Free The Child Who by Simon Lelic

down!’
    ‘Mr Blake, I don’t think . . .’ But Daniel had indeed raised the chair slightly, if only to keep his stepfather at bay. Blake lunged and ripped the chair from the boy’s grip. Daniel staggered backwards, into the corner of the room, sobbing now but snarling at his stepfather too.
    ‘Get away! Get away from me!’
    Blake held the chair, posturing like some circus lion-tamer. ‘Calm down! Do you hear? Calm down or so help me I’ll . . .’ Blake glanced at his wife. He shifted the chair in his grip but did not seem at all sure about what it was, actually, that he might do.
    ‘Leave me alone!’ Daniel swiped at the tears in his eyes. He looked from Blake to his mother to Leo. ‘All of you!’
    Daniel’s mother gave a wail.
    ‘Sit down, Daniel,’ said Leo. ‘Please.’ Like the others, he was now on his feet. It felt like there was something in his throat, squatting on his voice box and preventing him from swallowing. ‘Please,’ he said again and he held out a hand. The boy, in response, batted at the air.
    ‘Get off me! Don’t touch me!’
    There was the sound of a latch and the door to the cell swung open. The guard appeared in the doorway and at the sight of him Daniel reared. He squealed and, as the man started to advance, backed himself further into the corner.
    ‘Settle down!’ The guard had one hand on his holstered truncheon and the other splayed in front of him. ‘Okay? Just settle down.’
    ‘Leave me alone! Please!’ Daniel threw a glance towards Leo. ‘Make him leave me alone!’
    Leo took a step. ‘Officer. It’s all right. It’s just a misunder—’
    ‘Grab him!’ said Blake. ‘For Christ’s sake just grab him!’ Daniel’s mother started forwards but Blake barricaded her with his arms.
    ‘No,’ said Leo. ‘Don’t!’ He reached to the guard’s shoulder but the man just shoved him away. Leo tried again. He stepped forwards. He came between the boy and the guard, facing the man’s fury and conscious of Daniel’s terror at his back. ‘He’s fine. Leave him be.’
    The guard lunged. Daniel howled. Leo spun, stumbled and grabbed instinctively to still the baton. He held it, briefly, and hung his weight on the guard’s arm. The man was stronger, though, and Leo staggered. He reached once more, flailing now, but just as he made to grab again he spotted something on an arc towards his face. And then he felt it: a searing, slashing pain – followed by the cold of the concrete floor.
    It was glorious. There was a fragility to the light and a preciousness about the warmth. Here, behind the building and beyond the wind, it might have been spring. A sample exclusively for him. An atonement.
    He had his eyes closed and his chin high. To catch the sun. Also, to slow the bleeding. He had a paper towel pressed to his cheek and he dared not take it away because it would stick and the anticipation of the pain was worse, almost, than the pain itself. A proper gouge, the guard with the first-aid kit had said, with a kind of awestruck revulsion that had stung as much as the antiseptic. His nails? he had asked, angling his head. The boy did this just with his nails? Then, little shit. What a proper little shit.
    At which point Leo had reclaimed his personal space. Shrugging off the man’s concern, as well as his incitement to press charges, he had made his way to the lavatories and escaped, after that, through a fire door. He was not quite sure where it had led him. Behind the car park, he reckoned: a concrete expanse walled by road noise and infused with the odour of the industrial-sized bins. Yet calm, too; calming. Wherever it was, it would do.
    I’m not mental, he had said. I’m not and I’m not saying it.
    There was a house, a hall, in the area of Reading in which Leo had grown up. It was flats now: overpriced and under-occupied, he had heard, which to Leo was hardly surprising. The building, before the renovation, had been an asylum. The high gates and imposing walls that