When I Was Joe (26 page)

‘You what?' says Ellie, but I'm running. I'm running down the High Street and around the corner. I'm bashing into people and swearing, and running across roads without looking properly so cars screech to a stop and swerve to avoid me.

And I'm at the top of their road and I'm running down and I'm praying – to Jesus, to Mary, whoever – that I'm going to get there in time.

And I run up Ellie's wheelchair ramp and I fumble with her set of keys and then I leave the door open so she can get in.

And I run up the stairs, two at a time and I get to Claire's door. Of course she's blocked it with a chair, so I kick and push and shout, ‘Claire! It's me! Let me in!'

But she's done it really well and it takes an
almighty kick to finally topple the chair away.

I slam into the room and fall over the chair – damn – it's so bloody dark in here. But I know where to find Claire. I drag myself up and feel my way round her bed, while my eyes adjust to the darkness.

‘Claire? Are you here? Are you OK?' Far, far away I hear Ellie calling me. ‘Joe? What's going on?'

But I've found what I'm looking for. Claire is sitting propped up against the bed but she's fallen forward so her nose is touching her knees. She's not speaking – is she even conscious? – and when I touch her arm my hand feels wet and sticky.

I leap for the curtains and tug them apart so fiercely that the whole lot clatters to the ground. And I can see then that I feared right – she's cut herself, but it's not a neat, tidy little cut like usual, it's a big angry slash which is pumping blood over her skin and shirt.

‘Ellie! Call an ambulance!' I yell.

Christ almighty. I need to do something fast. I take the knife from the floor and grab the sheet from her bed. I cut a strip of fabric from the sheet and loop it around her arm, just under and then over the wound, lifting her arm up as high as I can. I need a stick – the only thing I can find is a pencil which isn't really long enough, but I wind the sheet around it and then turn it around and around so the sheet tightens on her arm. I'm so scared
that she's going to die. I'm screaming, ‘Claire, wake up, Claire, wake up,' and her eyes flicker open and she stares at me as if I'm a stranger. And we sit there like that, waiting for help, with me concentrating all my effort on winding the sheet as tight as possible.

Ambulances come quicker here than they do in London. The door crashes open again and there're two paramedics, a man and a woman, who run over to Claire and push me out of the way. One takes the pencil from my hand. And I can't bear to look any more and I stumble down the stairs to Ellie, who gasps when she sees that my shirt's soaked in blood.

‘Oh my God, what's happened? Did someone attack her? How did you know?'

I shake my head. ‘No one attacked her. She did it herself. She cuts herself when she's upset, and she was very upset.'

‘She does what? Oh, my God. Is she all right?'

‘I don't know. She opened her eyes.'

One of the paramedics comes downstairs and says, ‘Who put on the tourniquet? Was it you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good job. When did you do it?'

‘About ten minutes before you arrived.'

‘Well done. We'll bring her downstairs now and we'll take her to hospital. Can one of you come with us?'

It should be Ellie really, but I'm not sure how it'll work with the wheelchair. She says, ‘You go Joe, and I'll ring my dad and see what's happening about the boys. Mum's at the hospital already – that's where she works – general surgical.'

They bring Claire down the stairs on a stretcher and we get into the ambulance. Ellie shoves a jacket of her dad's into my hands and I put it on – it's a huge, smelly fleece thing but it covers the blood and it warms me up because although it's a hot summer's day I'm feeling cold and shivery.

We speed through the streets with the siren blaring and I'm remembering the ambulance I called to the park that day. The ambulance I never saw. The ambulance I didn't wait for. And I'm holding Claire's hand and I'm saying the Hail Mary in my head, because if it worked a miracle for Gran it might work one for Claire as well.

And we're in casualty, and Ellie must have got hold of her mum already because she's waiting there for us in her nurse's uniform, which reminds me a bit of Arron's mum, and she doesn't even speak to me, but she grabs Claire's hand and says, ‘It's all right, darling, it's all right. Mum's here now, it's all right.'

They disappear down the corridor and I don't really know what to do, so I just sit down in a corner and wait.
And I see Ellie and her dad arrive, but they go straight past without seeing me and get taken off somewhere.

I suppose I should just go home but I don't seem to be able to move. I wish I could call up my gran to come and look after me. After a bit I think about Mum saying, ‘It'll do for now,' and I think, well, sometimes you have to compromise. And I send her a text:
pls Nic cm n gt me, at hsptl, a&e Ty
.

Her first text says,
wtf
? And then she sends another,
omg r u OK
? And then she sends another,
on way
. She and Alastair arrive about twenty minutes later – I must have interrupted their big date. She spots me right away.

‘Are you OK? What happened? Did someone attack you?'

Alastair looks a bit bemused, given that I am pretty obviously unharmed.

I shake my head. ‘No, I'm fine. It's Claire, you know. Ellie's sister.'

‘What happened to her?'

But I can't say. And Mum sees it and she gives me a hug, and we just sit there for a bit with her arms around me until Alastair says, ‘There's Ellie. Hey, Ellie, over here.'

Ellie comes over and she's obviously a bit surprised to see Alastair, and she's looking from Mum to him
and back again and working out what he's doing there. I don't think she's all that delighted.

She leans forward: ‘Joe, Claire's all right. They stopped the bleeding. They're stitching it up. She's got to stay overnight, but she'll recover. They say you might have saved her life with that tourniquet.'

‘Oh,' I say. ‘Good. Is she awake? Will you say hi from me?'

But Ellie shakes her head and says, ‘She's asleep and they'll keep her asleep for some time. You might be able to come and see her tomorrow.'

So Alastair takes us home in his Ford Fiesta, and when we're in the car, Mum asks me, ‘However did you know how to make a tourniquet? You've never even done a first aid course.'

I answer, ‘I watched Arron's mum do it once.'

She's satisfied with that because Arron's mum is a nurse and I did spend a lot of time at their house. And it was true what I said.

But if I'd been telling the whole truth I would have said a bit more. And this is what I would have said: ‘I watched Arron's mum do it once. I watched her that day after we ran out of the park. I watched her that day I stabbed Arron.'

Alastair isn't the complete waste of space he looks. At home, he makes me a cup of horribly sweet tea and says I have to drink it for shock. Then he looks in our fridge, which is empty as usual, and drives to Tesco to stock up. When he comes back, he cooks stir-fry chicken and noodles and opens a bottle of wine for him and Mum. I'm feeling a lot more friendly towards him as I eat, although he should realise that the way to my Mum's heart isn't through feeding her.

She's already run me a bath and I‘m having supper in my pyjamas. Maureen's not here – there's a note which says, ‘Had to go, called out on urgent job elsewhere. Your gran is doing well. See you soon.' I'm kind of grateful she didn't see me covered in blood.

Mum pushes the noodles around on her plate and then goes and looks at my school uniform. She's got
a look on her face like she's going to throw up.

‘God, what on earth happened? There's so much blood here – what the hell did she look like?' I don't want to think about that, and I think she realises because she doesn't ask me any more.

‘Ellie never talks about her sister,' says Alistair. ‘She comes along to training sometimes. Just sits there in the corner reading, never gets involved. Poor kid, she must have been in a terrible state.'

Mum's still looking at the clothes. ‘The shirt doesn't matter, you've got plenty, and I think the stains will come out of the blazer if we put it in to wash now – good thing it's black – but the tie is ruined.' She holds it up – the grey and blue stripes are splattered with dark brown. ‘We'll get a new one tomorrow. You may as well take the day off school, get over the shock and tell me what happened properly.' And I nod and say, ‘Yeah,' and duck when she tries to give me a kiss. Luckily there's still a sleeping pill by my bed, so I know I can avoid bad dreams.

But I'm up early as usual and get ready for my gym session. I'm not giving anyone a chance to take my access card away; I'd rather not wait and see if Alastair is still here to cook us breakfast, and I'm not up for a heart-to-heart with Mum about Claire. I'll go to school, I reckon, and then I'll swing by the hospital and hopefully Mum
will be out with Alastair again tonight. And maybe she'll overlook that I skipped the debrief.

The blazer looks fine, I have a clean shirt, but the tie is no good. I finger the key to the lost property cupboard – there are plenty of old, unlabelled ties there. I sneak one out on the way to the changing room. Now no one will know a thing about what happened yesterday.

Carl and I have a good training session. We're competitive and we set targets which push us both further. It's working well, I think, this restorative justice scheme. I'm really feeling OK, considering what happened yesterday. In fact, when I think about Ellie telling me that I might have saved Claire's life I feel really chuffed with myself. Surely, saving someone's life is such a great thing to have done that it counts against other bad stuff? I can't be such a bad person after all; sometimes I get it just right.

This good feeling lasts all the way to registration. I'm there on time, properly dressed, ready for the day ahead. I'm talking to Brian about our football match, getting my books together for French. Ashley ignores me and no one else asks about Claire. They don't know. Maybe no one will ever find out. I hope not – Claire would find it so humiliating to be gossiped about. For a moment I feel sick when I think about what it would be like if all the bitchy girls knew that she was cutting herself.

Then Mr Hunt comes into the classroom, looks around the room and says, ‘Joe Andrews, Ashley Jenkins, straight to the head teacher.'

We walk there together in silence. She's looking nervous, thoughtful. I don't feel I have anything to worry about. I'm the hero of this particular episode and she's the villain. I saved Claire's life. I did something good. We reach the door of her mother's office.

And then she turns to me and says, ‘You better back up everything I say.'

‘What?'

‘Don't contradict me. Don't tell Mr Naylor what I said about Claire. Or I'll have Jordan and Louis down here quicker than you can say . . .' she gives me a flickering smile, ‘knife.'

Oh, my God. Oh, Jesus. And we go into the office and she says, ‘Hi Mum, we're here to see the head teacher.'

Mr Naylor is seated at his desk and gestures for us to sit down opposite him. I'm keeping a wary eye on Ashley. ‘Good morning, Mr Naylor,' she says, all demure. I mumble something.

‘I'm sure you both know why you're here,' says Mr Naylor. ‘The very shocking news about Claire Langley in your class.'

‘I don't know, I'm sorry, Mr Naylor,' says Ashley. She lies like an expert. I close my eyes and pray that
he will be discreet. But no.

‘Claire slashed her wrist yesterday afternoon. She lost a lot of blood and had to be rushed to hospital. Thankfully she is now making a good recovery.'

He makes it sound like she was trying to kill herself. I have to say something.

‘She didn't slash her wrist . . . she just cut herself.'

Mr Naylor and Ashley both look at me like I'm mad. I shut up.

‘Claire's parents spoke to me this morning and I want to find out exactly what was happening in the lunch break and afterwards yesterday – the period, Joe, when you were seen acting aggressively towards Ashley here, and then straight afterwards were witnessed by half the school shouting at Claire and manhandling her in the playground.'

Eh? ‘No . . . it wasn't like that,' I say, but I don't sound very convincing, even to myself.

Ashley says, ‘Mr Naylor, I've known Claire for years. She's a really sweet girl, not very confident . . . you know . . . she's quite young. I noticed Joe had his eye on her and I thought that was totally wrong. I know him and what he's like. I wanted to protect Claire from him . . . from what he gets up to. So I told him to stay away from her . . . from my friend. And he didn't like it and he called me a bitch and I thought he was going to hit me.'

‘I . . . I . . . never hit you. . .'

‘Only because Brian told you not to. Anyway, I think Claire overheard and got a bit upset. She's never had a boy interested in her before. I think she was really easy prey for Joe. Joe was angry with me and I was scared. And she ran away and he chased her. I don't know what happened after that. I felt a bit upset and I went to the girls' loo to . . . to recover. . .'

She should get an Oscar. Even I am beginning to be taken in by her. I don't know what to do. . . She's twisting everything, she's lying, but I can't risk Jordan and Louis telling about the knife.

Mr Naylor says, ‘What do you mean, Ashley, what Joe gets up to? I know it's embarrassing, but it's important to get these things out in the open.'