Page 99 of Sex Ed

‘Who are you calling a bell-end?’ he asks, puffing his chest out.

I look around that empty corridor. ‘I believe it’s you.’

He laughs and pushes my shoulder and I glare back at him even though I still don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never welcomed a fight in my entire life, I’m usually watching the fights or hiding in the shadows taking a side. He bench presses things and planks. I’d have to go street and just try to aim for the soft bits.

‘If Caitlin thinks the better option is some cretin like you who takes every opportunity to disrespect women and treat them badly, then I obviously misjudged her. You are welcome to each other.’

Or I can just stun him with complicated insults. I see him scan through the words I just said.

‘Look, mate,’ he grunts at me.

‘I’m not your mate.’

‘Well, obviously. Do you want to take this outside?’ he says, palms up, gesturing at one of the fire doors.

I laugh under my breath for a moment. This, again, is not the best thing to do because I see every sinew in his face stiffen ready to take me on. I’m only laughing as outside are the school tennis courts. Are we going to grapple on the tarmac? That could be the crowning glory of these last twenty-four hours, to get a wedgie from this P.E. shithead in full view of the science block.

‘What are you, twelve? Do you want my lunch money too?’ I tell him.

‘You think you’re smarter than me?’ he says, standing a bit closer to me. I notice kids by the door of the classroom peer around.

‘Remind me why you’re here again? To rub it in my face?’

It’s his turn to laugh now. ‘Look, I was trying to just clear the air given we work in the same place.’

‘You mean you’re here to mark out your territory, I get it.’ He should literally just slap out his cock and pee in a circle on the floor. ‘She’s yours. Not mine.’ It still stings to say that out loud, to admit to myself that she probably never liked me that much.

He pouts. ‘Best man won, Steady Eddie.’

I have no idea what to say to this man anymore. I should warn him not to lend her money. Maybe he should do what I did last night and delve into her past life in her old school where she broke a few other hearts, destroyed a few more lives. But perhaps the best thing I can do now is let him find that out for himself. Hopefully, once she’s cleaned him out of his life savings.

‘Yeah,’ I say, resigned to the fact that I have lost. He laughs quietly at me. I’ve lost all sense of hope that love is something for me. It’s better to be alone than to feel as crappy as this, to be standing here next to this man being insulted, bullied, belittled – in a school no less. ‘Their Biology exam starts in half an hour. I think we’re done here.’ I turn away from him and take a big breath before returning to the classroom, taking a seat by my desk and picking up a muffin. You are alone, Ed, but you make good muffins at least. The classroom is unfeasibly quiet for Year 11 and I glance up to see all the kids are looking at me.

‘You all right, Mr Rogers?’ Olivia asks.

‘Yeah,’ I say, through a mouthful of crumbs. Not really. They all stare back at me. I hope those aren’t looks of pity or I really will cry. ‘Right, someone have another muffin before I eat them all. Anyone else have any Biology questions?’

TWENTY-TWO

MIA

The problem with partial unemployment and bunking in with my sister is that she’s not letting me do all those things that I would do normally if I was in my house share. If I was on my own, I’d lay in until midday-ish, I’d binge watchTed Lasso, wank in between and medicate my confusion and possible heartbreak with Deliveroo and not even good Deliveroo, like veggie burgers from the chicken shop with limp chips and bad coleslaw that’s swimming in pale, watery mayonnaise.

Instead, Rachel gives me routine: she gets her kids to wake me up and she makes me sit at a table and eat breakfast with her, foodstuffs I rarely consume at breakfast like overnight oats and blueberries. Rachel has time to grate apple. She gives me lists of things to do like dust her bookshelves and buy milk. But buy the right milk. The shit hits the fan if you bring the wrong milk into her house. If it sounds awful then it is, but it isn’t, because overnight oats have kept me regular at least, the kids distract me and I’m using Rachel’s caviar moisturiser which is doing wonders for my complexion. In return, I look after my sister, I limit her alcohol consumption, I recommend books to her. I’m the better option than Alison who has told Rachel that she’s ‘not tried hard enough to make her marriage work for the sake of her children.’ That phone conversation ended in screams and a mug breaking but hey, at least I am Rachel’s favourite sister now.

‘How is this place still standing?’ Rachel asks me.

‘Possibly asbestos.’

Today is my day to lead the routine and I’ve brought Rachel to the community centre to join in one of the classes. The one thing about Rachel is that she needs to leave her house and remember who she is. She gave up a career to become obsessed by milk and she needs to slowly come out into the world, meet people, remember the smart, snappy girl she once was who has a degree in French. Because if I had a degree in French then I would be finding myself a Frenchman, the sort who would wear a scarf all year round, with good hair, who spoke with his hands and who’d make wild passionate love to me like in an illicit film from the seventies.

‘The curtains are still the same. You haven’t changed the curtains?’

Rachel doesn’t look at the community centre with the same romanticism as me. To me, it is a place where we had every birthday party from the age of five to ten, the place Mum took under her wing and infused with so much love and energy. I have happy memories of her running story time sessions for little people who’d sit on her lap and make her drawings. Rachel sees the heavy seventies curtains and the cold toilets with the scarily noisy cisterns.

‘Why would I change the orange curtains? That’s a vintage look now.’

She gives me a look, knowing my interior design is based around things I’ve found in skips and sprayed with Dettol. ‘So what course are we doing today?’ she asks me, still not wholly convinced this is for her.

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