Jessica's Ghost (9 page)

Lunch at Roland’s house was a remarkably cheerful affair. Mrs Boyle had roasted three chickens, along with a mountain of roast potatoes, roast vegetables, sausages, bacon, bread sauce, onion gravy, and a basket of freshly baked rolls in case anyone had the odd corner that still needed filling.

Roland’s father carved the chickens. He was a tough, wiry looking man not much bigger than his wife and Francis couldn’t help wondering how two such diminutive people could have produced a son who was bigger than both of them put together.

When Jessica got Andi to ask Mr Boyle what he did for a living, they discovered he had started out as a crane
operator, before borrowing enough money to buy his own crane and, finally, setting up his own company.

‘He goes all over the country,’ said Mrs Boyle proudly. ‘You want something heavy lifted, my Ronnie’s the man to do it!’

He had, it turned out, recently been involved in lifting railway carriages from a steep embankment after a passenger train had come off the line near Doncaster. And while Mrs Boyle cleared the plates before bringing out the puddings – two apple pies, a large bowl of chocolate mousse, a fruit salad and a jug of cream – Mr Boyle used some spare cutlery and some string to give a demonstration of the problems involved in lifting something weighing fifty tonnes, without it slipping out of the harness and killing the people underneath.

When lunch was over, Francis and Andi offered to help with the dishes, but Mrs Boyle wouldn’t hear of it.

‘Ronnie and I will look after all that,’ she said, shooing them towards the door. ‘You go and watch one of Rollo’s films or play on his computer. Save your energy for a swim later.’

Roland had an impressive collection of films and games, but Andi took one look at his room – with the drink cans littering the floor, the plates with the half-eaten remains of food, and the dirt and dust – and said there was no way she was doing anything until there was somewhere she could sit down without risking serious infection.

Before they knew it, Roland had been dispatched to find a Hoover, dusters and cleaning fluid, Jessica had been told to float up in one corner of the room and keep out of the way, and Francis had been sent back to the kitchen with a pile of dirty plates, and told to bring back some bin bags.

Mrs Boyle asked what he wanted the bin bags for.

‘Roland’s tidying his room a bit,’ Francis explained, ‘and he needs something to put the rubbish in.’

‘Tidying his room?’ Mrs Boyle stared at him. ‘Really?’

‘It was Andi’s idea,’ Francis admitted. ‘She sort of told him he had to.’

‘And he’s
doing
it?’ Mr Boyle looked equally astonished.

‘Andi can be quite forceful when she sets her mind to something,’ said Francis … ‘I don’t think she gave him much choice.’

Mrs Boyle had taken a roll of black bin bags from a drawer, but did not pass them to Francis. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll take these in myself.’ She headed towards the door. ‘Perhaps she can get him to change his sheets at the same time …’

‘I’ll look after those, shall I?’ Mr Boyle gestured to the pile of plates Francis was carrying. He took the plates, scraped the bits of food into a bin and began loading them into the dishwasher. ‘She hasn’t been able to get in to his room for weeks, you know. Roland wouldn’t let her. He wouldn’t let
anyone
in. I don’t mind telling you, we were getting worried. We knew he was unhappy about something … but we didn’t know what, and he wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t see anyone, didn’t want to go out …’ Mr Boyle turned to look across at Francis. ‘And then you come along and … bingo … All the lights are back on and he’s asking if he can invite people back for lunch! I don’t know what you did to him, but … What
did
you do to him?’

‘Nothing really,’ said Francis. ‘We just … talked, you know.’

‘Talked …’ Mr Boyle let out a long sigh. ‘We tried that. Trouble was we could never get him to talk back. But Angela says you had him chatting away almost as soon as you walked in the door. She doesn’t know how you did it, but …’ He paused, a frown of concern on his face as he looked carefully at Francis. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit tired.’

It was only now it was mentioned, that Francis realised he
was
tired. Very tired. It had, looking back on it, been an eventful morning.

‘Why don’t you go and have a lie down?’ said Mr Boyle. ‘Leave the tidying up to the others, and go and have a rest. Use one of the loungers by the pool.’

‘Yes,’ said Francis. ‘I think I will.’

He walked through to the pool, lay down on one of the loungers, and fell almost instantly asleep.

When he woke, it was to find Jessica lying on the lounger beside him, propped up on one elbow, looking at him.

‘You’ve been dribbling,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’ Francis pushed himself up to a sitting
position and noticed that someone had covered him with a rug.

‘That was Roland’s mum,’ Jessica told him. ‘She’s been coming in every quarter of an hour to check you’re all right.’

‘Oh …’

‘She comes on tiptoe, so as not to wake you. The others wanted to come in earlier for a swim, but she wouldn’t let them. She said you needed your rest.’

‘Ah …’

‘She and Mr Boyle have been talking about you in the kitchen. They think you have magic powers. Seriously. They think you do miracles. At the moment they’re discussing how long it might take you to get Roland back to school.’

‘Ah …’ Francis still had no idea what, if anything, he was going to do about that one.

‘Don’t worry!’ Jessica smiled. ‘We’ll think of something. But in the meantime, I’d better tell Andi and Roland they can come in for a swim!’

And she disappeared.

Later – much later – after a swim, a very large tea, another swim and a movie Roland provided about a man chained by his leg to a radiator, who had to choose between starving to death and cutting off his own foot to get free, Roland’s parents took Francis to one side, as he was getting ready to leave, and asked if he had had a chance yet to talk to Roland about school.

‘No …’ said Francis. ‘Not yet.’

‘Frieda Campion told me you like to wait for the right time,’ said Mrs Boyle. ‘She said that, with her daughter, you waited till she was feeling secure before you … did whatever it is you do.’

‘Well, it wasn’t quite like that …’

‘Unfortunately,’ Mr Boyle interrupted, ‘we don’t have a lot of time. You see, Roland’s been out of school a month, and they’re kicking up about it already. Threatening social services, legal action, all that sort of thing.’

‘So if you could have a word with him, fairly quickly,’ Mrs Boyle put in.

‘I will talk to him,’ said Francis, ‘but, honestly … I’m
not sure it will do any good. I can’t make him do something he doesn’t want to do, can I?’

Mr Boyle readily agreed that this would indeed be impossible, and Mrs Boyle said they were just grateful to him for trying, but he could see in their eyes that neither of them believed him.

Roland’s parents were both quite convinced that Francis was going to produce another miracle.

In the week that followed, Roland cycled over to Alma Road each day to spend the evening with his new friends – in fact he was usually waiting for them outside in the street when they got home from school – and he would stay until Francis or Andi’s mother told him it was time to go home.

They were sitting in the attic at number forty-seven – Jessica was helping Andi finish off some maths homework – when Francis cautiously asked Roland if he’d thought at all about when he might go back to school. You could almost see the shutters close down behind Roland’s eyes as soon as the idea was mentioned.

‘I’m not going back,’ he said, his chin jutting out
determinedly. ‘Not ever. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m not going back.’

‘But … don’t you have to?’ asked Francis. ‘I mean everyone has to go to school, don’t they? It’s the law.’

‘I don’t care,’ Roland repeated, stubbornly. ‘I’m not going. And no one can make me. I’d rather die.’

In the circumstances, this was not a threat to be taken lightly and Francis let the matter drop. He had said he would talk to Roland about school and he had done so. It hadn’t worked – he had never really expected that it would – but he had fulfilled his promise and, much as he would like to have helped, he didn’t see what else he could do.

It was later the same evening, after Roland had walked Andi back to number thirty-nine before cycling home himself, that Jessica came up with a possible solution to the problem.

‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if anyone’s thought about home schooling?’

Francis looked up from the broken zip he was removing
from Andi’s school skirt before putting in a new one. ‘Home what?’

‘Home schooling,’ Jessica repeated. ‘The law says you have to learn somewhere, but if your parents want to teach you at home, they can.’

‘Really?’ This was news to Francis.

‘I had a friend who did it for years,’ said Jessica. ‘I don’t suppose Roland’s dad would have time to do much, but his mum might.’

Francis considered the idea. ‘Interesting. I wonder if Roland will go for it.’

When they told him about it the next evening, Roland went for the idea immediately. The thought that there might be some way of never going to school again, and it somehow being all right, seemed almost too good to be true. An hour on his laptop, trawling through various websites, quickly convinced him that it was indeed perfectly possible. If home schooling was what you wanted to try, there were dozens of places you could go to for help setting it up and, according to the people who’d done it, it wasn’t that difficult. Mostly what it took was a lot of time.

‘Dad’s too busy, so it’d have to be Mum doing most of it,’ he said, closing the lid of the laptop. ‘But I’m not sure she’ll want to. She gets very nervous about anything connected with school work. She had a panic attack helping me with my homework when I was seven.’ He paused. ‘But I could ask.’

‘How about getting Francis to ask?’ said Jessica. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your parents think Francis could walk on water if he put his mind to it. If he said home schooling was the thing to do, I don’t think there’d be much argument from either of them.’

Francis put the idea to Mr and Mrs Boyle on Saturday. He sat down with them at the kitchen table before lunch, while Roland had taken Andi off for a swim, and he began by telling them that, after speaking to Roland, he did not think it would be a good idea to try and get him to return to St Saviour’s.

‘Oh, dear …’ Mrs Boyle could not disguise her disappointment. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I think if he went back now,’ said Francis, ‘it would
just make him very unhappy. And that wouldn’t be good, would it?’

‘Maybe not,’ said Mr Boyle, ‘but he
has
to go back, doesn’t he? It’s the law.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Francis. He explained, with Jessica prompting him, how home schooling was the legal right of every parent, that he knew of someone who had done it and found it a lot less difficult than they expected, and that there were all sorts of places to go for help, if Mrs Boyle was prepared to take it on.

‘Me?’ Mrs Boyle’s eyes widened. ‘I couldn’t teach him! I don’t know anything!’

‘Like I said, there’s all these organisations that’ll help you set it up,’ Francis assured her. ‘Roland’s been finding out about them on the internet. They tell you what to do, what books to get and everything. My friend said it takes a lot of time, but it’s really not as difficult as you might think.’

‘And you reckon this learning at home would be the best thing for Rollo, do you?’ asked Mr Boyle.

‘Yes,’ said Francis. ‘Yes, I do.’

Mr Boyle looked across at his wife. ‘Well, it’s up to you, love. You’re the one who’d have to do most of the work. But if Francis says it’s the best thing …’

And, as Jessica had said, that was the clinching argument really. Francis was, after all, the young man who, in a few brief days had turned their son’s life around. If he said home schooling was the answer, then that was what they would try, however frightening the prospect might be for Mrs Boyle.

The lessons, once they began, went better than either Roland or his mother had expected. As a home-tutor, Mrs Boyle might have the disadvantage of knowing almost nothing about any of the subjects her son needed to study but, where Roland’s happiness was concerned, she could be very determined. By the end of the week, she had a large chart on the kitchen wall showing lesson plans for the month ahead, she had a list by the phone of people she could contact for help, and the kitchen table was covered in books on the causes of the First World War, Spanish vocabulary, and the ecology of the Amazon Basin.

During the lessons, Roland usually found himself explaining things to his mother rather than the other way round, but he was not the first person to discover that this is in fact one of the best ways to learn. If they were both stuck, there was no shortage of people they could ring, though Roland preferred to start by asking Jessica. She usually called in two or three times during the day to see how things were going and, if she did not know the answer herself, could always get Francis or Andi to ask a teacher at John Felton. Between the four of them, there weren’t many problems that couldn’t be sorted out.

When Roland finished his work in the afternoon, he would get on his bike and hurry over to Alma Road. Regular cycling meant he was much better at coping with the journey these days, and he barely needed to stop and catch his breath before pushing open the front door and climbing the stairs to the attic room in Francis’s house, or at Andi’s.

At the weekends, the four usually met at Roland’s. His home, after all, had the swimming pool, not to mention the attraction of Mrs Boyle’s cooking. They would swim,
lie around, talk, eat – and if you had been watching them splashing noisily in the pool, you would have found it hard to believe that, only a few short weeks before, three of them had been seriously considering how best to end their own lives, and one of them already had.

They looked like people who were enjoying life – as indeed they were – though there was one incident, three weeks after the great revelation about Jessica, that threatened to blow their new lives apart.