He didn’t leave St Edwards. The headteacher did.  So did Daz.    A child psychologist gently explained to Charlie, Charlie’s mum, the police and the school that Charlie was understandably suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.  Rather more forcefully, in a series of scathing letters and strident phone calls, she also asked them what did they all think they were playing at, putting him back into school so soon.  Chastened, the Deputy Head arranged for Daz to transfer to a different school, the police thought about doing something better involving car crime and his Mum took him on a trip to visit his grandad, where Charlie could put the truncheon back into safe-keeping. 

When he walked on to the playground for the second time he had been greeted more warmly.  A new acting headteacher had been appointed in his absence, who met him at the gates with a friendly smile and walked with Charlie, chatting to him about football (which Charlie found about as interesting as French irregular verbs).  The previous headteacher had decided to take early retirement, after it had been explained to him that students trying to kill each other did not give teachers, governors, parents or school inspectors a great deal of confidence in his ability to protect children.   The events of the last few weeks had catalysed change in the school. 

Charlie had underestimated how understanding the school body were.  In his first few days back he experienced more warmth from students and teachers alike than he had at any other school.  Within a short time, he realised that he was content with this.  Trev was gone but that did not mean his life was also over.  He had never realised that he and Trev were well-liked but it was during this time he began to see that many people were as badly affected by Trev’s death as he was.  People expressed their sympathy with kindness. Soon he became aware that they didn’t do this out of a desire to be close to the notorious Charlie Buttons, but because they cared.  It didn’t lessen the pain of his loss but it did make it more bearable.   He was still grieving for Trev but he wasn’t doing this alone.   For the first time he felt he belonged in a school. 

That didn’t mean that things became easier for him.  He was lost without Trev.  He found it difficult to concentrate at school.  Homework wasn’t completed.  He could flash into sudden outbursts of temper with staff, friends and family.  Charlie returned to his old ways, retreating into a world of nefarious activity to compensate for the absence of his friend.  The few successes seemed petty when compared to what he had achieved with Trev.  The failures included significant amounts of calm, measured “chats” with police officers, security guards, teachers and his mum.

In the kitchen, Charlie’s mother fussed around the teapot, unnecessarily tidying up the tea things.  Angela Buttons had done her best, bringing up a pleasant, kind but scheming boy alone and on one income.  She had become accustomed to sorting things out on her own.  Watching Charlie avoiding her gaze, as he hid his face beneath his fringe, she felt a sudden stab of anguish.   It was heartbreaking to see her son lost in thought, the pain of loss etched upon him.  Angela felt helpless in the face of his torment and could not deny that she was worried.

She had always been confident that Charlie would not go off the rails, mainly because he had never really been properly on them. However, she knew that Charlie, under Trev’s wing, would never do anything malicious.  It came as a shock to her when Charlie attacked Daz after the accident because it was so out of character.  Her beautiful but sullen boy just wasn’t violent.  She did not accept that Charlie would do this without a very good reason.  It had taken the psychotherapist to explain the background to Charlie’s actions, after Charlie had eventually opened up to his mother in floods of tears of grief and remorse.

Somehow, through all of this she had kept her job at the BritishMuseum as a conservator.  She worked behind the scenes at the museum studying, examining and preserving rare, or commonplace, ancient artefacts.  One day she could be working on an elaborate twisted gold torc worn by a chieftain of the Trinovantes, the next she could be stabilising a Babylonian clay tablet that outlined a maths problem for children 4000 years dead.  It was work that kept her busy but it was work that she loved.   Bringing up Charlie on her own had been a struggle, but every day that she spent with Charlie, and with her work, fulfilled her.  Angela was happy in what she did and life was rarely boring.

After the incident on the playground, she had taken a leave of absence and had remained with Charlie at home.  They spent the days playing video games together, or poker, which Charlie loved.  They visited the great landmarks of London, especially if they were free to get in.  Under Angela’s guidance, Charlie experienced a sudden broadening of his horizons, as he was bombarded on all sides with fine art and the whole of human history.  His mother had even brought him into her workplace – something she had never done before – just as the team was unrolling a scroll that had not been read for 2000 years.  She watched him stand open-mouthed in awe as she read the handwritten Latin straight from the scroll.  Apparently a great roman lady, Claudia Pulchra, had some extremely unkind things to say to her friend, Agrippina Major, about some mutual acquaintances.

Charlie’s sombre expression lifted when she proudly showed him some of the projects she was involved with.  They walked through the conservation workshop, chatting about the artefacts.  She had always been there for him even though he took her for granted somewhat.  Tea would be on the table at the same time every night.  The dirty laundry basket would be magically empty and yet his clothes drawers were full to the brim.  He never really noticed dirt, dust or clutter in the flat because there wasn’t any.  Somehow, his mum seemed to just get things done and he seemed to cruise right along.  Angela didn’t mind.  It was simply what she did.   However, she realised that Charlie had begun to see her differently after that day visiting the Museum’s studio. 

One thing they had seen stood out in her mind. Angela had shown Charlie a golden Roman ring inscribed with a curse, laughing with her colleagues, speculating about who had made it and what drove them to do it.  She had seen his interest sparked by the object and he had shown a lot more interest in what she’d said for the rest of the visit.  On the way back to the flat that evening he could barely contain himself about his.

“How do you know so much about that ring?” he said over the noise of the tube.  “How can you possibly be so sure that you’re right?”

“I can’t,” she replied.  “How can we really know?  The people who created these things are long gone but you have to remember they were just people.  Even though they believed different things, behaved in different ways, followed different laws, they were still just people.  They loved their families, they hated their enemies.  They would do extreme things to get back at people who had done them wrong.”   They had both looked at each other uncomfortably and Angela had hurried on, “The man who put that curse on that ring was really very angry.  Why else would he want to curse his neighbour?  Goodness knows what it was that he had done, but the ring curses him and his descendents and that could mean that the two men were squabbling over the boundaries between their lands.  It’s a bit like two neighbours nowadays arguing over who owns which side of the garden fence.  The archaeologists who found it got lucky.  It was buried on land bordering that of an ancient roman villa which belonged to someone they already knew about.  He must have been so angry about something his neighbour had done he was prepared to give up a valuable gold ring as the curse price.  You’ve got to remember, Charlie, everything in those days was hand made, so that ring, which is exquisite, would have taken hundreds of hours to make and he just gave it up!  He must have been so furious,” she cackled as the train pulled into LondonBridge.

When Angela had laughed, she had seen a flicker of amusement in Charlie’s eyes.  It was the first sign that something changed within him.

A fly buzzed against the kitchen window’s pane, furious in its frustration.   Angela Buttons looked at her son sitting beneath the flickering neon light, staring into his tea, carefully avoiding her eyes.  She had been absolutely heartbroken over the loss of Trev, who she had considered to be almost a brother to Charlie, almost a son to her.  During the weeks following the accident she had tried to contact Trev’s parents to offer help but there was never an answer to phone calls, or the door.  The curtains were drawn in the Blackstock house, the inhabitants lost within, trapped in a private world of grief and pain. 

Stirring her own tea absent-mindedly, she considered how helpless she had felt.  Unable to help the Blackstocks, she’d realised she had to do something for her own family.  Perhaps a break from London and East Brockley would help?  She’d begun to look around for an interesting destination for a holiday.  There was a small amount in a bank account that she had been carefully saving for something like this.  Now was the time to put it to good use and give Charlie a once in a life-time experience.

Every night she had powered up her ageing laptop, a retired piece of equipment from work that was only really good for browsing the internet, or writing a letter (though not at the same time).  Its hard-drive would wheeze into action as she patiently investigated her options.  Angela was not interested in a package tour, or a long stay in a concrete pleasure palace by the Mediterranean.  She’d wanted something more absorbing, a place that was interesting in its own right, a place that would open up Charlie’s eyes to the wide world of experience beyond East Brockley’s grey streets and run down housing estates.  Places off the beaten track would click past her eyes: Transylvania, Georgia, Ethiopia, and Ecuador were all considered.  New Zealand, Finland, Iceland and Mongolia were also candidates.  The problem became apparent to Angela fairly quickly, the pleasure of looking began to outweigh the intention of booking.  In the way of things when surfing the internet, Angela ended up following a series of web links, clicking on random interesting pictures, which had resulted in the uncovering of life changing information for both her and Charlie.

She was looking at images of Tonga in Polynesia when something in one of them caught her eye.  The snapper had taken a photo of his friends getting on to a striking vintage seaplane, a brilliant white and orange twin engine aircraft with huge observation blisters set halfway down the fuselage.  However, it was not the unlikely beauty of the plane that caught her eye.  It was the name of the company painted beneath the cockpit in foot high letters, Bravo Islands Air Taxi. 

Bravo?  The name had piqued her interest.  She couldn’t help herself.  The name was special to her.  Trying to find out more about the people behind the plane, she had googled the company.  And there it was.  In another set of tourist photos, with bronzed holidaymakers making merry alongside the pilots, she found what she was looking for. 

A face she had not seen for fourteen years.

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