The Proof: Chapter 6

Next morning, Miss Thomas went to work with a hangover. She hadn't meant to drink that much, not on a school night, but eating dinner with her friends always had a tendency to get out of hand. It was quarter past ten and she still felt terrible. Her head throbbed, her eyes burned, and her discomfort wasn't helped by the obnoxious behaviour of her class: the boys were showing off and making noises, while the girls were encouraging them, sometimes with giggles and sometimes with frowns. It began to seem like the pain in her head and the antics of the children were one and the same thing. Maybe this was why her voice was so fierce when she stamped her foot and shouted at them to shut up. The class obeyed, but still, she regretted her outburst. She wanted her discipline to be positive rather than negative, to guide the children by giving them a role model to aspire to. "What I mean is," she added, "why can't you all be more like Charlie?"

Thirty pairs of eyes came to rest on the quiet boy at the back of the class. None of them belonged to friends of his, but none to his enemies either. He was just that boy who only spoke when the teacher asked difficult questions. While the others continued to watch, he lowered his head slightly, as if the weight of their attention oppressed him. His back remained perfectly straight though, and his sloping shoulders never moved.

Miss Thomas smiled at him across the classroom. She was a pretty young woman, with a social life that stretched a long way from her wholesome profession. She had a certain technique with her upper lip, thickening it slightly or making it taut, that had a powerful effect on the young men she met in nightclubs and parties and bars. But sometimes she used this technique without meaning to, at inappropriate moments, which is what she did then, smiling at Charlie.

A hand made a cup around Charlie's ear. "Miss Thomas loves you," a voice whispered through it; then the hand was retracted, in a hurry, because Miss Thomas was watching. After a pause, Charlie turned to his interlocutor: it was Susan, a messy girl with a cheeky smile. And around her were other smiles, sharp and full of meaning. He went back to looking straight ahead, with his neck curving slightly forwards and his rounded shoulders set very evenly.

It was almost time for the morning break. Miss Thomas had told the kids to sit quietly for the last two minutes, because she'd run out of things to make them do. But this was impossible, so they sat noisily, bursting into giggles or stamping their feet. Finally the bell rang and they rushed outside.

It was autumn in the playground, rust coloured leaves were blowing from branches and forming layers in mid air, planes of spinning leaves. The kids were playing all kinds of games — football, skipping, hopscotch, soldiers, only the edges were blurred and it was difficult to see where one game stopped and the next began. It was possible to stay on the shifting boundaries, kicking a ball here, dodging a chase there, without ever really joining in; and this is what Charlie did, as he left the school and crossed the tarmac playground. He was headed towards the grassy slope that rose up towards the playing field. When he got there, he stopped and turned around.

The grass was wet. It wasn't raining though, the sun was out, slanting through the trees at Charlie's back (the school grounds were full of trees, planted in a grid, like an orchard instead of a playing field). He had a feeling, maybe from a film he'd seen, a western, that he was more dangerous with the sun behind him. Somewhere on the playground, in the whirl of competing children, two girls were squinting and shielding their eyes.

"Who's that, over there?" asked Susan's friend. "That's Charlie," said Susan. "Why isn't he playing?" asked her friend. "Dunno," said Susan, clearing her face of her messy hair.

The girls were playing a game called scissors. The rules were simple: one person ran away and everyone else had to chase them, and catch them, and do whatever they wanted until they heard the word scissors. The rules were simple, and yet they were open to interpretation: sometimes when people didn't say scissors it was because they couldn't, because a hand or an arm was covering their mouth.

The game ended and everyone started shouting about whose turn was next. Then they decided: it was Susan's turn, her third.

Immediately, she raced away from her friend, who was loyal and stayed behind the chasing pack. At the front were mostly boys, the fastest and strongest. They expected to catch her quickly, like the last two times, but somehow this didn't happen. As she looped round the playground, they spread out behind her, puffing and stumbling and drawing more boys into her wake, convinced they'd succeed where their peers had failed. But they didn't, because Susan only ran even faster, her long thin legs turning in effortless circles. It was like she belonged to a different species, a different kingdom, twigs and fibres propelled by the wind. Eventually, the boys gave up altogether. They decided to play a different game: one where they all had to charge at each other.

But Susan kept running. She ran off the playground and didn't stop till she reached the grass, quite close to Charlie. "Whew I'm tired," she said, as if she was talking to herself, though she wasn't, she was talking to Charlie. He said nothing. Maybe he meant to say something, but this always seemed to take him a long time. "They never caught me," she went on, "I never said scissors." She was shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Why didn't you chase me?" she asked, and this time he had an answer. "Didn't want to," he said.

She smiled her cheeky smile.

"Why aren't you playing?" she asked, stepping towards him. "Don't want to," he said. Her brow crinkled — she had spotted a pattern. "Why… " she drew the word out, leading him on, "are you so boring?" But he didn't want to answer that, so she asked him again.

"Why are you so boring Charlie?"

Charlie started to run towards her, but he wasn't sure exactly when. The way she'd been moving her body, stepping forwards and back as she spoke, it was as if he'd been chasing her even when they were still. She raced up the slope ahead of him, always a few paces in front, and they vanished in the grid of trees.

A minute later Charlie had stopped and was breathing hard in the raw wet air. Susan had managed to escape him. She's hiding somewhere, he thought, hiding behind one of the trunks and laughing at me because I don't know where to find her. But like the sun that flickered between the branches, he knew she wouldn't stay hidden for long.

He crossed his arms to show he was waiting. He cleared his throat, drummed his fingers, began tapping his foot on the ground. There was a giggle behind one of the trees. Then there was a softer noise, feet on wet grass and leaves, a girl with long skinny legs running away, a clump of brown hair, dancing brown hair. He chased her through the orderly wood.

She veered off, drawing them towards the garden fences that lined one edge of the playing field. They were still going uphill, only now the fences were on their left, the houses on the other side were appearing one by one, all of them white, all exactly the same. Over his breathing, Charlie heard an animal sound.

A jogger had appeared from a lane between the homes, sweating and panting. He was mostly naked — tiny shorts, white shoes and a vest — but he must have been hot because his face was red and his hair stuck in points to his shining brow. He saw Charlie with a look of alarm, eyes wide and white, nostrils flaring, then turned so sharply that he skidded on the grass. He raced away from the school with the fence kept close to his side. For some reason, Charlie found this incredibly funny: he couldn't stop laughing as he watched the long hairy legs, hurtling up the slope with ridiculous speed.

When he finished, Susan had vanished again. He wondered if the jogger had been some kind of ruse, a hired diversion. He slowed down to a walk, saying "I'm tired, I'm going back now" in a tired voice, then lunged sideways and swung himself around one of the trees. But Susan wasn't there. And she wasn't behind the next tree he tried, or the one after that. Nothing was there, except the muddy ground and the silent trunks. For a moment he really did consider going back, but then came that giggle again, sound of the hunted mocking the hunter, and the chase was back on, even faster, along one of the corridors that multiplied endlessly between the trees.

Charlie had never run so much in his life. It was like a motor inside his chest, driving him forwards through the light and shade, mud and grass, roots and soggy falling leaves. Sometimes he was almost close enough to touch Susan's back or grab her fingers, but she always escaped; she was listening to him, waiting for his footsteps to squelch too loud. As he sprinted the whole scene shook around him, jarred by landing; only she remained steady, growing and receding, slowing then moving away.

Suddenly he was on the ground, he was shouting "Ow! Ow! I've hurt my ankle!" and holding his ankle. He could feel the grass wetting him through his trousers, the front of his jumper. He rolled onto his back and now Susan was above him, looming up like a tree with the world behind her, bent the wrong way. She wasn't convinced.

"You're lying," she said "you're a shit."

"Ow," he said, still holding his ankle, "ow, owww." She was moving, leaning forwards and half crouching down, checking herself and pulling back. She was always moving.

"If you've hurt your ankle then why aren't you crying?" she wanted to know. But she was getting closer, swaying indecisively above him. Charlie said nothing. He only manoeuvred into a sitting position, with his leg held awkwardly off the ground, then looked up at Susan. The sun was behind her, flashing on and off as she shifted her head.

Eventually she crouched down. "Is it really sore?" she asked. "Yes," he gasped, "I think I've twisted it." She took his leg with her twiggy fingers, then squeezed and asked if it hurt. He flinched, but her fingers kept touching and probing, enjoying their new game. She started bending his foot very gently back and forth, massaging the flesh above his ankle. After a while, her expression became sterner: "Well you won't be running again for a very long time," she said, "you'll have to stay at home and keep your foot in a tub of hot water. And then you'll have to walk on crutches and wear a tight bandage until the swelling has gone away."

The sun was in his eyes.

He grabbed her hand, the one holding his foot, and twisted it hard. As she lurched sideways he sprung forwards onto her stomach, used his knees to trap her arms, his hand to pin down her hair. He said: "I caught you," and he was smiling, the first time she'd seen him smile. She jerked her head up, as if she wanted to bite him, but her hair pulled tight and yanked it down.

"I caught you," he repeated, bending down to kiss her. She turned her head away and scrunched up her lips. After a few attempts, he landed a peck half on and half off her mouth. She spat and shouted scissors. He shifted his weight so that his knees dug into the soft parts of her arms, and she gasped. Before she could shut her mouth he kissed her on the lips, pressing his mouth hard against them. When he was done she shouted scissors again. This time he stood up, wiping blades of wet grass from his knees.