It’s Wednesday, 2 and a half weeks into the school summer holiday and teacher Phil is sitting in his study watching the rain pour from his broken gutter, hit the roof of the bay window below and bounce back onto the brick wall. Then he looks at the damp patch under his desk. He stares at it, glares at it until his focus goes and the damp patch becomes a shifting, whirling dull brown kaleidoscope. He sees faces come out of the wall – his wife, his son Thomas, Mark Morris from 4PC, the headmaster, his mum, his first girlfriend Jane, the boy who he sat next to in junior school whose name he can’t remember, the man who promised to come and fix the gutter, the headmaster again, and then his face staring back at him – not doing anything just staring.
Thomas is downstairs doing a fish jigsaw with his mum. He’s just done the stingray. Pamela strokes his blond hair. He’ll be going to school in September. She hopes it doesn’t do to him what it’s done to her husband.
Then the face becomes Pamela’s again and it’s calling out … “Phil! Phil!”
Phil watches it. “Phil … let’s go out … we can’t stay indoors all day – it’s the summer holiday!”
“Phil!”
Phil shakes his head and the damp patch stops moving. Phil listens to the drip, drip, drip and then bang, bang, bang of Thomas coming up the stairs.
“Dad, Dad I’ve done the stingray!. I hate stingrays”
“Yeah”
“What you doing Dad?”
“Just some school work” Phil lies
“I don’t want to go to school in Sepmember Dad”
“It’s September … No neither do I”
