‘I don’t understand,’ Adrian said, raking a hand through his hair, his ears twitching.

I turned on Sax. ‘I thought you quit the band to focus on your studies? Don’t tell me it was because you wanted more time to play The Tournament?’

Adrian answered instead of Sax. ‘You quit the band?’

Saxon stared into his lap, refusing to meet my gaze. What a mess—if I wasn’t so worried about him, I’d be embarrassed about Mrs Diapolos bearing witness to how little communication was clearly going on in our family.

Then another thought struck. ‘Hang on, if things are that bad, why are we only hearing about it now? If today’s incident hadn’t happened, when would you have let us know?’

‘Various teachers have reported trying to contact you both numerous times via email, which is always our first point of call,’ she said calmly. ‘They were all going to bring it up at teacher-parent interviews the week after next.’

‘I haven’t received any emails!’ I turned to Adrian as I yanked my phone out of my handbag to prove it. ‘Have you?’

‘Well, yeah,’ he said, sounding uncertain, ‘but we agreed that you’d continue dealing with all school communication, so I just deleted them.’

Oh my God! If I’d felt embarrassed before, now my cheeks were so hot I could probably fry an egg on them. Silence descended upon the room as I glanced down to check my junk folder. Sure enough, there was a number of emails from various teachers.

‘I changed my email a couple of weeks ago when I decided to change my name,’ I tried to explain. ‘I gave the new email to the office, but it looks like the new address sent the school ones to spam.’

‘That’s unfortunate,’ said Mrs Diapolos, ‘but what’s important is moving forward.’

‘Exactly.’ Adrian nodded his agreement, refusing to meet my gaze. ‘There’s no point either of us laying blame. In future we’d expect a phone call if Saxon is struggling with his work, and we’ll make sure he stays on top of his schoolwork.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to hear we’re on the same page regarding this situation and hopefully Saxon’s suspension will give him time to think about his behaviour and also spend some time trying to catch up. Considering today’s incident, his possible addiction to gaming and your current home situation, I think it would also be a good idea to have our school counsellor do a few sessions with him. We understand parental separation is tough and perhaps his inner turmoil has exacerbated this situation, but there are only so many allowances we can make.’

Despite his views on therapy, Adrian agreed to this and we were all dismissed.