The Suicide Club (14 page)

‘Take this home with you, Mr Harper,' he said. He was holding an envelope. I took it from him and tried to look timid.

‘Sir,' I said. ‘How's Craig?'

‘His parents are coming to collect him. He'll be fine.'

I smiled a little.

‘Can I just say something?' I said.

‘What?'

I looked at the floor.

‘You know I'm sorry about Bertie, don't you, sir?'

I was serious that I was sorry about Bertie being dead – of course I was sorry, I'm not disaffected. But that didn't change the all-important fact of the matter; that, although I was sorry about Bertie, when I said I was sorry to the headmaster I only said it because I was making fun of him.

I KNEW WHAT
was in the envelope. It was a summons for my parents. The headmaster would like them in to talk about their son – me. This would be the worst part of it all. I had to somehow explain to my parents about Bertie. This bird was kind of like a local celebrity and now he was dead. They were going to see that all of their efforts had gone to waste and that their son really was a bad egg.

By the time I got home that evening, I was numb. The envelope from the headmaster was in my hand and I desperately didn't want to give it to my parents. But I had decided to face the music like a man so I went into the kitchen and sat at the table with my mum and dad whilst they read the letter.

The initial reaction wasn't explosive because they were in shock. How could their son have done this? My father looked at me like I was a stranger, and that hurt. My father was always supportive of me, but now I feared I had lost him for ever. My mother stood up from her chair and walked out of the room, carrying the letter in her hands.

That was a bit of a let-off. I was glad that she had taken the time to cool off before speaking to me. But I was not going to be so lucky with my father.

I really love my father. After he left he stayed in constant contact with Toby and me. We never spoke about whether or
not he was seeing another woman, or who she might have been. And that suited me fine because I knew nothing was going on.

I always knew that my mother would forgive me for anything and I could sort of get away with anything, but my father was different. If I, for example, murdered somebody, he would turn me in. Because that would be the right thing to do. And now I was on trial and in jeopardy was his approval of me.

‘I can never forget this, son,' he said coolly.

His calm voice chilled me. I knew that he wasn't going to go off his nut at me because the nature of my crime was
so
horrific that scolding me would be meaningless. But the way he was speaking was not nice. My mouth got even drier than it already was. I knew what he was thinking – he was thinking, Richard hasn't changed. My chest was actually experiencing physical pain and my head felt light.

‘What the heck were you thinking of ?'

‘I . . . I . . .' I wasn't being dramatic.

‘Christ, be a man. Stop crying this instant,' he said sternly.

I looked at him through my bleary eyes.

‘I'm not going to shout at you just yet. Did you do it deliberate—'

‘No.' The word rang out. ‘Of course not.' I couldn't help but let water leak out of my eyes, although I wasn't
sobbing
. ‘It wasn't me.'

‘What would you think if you were me?'

I didn't know what to say.

‘I mean, after all we've been through with you, and we forgave you for it all. If this was an isolated incident then I could believe you. But what do you expect me to think, given your past? Do you think I should believe you?'

‘But I've tried so hard,' I cried. My voice shook and broke. I couldn't help it. I guess it was the Straw that Broke the
Camel's Back. Everything that had happened had caught me by the throat and I was broken. My dad just sat where he was. How could he not believe me? I had been so good. It was like the end of the world for me. The bond between me and my father was being severed and it was unbearable.

‘Listen to me, son.' He leaned forward over the kitchen table. ‘Let me talk to you as an adult. I think I owe you that much. You see, I have to look at this from two sides. On the one hand, I have to have sympathy for the school. This is the institution that is educating you and, if rules are broken, then the transgressors have to face the responsibility. As a parent, I should support the school because they only have the best interests of their pupils at heart.'

Hearing my father use words such as ‘transgressor' was awful. Because it meant I had lost my innocence. I was no longer a child if he was using big words.

‘If you've done this thing, then I have to see it from the point of view of the school. I'm not going to be one of these parents who can't see the facts.' I could feel his soul standing tall. ‘But on the other hand I'm also a parent.'

His voice was kindly now; I had never heard him speak quite like this, addressing me like I was an adult.

‘If you say that you didn't do it deliberately, then I'll trust you. The school could be wrong.'

‘They are wrong,' I pleaded.

‘Are you sure?'

‘No, yes. It was . . .' I tried to breathe. ‘We didn't plan it. It was just an accident.'

‘But, Rich, you've lied to me before.'

When he said that it was like a soap bar wrapped in a towel had been smacked into my chest like in that movie
Full Metal Jacket
. My father had just revealed to me an irreversible truth. He thought I was a liar. Or at least capable of telling lies. Which I'm not. Not any more. I can't lie about serious things.

He was talking about the time I went off the rails, he was talking about my Bad Thing, the incident that set me apart. I should tell you it now. You should know what happened. It's only fair.

I had been with an old group of friends (who refused to hang around with me after what happened) and I kind of threw a brick through a shop-front. We went to run away but an old man had seen us and stopped his car. My adrenalin was pumping so hard I thought my veins were going to burst. He came towards us and he was on his phone to the police. I was really drunk and got really scared all of a sudden so I picked up a piece of metal that just happened to be lying on the pavement. It was kind of like a pipe but there was no hole in the middle; it was solid. I paused. My mind said, Go on, Rich, take this as far as you can. My brain was howling at me. Just see what it is you are capable of. In one awful moment I swung the metal pipe at his head and just at the last minute a piece of common sense opened up in me and I changed my swing, smashing the phone out of his hand. I could feel the crunch of metal on bone. The man gasped and swore at me, and said that I was evil but his voice was scared and shaky so I pushed him in the chest and he fell backwards on to the pavement. I towered over him and the look on his face was awful. It was like he was looking at the devil. I walked past him quickly, towards his car. The door was still open and I ran up to it and, with the sole of my foot, smashed it closed. I felt the metal cave under my blow as the door slammed shut. My chest was going up and down, up and down. I turned back to my friends with a smile on my face, looking forward to seeing how impressed they were. But all I saw were six frightened children looking at someone they didn't recognize. I remember the metal pipe feeling heavy in my hand just before I dropped it to the ground.

I don't tell you this expecting any form of forgiveness – I
know that I can never be forgiven for what I did. I tell you it because it happened. I was drunk and I did something that 99.9% of the population would never even consider. I can't say it could happen to anyone, or that it was a terrible mistake, because it's not true. Only a certain type of person can do something like that. Only a certain type of person can go to such extremes purely to see what would happen. It was a true act of evil and most people cannot perform such acts. It is as simple as that. I despise myself because of it and whenever something good happens to me I remember what I did and my happiness drains away. The police were called in and I told my father that I didn't do it. But I did do it. And I was found out.

‘Dad . . .' I said. I was sniffling now. So pathetic.

‘Son, I want to believe you, I really do. I know you've been trying very hard to get back on the right track, and I have to say that as your father I
do
believe you. But this . . .
killing
a helpless animal—'

‘It was an accident.'

‘I'm going to take your mother and your brother out for dinner. You'll stay here. And not go out. All right?'

I nodded.

He got up from his seat. As he walked past I expected him to ruffle my hair as a show of solidarity. He always ended things on good terms. But he didn't do it. He left without even looking at me. I could feel that he
couldn't
look at me. I felt sick. I couldn't believe what my parents were going to have to go through again; all of the worry and fear.

When he shut the door it was like my mind had opened the floodgates. Inside my head was like a war zone. I felt like the line in the song where I could blow through the ceiling, you know? I was literally devastated that they were going out for a meal and I wasn't. I hoped that they wouldn't tell Toby what I had done – it would break his heart, which
I imagined to be vulnerable in the first place because he was so frail.

But at the same time I was glad, which I know sounds stupid because how can you be sad
and
glad at the same time? Well, I was. I was glad that my father had spoken to me in the measured way that he had. I felt more respect for him than I ever had before. And that just made me feel worse about Bertie because it must have been such a let-down for my dad. I was in a cold sweat and I dried my eyes with the sleeves of my school sweater that I sometimes wore beneath my blazer in the winter.

I suddenly had a Worst Case Scenario in my head, a really bad one, roaring out of the darkest corner of my brain. My parents were driving to the restaurant and they took a corner too fast. A car was coming the other way. It was too late. When the two cars hit, Toby's body was thrown clean through the windscreen. I saw his face get sliced apart by the glass, his outstretched arms not saving him. He always wears these stupid sandals with grey socks and I saw them hurtle past my dead parents' heads. So tiny, so small, rounded like bulbs over his child's toes. His skull smashed into the other driver's windscreen and his neck got snapped like it was made of balsa wood. His eventual resting position was with his head stuck backwards at a sickening angle, almost ninety degrees, to his neck. The driver's windscreen was shattered where Toby's head had hit, and looked like a spider had spun a web over the surface of the blood-smeared glass. Toby was face down and his arms were by his side. If you were hovering low in a helicopter, you could see the soles of his stupid fucking sandals. And if you looked closely, you could just see the side of his face, all covered in blood. And his eyes, do you know what they were? Closed. He was still, oh so still. My whole family was dead. I was alone, a broken man with nothing but pain, just like Craig Bartlett-Taylor.

Freddy got sent back to his parents and so when I was asked to go to the headmaster's office to watch the video with my mother and father, I had to go it alone. I knew their appointment was at two thirty and when that time arrived I was summoned. This was a shock as I didn't know that I was going to be in attendance. My father had requested my presence because he wanted me there when they were shown the tape.

It was an uncomfortable experience for all of us. We watched on as I saw my back turn away from camera on the headmaster's television set. Then we saw the dead bird in Freddy's hands and the footage was just as ambiguous as I remembered.

When the show was over, the headmaster told my parents that I had been very well-behaved during this school year, and that this sort of activity was abnormal.

‘I think it might be prudent to keep Richard and Freddy separate for a while,' he said at last.

‘I don't even know who this Freddy is,' said my mother (who was still ignoring me), her eyes burning into me as though I should tell her about everybody I knew.

In fairness, the headmaster went on to explain that Freddy had come clean about killing the bird.

‘He's been sent back to his family until he can accept what he's done. I haven't suspended him officially, but he won't return to this school until at least next week. And like I say, when he does come back, Richard and he should stay apart.'

‘Oh, you don't have to worry about that,' Mum said. ‘He won't be seeing anybody for a while.'

I listened, not really thinking much. My mother was talking as if I were a child, and she was being a bit stereotypical. If she was going to react like this, then I wasn't about to start
caring what she thought. At least my father had treated me like an adult.

When the meeting was over I was returned to my lesson. I sat next to Clare.

As the teacher spoke, I whispered, ‘Freddy's been kicked out.'

She looked at me. ‘I know. I heard this morning.' She paused. ‘My mother says—'

‘Clare!' The teacher had heard us. ‘Have you got something to say?'

My God, why do some teachers have to use such awful clichés?

‘No, sir,' she said meekly.

I loved her for that.

She started writing on a piece of paper:
My mother says I'm not allowed to speak to you anymore
.

I took the paper from her.
Are you going to listen to her?

We glanced out of the sides of our eyes at each other. Her black hair was the entire background. In the last two days, since Bertie's death had become public knowledge, Clare had sort of distanced herself from me. She had gone back to hanging around with her old friends all the time. My old friends had also distanced themselves. Jenny simply hadn't spoken to me at all. Only Matthew was still on my side and things were all going bad. I was glad to have the chance to sit next to Clare. I waited for her to write her reply. Finally, she smiled at me and brought the pen down to the paper.