Chapter 1 #2
He wrote MURAL - CAVANAUGH - TBC on his notepad in capitals that were too large and stared at them until the letters lost meaning.
The meeting ended. Chairs scraped. Colleagues converged on Rory with the choreography of a new-term welcome.
He handled it with ease, open body, direct eye contact, the half-smile widening to a full one when a remark amused him.
Charm he didn't know he had. The worst kind, it couldn't be dismissed as performance.
Neil stayed in his seat. Let the crowd thin. Organised his folder with unnecessary precision, agenda clipped to the inside cover, notes aligned, pen secured in the spiral. When he stood, the hall was nearly empty.
Rory had broken free of the last cluster. He was heading for the door. His path took him past the third row.
Their eyes met again.
Up close, the details sharpened. Paint ground into his knuckles.
A faint scar through his left eyebrow. Hair at his temple darker than the rest, damp, like he'd showered in a hurry and his hair was still deciding.
And the smell, turpentine, coffee, and underneath it, skin and desire Neil's brain refused to categorise.
Rory offered a nod. The ghost of that smile.
‘Saw you taking notes. Nobody else was taking notes.’
‘I take notes at everything.’
‘Dedicated.’
‘Compulsive. There's a difference.’
The smile widened by a fraction. ‘Rory Cavanaugh.’ He offered his hand.
Neil took it. Brief, correct. The hand was warm and rough and had paint in the creases and the grip was solid, solid, practised, a practised grip, solid. Neil let go faster than was natural.
‘Neil Ashworth. English department.’
‘English.’ Rory's eyes travelled across Neil's face, thorough, not predatory.
A painter's eye, studying surfaces for a living and couldn't help applying the skill to people.
‘That makes you my cross-curricular liaison for the mural project. Mrs Webb mentioned the English department was on board for the writing component.’
‘So I've been informed.’
‘Lucky me.’ It didn't sound like a joke. The tone balanced on the line between workplace courtesy and interest. ‘I'll need writing from the kids. Poems, responses, whatever you reckon works. Tied to the mural themes.’
‘Which are?’
‘Growth. Roots. Transformation.’ He said the words without pretension, like a shopping list. ‘The usual bollocks, except I mean it.’
Neil's mouth twitched. He caught it and disguised it with a sip of terrible coffee from the mug he was still holding.
‘Big themes for Year 7s.’
‘Big themes for anyone. That's the point.’ Rory shifted his weight, leaning one hip against the chair in front.
The posture was open, relaxed. He took up space because he didn't know how not to.
‘I'd rather aim high and get messy than play it safe and get something nobody gives a toss about. Wouldn't you?’
‘I'll send you an email about scope and timelines,’ Neil said. I'll send an email. A fire door slamming shut.
‘Grand.’ Rory pushed off the chair. ‘See you round, Mr Ashworth.’
He left. Neil stared at the space where he'd been. Turpentine hung in the air.
On the landing, he heard it before he got to the stair.
Behind Rory's closed door: the sharp clean sound of a glass put down on a counter harder than a glass should be put down on a counter.
Set down. Too firmly. A sound a hand made when it had decided not to throw something and was compensating.
Neil stood with a hand on the banister and did not go back.
Sue materialised at his elbow. ‘He seems nice.’
‘Does he.’
‘Very… creative energy.’
‘He's the art teacher, Sue. One would hope.’
She gave him a look he didn't want to interpret and wandered off with a hobnob. Neil rinsed his mug, dried it, and walked to his classroom. Shut the door.
The classroom was as he'd left it. Desks in rows, whiteboard clean, pens sharpened and colour-sorted. The Lord of the Flies display on the back wall, laminated on a Saturday afternoon, holding up.
He sat down. Pressed both palms flat against the surface and breathed.
The desk was cool. Solid. The one consistent surface in his life besides the kitchen counter.
He'd sat here through four years of terms, marking thousands of essays, and the wood had absorbed all of it without complaint.
The desk didn't judge. The desk didn't register when someone walked past your chair.
He'd been here before. The PE teacher in the sports hall. The father at the school gates. You noticed, you filed, you moved on. One more entry in a list that had never led anywhere that mattered.
He opened his markbook. Year 7 class lists.
Twenty-eight names. He read each one, committed the syllables, assigned tentative seating plans.
Adams, B. Front, needs glasses per the SENCO.
Carol, J. Near the window but not next to Campbell, R.
The familiar work of structuring, preparing.
By the time he'd finished the second list, his pulse had returned to normal and his hands had stopped making fists.
Laptop next. Timetable. Schemes of work. All in place.
Except, flagged in yellow at the edge of the timetable: Courtyard mural project, cross-curricular involvement, English dept to liaise with Art dept for pupil writing component. Lead: R. Cavanaugh.
He closed the laptop harder than necessary.
Three-thirty. Year 1 parents at the gate. Phones out. Conversations mid-flow. The universal posture of adults who'd had six hours of freedom and weren't sure they were ready to give it back.
Neil stood apart, hands in trouser pockets. He'd spent the afternoon teaching Year 7 the difference between similes and metaphors, which had gone well until Jake Hargreaves asked if my brother is an absolute weapon counted as a metaphor and Neil had to concede that technically, yes, it did.
‘Is my nan a national treasure a metaphor too?’
‘That depends on whether your nan is literally stored in a museum.’
‘She's stored in Croydon.’
‘Then yes. Metaphor.’
The first children emerged in a stream of noise and rucksacks and artwork clutched in sticky fingers. He spotted Freddie mid-pack. Jumper tied around his waist despite the September chill, a sheet of paper held aloft like a battle standard, face flushed from a good first day.
Behind him, from the art annexe doorway, Rory Cavanaugh. Mid-sentence, one hand gesturing, talking to a cluster of small children who looked up at him the way they looked at Father Christmas and CBeebies presenters.
‘…and then you take the orange and the red and they make this mad colour called burnt sienna, which sounds like a pirate but it's actually a place in Italy…’
‘Is it a NICE place?’
‘Gorgeous. Hills and churches and pizza.’
‘Does the pirate live there?’
‘The pirate is the pizza.’
‘That doesn't make SENSE.’
‘Art doesn't always make sense, mate. That's the best bit.’
A small girl with plaits and a sceptical expression folded her arms. ‘My mum says art is a waste of money.’
‘Your mum's entitled to her opinion. My mum said the same thing. I became an artist anyway.’
‘Did she change her mind?’
‘I was a tad older than you when she came to my first exhibition and cried in front of a painting. So. Yeah.’
‘Because it was that bad?’
‘Because she realised I wasn't lying when I said I was serious.’
The girl considered this. ‘I'm serious about horses.’
‘Then draw them. Don't let anyone tell you it's a waste.’
Freddie was laughing.
Rory was watching him.
Full-body. The laugh of a five-year-old who's found something hilarious and doesn't care who knows it.
Neil's stomach dropped. Because Rory was natural with children, crouched to their height, animated, present, and the one variable he hadn't accounted for.
The pull, yes, but this too.
‘DAD!’ Freddie broke free and sprinted. ‘Dad, look, Mr Cavanaugh showed us how to draw monsters and mine's got SIX arms and it's properly scary…’
Neil took the paper. A green blob with multiple limbs and what was either a top hat or a chimney. ‘It's terrifying,’ he said, and meant it in ways Freddie couldn't parse.
‘Mr Cavanaugh says I've got a cracking eye for colour.’
‘Does he.’
‘He says most people are scared of green but I'm not. I'm brAVE about green.’
‘Few people do balk at strong colours.’
When Neil looked up, Rory was crossing the playground towards them.
Unhurried. The afternoon light caught his hair, loose around his face.
He stopped a few feet away. Reasonable distance.
Hands in pockets. The smile aimed at Freddie first, then lifting to Neil, and changing fractionally as it did. Warmer at the edges. More aware.
‘He's got talent, your lad.’ Rory nodded at the drawing. ‘Proper bold choices.’
‘Green requires trust,’ Neil said. ‘Apparently.’
‘You were listening.’
‘I was collecting my son. Listening was incidental.’
‘Right. Incidental.’ The half-smile. ‘Well, incidentally, he mixed the green himself. Didn't ask for help. Didn't look at what the others were doing. Just went straight for the blue and yellow and made his own shade.’
‘He's five. Five-year-olds don't second-guess.’
‘Most of them do. Most of them look sideways at the next kid's painting every thirty seconds to check they're doing it right. Freddie didn't look sideways once.’
Neil glanced down at the green blob. The top hat. The six arms. The confidence of it, colour applied without hesitation, the paper covered edge to edge, no white space left as safety margin. His son's painting. His son's nerve.
‘Thank you, Cavanaugh.’
Surname. Distance. The drawbridge. As he took Freddie's hand and steered him towards the gate, a touch too fast.
‘Bye, Mr Cavanaugh!’ Freddie shouted over his shoulder. ‘See you TOMORROW!’
‘See you tomorrow, mate.’
Neil didn't turn around. He quickened his pace.
‘Dad,’ Freddie said, trotting to keep up. ‘How come we're going so fast?’
‘We're not going fast.’
‘We are. We're practically running.’
‘We're walking briskly.’
‘What's briskly?’
‘Ask me later.’
‘You always say that.’
‘And you always ask.’
‘Because you never ANSWER.’
‘That's not true. I answer most things.’
‘Not the good ones.’ Freddie squinted up at him. ‘Are you weird because of school? Mum says school makes you weird.’
‘Your mother has a talent for understatement.’
‘What's understatement?’
‘Ask me later. At home.’
‘DAD.’
At the car, Neil buckled Freddie in, closed the door, and stood for a moment with braced against the roof, head bowed, breathing through his nose. The metal was warm from the sun. Inside, Freddie sang something tuneless about monsters and pirates and burnt sienna.
Eight hours. The new term had lasted eight hours. He had a cross-curricular project with a man he couldn't be in the same room with and lose the ability to think. His five-year-old thought this man was brilliant. And his hands were still in fists.