Page 44 of The Cut
Nate sloped off to bed while Ben helped Lily up to her room.
A few minutes later, Ben returned to the top of the stairs and stood looking into the bedrooms of his two children before tiptoeing back into his own. The bundle wrapped up in the duvet174rolled over to face the door. Ben walked over to the en-suite and flicked on the bathroom light.
‘She’s hurting them.’ Ben’s silhouette lingered in the bathroom door.
‘What, love?’ Dani leant up on her elbow then picked up her watch from the bedside table. ‘It’s 2.15. Come back to bed.’
‘This film, I …’ Ben’s voice was barely a whisper. ‘I don’t know what’s happening … Why did we let them get involved in this? This was your idea.’
‘He just wants to make you proud. They both do.’ Dani rolled over and fell back into a deep slumber.
Ben was frozen on the threshold. Something was stirring deep down, rising up inside him. An old animal instinct he had long forgotten. Fight or flight.
He needed to protect his family at all costs.
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‘Roll B002 Scene 2 Take 1. Mark it.’
The man in the frame jumped as the board clapped; his eyes darted around the room, unfocused and nervous. After a few beats, he settled, and the interview began.
‘Tell me about your son’s friendships at school.’
‘I warned him not to let them in. I grounded him, but he disobeyed me.’
The doctor’s hair was thinning now. It had turned white and gave him a certain distinguished authority. The rest of his features told a different story. His face was lined with a road map of worry and stress, and there was a weariness that pressed down on his spine. He glanced over to the window, where the twilight outside made a mirror of the glass. He stared at his own reflection.
‘Once they’re invited inside, they have more potential to hurt you. Like vampires.’ Sandeep closed his eyes slowly.
‘David was an outsider … he was marginalised by his friends.’
‘Devesh … not David. He anglicised himself to fit in.’ The doctor sniffed. ‘It means “chief of the gods”.’
‘It’s a beautiful name.’
‘Hmm … he didn’t exactly live up to that mantle though, did he?’ A flicker of pain and disappointment flashed across the old man’s face.
The zoom tilted in a little closer, detailing every flinch of the broken man.176
‘Devesh was being dragged down by peer pressure.’ He shuffled papers around on his desk as if this was a consultation with a patient and he was looking for answers.
‘What kind of peer pressure?’ She knew the answer, but her voice and the questions would be removed in the edit.
‘Yes, that is rather a euphemism, isn’t it … hmm …’ The little hum was like a nervous tick that filled an awkward silence. ‘Coercing him into drinking and smoking, running riot all over the village like he was a tearaway, all kinds of nonsense. He should have listened to me, then none of this would have happened.’
‘Why did he cave in?’
‘The dog shit wrapped in newspaper, set on fire and posted through the letter box was definitely a catalyst … that’s another form of peer pressure, I suppose.’
‘Did that happen a lot?’
‘Mmm … Devesh just wanted to be popular, he wanted to be one of the gang, so he tagged along, did what he was told by the ring leader … His mother hated it, of course … especially that damned bike.’
The doctor looked up to the camera and fixed a smile on his lips, but his eyes were dead. ‘Children can be cruel, beyond anything an adult could dream up. Their imaginations are so …’ He sighed. ‘… stark. They despised everything about him, they othered him, so he buried himself in separate pursuits, solitary interests.’
