*teachers arguing*
"...[I don't want to] fall out..."
"WE NEVER FELL IN."
God, that was funny.
Chapter 29:
A few days later.
"I'm not hungry."
Michael gave a soft sigh, "You need to eat, Tom, whether you're hungry or not."
The headteacher and his deputies were sitting in the dining hall, surrounded by chattering students, the smell of mince and dumplings omnipotent.
Sian and Michael were tucking into the meal, stuffing Brussell sprouts into their mouths and sipping their hot chocolates – a special treat for Fridays – but Tom sat staring at his untouched sandwich miserably.
"Please, Tom," Sian begged.
She didn't like seeing him like this. She knew that people fell into two categories, generally; when they were upset and stressed and angry, they either stopped eating, or stuffed their faces with anything they could find.
Whilst the latter option wasn't exactly healthy, she'd have preferred to see him eating crisps and chocolate and sweets than starving himself.
"Tom, would Nikki really want this?"
Sian winced. That seemed to have been the unspoken sentence between everyone and Tom since the incident with Nikki – all of his colleagues had tried to comfort him, all of them thinking that Nikki wouldn't have wanted Tom to suffer too, but none of them had said it, because they'd known it wouldn't help. And now Michael had broken that unspoken rule.
"How can you know what she'd want?" he asked slowly, opening the plastic wrapper around the sandwich and beginning to shred the bread crust into crumbs, "Did you ask her?"
"Tom," Sian murmured, "He didn't mean it like that."
"And how can you tell me how to feel? It's not like you were very close to her, is it?" he continued, as though his colleague hadn't spoken, "You were supposed to be her boss, and you didn't even notice she was about to kill herself? You're just as responsible as me, Michael, so don't you dare patronise me."
"We understand you're upset."
"No, you don't. You don't understand anything."
"Look, I said you could come back to work today because I thought you needed something to distract yourself from worrying about Nikki," Michael said calmly, "But you're making it clear to me that I made the wrong decision. I know you're upset, Tom, and so is everyone else – it's perfectly understandable. I'm trying to be lenient with you, but I can't allow you to act like this."
"Act like what? God, is this a bloody prison now, or something? You don't own me, Michael – you can't control me. Maybe you thought you could control Nikki, and maybe she even fell for it, because she was vulnerable, but you can't control me, and when she gets better I won't let you touch her again."
"Tom, this is not Michael's fault. You know it isn't, really. Just calm down – you're going to regret this later."
"Sian's right. I don't want to fall out with you."
"What makes you think we ever fell in?"
There was a long silence. Several of the children nearby had abandoned their mince in favour of listening to the raised voices between their teachers. Their conversation would probably be all over Twitter in a few minutes.
None of the children were smiling today, though. Normally, teachers' rows were the gossip of the school for at least a week, but Nikki's suicide could hardly be gossiped about.
Some of the children had been found crying in the toilets this week. Others had handed chocolates to Tom, asking him if he'd give them to her, whilst others laid flowers at the school gates, and others wrote poems and read them in assembly. It had been a hard week for them all. Nikki had touched their hearts.
"I'm sorry," Tom said.
"It's okay."
"No, it's not."
That reminded him: he still had all of those poems to go through for the poetry competition. The turnout had been enormous, more than anyone could have anticipated – since Nikki's accident (everyone said accident, because it was easier), even the most unlikely suspects had entered.
Even Kyle Stack had written a poem, for God's sake, and Tom would admit without hesitation that it was actually quite a good poem. The whole school was subdued, marked by the darkness of what had happened just a few metres from where they sat now.
Tom bent his head.
Sian and Michael continued to eat their lunch, talking discreetly about the weather until he'd regained his composure.
"I heard it was going to... to brighten up, in the next few days," he said quietly, taking an exploratory bite of his sandwich, "Might even get to touch up my tan."
"You'd be lucky," Sian squeezed his hand affectionately.
"Dad?"
"Oh, hi," Tom stood up, laid a hand on his son's shoulder, "You doing okay, mate? How's your morning been?"
"Yeah, fine. Thanks," he stared down at his feet, looked uncomfortable, "Are you alright?"
Tom nodded.
"I thought I'd just check if you... have you, um, heard anything from the hospital? About Nikki?"
"Not since last night."
"Are we still going to see her later?"
"Josh..."
Josh raised his head, his eyes glistening with a mixture of anger and confusion, as though he'd just been betrayed by someone he'd trusted unquestioningly, "Dad, you said..."
"Look, come outside for a minute. If you'll excuse me, Michael? Sian?"
"Of course," Michael said through a mouthful of sticky toffee pudding and somewhat lumpy custard.
The corridor was quiet. That was something Tom had learnt about corridors in the past few days – they were always quiet. He'd come to rely on them; if things got overpowering in the ward, or beside her bed, or in the shop, or in Liam's office, he could always step into the corridor and calm down.
He wished it had been that easy for Nikki. Wished she could've just stepped out into the corridor rather than jumping from a roof. But then maybe if he'd dragged her out into that corridor – he was thinking metaphorically now – none of this would've happened.
"Dad, you said we could go and see her tonight. You said I could come; you promised. You've been sitting with her all week. I just want to see her."
"I know you do, Josh. I'm trying to protect you. It's because you care so much about her that I'm not sure it'd be the best idea for you to see her – maybe we should leave it a few more days. I just don't want you to be any more upset."
"But how is that fair? You're allowed to go and see her; it doesn't matter if it makes you more upset. You've barely talked to me all week, because you've been so busy with her, and..."
"Josh..."
"...and I don't even mind that because I know how much she matters to you, Dad. But why won't you let me see her as well? Why can't you just understand that I love her too?"
Tom leant back against the wall. He really didn't have an answer to those questions. Josh was right.
"Okay," he relented softly, "Okay. You can come."
XxXxX
This may or may not be the last chapter. Seems like a bit of a shitty place to end a story I enjoyed writing so much, but I guess that's life.
