Big Man Read online

  “But I don’t want to—”

  “You want to get kicked in the head by that idiot Fallowfield lad instead, is that it?”

  “No, but—”

  “No buts. I’ve signed you up for sixteen weeks of—”

  “Four months?!”

  “—intensive, personal training with Lewis. It’ll build your self-esteem and your confidence, and that’s what you need, Max. End of story.”

  “And if I refuse to come?”

  Aunt Donna folded her arms over her chest. “If you miss even two sessions of your sixteen-week course here—no job at the shop when your GCSEs are over.”

  Max paled. Aunt Donna worked in an independent electronics shop that offered electronics apprenticeships to any of the local teenagers who wanted to be a skivvy for shit pay. It was Max’s ticket out of school—if he was on an apprenticeship, he wouldn’t have to attend sixth form with Jazz and his cronies anymore.

  “You wouldn’t,” he croaked.

  “I would.”

  “But—but Aunt Donna—I’d have to—I’d have to go to school!”

  “You’d have to face those idiots for two more years,” Aunt Donna agreed. She stuck her chin out and raised her eyebrows. “So you can do that, with no tools to defend yourself, or you can do this and still have the chance to turn tail and run once you’re sixteen. It’s up to you.”

  Except it wasn’t, because what kind of a horrible choice was that? Max stared at the floor, at his boat-like trainers, and scowled.

  “Fine,” he mumbled and pushed open the door behind which “Eye of the Tiger” had clicked over into a fast-paced version of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

  Just in time to see a stocky black man in red boxing gloves smash his fist forward, and a skinny blond kid go crashing to the floor.

  “Max,” Aunt Donna said, “meet Lewis.”

  Chapter Two

  “AND LEWIS, THIS is Max, my stepson.”

  The black man grinned. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, gloved fists hovering around his waist, and he spoke thickly around a red gumshield. “Wi’ you in a mirret, Dorra!”

  The blond kid started to stagger drunkenly to his feet, looking a little dazed, and Lewis hooked an arm under his elbow and hauled.

  “Orrite, Cian?”

  The kid blinked and then nodded. With that, Lewis let go and stomped over the crash mats towards Max and Donna. He spat the gumshield into a plastic cup of water on a table by the door and began to unlace his gloves with his teeth.

  “How’s things, eh, Donna? Shop still going well? Heard you were getting married, you sneaky tart!”

  “Can’t play the scene forever, Lewis,” Donna said and clapped Max on the shoulder. “This is Lucy’s son.”

  Lewis squinted at Max and cocked his head. “One of the Farrier clan? Fuck me, must be, look at the shoulders on you, boy!” Unlike Cal at the desk, Lewis spoke with a Southampton accent, very quick and blurry. “And all that hair, looks like George Farrier before he fucked off to fuck his way around the Far East!”

  “That’s my uncle,” Max said, unsure of quite how to respond to that. “Luke Farrier was my dad.”

  “Ah, sorry lad, shame what happened to Luke,” Lewis said and then shrugged. “I didn’t know him, like, but I’ve been around here long enough I remember them coming and going, whole clan of ’em, John and Mary Farrier’s lads. Must’ve been most of the navy recruits from round here, Farriers!”

  “Probably,” Aunt Donna agreed. “Max needs some intensive training. Weight management secondary to confidence building, quite frankly. He’s being bullied at school.”

  “Aunt Donna!” Max mumbled, going red.

  “Been there,” Lewis said cheerfully. “Cian! Cian, move your skinny arse over here!”

  Max coloured as the skinny blond boy came over, and turned out to be a skinny blonde girl. Which was even worse. Max got embarrassed enough in PE in front of the other boys, but in front of the girls, it was just humiliating. Sweating in a tank top that showed off the fact he had the biggest breasts in the class was hardly the way to impress a girl.

  Not that Cian seemed to really care. She just looked bored, shifting on her feet like she wanted to go and do laps around the mats or something.

  “Muay Thai is about brute force,” Lewis said, “and while someone outweighing you by a metric ton is going to be an issue, you’re worse off if he’s taller than heavier than you. And you and Cian are about the same height.”

  That much was true. Cian was a tall girl. She was maybe seventeen or so—Max had only started really growing properly last winter, so he was still lumbering along at five foot eight. But Cian was easily five seven herself, and most of it—

  Muscle, actually. She looked boyish. Long limbs, wiry arms. Max could see the white strap of her sports bra under her tank top, and he shifted uncomfortably as his brain tried to mentally remove the top. Bad idea. No girl built like that, shifting from foot to foot and wearing a fat lip from her boxing instructor punching her in the face, was going to take his staring well.

  He dropped his eyes to the floor instead and felt the sticky flush creeping up his neck.

  “Cian’s a lot lighter’n you are, but height’s the important thing, and we don’t want to beat the hell out of you just yet!” Lewis continued, and Max risked another glance upwards.

  Lighter? No duh. Like, major understatement. For all she was tall, Cian was probably eight stone at the outside, and Max was sixteen. And at a second glance—the flush got worse, because once Max pushed past the lean muscle and awkward-looking gumshield—Cian was pretty. She was pale and freckly, with bright blue eyes and short-cropped hair the colour of wet sand. Rather than gloves, she wore strips of cloth around her palms and knuckles, and had long fingers but small hands when she stuck one out to shake Max’s.

  “Hi,” Max mumbled, but Cian didn’t say anything.

  Great. Just great. Max had, to put it very bluntly, a thing for blue-eyed blondes. Learning to box with a nearly naked blue-eyed blonde was going to be torture. And constantly humiliating himself in front of her—

  Yeah. This was going to be great for his confidence.

  Thanks, Dr Donna.

  “Honestly, Max, when your Donna here sounded out your situation to me, I thought immediately of our Cian. You’ve had your fair share of self-esteem issues and shitty kids at school, haven’t you, Cian?”

  That was met with silence and an epic eye-roll.

  “Naff off, you little shit. Anyway. I figured best start you off quiet and private, like, with someone who’s a bit sympathetic to where you are.”

  Max wanted to point out there was no way Cian had ever been fat, or even a bit chubby, but he held his tongue. Best not annoy the guy who beat up kids—Cian was sporting a bruise to match Max’s black eye already—or the kid who was probably built out of steel ropes.

  “Got a kit?”

  Max blinked. “Um, what?”

  “Have you got a kit?” Lewis repeated.

  “In the bag,” Aunt Donna said and smiled. “Have fun, Max. I’ll pick you up in two hours.”

  “Two hours?” Max exclaimed.

  “Hour and a half lesson, half an hour to mop yourself up in the changing rooms,” Lewis said. “Cian, show him where the changing rooms are. And no fucking chocolate, or whatever else you’ve smuggled in. You need a protein shake, not a milkshake, you skinny little bastard.”

  Cian pulled a face that made her opinion of protein shakes abundantly clear, and jerked her head at Max.

  “Aunt Donna!”

  “Have fun,” she repeated and shoved him after Cian into the lonely corridor.

  Unsurprisingly, Cian didn’t seem to want to talk to the lardy boy she was supposed to box with, and just walked down the corridor, opened another door, and nodded inside. Beyond was an empty room of lockers and a bank of showers—without any cubicles—at the far end, with a single toilet cubicle just visible in a corner. Thank God, no urinals.

  “Do I ha
ve to shower before—?” Max started but turned to find Cian had already gone.

  Faced with little choice—at least this evening, he could get Mum on her own and pester until she vetoed Aunt Donna’s plan, because making a total tit of himself in front of classes of superfit boxing aficionados and pretty blonde girls was not Max’s idea of how to boost his self-esteem, which thank you, Dr Donna, was not the problem!—Max opened the bag Aunt Donna had given him and squinted at the large shorts and tank top that awaited him. A tank top? Oh God, he was going to die. Or Cian was going to die, laughing herself to death at the idea of boxing with Max. God, this was going to be torture. This had to be illegal.

  Still—given Aunt Donna’s threat about the apprenticeship—it seemed he had no choice. Sighing, Max changed, the tank top clinging uncomfortably to his armpits and around his breasts. Cian was going to rupture something laughing; Max was sure of it.

  “I hate you, Aunt Donna,” Max told the rucksack and then edged out into the corridor. At least there was nobody else around. Boys’ things filled the changing room, and he could hear a man barking orders in one of the other rooms, but—for now—there was nobody to witness his general grossness, except for Cian and Lewis.

  Neither of whom so much as blinked when Max shuffled back into the chosen room. Cian was attacking one of the punching bags with suitably intimidating thwack noises every few seconds, and Lewis took Max to one side.

  “Right,” he said. “Warm up first—everyone does the same warm up as hard as they can—and then we’ll get you started on the first few techniques.”

  Warm-up was just like PE at school: horrible, embarrassing, and totally pointless. At least Cian ignored him while Max wobbled and huffed his way through only four shuttle runs in the allocated time, failed to do even one sit-up, and managed a tremendously difficult two push-ups, biceps shaking. Lewis had to demonstrate what on earth a burpee was supposed to be, and doing squats just felt a little too like having serious constipation problems for Max’s comfort. And then, once he was sweating buckets—and various folds he wasn’t aware he even had had shaken themselves loose and joined in the sweating party—Lewis made him run five laps of the room.

  “As long as it takes,” he said.

  ‘As long as it takes’ took forever, and by the time Max heaved himself to a shaky halt, he was literally dripping and wanted to vomit. Cian just tossed him a pink hand towel and fetched a couple of bottles of water from a bag by the door, throwing one to Max—who missed and had to retrieve it—before uncapping the other and taking a long pull from it.

  “That—was a warm—up?” Max gasped, towelling himself off. He felt as wet as if he’d taken a bath, and his knees were shaking.

  “Hey, you put a lot of effort in, more than some of my customers,” Lewis said, shrugging. “Cian, get Max a pair of gloves and help him put them on. And fetch a couple of training pads.

  “Right, Max, footwork. Muay Thai is all about moving, you gotta keep moving in a fight. You stand still, you drop your weight down on your heels, and you’re done for. So up on the balls of your feet, but keep your toes spread and flat. Look at my feet. Like that, yeah? Now shift your feet apart—you right-handed? Yeah? Okay, bring your left foot forward and just rock on your feet a little until you find a good solid balance.”

  “This feels dumb,” Max admitted.

  “Yeah, it looks pretty stupid when you’re not doing nothing. But—” Lewis’s hand lashed out and struck Max in the shoulder, his knuckles sinking into soft flesh and knocking Max effortlessly on his arse. “—that’s what we’re trying to avoid. You gotta have good balance, and your weight even and able to rock back to centre easy is how to do it.”

  The door banged as Cian returned, and Lewis beckoned her over.

  “Fighting stance.”

  Instantly, Cian’s languid, loose posture seized up. She rose up on the balls of her feet, heels leaving the floor and knees beginning to lightly rock as Lewis had shown Max. Her back and shoulders hunched too, her head shrinking down until her shoulders nearly touched her ears, and her hands, clenched into protective fists, came up to defend her face.

  Max shifted, painfully aware he was only wearing some unforgiving shorts.

  And so was Cian.

  Shit.

  “Now, Cian’s a southpaw—sorry, a left-hander—so I want you to do the opposite,” Lewis said. “See here where the left hand is near-touching the cheekbone? Your right hand needs to do that. And the other hovering in front of your eye a little further out—that’s it. Your head is the most vulnerable part of you. Blows to the stomach, you can see them coming. Hitting the chest is a waste of time unless you’re Bruce Banner. But the head is very vulnerable—very disorienting to be hit in the face, and it can end a fight in about half a second. Whatever you do, you do not drop this guard. Hit Cian.”

  “Um, what?”

  “Hit Cian.”

  “What, just—?”

  “In the face. Punch, slap, whatever you like. G’wan.”

  “Um,” Max said, staring at his hand, and then balled it into a doughy fist and tentatively jabbed at Cian’s face. Cian’s nose wrinkled, her hand lashed out, and a sound slap was delivered to Max’s wrist, pushing his hand away sharply. “Ow!”

  “Hit proper, like you mean it. Cian’s a right little knob sometimes, deserves it,” Lewis said, and laughingly deflected a blow Cian aimed in his direction. “Sod off, Cian. The day you start sticking to your diet program is the day I stop calling you a prick in front of the newbies.”

  Max tried to hit her again and got another slap. The third time, Cian dropped back a couple of steps, rising and falling gently on her feet the whole time, and Lewis beamed.

  “Now see, that’s how to work your feet. Go on, Max, stay in reach. Keep rocking, keep your balance nice and even, don’t overstep—that’s it!”

  It was like…a weird sort of dancing. Cian just bounced around all over the place, and Max was expected to keep up. At first, it felt stupid and clumsy, but the more Max moved around, his thighs slapping each other and Cian always just a little bit out of reach, the more natural it started to feel. Even if it fucking killed his ankles.

  “All right, good, we got the hang of moving around,” Lewis said. “Cian? Get the pads and glove up. Let’s teach Max how to really hit someone.”

  Cian grinned this wide, toothy smile that turned her slightly bored face into something oddly manic. Max’s gut twinged, and it wasn’t from the workout.

  “Finally,” she said in a high, musical voice that went everywhere it wasn’t supposed to on Max’s body. “Now we’re getting to the good stuff.”

  Chapter Three

  MAX FELT LIKE he’d been crippled the next day.

  Getting out of bed was nearly impossible. Everything between his scalp and his toes had locked up. The bruising on his face wasn’t getting a look-in over the tight burn of pain when he so much as tried to wiggle his fingers. He’d never enjoyed a shower like he had that morning, and lifting his arms ached so much from the ‘learning to hit proper’ lesson that he had to get Mum to do his school tie for him.

  And yet…

  Weirdly, it felt…good. He kind of liked the burn. It was mad, given that it hurt, but…there was a little burst of satisfaction out of it every time he moved. Plus Mum told Aunt Donna to give him a lift to school.

  “He worked so hard on Sunday, and his face is still all bruised up from that—that thug. Just drive him in, Donna. It won’t take you out of your way.”

  Aunt Donna rolled her eyes but jerked her thumb at the door, and Max slid into the van grateful for the reprieve. It wasn’t common for Jazz’s lot to come and find him on the way to school, but it wasn’t totally unheard of either, and right now, Max felt more unwieldy than ever.

  “D’you reckon I’ll be less stiff by next Sunday?” he asked as Aunt Donna started up the van.

  “Next Sunday?” she asked. “You’re going again this evening. Lewis is building it around that Ciara’s—” />
  “Cian.”

  “—training—whatever—schedule. When she’s free, you’re free.”

  “But—!”

  “I gave you your choice. You can drop out anytime, but it means school until you’re eighteen.”

  Max subsided angrily. It really wasn’t a choice. The only other way to get the apprenticeship would be to get into a college to do some shitty qualification in electronics or electronic engineering, and Max knew he would be up against way too much competition for it. Better to get the dogsbody job and do some training with Dave, the electrician who ran it.

  “Why can’t I just change schools?”

  “Because it doesn’t work, Max,” Aunt Donna retorted, overtaking a Fiat Punto doing the speed limit, which, in Aunt Donna’s eyes, was the equivalent of grandma driving. “You keep changing schools, and the problem follows you, if not the precise culprits. The Muay Thai will do you a lot of good.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “For goodness’ sake, you’re not the only person who’s ever been bullied,” Aunt Donna said. “I was beaten up outside a gay bar with my first girlfriend when I was seventeen years old. Eight weeks in hospital, and nobody was ever convicted for it, because nobody cared to investigate or come forward to the police about it. It was just a couple of dykes. Nobody cared.”

  “But—”

  “There will always be people who want to stomp on you. They don’t care if you have the right to go about your life how you like; they don’t care if you’ve ever done anything to them—they just find it funny. There will always be those people. And the best way of warding them off is letting them know you’re not a victim, that picking on you is going to end very badly for them.”

  “By beating them up?”

  “By defending yourself. Which means you stick this course at Muay Thai. I promise you, Max,” Aunt Donna added as she pulled up outside the school, “that this’ll change things.”