The Unluckiest Boy in the World Read online

When the bird eventually broke free, he found that one of the bottles was sulphuric acid and that it had splashed over his hands and down the front of his trousers. He stopped calling for everyone to stop shouting, and rushed over to a basin to turn on a tap. His hands were already beginning to sting rather painfully.

  By now, the class was a bedlam of noise. One boy was running along the top of the benches trying to catch the pigeon. Most of the children were trampling over each other’s bags, feet and fingers in an effort to get away from it. Fiona had taken the first-aid box from the wall and was attending to a girl who had cut her hand on some broken glass (clean wound in running water; apply sterilized dressing; elevate injured limb), when suddenly there was silence.

  The headmaster had appeared in the doorway and everyone stopped. Even the pigeon settled on a bookshelf by the door. Mr Fender stared at the chaos around him. He looked at the children, at the spatterings of bird mess, at the broken glass on the floor – and at Mr Daimon, moaning quietly at the sink, with little tendrils of smoke drifting up from spots on his trousers.

  ‘I want everyone to sit down,’ he said firmly, ‘and keep very quiet.’

  There was a shuffling as everyone went back to their seats. When they were all in place, Mr Fender reached gently for the pigeon on the shelf, carried it to the window and let it fly away.

  ‘If that’s acid on your trousers,’ he said, turning to Mr Daimon, ‘I think you’d better go down to the staffroom and get changed.’ He looked at the rest of the class. ‘Has anyone else been injured?’

  Fiona brought out the girl with the cut hand, who was sent with three others to be treated in the school office, and after that the headmaster sent six children to the cloakroom to wash the pigeon mess from their clothes. He told the rest of the class to go the library until lunchtime, and read.

  Although Nicholas had not been hurt in any way, he was probably more upset by these events than the people who had. It was, he now realized, going to be the same story all over again. The accidents would happen at this school, just as they had at his last. Someone would eventually realize that he was the cause of them, and then he would be asked to leave. He was more disappointed at the thought than he could say.

  At lunchtime, when Fiona offered to give him a tour of the school buildings, he didn’t wait while she went to the cloakroom, but crept quietly away. She was a nice girl and, for her own safety, it would be best if he kept as far away from her, and everyone else, as possible.

  In a quiet corner at the back of the main building, he found a set of steps leading down to the boiler room. Ignoring the sign at the top that said ‘No Entry’, he climbed down to the concrete floor at the base and sat with his back against the wall. From above came the sounds of other children laughing and shouting and, much as he would have liked to join them, he knew it was better if he stayed down here. With a sigh, he reached into his bag and took out the plastic box containing his packed lunch.

  ‘You didn’t have to run away.’ Fiona was standing at the top of the steps, looking distinctly hostile. ‘If you didn’t want to be with me, you could have said.’

  Nicholas stared up at her.

  ‘I’m supposed to be making sure you know where to go. Mr Fender said. And if you don’t, I get into trouble.’

  ‘I… I’m sorry…’

  ‘What are you doing down there anyway?’

  Nicholas opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again. What could he say? How could he explain that he was keeping away from Fiona and everyone else so that he didn’t hurt them? And in trying not to hurt Fiona, he had hurt her anyway. It seemed that whatever he did, he couldn’t win.

  ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with you,’ he said. ‘I was trying to protect you.’

  ‘Protect me?’ Fiona stared at him. ‘From what?’

  ‘From…’ Nicholas struggled to find the right words. ‘From getting hurt.’

  ‘Why would I get hurt?’ Fiona had begun walking down the stairs.

  ‘Because that’s what happens to people when I’m around.’

  ‘They get hurt?’

  Nicholas nodded.

  ‘But why?’ Fiona came and sat down on the concrete beside him. ‘I mean… why?’

  And perhaps because he was tired, or perhaps because he no longer cared whether it was a secret or not, or perhaps simply because Fiona’s was the first friendly face he had seen in some while, Nicholas found himself telling her about the curse. He told her about going to Spain on holiday, about what he had done to the grave of Toribio de Cobrales and how, from that day on, he had attracted misfortune and calamity.

  He told her how the only reason he was still alive was that Señor Herez’s grandmother had woven a protective shield round him. He told her about flying home from Spain, and he had just started telling her about the accidents that meant he had to leave his first school, when a voice called from the top of the stairs.

  ‘What are you two doing down there?’

  It was Mr Daimon. He had bandages on both his hands, which had been burned by the acid, and was wearing tracksuit bottoms instead of his trousers.

  ‘This area’s out of bounds; you ought to know that.’ He was clearly in a bad mood, and peered angrily into the gloom at the base of the stairs. ‘Fiona? Fiona Gibbon? Is that you?’

  He leant forward with his hand on the stair rail but, with the burns and the bandages, realized too late that he was unable to get a real grip. His hand slid forward, his body followed and a moment later he was rolling in an ungainly series of somersaults to the bottom of the steps, where his head landed with a smart crack on an old brick lying among a pile of dead leaves.

  He lay there, quite still.

  Fiona moved quickly to the fallen body and lifted the head a fraction. She ran her fingers over the back of Mr Daimon’s scalp and they came away smeared with blood.

  ‘First priorities,’ she muttered quietly to herself. ‘Control blood loss and arrange transport to hospital.’ With one hand cradling the science teacher’s head, she reached into her bag for a games shirt. ‘You’d better go and tell someone to call an ambulance, Nicholas.’

  Nicholas did not move. He had seen a lot of accidents in the last year and a half, but something about the speed and suddenness of this one left him paralysed.

  ‘Nicholas!’ Fiona repeated. ‘You have to go and get help!’ She had clamped the games shirt over the wound with one hand and was pointing up the stairs with the other. ‘If you don’t, he could…’ She stopped. Standing at the top of the steps was a policewoman.

  WPC Hillshaw was visiting Dent Valley to give a lecture on road safety. She had recently transferred from an area of London where violence by pupils towards staff was not uncommon. When she saw Mr Daimon lying on the ground and two children beside him, one of them with blood on her hands, she jumped to what seemed the obvious conclusion.

  ‘Don’t move!’ She was already reaching for her truncheon and a can of mace. ‘Don’t either of you move a muscle!’

  ‘WPC Hillshaw,’ said the headmaster, ‘would like to apologize.’

  Mr Fender was sitting in his office, with the children opposite him, and WPC Hillshaw standing beside him, looking slightly embarrassed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said stiffly. ‘I would indeed. I was far too hasty at lunchtime today. Only when I saw you, and the blood and everything, I assumed that…’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Fiona. ‘We quite understand.’

  ‘And if I was a bit heavy-handed with the wrist restraints,’ WPC Hillshaw continued, clenching her fists nervously, ‘I apologize again. If you want to make a formal complaint, I shall quite understand and –’

  ‘No, no,’ Nicholas interrupted her. ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  Fiona nodded her agreement. ‘We know you were only doing your job.’

  ‘That’s very understanding of you.’ WPC Hillshaw relaxed a little. ‘Thank you.’

  It was nearly three hours since Mr Daimon had fallen down the steps
and a good deal had happened in that time. An ambulance had arrived and taken him to hospital, and Nicholas and Fiona had both been arrested for attempted murder.

  Nicholas’s mother had been called to the school where she found her son sitting in handcuffs in the back of a police car, while other officers tried to contact Fiona’s father who, perhaps fortunately, had gone out for a walk.

  Mr Daimon recovered consciousness on the way to the hospital and was able to explain that his fall had been an accident but, by the time the news got back to the school, there were eleven policemen scattered over the school grounds doing everything from forensic analysis to photographing the scene of the crime. It was gone four o’clock before everything was sorted out and back to normal.

  ‘I gather Mr Daimon will want to thank you as well,’ said the headmaster. ‘The doctor at the hospital said the way you stopped the bleeding from the wound in his head quite possibly saved his life.’

  Fiona blushed modestly. She had, Nicholas noticed, taken this whole affair much more calmly than he’d expected.

  ‘I’ve got a police car outside ready to take you home,’ said WPC Hillshaw. ‘In the circumstances, it’s the least I can do.’

  At the headmaster’s suggestion, the children went to have a wash and clean-up first. Walking along the corridor to the cloakrooms was the first time they had been alone together since the accident, but for several minutes neither of them spoke.

  It was Fiona, with her hand on the door to the girls’ cloakroom, who finally broke the silence.

  ‘Things like that happen to you all the time?’ she said.

  ‘Like I told you,’ Nicholas answered, ‘I am the unluckiest boy in the world.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After all that had happened, Nicholas half expected that Fiona would never want to speak to him again, but he was wrong. She gave him a little wave as he came into the classroom the next morning and indicated that he come and sit beside her.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she asked as he sat down. ‘Anything happened today yet?’

  ‘There was a traffic accident while I was walking in,’ said Nicholas, ‘but only a small one. Nobody hurt.’

  The accident had happened when a squirrel leapt out of a tree as Nicholas walked past, landing on the head of a cyclist who swerved off the road into a hole where they were repairing the drains. He could not be entirely sure that he had been the cause, but he thought it likely. Animals tended to behave strangely when he came near them.

  ‘Do you think anything will happen at school today?’ asked Fiona.

  Nicholas admitted that it was probable.

  ‘Though I doubt if it’ll be anything as bad as yesterday,’ he added. ‘When there’s been a major disaster like that, things usually calm down a bit for a few days. All the same, I think it might be best if I keep away from you. I’ll go and sit the other side of the room…’

  Fiona, however, would not hear of him moving anywhere. The fact that being close to Nicholas might involve her in further accidents did not seem to worry her at all.

  ‘If anything does happen,’ she said, ‘I’ve brought this.’

  She produced a large box marked with a green cross from her bag.

  ‘It’s got most of the things we might need.’ She opened the lid to show him. ‘Sterile dressings, bandages, disposable gloves, face shield, cleansing wipes… Dad gave it me for Christmas two years ago, but I’ve never had a chance to use it yet.’

  Nicholas could not help but admire the very positive attitude she seemed to be taking. He hoped it was not something she would come to regret.

  In fact, there were only two accidents that morning. One was in maths, when a fly flew up the nose of Mr Pierce just as he was opening a packet of drawing pins, resulting in a punctured knee when he knelt down to pick them up off the floor. And the other was in RE, when Miss Rawlins was knocked unconscious by thirty-six copies of the Good News Bible that slid off the shelf above her desk and fell on her head. At least Nicholas knew what to do about it this time. If someone was unconscious, he remembered, you stood back and let Fiona deal with it – which she did with great efficiency.

  At lunchtime, the two children strolled across the playing field to find somewhere quiet to eat their sandwiches, and Nicholas showed Fiona how any plant or flower that he touched would wither and die. Her eyes widened at the sight of the grass blackening beneath his hand when he ran his fingers over the ground, and the daisy that closed and shrivelled up when she held its petals against his arm.

  ‘Isn’t there anything you can do about it?’ she asked. ‘I mean, can’t you find someone to help?’

  ‘We’ve tried.’ Nicholas gave a sigh. ‘But the only time we found anyone who said they knew what to do, they were hit by the curse before they could do anything.’

  He told Fiona about the woman from the north, who had been knocked down by a lump of ice on her way to the front door.

  ‘Ice fell out of the sky?’ said Fiona. ‘Where from?’

  Nicholas shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Do things fall out of the sky very often?’

  Nicholas thought about it. ‘It’s happened a few times. At my last school, on sports day, some fish fell out of the air into the swimming pool.’

  ‘Fish?’

  Nicholas nodded. ‘They think it was caused by freak atmospheric conditions in France. Most of them were lampreys, but one was a baby crocodile and it gave the relay team some nasty nips.’

  He rather enjoyed being able to talk to someone about all the strange things that had happened to him, and the wonderful thing about talking to Fiona was that none of the stories seemed to worry or frighten her. She was interested, particularly if they involved some sort of medical crisis, but never upset, and the fact that she could listen so calmly to descriptions of the most extraordinary events made her a very relaxing person to be with.

  The one thing that did worry Nicholas was that spending time with Fiona made it more likely, if not inevitable, that she would one day be hurt by the curse herself. He liked her. She was the first real friend he had had in over a year, and the last thing he wanted was to see her get hurt. It was bad enough when things happened to people you didn’t know. When they happened to people you liked and cared about, it was ten times worse.

  Fortunately, for the next two days at least, nothing did happen to Fiona. Some things happened to other people in their class – Amanda Dowling set fire to her hair with a bunsen burner, and Tom Rattan stapled his ear to a bit of cardboard – but neither of the injuries were serious. Fiona provided first aid for both of them, and the calm, methodical way in which his friend did what was necessary made Nicholas admire her even more.

  The two children came to spend almost all their time together. They sat together in class, spent break times talking or walking together through the grounds and, at the end of the week, Fiona asked Nicholas if he would like to come home with her for tea.

  ‘Well, I’d like to,’ said Nicholas, ‘you know I would, but I’m not sure it’d be wise. Suppose the accidents start happening there?’

  ‘If they do,’ said Fiona, ‘we’ll just have to manage. Like your mum does in your house.’

  She had recently, Nicholas noticed, had her hair cut – possibly by someone with a pair of garden shears – in a way that made it look even worse than before.

  ‘And I want you to meet my dad,’ Fiona went on. ‘I think you’d like him.’

  She was very insistent and, in the end, Nicholas gave way. In truth, he did not need a great deal of persuasion. He had been without friends for so long that the thought of spending time after school with someone that he liked was almost irresistible.

  Fiona lived on the ground floor of a small block of flats in Carlton Place, near the railway station. She had her own key and, as she opened the front door, called out ‘It’s me, Dad. I’m home!’

  Mr Gibbon had been confined to a wheelchair ever since a motorcycle accident that happened when Fiona was only two year
s old – the same accident in which her mother had unfortunately been killed. He had, nevertheless, brought up his daughter entirely on his own for the next ten years, though recently the roles had been slightly reversed when he started losing his sight.

  Mr Gibbon had an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, which is caused by a defective gene. His eyesight had been adequate for most of his life, but about a year ago had suddenly deteriorated, leaving him first with tunnel vision and then almost totally blind. It meant that, these days, Fiona looked after him at least as much as the other way round.

  Despite all this, he was a remarkably jolly-looking man. He was short and round, with a cheery smile on his face and long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, was dressed in a faded pair of jeans with a T-shirt that had ‘I love my Harley’ written on the front. He gave Fiona a hug as she bent down to kiss him.

  ‘This is Nicholas, Dad,’ she said as she stood up. ‘The boy I was telling you about.’

  ‘So you’re the lad who’s been looking after my daughter, eh?’ Mr Gibbon held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  Nicholas wasn’t sure why Mr Gibbon should think he had been looking after Fiona when it had so obviously been the other way round, but he shook hands and murmured something polite.

  ‘How are you enjoying school?’ asked Mr Gibbon.

  ‘It’s not too bad,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Never liked it much myself,’ said Mr Gibbon. ‘Mind you, schools were very rough places in my time. I remember our headmaster used to beat everyone at least once a day, including the staff, and if you did anything serious, like talking out of turn, they’d hang you up by the ankles with barbed wire and cut bits of your ears off.’

  ‘Dad!’ said Fiona.

  ‘Quite right. Mustn’t exaggerate.’ Mr Gibbon smiled at Nicholas. ‘Forget the barbed wire. They used ordinary rope most of the time.’ He swung his chair round and headed out for the kitchen. ‘I’m doing a spaghetti Bolognese for supper. I hope you’re not a vegetarian!’

  Nicholas followed Fiona and her father out to the kitchen where a saucepan was bubbling on the stove.