Sleepwalkers by Tom Grieves

was asleep, he left him be and carried on with whatever grownups did late into the night.
    Finally Toby pulled the sheets away and went to the wardrobe, opening the door where the full-length mirror hung on the inside. He stared at himself, wretched, and let his pyjamas fall to the carpet.
    He looked at his battered body and ran a hand over theembossed scar tissue along his stomach. Angry and upset, still no closer to the truth despite it all, he couldn’t help the tears that rose up in him again. A naked child, helpless and hopeless.
    He dressed himself again and got under the sheets, staring up at the ceiling. Slowly the exhaustion of the day won over. He didn’t want to sleep, he wanted to find some sort of comfort from those heady moments on the bridge, but that all seemed so far away now. He had a memory, though it might be a dream, of a man calming him, offering him some sort of support.
Just close your eyes, kid, you’ll be okay. Close your eyes, squeeze them shut and everything will be okay
.
    Toby obeyed the voice of his memory. He felt the lightness in his head and body as it gave over to sleep, felt his mind relax and spin into kinder, safer worlds.
    *
    Anna was called to the headmaster’s office as soon as she entered the school the next morning. A suspension was on the cards unless she could do a pretty amazing job with the parents. They were coming in, in half an hour.
    Mr Benton, the headmaster, had a depressing, characterless office, rather like the man himself. Photos of his wife and children were the only personal details. Otherwise the room was just pine furniture and a tidy, organised desk. Benton was six foot three, naturally sombre, and was known as The Undertaker by the staff. Everything about him was grey.
    ‘I don’t quite know what you were thinking, Miss Price.’
    ‘Anna.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘Until today, you’ve always called me Anna. Why the formality?’
    ‘Well, I imagine you know the reason for that.’
    Anna had a flashback to her childhood: stamping her feet in front of her father who was dressed in a dinner jacket. He put on his raincoat, ignoring her sulk, then turned back and leaned down, tickling her under the chin. She refused to laugh.
    ‘Have they said anything about me?’
    ‘Only that they wanted to talk about this as a matter of urgency. I don’t know if they’ll want you to attend, but I think they should hear you out.’
    It was the closest to solidarity she would get from him and she knew it. He pressed her again – a teacher taking a child out of the school without permission. In this day and age. How could he defend her? Anna bit her tongue.
    ‘It was a serious error of judgement. You have to hold your hand up to that.’
    Anna nodded and nodded as The Undertaker droned on. But her rage about Toby’s abuse snarled and scratched within her. And when Mr and Mrs Mayhew were led into the office and The Undertaker grinned obsequiously at them, Anna wanted to scream at them all.
    Instead, she stumbled through a muted apology. She knew she should have sounded more repentant, more genuine, but the anger wouldn’t let her do any better.
    Michael Mayhew was dressed in a suit and tie. His shoes were polished and buffed. He shifted unhappily in his chair.
    ‘I allowed my concerns and my – er – my trust in your son to cloud my judgement,’ she continued. ‘In the clear light of day, I should never have—’
    ‘Wrote this down, did you?’ Mr Mayhew snapped at her. ‘Feels nicely prepared.’
    Anna was taken aback by the anger in the voice. She expected him to be defensive, at the very least.
    ‘I don’t want her teaching my boy. What did she want with him? You’ve done all the right checks on her, have you? If she’s got form for this kind of thing, then you and this school are—’
    ‘Mr Mayhew,’ interrupted Mr Benton in his most reasonable voice, ‘Miss Price is a valued member of my staff. She’s explained her actions and apologised