Chapter 20
Henry stared at his son, feeling the ripples of his words flowing outward into ever-increasing circles, as if they were a stone dropped in a pond. The ramifications of what he’d just said were… But Henry couldn’t begin to think about that now.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Yeah, you and me both,’ replied Adam, his voice laced with bitterness.
‘I get offered a promotion one minute and then I go into school on the last day of term expecting to meet with the head to discuss it, and then… boom…’ He motioned a bomb exploding with his hands.
‘I get called into a meeting where I’m told my services are no longer required.
Can you believe that? Right before Christmas. Bastards…’
Henry licked his lips, trying to work some moisture back into his mouth. ‘I’m struggling to, that’s for sure. But I still don’t see how they can threaten redundancy when they’ve only just offered you a promotion.’
‘They’re not threatening, Dad, it’s happening, there’s no doubt about that.
’ He flicked a glance towards the kitchen door as if worried that one of the others might burst through it at any moment.
‘Now I know the truth of what’s been going on, it makes perfect sense.
I told you that the promotion was being offered because the school was doing away with some head of department roles in an effort to save money.
Well, the reality is that they’re bankrupt, so it was a case of too little, too late.
And being an academy, it means that their funding comes directly from the government rather than the local authority.
They’ve been bailed out on a couple of occasions already and so now it seems that the funding agency has had enough.
They’ve brought in another, much larger academy group to run the school, a group which already has heads of department and pretty much every other managerial role you can think of.
And, as we’re the ones in the shit, we lose all our people in place of theirs. ’
Henry frowned. ‘But surely you must have known how bad the school’s finances were?’
‘Above my pay grade,’ said Adam harshly.
‘I knew some of it – they’ve been banging on enough about budgets and cuts to this, that and the other, but no one had bothered to tell those lower down the food chain what the reality was, never mind what the consequences might be.
The head’s a spineless—’ Adam broke off, his face stony.
‘Insert whatever derogatory term you like.’
‘So when will all this happen?’
‘It’s a done deal. Emergency order, or whatever you call it.
The governors had an extraordinary meeting during the last week of term and were all booted off the board.
Term starts in January under the new regime.
Not that they’ll bother to show their faces for a while yet, I don’t suppose.
They’ll let all the dirty work be done first before they swan in and save us.
’ He rubbed a hand across his mouth. ‘Not sure I want to be saved.’
‘No, quite.’ Henry regarded his son’s expression. Anger, disgust, fear… ‘Jesus, Adam, I don’t know what to say. It’s a crap way to behave, but you already know that.’ He scratched his head. ‘Have they said what happens now?’ he asked. ‘What the timescale is for the redundancies?’
‘They’re working with the unions, but I doubt anything above and beyond the statutory requirement will be achieved.
So that’s a term’s notice and the usual redundancy pay.
The head said we should get our calculations shortly, whatever that means in terms of time.
I’d kind of stopped listening by then, it’s all bullshit and none of it—’
But Henry had stopped listening too, the last of Adam’s words heard but not making it any further than his ears – his brain was preoccupied with other thoughts. Conversations which had taken place previously…
‘You haven’t told Sofia, have you?’ he asked, although the question was rhetorical. ‘She still doesn’t know…’
Adam looked distraught. ‘How could I tell her?’ he replied, his voice a hoarse whisper.
‘It’s Christmas…’ He raised his hands in a helpless gesture.
‘And I’d only just told her about the promotion.
You saw how she reacted. She already has every last penny of my supposed pay rise spent.
Making videos about our Instagram-perfect life… ’
‘She’s your wife,’ said Henry.
Adam rubbed a hand across his forehead. ‘I was going to tell her. Straight away when I got home, but then it was this arrangement and that arrangement… You were arriving the next day and—’
‘Then before you knew it, it was Christmas and I crashed my car,’ supplied Henry. ‘I know, I’ve made things very difficult for you.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ replied Adam. ‘The truth is that I bottled it. Christmas is bad enough without adding something like this into the mix and I just thought… It doesn’t change anything, does it?
When she knows makes no difference. I thought that if I go into school as normal after the holidays I could pretend that’s when I found out.
’ He lowered his head, hardly able to hold Henry’s look. ‘I know, I’m a coward.’
Henry closed his eyes, sinking his hand deeper into Rolo’s soft fur. Agreeing with his son wouldn’t help and, wrong though it was, part of him understood Adam’s actions all too well. He wouldn’t want to break news like that to Sofia either. He patted Adam’s hand awkwardly.
‘Like everything in life, you’re going to have to live with the consequences of that decision, so I’ll say no more about it.
You know what you have to do.’ He paused.
‘So you will have until Easter before you lose your job, which I know is not that long, but if you’re lucky, long enough to find another position.
Unless you decide to fight the decision, that is. ’
Adam sat back in his chair and stretched out his legs.
‘The school can…’ He made a wry grimace.
‘Again, insert the expletive of your choice. But there’s no point arguing the toss, or fighting, I’ve seen this happen to enough colleagues to know how fruitless that is.
It’s the lack of loyalty which is most galling – that I’ve given my all over the past few years and in the end it counts for absolutely nothing.
The head made a show of telling me what a difficult time it’s been, and thanked me for my hard work, blah blah blah, but it’s pretty meaningless when you know that he doesn’t really care because he’ll do whatever it takes to save his own arse, and stuff the rest of us – I’m not the only one being made redundant. ’
Henry nodded. ‘Sadly, I think that’s probably true.
People my age are notorious for viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses, but I’m not sure organisations were ever any different.
Some hide it better than others, but essentially they promise loyalty and respect until it no longer serves them.
Then, you’re on your own.’ He took another swallow of tea, trying to order his thoughts. His head was pounding.
‘So I’m guessing what’s worrying you the most about this is the financial aspect?’
Adam shook his head, almost in disgust. ‘Yeah, the mortgage. It’s crippling, and yes, before you say it, I know it’s my own fault.’
‘But you have a beautiful home to show for it, and that’s your choice,’ said Henry, giving his son a soft smile. ‘But I don’t think your dining room needs to be any bigger.’
Adam rolled his eyes. ‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘Okay… so I think the likelihood is that you’ll find another job quite easily, but I guess the real question is whether or not that’s something you want to do – find another job, fund your enormous mortgage, carry on arguing over the size of the dining room, and have everything go back to being exactly as it was.
And if that’s what you decide, then I’ll help you in any way I can. Financially too, if it’s necessary.’
‘Dad, I can’t ask you to do that.’
‘Possibly not. But I’d like to, if I can. It is the kind of thing parents do for their children, after all.’
‘The ones who deserve it, perhaps.’
Henry let Adam’s words hang in the air for a moment.
He wasn’t about to refute Adam’s comment, not when it held grains of truth, but this wasn’t the time to be harsh about lessons which needed to be learned either.
It was time to be kind – to Adam and himself.
He was equally to blame for the state of their relationship.
‘You’ve been an idiot in keeping this from Sofia, but under the circumstances I understand why.
You also said earlier that I know nothing about your lives, and that’s something I need to fix.
Parents can’t expect to be a part of their children’s lives unless they are a part of their lives.
’ He smiled. ‘So, I would like you to know, if only to calm the terror you’re feeling about your future, that this is something I will support you with if I can.
But I would also like to throw something else into the mix…
which is that getting another job and having everything the way it was is absolutely fine, if that’s what you really want to do, but you could also decide to take the fork in the road which is being offered to you. ’
Adam’s eyes were curious. ‘And do what?’
Henry raised his eyebrows. ‘You tell me… But I think you might already know.’
‘You mean get back to writing, don’t you?’
‘Do I?’ He held his son’s look with a slight challenge of his own.
Adam sighed. ‘Would that it were that easy… There’s no way I could pay our mortgage by writing for a living.’
‘Not immediately, no. And probably not one of the size you have now. But if you had a smaller house, and a job which didn’t demand so much of you, which didn’t necessitate working of an evening, or trying to catch up on the weekend.
Perhaps then you might have a little writing-shaped space in your life. ’