Frozen

It had begun to snow heavily that Thursday evening, at the end of dark January, for the first time that Winter and although still loose and powdery it was beginning to form dense, crystalline, crusted layers  on the roads. The temperature of my whole being dropped below zero that night. A hard layer of ice coats my mind still, as if those events have been trapped in ice, like some preserved set of artefacts from another world….

I was glancing at my watch deliberately, as Mrs Danebury warbled on, wittering like a slightly ruffled mother hen, her brown fur coat a fluff of brown feathers.

“Well, it’s her future we are worried about, Mr Daniels. If she doesn’t get her ‘B’ grade they won’t want her for A Levels, will they… And what then?”

“Well… I…I  would recommend the Foundation Paper Mrs Danebury. That’s my professional opinion,” I said, fighting off a yawn. “But if you feel she will work hard enough, over the next few weeks, it’s your call, at the end of the day, and I will bend up, so to speak, to your will…”

I looked up rather irritably at the now empty hall. I was the last. A laminated banner on the wall glared down at me:‘Everyone Matters’ and the tables that were thronged with parents twenty minutes before, were now void and empty; discarded Nescafe coffee cups and the loose remains of bourbon and custard cream biscuit wrappers, were the only battle scars of the evenings engagements. Apart from Mrs Danebury. Her eyes seemed to stare with growing dread into the future of her daughter’s academic life…

“Well, we’ll give her a chance, then…” I said.

I was finally released. Grabbing my laptop, dog-eared datasheets and planner and the piece of paper I’d scribbled down notes  about poorly performing pupils, I ushered my way out, past the caretaker, who was pushing away chairs, wearing a pallid, drawn expression that made him look weary and ready to sleep.

Would it have been different if I hadn’t stopped? Would fate have still laid its same hand? I will never know. Never. But I did stop in the foyer, as the two parents, hand in hand wandered disorientated in, searching, for what, I did not know…

As I attempted to sidle around them, feeling for my phone, I stared at the woman’s sunken eyes. She wore a pale yellow headscarf, which was marked with snowflakes, and was about five foot tall, small in build, but seemed to have shrunken in on herself, even more. It wasn’t just the cold. Mr and Mrs Urbani.

 He was the one who spoke first. “Ex-excuse me. Salaam. We are looking for…”

“It’s our son,” she gasped, in a stronger accent. Pakistani? Bangledeshi, perhaps… “He’s been missing for hours. He goes to the school. No one answered the phone….”

I looked around for help. Other than the caretaker, it looked like most of the staff had gone, and there was no sign of any pupils. A Year 10’s GCSE Art piece of a spider caught in its own web hung on the wall opposite and for a moment I froze like the spider.

Surely they were being melodramatic. Had they phoned him? He’d left his phone at home; the mother clutched it like a delicate jewel in her hand, as more tears ran, slowly, an unsettled  peace in her eyes, onto her cheeks.

“We’ve called police,” the father said, hope falling from his voice.

I reassured them. The child’s name was Usman, a sixth former. I knew the lad. Doing Literature in the sixth form. He’d been handing out coffees earlier, I was sure of it. A good boy who, I was sure was walking home through the snow right now, and the best thing would be to go home and wait for him.

“He probably only left ten minutes ago, so you must have just missed him as you drove in.”

A look of uncertainty lifted from the father’s face, as I left them heading back towards the entrance, or exit as it now was, and into the cold night. Snow whirled  around me like in a fairytale picture book and the bitter chill of the wind bit at me, as I headed, head down toward the staff carpark by the  ‘Lesiure Gymnasium’ . My footprints mingled with those that had gone before me, crunching with comical dread, the school behind me, where Mr and Mrs Urbani still lingered, lit up like a lighthouse in the white darkness.

Would Louise have saved me dinner? Was the little one asleep? I reached the snow covered Fiat, and opened the half frozen door….

As I indicated right, at the small roundabout, the traffic lights turned red. The light spread its glow on the still falling snow and I turned up the heater, with half numb fingers, the warm air from the engine only just beginning to whir out from the vents on the dashboard, pathetically.

I stared at the row of shops. Grates up. Windows darkened. A hair salon. A newsagents. A florist. Everyone had abandoned the streets for the warmth of home. No one was present apart from I. Me. Signs of life burned in electric light from behind curtains of the houses on the estate and I yawned, half shivering, bleary eyed and tired. I want to be home. Phrases from the evening still fell through my mind. Targets. Progress. Expectations. Results. Effort.

The thump, thump, thump of the windscreen wipers roused me like a heartbeat, and the light turned green. The snow was thick as I headed down St Luke’s Hill, past the old hospital (an even older workhouse) that was being knocked down to make flats. The snow opened and closed like a set of curtains revealing a lit stage. I slowed down a little. Barely see. Fiddling with the dial, I tunred on the radio, feeling the warmth of the fan haeter more now.

A voice crackled from the cheap dashboard speakers: “ You’re listening to ‘The nature Of Being.’ So, as we were saying, in a way time is something we can only experience in freeze frame. The present is only the present when it is recalled from the past and aware of the future. Does that make sense.”

 I flicked to CD. Bob Dylan. An old CD I’d got fro my birthday years ago. Blood On the Tracks. It was then I felt the tyres slip a little and the brakes lock. Lock like gears in a broken clock.

“Jesus…”

I slowed more, but then I was off the ice. The grip returned. Relief. The snow came heavier, but then again, as I increased speed, halfway down the hill, they locked again. Wheels slid and skidded. Panic. I could barely see through the wipers. Thump. Thump. THUMP.

His face came into view. I can see it now, even though it’s gone it is there. Here. Even before I got out of the car, I knew it was him. Must have been.  My headlights lit up his dark hair, against the white snow. The CD player was still playing. His heart stopped in the whiteness of the night. The wipers still beating and everything else was fixed in the moment and lost… A son lost in the cold night and my own life lost with him.