Zigic sat down opposite her, placing his wine glass on a coaster, knowing what he was going to say but still not quite ready to do it. There was a small core of resistance in him that he couldn’t put aside, convictions too long held and firmly set for him to simply ignore.
Anna was just as firm in her decision; he could see it in the tilt of her head and the tension in her toes as they gripped the rug under the coffee table.
‘I was reading this article in the paper,’ she said. ‘About how the numbers of hate crimes in schools have exploded in the last year. These were reported figures from police forces. Not anecdotes from teachers or on social media, these were incidents that were severe enough for the police to be called.’ She pressed her fingertips together, flexing her knuckles. ‘Muslim girls having their headscarves ripped off, threats of lynchings and jokes about gas chambers. And what about all the things that happened without anyone seeing them? Because you know how insidious racism is, Dushan. You know that better than anyone.’
He looked at the pattern on the rug, the curlicues and flourishes, going exactly where she wanted him to and he couldn’t help it.
Back to the school he hated, the trouble starting on day one when a teacher didn’t know how to pronounce his surname and her mistake stuck for the rest of the term, despite endless corrections. The stupid cruelty of children which turned Dushan into ‘Dustpan’; it was a meaningless insult, he saw that now and maybe understood even then how petty it was, the kind of joke which would only raise a laugh in the narrowest mind. But the laughter kept coming and the viciousness of stupidity knew no end, he’d found. Didn’t stop with reasoned argument or physical violence. In fact once he’d resorted to violence, the nickname got thrown around even more by girls who’d realised he wouldn’t hit them and by bigger boys who were giving him a reason so they could hit him back.
He’d got good at fighting. Got used to black eyes and busted lips and bruised ribs.
His father told him it was important to stand up for himself, that he learned how to take pain and give it back, because he would meet as many bullies in adult life as in the schoolyard and the sooner he equipped himself to deal with them the better.
They never went to the school to complain.
His mother washed the blood off his shirts and his father would smile as he took hold of his scuffed knuckles: ‘You are becoming a man, Dushan.’
He imagined Milan coming home with his face swollen and his knuckles cut from fighting, and the thought of it set his heart aching. He didn’t want that kind of childhood for Milan and Stefan. Or Emily, he realised, because girls were no better than boys, less likely to indulge in open violence perhaps, but perfectly capable of making her life hell once they’d fastened on the particular difference that would allow them to target her.
Even in a city as multicultural as Peterborough.
He did want to insulate his children from that.
He wanted the best for them, a childhood that felt as safe as he could make it for as long as he could manage. The world was going to be cruel to them, as it was to everyone, but he wanted them to be prepared for it as well as possible.
And this school would do that.
‘Are we just delaying the inevitable though?’ he asked, looking up at Anna. ‘Say we send them there and it’s all lovely and idyllic and there’s this great zero tolerance policy on bullying. What about when they leave? They won’t know how to handle aggressive people.’
‘You’re worrying about what’s going to happen in seven or eight years’ time,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’m worried what happens next month when Milan goes up to that big new school, and his bullies fall in with an even bigger group of bigoted shits and they all decide to gang up on him.’
‘Maybe it won’t be like that at secondary,’ he said weakly.
‘Well, from what I remember of school, everything got worse at secondary. And the teachers get a lot less interested in stepping in because they don’t want to risk the bullies turning on them.’
Anna was crying now.
‘Why won’t you just back me on this?’ she asked. ‘I’m not suggesting we sell their organs or sign them over to the foreign legion. I just want to keep Milan safe.’
‘I know,’ he said, going over to her, feeling the ache in his chest that her crying always provoked. ‘I’m worried about him too. I don’t want the kids to dread school, either.’
‘You’re not here,’ she said. ‘You’ve got no idea how terrified he’s been about seeing those little shits again. He packed a bag.’ Anna reached for her wine glass so sharply that a few drops sloshed onto the hem of her sundress. ‘I found it under his bed – that little suitcase we bought him – he’d packed it full of clothes and books and one of Emily’s stuffed toys. And when I found it and asked him why he just started … wailing. Like he hasn’t done since he was a baby.’
Zigic pressed his hand over his mouth, tears in his eyes.
His boy, that scared, but he never said anything, didn’t come to him and talk about it. Just held it all in his tiny chest, the fear and the desperation, until running away became the only logical option for him.
He thought of the last time Milan had packed that case, fastidiously folding his summer clothes on the final day of their holiday, and how confidently he’d wheeled it through the airport, his little man, the world traveller, so open-minded and bold.
And now this. One incident robbing him of his self-assurance.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’ he asked.
She wiped her face dry.
