The Savages Read Free Page A

and I’m grateful for the cash you’ve just paid for the stick. But what I need more than anything, Titus, is a promise that I’ll still have a job once you’ve cut out all the fat. I have a family that relies on my income. Without it, we’re finished.’
    Titus Savage smiled and clapped the man on the shoulder.
    â€˜How are the kids?’ he asked.
    The man seemed uncomfortable about answering the question for a moment.
    â€˜Good,’ he said eventually. ‘Yours?’
    â€˜The same,’ Titus answered. ‘Sasha has some issues which I plan to work on, but my boy is really beginning to shine.’
    For the second time that week, Ivan Savage took a seat in the office of the school’s deputy head teacher. She sat across from him with both hands flat on the table, one on top of the other, and her mouth pressed tight. She had said nothing beyond summoning him into her office. Ivan looked up at her, well aware that she was awaiting some explanation.
    â€˜It was meant to be funny,’ he reasoned. ‘Those girls just have no sense of humour.’
    The deputy head teacher was a fair-skinned woman with shoulder-length red hair she tied back in a band. At home and weekends, when she let it fall in corkscrews, she was known as Gemma. In school, to staff and pupils, Ms Turner was not someone who thrived on having her patience tested.
    â€˜What is funny,’ she asked eventually, ‘in finding thumb tacks in your school meal?’
    The boy shrugged, like she just didn’t get it.
    â€˜I wanted to liven up lunch break. That’s all.’
    â€˜Ivan, you could’ve seriously harmed three of my students. There’s nothing amusing about pain and suffering. You should consider yourself very lucky that one of the dinner ladies saw what you were doing.’
    Ivan sat on his hands and stared at the floor. With his skewed tie and one shirt tail hanging free, he didn’t look like a pupil capable of getting full marks in the sciences and mathematics. Still, that’s what he was achieving. So long as the subject contained logic at its core, the boy would thrive. At the same time, Ivan was seriously struggling with the arts. Ms Turner had his pupil report in front of her, in fact. It concluded that while Ivan was an enthusiastic student, his critical, creative and interpretive skills were often deemed inappropriate. Ms Turner had an example right in front of her. It was taken from a short story Ivan had written about the day in the life of an animal. While most of his classmates picked playful pets, the boy had opted to write five hundred words from the point of view of a mouse being swallowed alive by an Anaconda. The piece was capably written, but had left his English teacher so disturbed that she reported it to Ivan’s head of year.
    â€˜Are you going to tell my dad?’ Ivan looked up. He seemed troubled at the thought. It was something Ms Turner spotted straight away.
    â€˜What do you think might happen if I did inform your father, Ivan? What would he do?’
    â€˜To me?’ Ivan said with some surprise. ‘Oh, nothing. I was worried about you.’
    Ms Turner blinked and tipped her head to one side. She drew breath to question just what the boy had meant by that, but then thought better of it. The kid was just weird.
    â€˜Ivan, I’ve consulted with your head of year. We’ve agreed that it would be good for you to have a session with Mrs Risbie.’
    â€˜But she’s the school counsellor,’ complained Ivan. ‘I don’t need to see a shrink. Everyone will make fun of me and I’ll just get cross with them.’
    â€˜Then what would happen?’ asked Ms Turner.
    â€˜Nothing.’ Ivan shrugged and looked to the table. ‘Not straight away,’ he added under his breath.
    â€˜The session with Mrs Risbie would be an informal arrangement,’ Ms Turner stressed. ‘A