Sixth, fifth, fourth, third. In second place — the Kranium Krusherz. Mike and Connie’s team had beaten us by two points. I watched Mike and Connie embrace to cheers and applause, and on the benches, too, Ryan and Albie were clenching their fists and whooping in that simian way.
But I remained concerned. One point for each bonus question, when we had given them two? Nothing for the USSR? Mentally I calculated our correct score, calculated it again. There was no denying, we’d been cheated of victory, and I felt I had no choice but to cross to the quizmaster and make the case for a recount.
For a while, audience and contestants seemed confused. Was the evening over? Not quite yet, not until I’d consulted with Albie’s head of year, Mr O’Connell, pointing out the discrepancies in the marking.
Mr O’Connell placed his hand over the microphone. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘Yes. I think so. Yes.’
By now the hall had taken on the grim and solemn air of a war crimes tribunal. I’d hoped my intervention would be taken in the light-hearted spirit I’d intended, but parents were shaking their heads and pulling on their coats, and still the recount continued until, after what seemed an age, justice prevailed and it was announced to the half-empty hall that our Kranium Krusherz had lived up to their name and won by half a point!
I looked to my son. He did not cheer. He did not punch the air. He sat on the bench gripping his hair with his hands while Ryan draped an arm around his shoulder. In silence, my fellow Krusherz divided up the spoils, £10 worth of vouchers to spend at the local garden centre, and we walked out to the school car park.
‘Congratulations, Doug,’ said Mike, standing by his Transit van with a grin. ‘You showed us who’s boss!’ Then to my son, with a hateful wink: ‘Your dad, he’s practically a genius!’ In times of old, we’d have just gone at each other with clubs and rocks. Perhaps that would have been better.
Anyway, the three of us drove home in silence. ‘For as long as I’m alive I never, ever want to talk about this evening again,’ said Connie quietly as she unlocked the front door. And Albie? He went upstairs to his room without a word, contemplating, I suppose, just how very clever his father was. ‘Goodnight, son. See you tomorrow!’ Standing at the bottom of the stairs, I watched him go and thought, not for the first or the last time, what an awful feeling it is to reach out for something and find your hand is grasping, grasping at the air.
Sweating, shaking, I woke with a start. The blackout blinds had done their job all too well and I was locked in a black box at the bottom of the ocean. I fumbled for the switch at the side of the bed and the metal shutters juddered apart, letting in a blinding morning sun bright enough for midday. I squinted at my watch — a little before seven. Madrid. I was in Madrid, on my way to see my son. Plenty of time to make the rendezvous. I lay back in bed to let my heart rate normalise, but the damp sheets had gone cold and so I padded to the window, saw the blue sky, the early-morning traffic on the Gran Vía, the bright new day. I showered at length and got dressed in my brand new clothes.
At breakfast, I ate a great deal of delicious ham and clumpy scrambled eggs and read the news back home on my tablet, missing the old sense of isolation that foreign travel used to bring. ‘Abroad’ seemed so much further away then, isolated from the British media, but here it was, all online, the usual mixture of rage, gossip, corruption, violence and bad weather. Good God, no wonder Albie had run away. Wary of souring my mood, I researched a little about Madrid instead, looking up the Wikipedia entry on Picasso’s
I rather liked Madrid; grandly ornamental in places, noisily, messily commercial in others, scruffy and unpretentious, like a fine old building covered in stickers and graffiti; no wonder Albie had headed here. Perhaps I was mistaken, but there was a sense that ordinary people lived here, right in the centre of the city, a possibility long lost to the citizens of London or Paris. Although I only had the hotel’s complimentary map to guide me, I had covered some ground by nine forty-five, at which point I made my way to the Prado.
