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  His sixteen-year-old sister had joined the attack, forever complaining about things he had done or not done or done in the wrong way.

  ‘Every day this…chorus of complaint follows me around,’ said Jake. ‘I just need to walk into a room round at my place and I’m already annoying somebody.’

  ‘You’re a guy,’ said Sam. ‘Your mom’s on your case because she’s mad at your dad. Your sister is picking up on the vibe.’

  ‘What are you, some kind of shrink?’ Jake gave an empty little laugh.

  ‘What does your dad say?’ I asked.

  ‘What dad?’ said Jake. ‘I haven’t seen him for a month. He calls me once a week and that’s it.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then, as if realising that he had given too much away, Jake stood up. ‘I gotta go,’ he said.

  ‘You know what you do?’ Sam looked up at Jake. ‘You call your dad. You tell him you’d like to meet up. You talk it through.’

  ‘I’m not the parent, he is,’ said Jake. ‘He’s the one who left home.’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Sam. ‘Maybe he feels so bad about what’s happened that he’s ashamed to show you how he feels. Maybe your mom has said something to him. You’ve got to talk to him, Jake. Call him or message him and see what happens.’

  But Jake was on his way, hands in his pockets, his bony shoulders hunched, closed in on himself and his unhappiness.

  Crash

  Here’s the Crash Lopez three-point method: watch, learn, make your move fast and hard, get the hell out of there. Maybe it was four points.

  That week we watched. We took in the sights, cruised the area in that embarrassment of a toy car, generally blended in with the scenery. We tried to get used to the way the natives spoke – the ‘pleases’, the ‘thank yous’, the ‘are-you-sures’.

  I still had this niggling sense that the creepy Burton family was holding out on me, so that Tuesday evening, we hung out on Somerton Gardens, sitting in the car, heads behind newspapers, watching and waiting.

  It turned out they had a visitor that night – some little Indian chick, carrying a guitar case, came back with the Burton kid and the Canadian girl, Simone. As night closed in we heard the sound of singing coming from the house.

  ‘It’s the girls singing,’ said Ottoleen. ‘It sounds nice, doesn’t it?’

  I said it sounded OK through a couple of walls. Maybe close to, it wouldn’t be so great.

  ‘Family life,’ said Ottoleen in that dreamy voice, which kind of gives me the creeps to tell the truth.

  ‘Don’t even think what you’re thinking,’ I said. ‘We’re getting my son back first, right?’

  ‘I never said anything about starting our very own family. I never even mentioned how totally great it would be or how happy it would make me.’

  I looked across. She was giving me that smile she knows I can’t resist.

  ‘Honey,’ I said. ‘Starting a family is serious. It’s not an easy thing, like starting a car or starting a fight.’

  ‘It can be easy,’ she said, and squeezed my knee.

  The singing from the house stopped for a moment. Then the girls started their song again.

  ‘I can’t stand this waiting,’ I said. ‘I need action.’

  ‘Sure, Crash.’ Ottoleen cuddled closer. ‘I guess we all need a bit of action sometimes.’

  Zia

  It was one of the most magical moments of my life.

  Sam and I had gone straight to her little room, leaving Matthew downstairs watching TV.

  I got my guitar out of the case, tuned it. ‘Where shall we start?’ I asked.

  ‘How about “Private Cloud”?’ she said. ‘That’s the single, right?’

  I laughed, played the intro chords, then stopped. I find I can play in public, but performing for one or two makes me feel shy.

  Then Sam started singing, she picked up the key from me and went ahead by herself.

  ‘They say – take it easy, take it slow

  They say – give it time and let it grow

  They tell me take it one day at a time

  They say – that caution never fails

  One day – the wind will catch my sails

  And take me through the shadowland, the second hand

  And soon I’m gonna climb.

  The opening verse sounded so good coming from her that my fingers started moving over the frets almost of their own accord. When she reached the chorus, I came in with a harmony. Soon, smiles on our faces, looking into each other’s eyes, we’re singing together.

  ‘And I’ll be high in the sky

  Looking down on the world

  Me on my private cloud

  Living my daydreams

  Wherever I go

  Singing my life out loud.’

  It was all I could do not to cry with the feelings that were welling up inside me. But Sam was already hitting the second verse.

  Magical. I’ll never forget it.

  Matthew

  I was downstairs when these voices started coming through the ceiling. At first I thought that Sam and Zia had put on a record.

  I turned down the sound on the TV and listened more closely. It was the two of them, singing to the guitar, and it was – well, would ‘unbelievable’ do?

  16

  Mrs Cartwright

  I was in my office one morning during the second week of term when I received a call from a Mr Stevenson, an American gentleman. He informed me that he was moving into the area and that he had a kid, as he put it, that he would like to enrol at the school. He would very much like to ‘check out’ the school.

  Between you and me, I was not overly impressed by his tone of voice. I informed him that there were certain procedures involved.

  ‘Procedures?’ he said. ‘What’s there to proceed? Me and my wife want to look round your school. How does tomorrow sound?’

  I told him that we had what I call proper channels for prospective parents. Our next open day would be in eight days’ time. From seven o’clock the following Thursday, he and his wife would be welcome to visit the school and meet myself and some of the other teachers.

  I heard him discussing the matter with Mrs Stevenson.

  ‘We normally advise parents to bring the child in question along with them,’ I said. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

  ‘Er, he’s a guy,’ said Mr Stevenson. ‘Name of…’ He hesitated. ‘Name of Angelo.’

  ‘Angelo is very welcome,’ I said.

  He muttered something, which sounded like, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and hung up.

  Slowly I put down the receiver. I remember hoping that Angelo had better manners than his father if he wanted to what I call fit in at Bradbury Hill School.

  Matthew

  I just didn’t get it. As if Sam’s life wasn’t complicated enough, he was now planning to go out on a date. What was more, he seemed quite excited about it.

  ‘You can cancel, you know,’ I said to him as we made our way to school on the morning of his big night out with Mark Kramer.

  ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’ Sam said with a little shake of his long hair.

  ‘Because you’ve got enough problems.’

  ‘I can handle them.’

  ‘Because cancelling things is what girls do.’

  ‘Not this girl.’

  ‘Because you’re a guy, for God’s sake!’ I almost forgot myself and shouted the words out loud.

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘Sometimes you are so old-fashioned.’

  Charley

  I don’t care what she said, Sam was excited about her date with Mark Kramer. Everyone in the class had heard that Mark was taking her to a football game. Although some of the girls teased her, it was pretty clear that they were impressed.

  After all, it was unusual for a boy in the Lower Sixth to pay any attention to a Year Eight girl. For the boy to be Signor Hunko himself was quite an event.

  In the playground, between classes, we noticed that some of the olde
r girls were darting looks at Sam, as if they were thinking to themselves, ‘What exactly has this little kid got to offer that we haven’t?’

  Sam seemed pretty cool about it all, but I could tell that the attention was getting to her. The rest of us, perhaps with one exception, were just proud of her.

  Elena

  So what was the big deal? He probably wouldn’t show or he’d roll up with that Tasha, just as he did with me.

  Anyway, the way I saw it, where would Sam have been without my padded bra?

  Mr Burton

  When Matthew mentioned that he was worried about Sam going to a football match with this older boy, Mary and I had a big discussion about how best to handle the situation.

  Obviously, to the outside world there would be a problem. It was clearly inappropriate that a girl of thirteen should be dating a boy four years older than her, particularly if the boy in question has a bit of a reputation.

  On the other hand, Sam wasn’t a girl. What was happening here was that a couple of boys were going to a football match. Why, if one of the boys happened to be disguised as a girl, should that make any difference?

  For some reason, it did. We were concerned. Somehow it seemed all wrong.

  Mrs Burton

  Neither of us mentioned it, but I knew we were both thinking the same thing. Sam was enjoying being a girl rather too much for this to be entirely straightforward.

  He plucked his eyebrows. He had become concerned about what he wore. He had taken to giggling. Frankly, if one night he had volunteered to cook us a nice new vegetarian dish he had been working on and had announced that he wanted to be a hairdresser when he grew up, we would not have been in the least surprised.

  Gender fluid. Neither of us actually said the phrase out loud, but at this point it was on our minds.

  Not that we had a problem with that. Gender fluid was fine with us, so long as it was what Sam really wanted. But was it?

  Mark

  Looking back on it, we should have gone to the family stand, or maybe the south enclosure – anywhere, in fact, except the Pit. Because the Pit, where the most hardcore fans hung out, was definitely not a place for girls. But tickets for the Pit were the only ones that weren’t sold out. Sam said she wanted excitement and atmosphere.

  She got it.

  Everyone’s different outside school, but Sam Lopez was way, way different that night. The crowd was gathering outside the main entrance when I first caught sight of her and, if it hadn’t been for that long blonde hair, I wouldn’t have recognised her. She walked through the fans with a kind of bouncy swagger, looking this way and that, wide-eyed and with a dangerous half-smile on her face. She wore jeans and trainers and a big purple puffa jacket that somehow made her look even smaller than usual.

  ‘Whoa,’ she said when I greeted her. ‘This is more like it.

  ‘I knew you’d like football,’ I said.

  ‘It ain’t the football,’ she said, looking around her. ‘It’s the violence. I can smell it in the air.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said in my most reassuring voice. ‘I’ll look after you.’

  She looked up at me and laughed in a way which I found kind of peculiar. It was almost as if she felt sorry for me.

  We took our seats and, by the time the game had started, I knew that I had made a big mistake bringing a girl to the Pit. Looking around me I saw some familiar faces, the hard men and psychos who turn out for the games when the heaviest action is going to be off the pitch.

  Sam hardly watched the football, but looked around her as the supporters jeered and cheered and chanted and goaded the other side’s fans, who were in the north stand.

  Then she started joining in. Within a few minutes, she was screaming abuse with the best of them. Normally I like a bit of a shout myself, but the more noise Sam made beside me, the more I wished we were somewhere else – at a cinema, a restaurant, anywhere but in the Pit during a derby-cup game.

  Because soon the fans around us were noticing this crazy little American chick and her wild language.

  ‘Go for it, girl,’ one of them shouted after she had stood up alone and directed a few choice swear words in the direction of the other fans.

  ‘Easy, Sam,’ I muttered.

  She glanced at me and I noticed a dangerous glint in her eye. ‘Got a problem, hombre?’ she said.

  I shrugged and said nothing.

  It was five minutes before the end of the game when the real trouble started. The other side scored in the goal just in front of us and, as their players celebrated, a few of the rival fans, not fifty metres from us, ran out to the pitch to join in the party.

  It was too much for some of our guys. They were out of their seats and on to the turf before the stewards could do anything about it.

  I turned to Sam to suggest that maybe we should leave – just in time to see her leap up, run down the aisle nearby, skip over the low fence and into the small riot that was already developing on the pitch.

  It got worse. More fans became involved. The players left the pitch, and about ten police horses, their riders in full riot gear, emerged from the far corner of the ground and advanced in a line towards the fighting fans.

  What could I do? Chase Sam on to the pitch? Pull her out of there? It was too late. She was in the thick of it all, legs and fists flying. I decided that I should stay where I was. At least that way she would know where to find me when things calmed down.

  But she showed no sign of turning back. One or two of the other side’s fans seemed to hesitate when they saw this little girl in the front line of the action. It was a mistake. With a kick to the crotch or a fist to the face, Sam was on them.

  With the horses trying to separate the two groups of fans, some of them decided they had had their fun and returned, grinning and punching the air, to their seats. Soon only about fifty or so remained battling it out on the pitch. Sam, as is now well known, was in the thick of it all. I ran to the front row of seats and screamed at her from behind the line of stewards, who were now shoulder to shoulder, preventing anyone else from getting to the pitch.

  Too late. The remaining fans were cornered by the horses. Police with dogs moved in and, amid a blizzard of flashing bulbs from the press photographers who had gathered around the scene, they were grabbed, one after another and frogmarched off to the vans outside, to cheers and boos from the fans in the stand.

  That was the last I saw of Sam on our great night out – walking between two policemen, each of them twice her size, as photographers snapped away and people in the crowd pointed at her.

  No one – not a player, not a fan – had made such an impact as Sam Lopez did that evening.

  Mr Burton

  At around ten that night, we got a call from Mark Kramer. ‘Something’s happened,’ he said.

  He told me the police station that Sam had been taken to. I said I was on my way.

  Matthew

  You want the truth? Part of me was relieved when the call from Kramer came through and we learned the sad news of how Sam’s hot date had ended.

  The fact is, it could have been a whole lot worse. Sooner or later Mark would have tried it on or said or done something that would have offered Sam a choice – either smack him in the chops or reveal his guilty secret.

  The fact that he had got involved in a football riot and had ended up in the police cells solved that problem at least.

  Sam – the real Sam – was back. That night he had put away his eyebrow tweezers, had gone out and, as he once would have put it, had kicked some serious ass, just like in the old days back in the States.

  It had turned out that you can dress someone up in a skirt, get him to mix with female company, give him all the things a girl might want, but when it came right down to it, a guy was a guy.

  I can’t say that the idea upset me too much.

  PC Chivers

  It was a rough night. We took the home fans in, put them in the cells, charged some of the worst troublemakers, and let the rest o
ff with a caution after allowing them to cool down for a few hours.

  Some of the lads were worried about leaving a young girl with some of the hard cases we had arrested, but we didn’t have a choice. Besides, the two officers who had brought her in seemed to think that she was capable of looking after herself.

  Soon after eleven, a Mr Burton appeared, asking for her. We took him into the interview room, and brought the girl Lopez in and told them both that, in view of her age and the fact that she had probably been led astray by some of the undesirable older male elements she had been mixing with, she was going to be released with a formal caution.

  Mr Burton seemed relieved, but the girl just sat glowering at us, as if all this was somehow our fault.

  We were about to let them go, when the duty officer suggested that, since Mr Burton was not her father, we should check that he was genuinely the girl’s guardian.

  I put through the call to the number Mr Burton gave. Mrs Burton explained the situation but seemed less than impressed by what had occurred. So Miss Lopez was released from custody, and frankly I would have liked to be a fly on the wall when that little girl got home.

  Funnily enough, it was only later that I realised why there had been something familiar about her. I had seen her before – in the park, hanging about with some boys.

  Honestly, kids these days. It makes you wonder sometimes.

  Mrs Burton

  They were home after midnight. It took one look at Sam for me to realise that now was not the moment for us to talk this thing through.

  His jeans were torn and the purple puffa jacket that he had been so proud of was covered with dust and mud. There was a red welt across his cheek and the beginnings of what looked like a nasty black eye.