‘Shit!’ I said. Pain sliced through my knee, which was caught under the bent frame of the bike. My hands blazed with a burning, stinging pain. Looking down, I saw a constellation of tiny stones and beads of blood on both my palms. The front wheel of my bike was all bent from hitting the pavement, and I’d jarred my back.
‘Bastard, bastard,’ I said with feeling and hobbled towards home, having to hold the front half of the bike off the ground all the way.
I was surprised and grateful to find that Anya was there when I got back. She didn’t normally get in until about seven.
I’d taken the bike down the alley to the backyard and I opened the kitchen door to find her standing at the stove, stirring something in a pan. When she saw me, her face went from pleasure to concern in half a beat.
‘Did something happen?’ she said, wiping her hands and coming over to me.
‘Fell off my bike,’ I said. She made a sympathetic noise and took my backpack from me. ‘Well, I say that, but I was essentially forced off it by some tosser who thought I was Dennis Weaver.’
‘Oh no!’ she said, and it made me smile, despite the fact that most parts of my body were hurting right now. One of the things about being married that had never stopped thrilling me was the near-telepathy over cultural references.
She came over and turned my palms round, then gently kissed the grazes. It hurt but I managed not to wince.
Anya helped me wash the grit out, as I told her all about what happened, and then she gently applied antiseptic. Her brow was sweetly scrunched, as if she was doing highly skilled surgery.
My right knee ended up with a large plaster across it, which was bound to come off straight away, but I let her apply it anyway.
‘So,’ she said, as she put away the first aid kit and washed her hands. ‘Did you get a look at the guy’s face? The one in the car?’
‘No, not really,’ I said wearily. ‘He had on a baseball cap and sunglasses. Anyway, it all happened …’
I paused.
‘What?’ said Anya, turning back to me.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ I said. ‘Just that I had an encounter with a parent today and he was a bit aggressive.’ I filled her in on what had happened.
‘Do you think it was him who knocked you off your bike?’ she said. Her back was to me and she turned on the gas under the pan again, before starting to stir. ‘You really didn’t see him? Can you describe him at all?’
I thought about it for a moment, touched by how seriously she was taking this.
‘No,’ I said after a few moments. ‘I can’t believe he’d do that. I mean, it really was nothing.’ I paused again. ‘It’s just that …’
‘What?’
I blew air out through my mouth. ‘I don’t know, Anya, he just said this really strange thing about knowing me. I swear I’ve never spoken to the man before.’
‘Knowing you?’
‘Yeah … sort of like we’d had a beef before.’
We were both silent for a moment, thinking about this.
‘Do you think he might be confusing you with someone else?’ said Anya, turning to me now.
I shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
As I said it, I thought about the way the man had looked at me when he was standing outside the school. Stock still, staring, his eyes cold. Aggression seeming to radiate off him. I experienced a small chill.
I went over to her and wrapped my arms around her narrow middle, leaning down to rest my chin on her shoulder. She smelled better than any person I’d ever known, and I breathed her in for a moment.
‘You’re feeling better?’
She nodded, looking down at the stove top.
‘I’m …’ I began ‘… I hope I wasn’t a dick the other day.’
She twisted her head and gave me one swift kiss on the lips before turning back to her stirring.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said, which didn’t exactly reassure me.
‘What are you cooking?’ I said.
‘Making a cheese sauce,’ she said. ‘For a mac cheese.’
I smiled into her neck. I was obviously forgiven. Despite all the things that my palate had been introduced to in the last few years – from crocodile steaks to guinea fowl, quinoa to (unforgettably) coffee that came out of a civet’s bum – I still hankered for the comfort foods of my childhood, sometimes. This was one of the few things my mum used to cook from scratch and eating it made me think of being cosy on the sofa and watching telly together on winter evenings.
‘To what do I owe the honour?’
She turned and pecked me on the cheek.
‘I just thought the first day back marshalling the little monsters of Beverley Park might warrant comfort food,’ she said. ‘Especially now I know you’ve had to deal with thuggy dads and stave off maniacs in trucks.’
‘Well,’ I said sheepishly, ‘it wasn’t exactly a truck … but thanks.’
She started to stir more vigorously. I took the hint and moved away, going to the fridge to find some juice.
‘I meant to tell you,’ she said. ‘Managed to lose my phone yesterday.’
I hadn’t clocked that we hadn’t had a text exchange today, what with everything that was going on.
I paused with the juice carton in my hand. ‘That’s a bummer,’ I said. ‘Have you used the finder app?’ We had a program that showed you where your phone or laptop had last been used. It had been very handy when I’d lost my laptop last year, enabling me to track it down to a café on the seafront.
She carried on stirring, her back to me.
‘Yeah but it’s clearly been unlocked and disabled by someone.’ She flashed me a quick, bright smile. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It was a bit knackered anyway. I treated myself to an iPhone 8. I’ll give you the new number, wait …’
She fished the phone from her back pocket and tapped at the screen. My own phone buzzed with her message, but I ignored it, a little distracted by what she’d said.
‘Why did you change the number?’ I said after a moment.
She shrugged. ‘Oh, it was just a security thing … they prefer you to do that when it’s been stolen … or whatever.’
I didn’t reply. I’d never heard that before. Plus, it was unlike her to blithely spend money like that; and then I remembered that she had been with Patrick and Julia yesterday. They would have given her the cash for the new phone.
Those were the kind of things that rankled a bit, much as I loved my parents-in-law. It was the assumption that they could just spare, what, seven hundred pounds like that. As though it meant nothing.
When dinner was ready, we settled in front of the Sky planner with our food on trays.
I got through my portion quickly and was rising for more when I looked over and saw that Anya had basically rearranged hers, barely touching her food.
‘Not hungry?’ I said and she shrugged.
‘Just a bit tired, is all.’
It was a strange evening, overall. I was aching all over from my earlier tumble and took myself off for a hot bath after we’d watched two episodes