Mr Richards was a popular teacher, young enough for us to look up to. He got away with things we never would have let our older teachers do, like wearing gym shorts, or telling us stories of god intervening in daily life. His favourite story was about an oak tree falling on his girlfriend’s car. The tree was diseased, or perhaps there was a storm. I don’t think it mattered. The point was that the transmission on the car had failed only the week before. Too expensive to repair, the car was destined for the scrapyard, but in the end the insurance company paid out as if there had been nothing wrong with it. God doesn’t always work in mysterious ways, Mr Richards said. He and his girlfriend gave half the money to their local church and with the rest went on holiday to Lanzarote. 

On our last day of school, four of us – Nathan, Stobbsy, Tubs, and me – went to the butcher’s on Balkerne Hill. An old fashioned place, children’s book-style. Red and white striped awnings. Hand drawn price tags. Those blue buzzing lights that zap flies. Outside were two plastic figurines to welcome shoppers. One: a ruddy, life-sized replica of a generic butcher, shiny and fat and bald, and bearing a delightful resemblance to the real, living butcher who stood at the counter indoors. The second figure was an anthropomorphised cow, standing on its hind legs, shrunk so that it was roughly the same height as a man. The cow wore a chef’s apron, discoloured by exhaust fumes from customers’ idling cars, and it had a bright pink tongue poking out the side of its mouth. It carried a set of barbecue tongs in one of its hooved hands. It smiled with its eyes closed. 

Inside, I saw things I’d never considered eating. Wood pigeons, bulbous and plucked and strung from wire. A pair of brown rabbits, orbits of dried blood round the nostrils, also hanging. On the work table at the back, I recall the entire head of a deer; female, I think. Its eyes were stark and wide. Stobbsy did an impression of it. Even traditional farm animals were presented in ways that were new to me. There were stomachs and lungs and deep blue kidneys, smooth as pebbles on a beach. I’d only ever seen organs in horror films, or when something was split open on the road, and then you only got to glance at the innards, a blink from the window of a car.  

“Do you sell cow bollocks?” Nathan asked, grinning at us while he did so. The butcher barely shook his head. He watched us with his arms crossed, unblinking. No smile. We nudged and snorted at each other, bounced around like imps. We considered a box of pig’s ears, loose and leathery as bats, but then Stobbsy pointed at the hearts and we all squirmed and that was the sign we were on the right track. I can’t remember who handed over the money, but I remember the heart being cheap, less than one pound fifty. It came wrapped in several layers of greaseproof paper, then a polythene bag, then another bag. We made Tubs carry it back to school. 

Mr Richards made a soft choking noise when he opened his desk drawer and saw the heart inside. The blood in his face turned cream. I’d never actually seen someone go pale before. I don’t think I’ve seen it since, not like that. We all went silent because Mr Richards no longer looked like himself. He put one hand over his mouth and another hand out in front of him, gently, palm forward, like he was trying to convince someone not to jump from a fatal height, and he sort of backed out of the room without ever meeting our gaze. Perhaps someone giggled. I can’t be sure. I didn’t look at Stobbsy or Nathan or Tubs. I tried to draw perfect circles in the grid squares of my exercise book. Eventually Mr Richards came back with Mr Leverson, head of geography. Leverson also looked in the drawer, pouted, exhaled so the boys at the back could hear. Then he asked Mr Richards in front of the class how he wanted us dealt with. Mr Richards’ lips were fluttery and wet. I think he might have thrown up outside. He said, “Just get them out of my sight.” Leverson nodded gravely. I stared at the circles in front of me. Then Nathan stood up and said it had been Tubs’ idea. We all went along with it, so Tubs’ parents were called. He got sent home early, last day of school. He didn’t get to appear in the yearbook photos, even though I hear his mum begged.  

We called Tubs our friend at the time but I’m not sure he would describe what we had as friendship. I hope he’s had better luck since. We used to spend a lot of time pushing him into rose bushes or hiding his school books in commercial skips and one time we pinned him down on a train station platform, ripped off his orthopaedic shoes that he’d only had bought for him that week, and Nathan threw them through the closing doors of the 4.15 to Ipswich. It took five or six boys to hold Tubs down. I stood at the side and looked up at the station clock. I didn’t like the sounds Tubs made when we did things like that. I think Nathan once spat in his face, just to see how he’d react, but that might have been someone else.