Think of the Children by Rebecca Klassen

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I’ve not seen Tyler since he was a boy, but the guilt over what I did to him still shudders inside me like animal skin. Even though he has his back to me, I recognise his oblong head and right-angle-ears in my headlights. He’s staggering from alcohol at the start of the country lane where the speed limit is sixty miles an hour. I know every blind corner and pothole on this road home, but I’ve never driven at sixty here because I’m not stupid. Or maybe I am, because I’m pulling up alongside him and winding down the passenger window. He's clutching a polystyrene tray of chips in a brick-coloured sauce. Potato churns in his smile as he leans towards the open window, his joy disappearing when he sees me. 

‘Mrs North.’ He pronounces it ‘norf’, maybe because of the drink, or simply habit. 

‘Let me give you a lift, Tyler. It’s dangerous to walk down here.’ We haven’t spoken since he was eight, so I’m unsure how to convince this man version of Tyler to get in. Not that I was ever able to convince him of anything as my pupil, even after slapping his face with all my might. Now, it’s fifteen years later and he’s an intoxicated man with broad shoulders and a justified grudge. I expect an ‘eff off’, but instead he gets in, eyes fixed on the moths dancing in my headlights. 

I accelerate.

Seven minutes until we’re off the lane and I can let him out. I wonder if he’s too drunk to listen to my apology. He speaks first.  

‘You still teach?’  

‘I do.’ 

He gives a breathy laugh that I deserve. A polite reflex makes me ask, ‘What do you do these days?’

‘I’m chancellor of the exchequer. Left my Jag back at the pub.’

Six minutes until I can let him out. I debate offering him to slap me – an eye for an eye, making us even.

But it wouldn’t. 

I glance at his clublike fists holding his chip tray. I should’ve let him walk, left this nightmare in the past. 

Tyler asks, ‘Did you tell anyone what you did to me?’ 

‘Yes.’ I don’t mention that I told my husband, Jim, who agreed I should lie to keep my job, which worked. Jim was understanding, said the pregnancy had made me protective. 

Tyler lifts his hand to scratch his nose, and I flinch. Five minutes before I can let him out. He asks, ‘You hit any other kids?’ 

‘No, just you.’

More of that breathy laughter. ‘I must’ve really got under your skin,’ he says.

I tap the brake for a hairpin bend, feeding the wheel through my hands, three passes to the left, three passes to the right, then a breath before I speak.

‘You caused me so much stress my hair fell out.’

‘That wasn’t me.’

His words plant me back in the classroom. Drawing pins on my seat, my lost toenail from him stamping on me in football studs, the school guinea pig he killed by feeding it Blu Tack, ripping up my books and wall displays. 

Throwing a chair at my growing baby bump. 

He said it every time: that wasn’t me.

Four minutes until I can let him out. I momentarily veer over the white lines, avoiding the anticipated pothole, then say, ‘I’m going to hurt you so much that your baby dies. You said that after you’d thrown a chair at me. Even though you lied a lot, you definitely meant it.’

Tyler replies, his mouth full of chips. ‘Nah. You were just chickenshit.’

I squeeze the wheel, my face burning, slowing for the blind corner. Three minutes before I can let him out. I turn us gently round the bend.

‘Thing is,’ he says, ‘I reckon you’d still do it, wouldn’t you?’

I brake sharply for what’s in the road. Tyler swears, his chips hitting the windscreen, dry ones ricocheting to the floor, saucy ones sticking to the glass. 

I’m used to seeing foxes dart across the road, but this one is sat facing us, unperturbed, her teats swollen, dried blood around her muzzle. As I gaze at her, I recall the chair hitting my arm as I shielded my unborn daughter, one of the legs striking my head, nauseated dizziness before telling little Jenny to get the headteacher, then remembering he was at a safeguarding conference. I sent the class into the playground because Tyler was still working through his anger, and all I could do, all I was allowed to do was watch. 

Two minutes before I can let him out the car. He leans over and holds down the horn, but the fox doesn’t move. 

‘Is it dead?’ A ridiculous question with the thing being stood upright. ‘Is it real?’ Not so ridiculous a question. It’s taxidermy-still. 

Her cubs will be in a den nearby, her raison d’etre beating in nature’s chest. In her bulb-bright eyes I see the wildness that flashed in me when Tyler mentioned my baby dying. The slap had been a reflex so primal that I’m sure I bared my teeth as I struck him. 

Without prompt, the fox scurries away, back to her babies.

‘Of course I wouldn’t hurt you again, Tyler,’ I say. ‘I wish I could undo what happened.’

That laugh again. ‘Sure.’ He squashes the fallen chips into the footwell mat with his trainers. 

Pulling away, it’s one more minute until I can let him out, until I can call my daughter on my mobile, tell her I’m nearly home, ask her if she wants to watch Friends and eat popcorn when I get in. She’ll say yes, get a blanket for us, and before we sit down, I’ll give her a hug, which I’ll linger over. She’ll ask what’s up, and I’ll say nothing, it’s just because I love her more than anyone else in the world, and I’d do anything for her. 

Absolutely anything.