Tim nodded.
“Does my wife know what you’re doing?”
Tim always told the truth. He shook his head. He couldn’t speak.
Mr Richardson’s lip curled. “You’re fired. Get out before I kick you out!”
Tim felt his nose clog up as his eyes filled with tears. He’d done it wrong. Mum had been so proud of him being an assistant, and now Mr Richardson had fired him.
As he stood there, Mr Richardson started shouting. “Well? Did you hear me? Are you too stupid?” He grabbed Tim’s arm and started pushing him towards the door. They were near Mrs Richardson’s table and he was going to knock into it and make the beautiful long-stemmed cups fall over and shatter. He panicked. He pushed Mr Richardson away, hard. The grip on his arm loosened and he waited with his eyes screwed tight shut, waiting for Mr Richardson to start shouting at him again.
Nothing happened, and cautiously, Tim opened his eyes.
Mr Richardson was lying on the floor. There was blood on the corner of the stone table, and blood on the floor coming out of Mr Richardson’s head and ears. Tim felt sick. Mr Richardson would tell the police that Tim had attacked him. He was going to go to prison. He watched, frozen, and then as he saw Mr Richardson’s face turn blue and bubbles come out of his mouth, he realized he was in even more trouble than he thought.
Mr Richardson wasn’t going to get up at all.
Tim sank down to the floor and forgot about being a grownup. He cried.
After a long time, he mopped his eyes. It was no good crying over spilled milk (Mum). He screwed up his face, trying to think. That was the trouble with not being clever. It took him a long time to know what to do. Usually, he asked Mum, but this time, he couldn’t. And eventually, he worked it out.
It was a good job he had the trolley. Mr Richardson was heavy. He wheeled him into the kiln room, and, grunting slightly with the effort, he slid Mr Richardson into the kiln. A leg flopped out, and then another. Tim stood there, perplexed. He bent Mr Richardson’s leg and then the other, and wedged it against the kiln wall. He had to try several times before Mr Richardson was safely folded in.
But now, there was no room for the pots. They were all big, heavy ones. “We’ll start you off on the basic stuff,” Mrs Richardson had said.
Tim screwed his face up as he thought. When the idea came, it scared him as much as when he’d thought about doing the firing on his own. He wished, now, that he’d just gone home, but it was too late for that. Look before you leap (Mum). But he didn’t have time to hide his face and wait for the idea to go away.
There was just space in the kiln for one shelf of small pots. Very carefully, he set the supports. Bits of Mr Richardson kept getting in the way, and he had to remember that Mr Richardson wouldn’t be there all the time to prop up the shelf. It was an hour before he’d got it right and he was confident that shelf would stay in position by itself. Then, his tongue clamped between his teeth, he picked up the long-stemmed cups, one at a time, and placed them on the shelf. He felt as though he hadn’t breathed in all the time he was doing it, and when the last one was in place, he had to sit down for a while.
Then he swung the heavy door of the kiln shut, and turned the wheel to seal it. Everything was ready. He turned on the gas, lit the gas wand – he wasn’t even a bit scared of it now – and slipped it into the ports where the burners were waiting to be lit. Whoof! The kiln ignited.
He went into Mrs Richardson’s office to phone Mum. He was going to be out all night and he didn’t want her to worry. “Will you get a lift back?” Mum asked.
“Yes.” Tim didn’t like telling lies, but he knew the early bus would get him home safely. All he needed to do now was wait. He sat on the floor watching the temperature gauge. It was going to take a long time. After a while, the smell of something cooking began to fill the room and Tim realized he was hungry. He went to his locker to find the sandwiches that Mum had made for him that morning.
Anthony didn’t come home all weekend. Molly hadn’t expected him to. When she went into work on Tuesday morning, she expected to find him there with the details of the divorce all worked out. She was going to fight him. She wanted every penny that he owed to her to secure a future for their son, and she wanted what he owed her for other children, the ones he would never agree to and now she would never have.
His car was in the car park when she arrived, but there was no sign of him.
Puzzled, she went into the pottery. Tim was already there, down on his hands and knees scrubbing the work room floor. “There’s no need to do that,” she said. “Just mopping it is fine.” He muttered something, and she realized that he was rigid with tension. She looked round the room and saw at once that a jug was shattered on the floor.
“Don’t worry if you’ve…” and then she saw that the long-stemmed cups were missing.
Her eyes went back to Tim’s. He dropped his gaze.
“Tim,” she said. “What have you done?”
He didn’t answer, but the way his eyes moved towards the kiln room told her all she needed to know. She ran through, hoping that she was wrong, but when she got there, she saw the kiln door closed. She touched it. It was still warm. “Oh, my God, Tim!” Anger fought with guilt. She should never have let him think he could do this. She should never have left him alone in the pottery. She’d have to start from scratch, the commission would be delayed…
She checked the temperature than spun the handle and dragged open the door of the kiln.
And what she saw silenced her.
She was aware of Tim, a silent presence in the entrance behind her, but all she could see were the cups. She’d never seen such a quality in a glaze. The colour had the deep translucence she had been dreaming of. Scarcely breathing, she lifted one out and held it to the light as she turned it in her hands. They were the best things she had ever done.
“Tim,” she said. “What did you do?” For there had to have been something in the firing that gave it this extra quality, a quality she had never planned because she didn’t know it existed.
Then she noticed that there was ash in the bottom of the kiln. She leaned forward and studied it. It wasn’t just ash. There were lumps of charred…
“What’s this?” she said, straightening up.
His face flooded red. “Just… stuff.”
There was a pool of metal on the floor, something melted beyond recognition, something about the size of a man’s watch… Her eyes met Tim’s. His face was wretched with guilt. She remembered him scrubbing the workroom floor, his face tense with effort.
She looked at the pots again and found herself wondering what the effect would have been of very high levels of carbon in the kiln during the firing, carbon from-
“Fine,” she said slowly. “I’ll get rid of it.”
No one ever found out what had happened to Anthony Richardson. The investigation into his disappearance went on for several weeks. His car was found in the car park at his office. His secretary said that he had left shortly after six. As far as she knew, he was going home.
His wife told them that her husband had been having an affair and that they were planning to divorce. His mistress told them the same thing, but both women had alibis for the evening he had last been seen.
No one really asked Tim any questions at all. No one knew that Mr Richardson had visited the pottery before he went home, no one knew Tim had stayed late, apart from his mother, and no one asked her. Tim was pleased about that. He didn’t like telling lies. He knew the best lies were the ones you never had to tell because nobody ever asked you the question.
And the long-stemmed cups that he’d fired were the best things that the pottery had ever produced. But Mrs Richardson decided to keep them. “These are special,” she said. “I’m going to give them to the people I think should have them.” To Tim’s surprise, she gave one to Mr Richardson’s lawyer, Olivia. “For drinking a toast when the baby’s born.”