Free The Child Who by Simon Lelic Page A

now served to keep people out had been installed, initially, to keep them in. Who – in their right mind – would want to live there? Leo, his mates: when they were kids they would try to break in. Not really try because breaking in, actually, was the last thing they wanted to do. It was a terrifying place and that was the thrill: fear of what lay beyond. Manic laughter and swinging light bulbs. Baby-eaters, shit-throwers, shrinks. There was a prison close by too but the lure was barely as great. Prison, after all, was no big deal. Not compared to the alternative.
    Leo tested the paper towel. It was stuck, just as he had feared. He tugged, gently, then harder, and winced the tissue from his face. He touched his cheek. His fingertip came away red. He tore a strip from the paper towel and applied it to the wound, as he would have had he sliced himself shaving. Would he get away with that, he wondered? Old razor, he could say. Ageing face.
    He inhaled and pursed his lips and puffed until his lungs emptied. He felt, all of sudden, in violation, though of what he could not have said. There was work to be done, apart from anything. Yet he had no desire to return to the world, to forsake this unlikely oasis. And so he sat, alone, on a wall, wondering what on earth had just happened and failing, despite everything, to blame the boy.

9
     
    They watched on the television. Megan, probably, would have liked to have gone. Ordinarily, at least. Leo, on the other hand, would rather have forsaken even the coverage. He had suggested it – started to – but it was not, apparently, up for debate. This was part of it, his wife’s expression had conveyed.
    And so they watched, side by side but as far apart as their three-seater sofa would allow: Leo with paperwork balanced on the arm on his side, Meg with a box of tissues on the arm beside her. The curtains were drawn and Leo had resisted the urge to ask why. It seemed needless; superstitious, almost. Tokenism, in the harshest terms, much like the funeral itself. A ceremony for the sake of the living that would help, in Leo’s experience, only if one did not truly hurt.
    He switched on the side light.
    The anchor, on the television, was reaching for the weather. Already, only minutes into the broadcast. It was befitting, apparently, that it was so unseasonal – just as, Leo suspected, rain would have been, or a shroud of snow, or a furious, anguished wind.
    It was a strange decision, he would have argued. Letting the world in when he, in the Forbes’s place, would have done what he could to shut it out. It seemed improper, somehow: turning the day into a public event. Although perhaps, given the attention their daughter’s death had received, they no longer had any choice. Even his father’s funeral, after all, had snowballed into something less than private. There had been relatives that Leo barely recognised, friends who had long since moved away – no one, other than Leo and his family, who had attended other than because they had felt obliged to. So maybe, in the circumstances, what the Forbes family was doing was brave. Maybe, actually, it was generous. More so, in retrospect, than Leo had managed to be.
    The cortège, to the anchor’s commentary, diverted from the Exe and towards the High Street. There were even more onlookers along the route than had been expected; the pavements were clogged from doorway to drain. So much for the pundits’ predictions, that most would choose to mourn in private, in the consoling surround, as they had put it, of their homes. Probably they would prove wrong about the viewing figures, too. Six million would follow the coverage, they had estimated, in living rooms from Truro to Thurso.
    Leo saw Megan glance over at him. Just a glance but he knew what it meant. Look, Leo. Look at the enormity of this.
    It was astonishing, he had to concede, that one life should impact on so many. One death, rather; one manner of death. Twice now the anchor had