‘I...’
‘Zero out of twenty-five because his handwriting was too big? Are you serious?’
‘Dad, please!’ Alex pulled his hand free of his father’s, his face pink with humiliation.
But Mackenzie was oblivious. ‘Would you dismiss Einstein’s theory of relativity because you didn’t like his handwriting? And it wasn’t too big, you know, it was too small. Notoriously mean. Oh, and, by the way, handwriting is not hyphenated. I can’t believe someone who doesn’t know this is teaching my son English. I take it you do have a degree?’
‘Of course.’ Miss Willow was recovering from the initial assault and gathering her defences.
‘In what?’
‘English and drama.’
‘Oh, drama?’ he said dramatically. ‘That must be where you discovered the propensity for overuse of the exclamation mark.’ He picked up Alex’s essay and waved it at her. ‘Not one exclamation mark, not two. But three. Oh, yes, very dramatic. Alright in social media, perhaps, but not in my son’s classroom. Oh, and another footnote. Exclamation marks were originally called the note of admiration. Perhaps if you had taken the trouble to read this you might have been awarding him many notes of admiration. He took the trouble to write it, the least you could have done is read it.’ And he slammed it back on top of the pile.
Colour had risen high on Miss Willow’s cheeks, her lower lip trembling as she fought not to spill her tears. Mackenzie turned to take Alex once again by the hand, and march him back out into the corridor. It wasn’t until they reached the gate, and his anger had subsided a little, that he saw the tears streaming down his son’s face.
‘What? What’s wrong?’ He was genuinely mystified.
‘I hate you,’ the boy spat at him. ‘I really hate you. I’m glad you’ve left. Mum’ll have to find me another school now.’ He thrust his jaw in the direction of the building behind him. ‘I can’t ever go back there.’
Mackenzie was filled with sudden regret. He had only been standing up for the boy, as any dad would. He glanced back at the school and saw Miss Willow standing at her classroom window and knew that she was crying too. He opened the car door. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re going to be late for the football.’
The boy threw himself into the seat and folded his arms across his chest, pouting through his tears. ‘I might just be in time for the final whistle.’
He was almost at the turn-off to Westlea Road when he saw the blue light flashing in his rearview mirror. It was the lull between the end of school and the start of rush hour. And Boston Road had been almost empty. A wide road lined by plane trees in spring leaf, mock Tudor semis set back behind redbrick walls. He saw the officer behind the wheel indicating that he should pull over.
Mackenzie sighed. The speedometer had crept above thirty without him realizing. He had been replaying his confrontation with Miss Willow. Again and again. And each time had failed to see how he might have handled it differently, although he knew by now that there must have been some other way. Alex was a black hole in the passenger seat, radiating hatred, draining his father of all his energy.
He wound down the window as the uniformed officer leaned in.
‘Driver’s licence and registration document.’
Mackenzie fished them out from an inside pocket and sat silently while the officer examined them.
‘Are you aware, sir, that you were doing forty in a thirty zone?’
Mackenzie was contrite. ‘I wasn’t. But I realized it as soon as I saw your light in my mirror. I am truly sorry.’
‘You would be if you’d hit a child at that speed.’ The officer glanced across at the sullen boy in the passenger seat and took out an official pad and a pen. ‘Occupation?’
‘Police officer.’
The uniform’s head snapped up in surprise. ‘A cop?’
‘Fifteen years with the Met. Starting with the National Crime Agency next week.’
The officer slipped the pad back into his breast pocket. ‘You should have told me straight away, sir.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wouldn’t have booked you, sir.’
Mackenzie frowned. ‘I don’t know why not. I’m not above the law just because I’m a cop.’ He paused. ‘Are you telling me you would have let me off?’
The policeman threw him an odd look, as if he were not entirely sure if Mackenzie was being serious. ‘It had crossed my mind,’ he said, evenly.
‘In that case, I’m going to have to report you.’ Mackenzie reached across Alex to open the glove compartment and retrieve a black notebook and pen. ‘I’ll need your name and number...’
The traffic cop’s look might have turned him to stone. He said dryly, ‘Perhaps, sir, if you had spent any time on traffic duty you would know that whether I book you or warn you is entirely discretionary. In this case, I am warning you.’ And there was something almost dangerous in the way he said it. He turned abruptly and walked back towards his car.
Mackenzie turned his head to find Alex looking at him with something like contempt in his eyes. ‘I’ll be lucky if I even make next week’s match now.’
Hanwell had changed during the years that Mackenzie and Susan had lived there. An influx of Polish immigrants leading to the opening of Polish shops in a High Street which had seen better days. Everywhere you went now you heard Polish spoken. There was even a Polish school in the suburb. Ealing had always been that bit more upmarket than its less well-heeled neighbour. But as Susan had been keen to point out when Mackenzie suggested moving, everything would change when the Crossrail project was completed. Hanwell would have its own station, and direct access to central London in just twenty minutes. Property prices would skyrocket. Something from which she would doubtless benefit if she succeeded in having the house put into her name.
As usual, he was unable to find a parking place outside the house, and Alex refused to take his hand on the 50-metre walk along the terrace to number 23, marching two paces ahead of his father, half a step away from a run.
Alex had arrived too late at the sports centre to be picked for the starting eleven, spending almost the entire game sitting on the bench before coming on as a substitute for the last five minutes.
Now he couldn’t get home fast enough. As soon as Susan opened the door, he pushed past her and ran straight upstairs. Susan folded her arms, standing full square on the doorstep, making it clear that Mackenzie was forbidden entry to his own house. Or her house, as she now saw it. The house whose mortgage Mackenzie had paid for more than ten years.
‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’
He looked at her, surprised by her tone.
‘I got held up in traffic. We were only twenty-five minutes late in the end.’
She tutted theatrically. ‘I’m talking about threatening Alex’s teacher.’
He frowned. ‘Threatening? I didn’t threaten anyone. Certainly not Miss Willow.’
‘That’s not what she says. I’ve just had the headmaster on the phone. He was livid! She went to him in tears, apparently, after your visit.’
Mackenzie sighed. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. The woman refused to read the boy’s essay. Gave him a big fat zero because she said his handwriting — hyphenated — was too big. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.’
Susan just shook her head. ‘You never change, do you? And you just don’t get it. You can’t speak to people that way, John. How many friends have you lost? How many bosses have you pissed off? Maybe you do have a brain the size of a fucking football, but you’re a bigger idiot.’
She raised a hand to pre-empt his protestations.
‘I know, I know. Sometimes they’ve got it coming. But Jesus, John, you have to employ a bit of common sense. A little tact. Filter your worst excesses.’ She sighed. ‘Not you, though. Not our John. He’s always right, even when he’s wrong, and damned if he’s not going to tell everyone so.’ She paused only to draw breath. ‘You’re a bloody misfit, that’s what you are. And what’s the point of all those stupid degrees when you don’t have the first idea how to be civil to folk, not a Scooby when it comes to what’s socially acceptable.’ She nodded her head towards the stairs inside. ‘And in front of Alex, too. How humiliating was that for the boy?’