The device glowed blue again but still didn’t obey.
Ted used the downstairs bathroom, zipped himself up and checked his reflection in the mirror over the sink. Even in the bright light his complexion appeared pale and grubby, his blue eyes tired. He threw some water in his face and dried it with the hand towel, running his fingers through his straggly hazel hair and deciding it looked even worse. It didn’t bother him that much, but he didn’t want to let Juliette down. He headed back down the rear passage to the kitchen. Juliette was just opening a bag of ice. Orla and Connor had arrived. Now they were just waiting for the last two latecomers. ‘Just going to check on Georgie.’
‘He’s not himself.’ Juliette dropped some of the cubes into glasses.
‘The usual?’
‘I think so.’
Ted headed upstairs to Georgie’s room. He’d only seen him briefly today as he’d been too busy getting things ready for the evening, but he always tucked him in. When he opened the bedroom door his six-year-old son was in his pyjamas, his fair hair dark and wet and combed straight. He sat cross-legged on top of his SpongeBob duvet, wearing headphones that were plugged into a tablet. Ted gestured for him to remove them and he did so. ‘Hope we’re not too noisy, scout.’
‘No. I know you’ve all got to let off some steam.’
Ted smiled. Georgie had an unerring knack of absorbing adult phrases and using them in exactly the right context. ‘Had a shower?’ It was Georgie’s new thing: he took a shower most nights and spent at least half an hour in there. Ted was concerned about the water consumption, but Juliette wanted to encourage his interest in hygiene. ‘Everything OK at Peta’s house today?’ But Ted knew the childminder wasn’t the problem.
‘Fine.’ Georgie wriggled on his behind uncomfortably.
Ted crossed the room and sat on the bed. ‘What about at school?’ Georgie breathed heavily through his nose and Ted could see his distress building. ‘Is it Jolian again?’
Georgie swallowed hard and his ears twitched. They protruded and it made him an easy target for name-calling. ‘Not just Jolian.’
‘Who?’
‘Tyrone, Yash … Brendan.’
‘I thought Brendan was your best buddy.’
Georgie nodded and narrowed his eyes at the screen. Ted could see how anxious he was. ‘So has Jolian been getting them to gang up on you again?’
Georgie nodded.
‘Then they’re not worth your time.’ What could he say when, as far as Georgie was concerned, his universe had ended? ‘I know school’s hard but, believe me, you’ll find real friends soon. Proper ones. You thought these boys were but sometimes people aren’t what they seem. Sometimes they have what we call ulterior motives.’
‘What are they?’ Georgie clearly liked the sound of the phrase.
‘Stuff they want from you but don’t tell you to your face.’
‘Like my Xbox games?’
‘That sort of thing. Point is, if your friends do exactly what Jolian says and turn on you, then they’re really not worth knowing, are they?’
Georgie looked up at him, anguish in his eyes. ‘But I’ve still got an invite to Brendan’s party.’
‘When is it?’
‘March the sixth.’
‘That’s nearly two months away.’ Two months was a long time in the social life of a child. ‘You can decide whether you want to go then.’
Georgie straightened his back in mortification. ‘But I do want to go.’
‘But remember Brendan will want to come to yours the month after. That’s when you decide whether he’s been a good enough friend.’ They’d had Brendan around a few times. He was spoilt, so Ted knew what was coming next.
‘His party will be better than mine.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
Georgie seemed to know why but clammed up.
Ted knew it was wrong, but he didn’t like Brendan. Didn’t like a six-year-old boy who still had to grow up. He was a bad influence on Georgie. Had already told him that Santa didn’t exist. At six! ‘We can do anything here you could do at Brendan’s.’
‘Yeah … I know.’
But Georgie was sparing his feelings. Brendan’s parents had a huge Georgian house with a games den. Georgie only had a playroom in the garage and that was damp and full of junk. It would be a big expense to make it properly habitable. ‘Look, I’ve got to get back to the guests now, but we’ll talk about this in the morning. OK?’
‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’ll be OK. Really.’
Ted could feel his heart starting to break. ‘It’s Friday. Two whole days of no school. Try not to worry. If you show them that what they say doesn’t bother you at all, they’ll move on to somebody else. And if they don’t, we’ll both figure out a way of making them stop. Deal?’
‘How about I take a kickboxing class?’
Ted smirked. ‘I don’t think we need to do anything that drastic. Come on, it’s past lights out.’
‘But I’ve only just started my screen time.’
‘We’ll roll it over to tomorrow.’ Ted gestured for him to climb into bed and he scrambled under the duvet. ‘We’ll work it out.’
The doorbell rang.
‘Who’s that?’
‘And don’t play for time. Football training in the morning.’ Ted kissed his hair and it smelt like he’d used too much shampoo. ‘Don’t worry about a thing, scout. It’ll be a different story this time next week.’ It probably would be, but he guessed that Jolian and Brendan were going to be the topic of many more conversations to come.
‘Night, Dad.’
He’d only recently started taking the DY off Daddy and Ted wasn’t sure he liked it. ‘Sleep tight.’ Ted got up, closed the door quietly and went downstairs. He met Juliette in the hallway. ‘Half an hour’s not too bad for the Driscolls.’
It was ‘KathRhys’ at the door. At least that was how they signed their greetings cards as a couple. The others all shared history, but Kathryn and Rhys had only moved to Basildon in 2017. Rhys worked for a petrochemical company that had relocated there and Kathryn was a recruitment consultant. Even though they lived the closest, only a five-minute drive away, they were always the last to arrive.
This rankled with Ted and more so with Jakob, even though Jakob had been instrumental in recruiting them to the dinner group. When they held up everyone else’s evening, they never apologized for being late, so Ted had taken to inviting them an hour early to exert some damage limitation. ‘Here they are!’ he exclaimed, diplomatically, when he opened the door.
‘Hope you haven’t started without us.’ Rhys’s breath clouded around his dark bearded face. He was thirty-four, a year younger than Ted but his frameless spectacles gave him an avuncular appearance.
Tall Kathryn had her dark hair in a bun on top of her head and her usual dyed Mallen Streak forelock swept across the top of her fringe. She thrust a bag containing wine bottles into Ted’s hands as if it was their ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Some interesting ones in there.’ Rhys nodded at the bag.
Ted didn’t have a clue