As she did, James grabbed a dustpan, brush and cloth and stepped around the counter, up to the troublemakers.
“Excuse me.”
They looked at him with narrow eyes but did not move. He pointed to the floor.
“I need to clean up your mess.”
“I think you’ll find, big man,” said Trina, pointing to their victim. “It’s dough boy’s mess.”
“I think you’ll find,” James responded, “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
He spoke with far more confidence than he felt and worried if either of them went to slap him he’d flinch, ruining the whole play. To defend against this possibility, he went on.
“Why don’t you two take your food, and go eat. If you want to cause more trouble, you can cause it elsewhere, and be hungry doing it. What do you say?”
Still, they stared. Still, he worried they might call his bluff and raise a hand to him. They gave each other another glance, then turned away, Kieran pointing to the hot plates.
“Some of everything. None of that veg shit though.”
Mac gave a small smile and proceeded with their order. James watched them take their food and move away, then leant down to clean up the mess, feeling a growing sense of pride at his handling of the situation.
It was harder work than he had done in a long time. While this may have said more about his past experiences than it did the job, such knowledge didn’t leave him feeling any less knackered when they handed out their last dish at just after two thirty to a shy looking kid with a black eye and a cut lip, each of which broke James’ heart in equal measure.
“How often do you do this?” he asked.
The room was quiet. A few kids were finishing their meals or chatting over empty plates, but most had gone. Mac was standing over the sink washing dishes, and James was drying them as they came through.
“Most Saturday lunchtimes and one or two evenings a week. It’s not much. I could always do more.”
“But you work, too?”
“Yeah. I’m a secretary Monday to Friday.”
“That’s amazing,” James said.
Mac put her head down without response. She’d been struggling with a cloud of misery the entire meal. Thoughts of her hospitalised boyfriend not helped by the Trina and Kieran situation.
“You get a lot of idiots?” he asked.
“Hardly any. Trina and Kieran are special cases. They’ve always been bad, and they’ve only got worse. The whole Barnes clan has tried to help. First Luke until Mark had a pop, saying he wasn’t helping right. Then Mark tried but with no more success. Christina was the last to weigh in, and they seemed to respon
d to her for a while. George has had plenty of conversations with little progress. It doesn’t help when they’re on -“ she looked around as though worried impressionable ears might be wagging - “drugs.”
James nodded, feeling a little distracted. It hadn’t passed him by that Mac was the first person to reference Luke freely, and not concerning the Charlie disappearance. He wanted her to say more but was afraid his questions might shove her into a shell.
“I appreciate you dealing with them,” she said, as though sensing his enquiries and heading them off. “Usually I’d do it myself or…”
She trailed off, but James remembered what Megan had said.
“Mohsin.” He kept the word quiet, afraid giving it volume would increase its ability to hurt, but Mac flinched anyway. “I guess he was supposed to work today? I’m sure he’ll be up and about next week and back here where he -”
“Mohsin doesn’t work here,” she said. “He did, until a couple of weeks ago, but he stopped.”
“How come?”
Shrug. “Think he fell out with George. Don’t know. Does it matter?”
“I suppose not,” he said, taking the next dish from her, giving it a cursory wipe without paying it much attention. Allowing his mind to wander over different topics. Thinking.
“So all the Barneses have worked here?”
She gave him another plate and a suspicious look. He couldn’t blame her, but nor could he think of a more subtle way to ask the question.
“No,” she said and didn’t elaborate for over a minute. “Emma’s never helped out, and I doubt she’d want to. Christina and Mark occasionally pitch in, but it’s rare. They tend only to deal with the more troublesome kids like Trina and Kieran.”
Another pause. She allowed her eyes to find his and stared, as though daring him to ask about the missing member. He resisted, deciding she would talk it if she wanted to and otherwise… well, it was none of his business.
“Before Luke left town he was here almost every day. Working with the kids. Helping them. Helping George. Doing whatever he needed to do.
“He was brilliant.”
James was stunned. It was the last thing he expected to hear. So far those who spoke of Luke spoke of him in hushed tones. Fearful words hinting at crimes they didn’t dare elaborate on. Now here was Mac, giving the opposite opinion.
“Not what you expected?” she asked.
He shook his head. She smiled. Took the next dish.
“If he was so great, you must have been shocked,” he said, speaking carefully. “When he was run out of town.”
“I’m not going to talk about that.”
“Fair enough.” Thinking. Searching for another approach. “When he took Charlie then. And Mohsin. I guess you know he was most likely the attacker?”
She looked at him. A long hard look that barely hid she was on the verge of tears. She turned away again, scrubbing a plate that must have been clean thirty seconds ago. With nothing to dry he stood, dishcloth limp in hand like a dead body in a tree, his eyes on her, swirling a scourer around and around like some mad DJ at his decks.
“You don’t know,” she said. “No one knows.”
Still running her hand around and around the dish.
“Who else could it have been?”
Still watching the cloth, feeling a little as though he was being hypnotised.
“Anyone,” she said. “We don’t know. But it doesn’t make sense. Why would Luke have come town side? And how did he get into the house? Surely the doors were locked?”
James had considered the first point, but not the latter. He thought upon the implications.
“You think someone was helping him?” His thoughts went to the mystery girl. Who was she?
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
The sound of the cloth on the dish became grating. He reached for it.
“Mac, I think that plate’s -“
He touched her arm, and she jerked back, dragging the plate with her like a movie monster drags the virgin girl through the woods. It caught on the side of the sink, clinging to its bath, and she released.
He watched it flip over the edge and reached for it, getting as close as he would have guessed he could, which was not close at all.
It smashed, pieces rushing off in different directions like a family after an argument.
From beyond the counter, a whoop rose at the sound of the smash, but neither Mac nor James responded. Mac stared at the broken pieces as though willing them to reassemble. James stared at Mac, worried she might go the way of the plate.
“Shit,” Mac said. The word spat out, tears rolling from her eyes.
“It’s fine, I’ll -“
“It’s not.”
Dropping to her knees she grabbed at the pieces with reckless abandon, piling them in one hand and clinging to them as though they might try to flee. James watched this a few moments, then dropped as he saw the line of red running down the back of one hand.
“Stop,” he said, then, when she kept going, grabbed her wrists and held them with sturdy care, waiting until she looked him in the eye. “Stop.”
Trembling, she looked as though she might pull away. He turned her right wrist a little, revealing the back of her hand. She looked and saw the blood trailing over her fingers, dripping to the floor.
“Oh,” she said. He thought she might be in shock.
“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
She shook her head frantically, as though he’d suggested pitting her against a bear in a fight to the death.
“Come on, Mac, it’s -“
“It’s my fault,” she said, and her eyes widened as they caught his.
“What is?”
But she yanked her arms away, falling onto her back and just missing a piece of glass which may well have punctured her skin and caused a far more severe injury than the one on the back of her hand. She stared at him. To anyone who walked in it would look as though he had attacked her.
He held out a hand. When she didn’t take it, the question slipped out.
“Do you mean it’s your fault because Mohsin wouldn’t have been there if not for you or because it was you who -“
He caught himself, stopped. But it was too late.
“Fuck you,” she said, and scrambled to her feet, knocking his hand away as he went to her. Once up she turned from him and, clutching her injured hand, ran from the canteen as fast as she could, the question he hadn’t finished left unanswered.
He couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After clearing the glass and blood from the floor, and collecting and washing the rest of the dishes, James went looking for George, unsure if or how he was supposed to lock up the canteen now lunch was over, and the kids had left.
Into the corridor James head back the way George had walked him, stopping halfway up at the door George had implied hid a staircase.
Here, he hesitated.
There was no sign on the door indicating as much, but it felt like the kind of entrance one should not pass without appointment or invitation. This had him looking to reception, wondering if Diane was still there before he remembered George had invited him up as they stood in the canteen.
Pushing through the door before more doubts could set in, James made his way up a narrow, carpeted staircase, coming out on a corridor much like the one he had just departed, stretching from one end of the building to the other and segmented by doors on either side. These leading to meeting rooms, training rooms, classrooms and offices, rather than games rooms, relaxations rooms, bedrooms and the canteen.
At his end of the corridor, he was surrounded by the larger rooms, with the offices further up. He head towards these, only pausing when one of the doors opened and a man a few years younger than George stepped out.
“Hello there,” he said, voice small town friendly. “Can I help ya?”
“I’m looking for George,” James said, closing the space bet
ween them. “My name’s -“
“James, of course. George mentioned you. Ben -“
He held out a hand which James took., noting Ben had departed a door with a placard reading BEN PASKINS.
“The cop,” he said, then, catching himself - “uh, police officer.”
Ben laughed.
“Cop is fine. Or even Ben. Pleased to meet you.”
The handshake ended. An awkward pause, then Ben turned to the next door along from his office.
GEORGE BARNES
“That’s the one you want,” Ben said. “I think he’s with someone, but knock. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”
“I will, thanks.”
“No worries. See you around.”
He gave a half wave, though he was only a foot from James, and wandered on down the corridor.
James watched him go, as though worried the friendly attitude was a ruse, and Ben would attack the moment James turned his back, then went to the door, knocking with polite knuckles.
“Come in.”
There was movement inside, and when James opened the door, George was already coming towards him, possessing that same strained smile as earlier.
“James, good to see you.”
He held out an official hand, and James shook. They broke, and James examined his surroundings. A small, square room with a tiny window looking onto the carpark, a desk holding a PC almost as old as the one in reception, a plant that smelt plastic and a handful of pictures - George and Christina, Emma, Mark, Christina and Emma. No sign of Luke. There was an office chair behind the desk and a plastic option in front. A young girl occupied the office chair. She was maybe 14, with curly blonde hair, a well worn white-grey top and a nervous smile.
“This is Becky,” George said, squeezing the girl’s shoulder. Comforting her. “She is one of our most promising wards. Doing great in school. We’re all very proud of her. Becky, let’s finish this up later.”
James came around the desk a little and saw on screen a number of pictures, all of the same smiling boy in his late teens. On the desk lay an open book with the profile of another boy. Picture in one corner and several blocks of text and headings James couldn’t make out from his position. He took this in then smiled as Becky stood and faced him, hands stuffed in pockets.