FICTION:
March 2, 2023
The canteen at the Rugeley site had four tables, three microwaves and a television bracketed to the wall that nobody could reach to change.
Dean Coyle was fifty-one and had been on the counterbalance eleven years. He came in at ten past six with his flask.
“Have you seen this,” Jodie said. She was twenty-four, agency, six months in, phone flat on the table so three people could watch. “This professor.”
The clip ran. Then it ran again, because Jodie had it saved.
“Youngest Black professor at Cambridge,” Jodie said. “Autistic. Didn’t speak till he was eleven. Couldn’t read till he was eighteen.”
“Couldn’t read till eighteen.”
“That’s what it says.”
Dean put his flask down.
“Didn’t talk till he was eleven.”
“Yeah.”
“My sister’s lad didn’t talk till he was eleven. He’s twenty-two now. He’s got about forty words and he lives at home and my sister does everything for him. Everything. She’s fifty-four and she’s washing a grown man.”
“It’s a different kind, though, isn’t it,” Jodie said. “Autism. It’s a spectrum.”
“It’s a spectrum,” Dean said. “I’ve heard.”
Errol Baptiste came over with tea. He was fifty-eight, thirty-one years on site, and he ran the wrapper because nobody else could get it to behave.
“What’s the excitement.”
“Professor at Cambridge,” said Jodie. “Look.”
Errol watched about twenty seconds of it.
“Thirty-seven,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“My cousin’s been at Wolverhampton nineteen years. Nineteen. She’s a senior lecturer. She’s got two books out and she marks till one in the morning.” He drank his tea. “Thirty-seven and a chair at Cambridge.”
“Well, he’s had it hard, hasn’t he,” Jodie said.
“We’ve all had it hard,” Errol said.
Karen Vosper came in at half six with the shift sheet. She was forty-seven and a team leader and she had done more courses than anyone in the building.
“What are we watching.”
“That professor.”
Karen looked at the phone for four seconds.
“Right,” she said. “Don’t say any of that upstairs.”
“Say any of what.”
“Any of it. Whatever any of you were about to say. Head office will have it on the intranet by Friday. When they do, you say inspiring.”
“Inspiring.”
“Inspiring’s good for about two years,” Karen said, and went to check the racking.
November 9, 2023
The module was called Neurodiversity and Belonging and it took forty minutes and had to be done by the end of the month.
They put four laptops in the training room and let people do it in pairs at the end of shift, which meant Dean did his with Karen sitting next to him with a coffee and her reading glasses on a chain.
“Question six,” Dean said. “A colleague makes a comment about a neurodivergent team member. Do you A, address it in the moment, B, report it through the appropriate channel, C, monitor the situation.”
“B.”
“It says here A is about creating an inclusive culture.”
“A is what they want you to feel. B is what they want you to do. Click B.”
He clicked B.
“This is a test.”
“It’s not a test. It’s a record.” Karen took her glasses off. “Dean. Listen. When something happens on this site, and it will, somebody in Milton Keynes pulls up who did the module and what they put. That’s what it’s for. It’s not for you. It’s for them.”
“Then why am I doing it.”
“So they’ve got a piece of paper with your name on it saying you were told.”
Dean sat back.
“Question eleven,” he said. “Which of the following is a limiting assumption about neurodivergent colleagues.”
“Read them.”
“A, assuming somebody can’t do a task. B, assuming somebody needs help. C, assuming somebody’s condition explains their behavior.”
“A.”
“They’re all the same thing.”
“They’re all the same thing and it’s A.”
He clicked A. It went green.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve done eleven of these,” Karen said. “It’s always the first one. The first one’s the one they wrote first and the other two are the ones they wrote after lunch.”
He finished at 7:52. The certificate came up with his name spelled Deane.
On the way to the car park he said, “That fella. The Cambridge one. He’s in it, isn’t he. There’s a bit about him.”
“There’s a bit about him.”
“So the module’s about him.”
“The module’s about the module,” Karen said.
Dean stood by his van. He had thought about it for eight months on and off, mostly at four in the morning, and he had not said it to anyone at work.
“I’ll tell you what gets me,” he said. “It’s not him. It’s that they want me to be amazed. They just want the clapping.”
“Right.”
“And if I say what I’ve just said, I’m the one with the problem.”
“Yes,” Karen said. “So don’t say it.”
June 14, 2024
The Coach and Horses had the election on and the sound down.
“You’re never,” said Errol.
“I am.”
“Reform.”
“Reform.”
“Dean.”
“Go on then. Tell me.”
Dean had four points and he had rehearsed them in the van.
“One. They told us about the vaccine and they were sure. Then they were sure about something else. They were never sorry, they were just sure about the next thing. Two. Every one of them has a story now. Every single one. You can’t get a job or a book or a spot on the telly unless you’ve got a story about how hard it was, and if your story’s just that you got up at five for thirty years, that’s not a story, that’s a shift pattern. Three. My mother waited fourteen months for a hip. Four.”
“Go on.”
“Four’s the one I can’t say at work.”
“Say it here.”
“They’ve got an answer for everything and none of the answers ever come true,” Dean said. “That’s all. They said the wages would go up. They said the town would come back. They said the college would be a university. Our Chelsea’s got eleven grand of debt and she works in Greggs. And when I say any of that I’m thick, and when they say it and it’s wrong they’re just early.”
Errol nodded for a while.
“And your professor.”
“He’s not my professor.”
“He’s the top of the pile of what you’re describing. That’s why you keep bringing him up.”
“I’ve brought him up twice in a year.”
“You’ve brought him up twice tonight.” Errol finished his pint. “I’ll say my bit. My mother came in fifty-nine. My father did the buses. I was told twice as good. Twice as good, don’t give them anything, don’t be late, don’t be loud. And I was twice as good and I’m on the wrapper. Now they want a lad with a story instead.”
He put the glass down. “So who was the twice as good for?”
March 2025
The letter said Ryan Coyle, twenty-two, warehouse operative, and it said a colleague had reported that on February 27 in the smoking area he had described a named academic as, and here the letter used the phrase in quotation marks, a retard who got the job for being Black.
Karen read it twice in her office with the door shut and Ryan sat there with his hood up.
“Take that down.”
He took it down.
“Did you say it.”
“I said something.”
“Did you say that.”
“Probably.”
“Right.” She put the letter face down. “Listen to me. I’m going to be in the room with you Thursday. There’s two ways this goes. You can tell them what you meant, which is going to take you eleven minutes and lose you your job. Or you can say four sentences and keep it.”
“What’s the four sentences.”
“You say: I said something stupid. You say: I’ve thought about it and I understand why it caused offense. You say: I’ve asked to redo the module. You say: I’m sorry, and I want to apologize to the person who heard it.”
“I’m not sorry.”
“I didn’t ask you that.”
Ryan looked at the desk.
“Is that not lying?”
“It’s a form,” Karen said. “You’re filling in a form with your mouth. They know it’s a form. The bloke from HR knows it’s a form and I know it’s a form and you’re the only one who’s going to stand there and want it to be real. That’s what costs people their jobs round here.”
“My dad wouldn’t do that.”
“Your dad’s fifty-two and he’s been on the same grade for eleven years,” Karen said. “How’s that working out.”
Ryan did the four sentences on the Thursday. He got a written warning and kept the job. Coming out he asked Karen how she knew all this and she said her sister had been a rep at Longbridge, and that was all she said, and Ryan told two people that afternoon that Karen was sound.
July 28, 2026
Jodie had left and come back on a permanent contract and had a lanyard now. She was the one who found it.
“Here,” she said. “That professor.”
“Which one.”
“The Cambridge one. Yours.”
“He’s not mine,” Dean said.
She read it off the phone in the canteen. Plagiarism allegations. A thesis. Papers with corrections on them. A magazine that had the story in 2025 and dropped it after a law firm wrote to them. Interview quotes that appeared to come out of somebody else’s study.
“The university says he’s been cleared,” Jodie said. “It’s in there. And they say there’s a campaign against him. And the bloke who put it out is a nutter about race.”
Karen came in with the sheet.
“Have you seen?”
“I’ve seen. There’s a note come round already.” She held her phone up without looking at it. “We’re not commenting on individual cases and our commitment to inclusion is unchanged.”
“That was quick.”
“They had it in the drawer,” Karen said. “They’ve had it in the drawer since Christmas.”
Dean drove home the long way. In 2023 he had been told what to say, and had said it, and had felt like a fool for saying it. The saying had changed again and he had been wrong both times, and nobody had ever written to him to tell him the rules had moved, and nobody ever would, because the letters only came when you got it wrong.
Somebody knew. Karen knew. Karen had known in March 2023 standing in the canteen with the shift sheet, and she had known what would be in the drawer at head office three years before they took it out.
He had asked her once how she did it. She said you watch what they do with the ones who get it wrong.
