Fat Boy Swim (7 page)

How Jimmy made it from the bin shelter to the Latecomer’s Line, he couldn’t tell. Maybe angels pushed him there on castors. He certainly felt as if he was floating, even when the Heedie wheeched him out the line by the tie and tugged him all the way up the English corridor to Mrs Hughes’ room, waving a detention slip in his face like a matador baiting a bull: ‘Move it, for once in your life, Kelly!’

For the first time in a long time, Jimmy didn’t care. Didn’t care what he looked like lumbering after the Heedie. Didn’t give a toss that the sight of him had reduced the Usual Suspects to a hysterical heap outside the Heedie’s door.

Ellie McPherson. The sooner he reached his English class, the sooner he’d see her again. That was all that mattered.

Chapter
13

Ten years on

Ten Years On

Mrs Hughes wrote on the blackboard.

‘Think about it,’ she said, in that quiet voice of hers, her eyes scanning everyone in the room. Even Jimmy looked up. You had to, if you wanted to hear what Mrs Hughes was saying, because she wouldn’t repeat herself, and she wouldn’t shout.

‘You’ll all be ancient. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Some of you parents. Yes, maybe even you, Alistair, God help us.’ She smiled, leaning close – but not too close – to Dog Breath Doig.

‘Some of you’ll know what they want to do with their lives already, but others’ll have given their future no thought. That’s fine.’

Mrs Hughes spoke even more quietly. Jimmy’s ears strained to catch her words.

‘So before you begin this assignment, I want you to shut your eyes. Come on, Victor, I’m the only one who’ll know if you don’t look cool. Imagine you’re wearing virtual reality helmets and they pitch you forward ten years. What do you see in your future? What are you doing? Matthew, since you haven’t bothered closing your eyes, maybe you can tell us what
you’ll
be doing ten years on.’

Maddo, creasing double at his own wit, announced, ‘Ten years, Miss. Geddit? Ah’ll be dain’ ten years.’

‘Fiona?’ Mrs Hughes cut into the wave of admiring sniggers before Maddo threw in one of his prison stories.

‘I’ll be modellin’, getting’ intae a bit of actin’. Oh, aye, an’ livin’ in London. Away from this dump of a city.’

‘Ambitious, Fiona,’ said Mrs Hughes, diplomatically. ‘You’re muttering something, Victor. Spit it out.’ Mrs Hughes plucked the rubber that Victor was about to fire at the back of Fiona’s head from the top of his drawn-back ruler.

Victor had a few tough choices to make. Would he swim butterfly for Scotland or would he be a premier league footballer? ‘Lot of people are interested in me,’ he said leaning back in his chair, and giving himself a couple of congratulatory pats on the chest. Then he winked at Mrs Hughes. ‘And I think I’ve got the looks to get into the music business, an’ all. A kinda Pop Idol, but no’ gay.’

‘Just like that,’ said Mrs Hughes, her mouth twitching. She moved on to Dog Breath Doig.

‘Dental hygienist, Miss. Yon lassie who scrapes m’ teeth every month gets to listen to Clyde One all day. That’ll do me. Oh, and ah’m gonny be married wi’ at least four weans.’

‘Any takers?’ asked a deadpan Mrs Hughes. She moved on.

‘What about you, Jimmy?’ she asked.

‘Kelly?’ snorted Victor.

‘He’ll have burst, Miss.’

‘Cardiac arrest.’

‘Look at the stupit smile oan him.’

‘Dreamin’ he’s working in a cake shop.’

‘Want me to wake him up, Miss?’

* * *

Ten years on I will have my own restaurant.

My name will be up in black and gold.

People will see it from a distance and say, ‘There it is. We’ve found it.’

It won’t be in Glasgow. Or in any city.

It will be by the sea. People will have to make a special journey just to find it.

I might have a couple of rooms upstairs so people can stay if they’ve travelled a long way.

I’ll do lunch and dinner five nights a week.

Nothing too fancy.

Not too many choices.

People will know about me. Television folk will come to eat at
and they’ll try to persuade me to do a series or write a cookbook.

‘Maybe,’ I’ll tell them.

I’ll bake, too. Bread, scones, pastries. The things people like best.

And tablet, of course.

Everyone gets a bit of that. Even if they come in for a coffee.

At Christmas, I’ll make loads and put it in fancy boxes.

Ten years on, I’ll have my own restaurant.

And I won’t be this size any more.

‘Ten years on, Jimmy, where will we find you?’

‘In the Guiness Book of Records.’

‘Stuck inside his house wi’ his maw running after him because he’s too big to get oot.’

‘Doing nuthin’, fat loser,’ concluded Victor, as Maddo banged his desk-lid to jerk Jimmy out of his reverie.

Mrs Hughes silenced the growing ripple of insults with a frosty finger.

‘Jimmy?’

No way was he going to curdle his dream in front of this lot. Especially when Ellie McPherson was turning, trying to focus on where he was sitting. He wasn’t daft.

He dropped his head so that the faces jeering at him disappeared.

‘Probably working in an office,’ he shrugged. The first, the least controversial, thing he could think of.

‘Ellie?’ Mrs Hughes smiled at Jimmy:
Well done for saying something.

Ellie’s voice rang clear.

‘Travelling,’ she said. ‘Finding lots of out-of-the-way places.’

Hope you find
, wished Jimmy, slatting his eyes open just enough to see the back of Ellie’s chocolate brown hair through his lashes.

‘Finished at last?’

Mrs Hughes smiled at Jimmy when he handed over his essay, and bumped his way out the classroom, thighs knocking against all the desks.

‘Must be some office job, Mr Kelly.’

Ellie was now the only pupil still writing, her face practically touching her paper, hair tumbling over the sides of her desk. Jimmy hovered inside the classroom door, willing Ellie to hand in her essay and join him. He had to content himself with a half-smile from her as Mrs Hughes shooed him outside. It was halfway through morning interval and the corridors were thronged.

Jimmy, head full of Ellie sitting at a table in
, stepped out of the classroom without planning ahead, and was immediately swept along towards the one place he did not want to go: the lower-school bogs.

‘Well, well. Look who’s no’ got his catheter in the day?’

Maddo, on sentry duty at the bog door, denied two wee first years entry with a knee to their bladders, but caught Jimmy by the arm and wheeched him inside before he could escape to the playground. ‘Stand back everyone, Pavarotti needs a wiss.’

Wedging the toilet door shut with one boot, so no one else could come in, Maddo shoved the other against Jimmy’s buttocks. The force knocked Jimmy off balance. He stumbled, falling hard on his hands and knees. At Victor’s feet.

‘Fag?’

Victor held the soggy end of his cigarette to Jimmy’s mouth, pushing it roughly against his clenched lips.

‘Why you down beggin’ if you don’t want it, you fat toad,’ he said as Jimmy jerked his face away.

The toe of Victor’s boot caught Jimmy under the chin. Forced his head back until he could see Maddo’s face grinning upside down behind him. Then with a flick kick Victor sent Jimmy sprawling backwards on to the dirty toilet floor.

Through cigarette fug Jimmy looked up at the sneering faces of Victor, Maddo and Dog Breath. Beached and helpless, he was surrounded. He prayed that Victor had forgotten what he did the last time he had Jimmy in the toilets, sticking his head down the pan just after Maddo had been in. But before he’d flushed.

‘New blazer, Jimmy?’

Victor’s tone was deceptively friendly as he knelt down beside Jimmy’s head and flicked ash on to Jimmy’s face and collar.

‘That was daft, leaving the other one in the shower, you plonker. Oops.’ Victor wet his finger with spit and rubbed ash into Jimmy’s lapel.

‘Kelly’s blazer looks smart the day, eh? No’ a mark on it.’

As if on cue, a shower of ash rained from three cigarettes while Jimmy struggled to raise himself to his elbows.

‘Goin’ somewhere?’ Dog Breath pinned Jimmy back to the ground with his foot. Then he cleared his throat and let a thick, green grog slither through his lips. It landed – splat – on the edge of Jimmy’s sleeve, and dribbled on his hand.