The Damage Report
ACT I SCENE 1
(The stage is entirely dark. The sound of a distant, ringing school bell is heard, quickly followed by the indistinct murmur of a large crowd in a hallway, which fades slightly as the first spotlight snaps on.)
SARAH: I was right there by the lockers, heading to Geography. I saw it all, but I couldn't move. No one did. LIAM just rocked up to VICTOR, and it was like watching a train crash in slow motion...
(Snap to next light. Sound: A sharp, single metallic clang.)
JOSH: Honestly, VICTOR had it coming. He's such a weirdo. Never talks to anyone. He makes himself a target, doesn't he? LIAM wasn't picking on him for no reason...
(Snap to next light. Sound: The distant, rhythmic squeak of running trainers.)
MR. DAVIES: I didn't witness the initial incident, unfortunately. I was coming out of the gym office when I saw LIAM LACKLAND sprinting toward the main exit. He was moving with that familiar, aggressive intensity...
(Snap to next light. Sound: A quick, harsh bark of laughter.)
MARK: Look, it was hardly a big deal, was it? Everyone’s blowing it way out of proportion. It was just LIAM being LIAM. He didn't even properly hit him! He just gave him a shunt, and that portfolio... it was just paper, messing about. A joke.
(Snap to next light. Sound: A soft, defeated whimper, quickly cut off.)
MRS. COOPER: I was in the classroom next door, just getting my things. I heard the scuffle, you know, that specific sound—the sound of silence following a shove. I knew it was too late by the time I opened the door. VICTOR was just frozen, staring down at the ruined drawings, and then I saw his hand—it was definitely bleeding. I should have been faster. I should have trusted my gut.
(Snap to next light. Sound: A single, sharp intake of breath.)
MR. WALLACE: This is highly unfortunate, but let me be absolutely clear. There is no bullying at our school. This was a disagreement that, regrettably, escalated into an isolated incident of rough play. We are managing the optics of this effectively.
(Snap to next light. Sound: A quick, sharp SMASH of glass, followed by immediate silence.)
MR. HENDERSON: Arthur, we can't label a deliberate physical assault and destruction of property as "rough play." This is a failure of our pastoral duty. Trying to manage the optics first is precisely why the cycle continues.
(Snap to next light. Sound: The muffled rattle of keys.)
SARAH: He didn't fight back, he just went totally limp. His face... it just crumpled. It was the most awful thing I've ever seen. You could feel the air go thick... He was holding his wrist, and there was blood, just a little bit, on the floor. It was just cruel.
(Snap to next light. Sound: The faint, static hum of fluorescent lighting.)
MR. WALLACE: (Frustrated) James, you are over-sensitising the issue! We have an image to maintain. The paperwork will reflect a Grade Two Disciplinary—not an assault. We must protect the school's reputation above all.
(Snap to next light. Sound: A single shoe scuff on a linoleum floor.)
MS. RILEY: The central events are undisputed. LIAM cornered VICTOR, physically pushed him, and then deliberately shredded Victor’s portfolio before running. My primary concern is the escalation of systemic bullying...
(Snap to next light. Sound: The electronic buzz of a mobile phone notification.)
MR. HENDERSON: (Intense) Reputation is built on trust, Arthur. When a student is bleeding, and we call it "rough play," we lose all credibility. We need to address the root cause in the Lackland home before it ends in tragedy.
*(Snap to next light. Sound: A quick, long, tired exhale.)
MRS. JENKINS: "...It makes you worry, doesn't it? You send your kids to school expecting them to be safe, not to be caught up in this awful sort of power play and violence. I'm thinking of keeping her home tomorrow, just to be on the safe side..."
*(Snap to next light. Sound: The muted, high-pitched chirp of a child's electronic toy.)
MR. EVANS: LIAM LACKLAND's behaviour was a clear breach of school policy, not just for the destruction of personal work, but for the act of physical aggression and the distress caused to VICTOR. We have zero tolerance for bullying here. This suggests a deeper issue at play...
*(Snap to next light. Sound: The light footsteps of someone backing away.)
MISS HANES: No. We have a responsibility here, not just to punish, but to teach empathy, to rebuild that sense of safety. I just worry that these small acts of cruelty compound until they become something much, much bigger.
*(Snap to next light. Sound: A single, long, tired exhale.)
MR. FINCH: Aye, I saw young LIAM earlier, before all the kerfuffle. He was looking like a dark cloud himself... He deliberately knocked the big presentation right out of VICTOR’S hands, didn't he? And then that vicious push into the lockers. He was just the nearest vent, wasn't he?
*(Snap to next light. Sound: A sharp, quick thump.)
MS. RILEY: The whole environment allowed LIAM to play out his frustration on VICTOR without consequence, until an adult arrived. It underscores the failure of peer intervention.
(The light snaps out completely. A moment of silence.)
ACT II SCENE 1
(A single, bright, cold white spotlight snaps onto LIAM, who is standing alone, running a hand through his hair. Sound: A low, intense electronic hum underscores his speech.)
LIAM: She thinks she solved it. She thinks she's shut it down. But the noise is still here, right here in my head. I can still hear the bang of that kitchen phone after the school call. That’s how it always starts—with a loud noise. Mr Harrison, droning on about Victor and the portfolio, and then Mum turns around with that tight, stretched face. You know the one. The one that means you’ve embarrassed her and now you’re going to pay for it. She didn't even breathe, just went straight into the attack. She stared me down and said: "I had to apologise, Liam. To that stupid head teacher. What did you think you were doing?" What did I think I was doing? I was just trying to feel something else! School is chaos. It's just everyone shoving and shouting, and if you don't shove back, you get trampled. It’s like being in a constant, low-grade riot where your only job is to survive and not look weak. And Victor? He’s just asking for it, all quiet and weak. He walks around like a target, a walking billboard that says, 'Kick me.' When I slammed him against the lockers and ripped up his drawings, man, I was suddenly the one in charge. The one who had stopped the noise. Just for a second. That rush, that absolute silence in my own head while the world outside freaked out, it was the only real calm I’d had all week. It was a terrible calm, maybe, but it was mine. But she doesn't care about that. She just cares about the drama. About the inconvenience. About the way it reflects on her life.
(Sound: The hum briefly intensifies, then dips.)
LIAM: So, I said, just to get under her skin: "It’s not a big deal. He’s fine." And that just set her off properly. The air crackled. Her whole body tensed up like a drawn bowstring. "You think you’re so hard?" she screamed. Her voice went thin and sharp, the one she saves for maximum impact. "You think your father and I work ourselves sick just so you can act like some kind of street idiot? You shame me! You shame this family!" See? It's always about the shame. Never about me. Never about asking why I did it, or if I’m okay, or if I’m struggling. It’s a performance for the neighbours, a frantic attempt to keep the perfect-family mask glued to their faces. And that's exactly what I learned from them, isn’t it? They talk about behaving, but all I see is Dad getting his way when he raises his voice—when he smashes things. The way he can make Mum go stone-cold silent just by slamming a door. Mum shuts down, but she’s loud when she wants to be, loud enough to make him stop, or loud enough to make me feel like a mistake. I watch them, and I know: if you want anything around here, you gotta get angry, or you gotta get quiet. That’s the rule. Power means making the other person smaller. They taught me that lesson better than any textbook.
(Sound: A single, sharp clack of a phone being slammed down.)
LIAM: So, I pushed back. I looked her in the face, and I told her the one thing I knew would pierce the performance: "You only care about what Mrs. Clarke next door thinks of you." I saw the flicker of pain, the moment the mask slipped, and for an instant, I felt the sickening satisfaction of victory. And that’s when the hammer came down. No talking. Just punishment. She ripped the phone right out of my pocket. It was vicious, a physical snatch that left my hand stinging. "You are grounded. Everything’s gone. You're not leaving this house for a month. I don't want to look at you for a while." "I don't want to look at you." That's the part that cuts. It’s not about the phone or the door. It’s the utter dismissal. They isolate you. They shut you away. They think by locking the door, the feelings disappear. They think the anger is something that lives outside, something they can banish by taking away my escape. But all they've done is take away the few small things that keep me calm. My headphones. My connection to the outside world. The ability to listen to something, anything, other than the echoing sound of my own failure in this house. I didn't learn not to hit people. I just learned that when you get caught, Mum goes mental and cuts off your life support. The feeling of wanting to explode? It’s still here. It's built up tighter now. The pressure valve is gone and the boiler is working overtime. I tried to walk away, I swear I did, but the red just comes so fast, and I don't know any other way to let the pressure out. They haven't fixed anything. They've just made me a hell of a lot angrier. The lesson they taught was not to be a better person, but to be a smarter criminal. So fine. I’m stuck up here. But next time, I’ll be smarter. I’ll learn to hide the damage better, to choose my moments when the witnesses aren't looking. I’ll make sure there's no frantic phone call to the headteacher. And when I snap again—and I will—they won't have the faintest idea why. They won't connect my rage to their shame, or their silence, or their petty punishments. They'll just wonder why their little monster got worse. They'll just keep polishing their perfect-family myth while their son is planning his next, bigger detonation.
(Liam turns his back on the audience, his body rigid with contained rage, his fists clenched tight enough to shake. The intense electronic hum stops abruptly as the light snaps off.)
ACT II SCENE 2
(A soft, isolating, yet bright light snaps onto VICTOR, sitting on the edge of his bed. Sound: A quick, anxious heartbeat is heard, fading into the background.)
VICTOR: It's just always here. This knot of worry, right here in my chest. (He touches his chest.) It gets tighter the closer I get to school, like someone’s slowly twisting a rope around my lungs, and it doesn't leave, even when I'm safe in here. Even when I’m home, tucked away in my room, I can still feel the echo of the hallways, the expectation of the next comment, the next shove. I spend so much time anticipating the next bad thing that I forget what it feels like to just relax. Liam... he makes sure you can't just be quiet. He targets the quiet ones because we don't fight back, and he knows that silence is where our deepest fears live. The smash and the blood were bad, a shock of physical fear, but what he did after was worse. Spreading the word. Saying stuff about me to everyone—saying I'm weird, saying I'm a joke, saying no one actually wants me around. It’s like he took a microscope to my insecurities and projected them onto a big screen for the whole school to see. And when everyone starts laughing, when they look at me with that mix of pity and scorn, it just proves the feeling I already have. It just makes it real: I'm not important enough for anyone to care about. I'm just a waste of space. I’m the punchline, the acceptable sacrifice that keeps the bullies busy.
(Sound: The heartbeat quickens slightly.)
VICTOR: I finally told Mum and Dad. I had to. The feeling of holding it all in was becoming physical; I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t concentrate. I thought telling them would make the knot loosen, that sharing the secret would divide the pain. But it didn't. They didn't shout, which was a relief. But they went massive. Huge, overflowing panic. Mum started crying instantly, her shoulders shaking. Dad got all red and started pacing, saying things like, "We'll stop this, Victor! We'll ring the headmaster every day! We'll make them pay!" They're good, I know. They hug me and they care. They came straight over to my bed, held me tight, and told me it wasn't my fault. But they just went straight into freak-out mode. They wanted to rush in and fix everything, maybe pull me out of school, as if physically removing me from the building would fix me. They immediately started talking about administrative action, legal rights, and parental duty, treating the whole thing like a legal issue or a school project that needed fixing. (His voice lowers, conveying isolation.) Their reaction made me regret it instantly. It made me feel like I’d just handed them a huge, awful disaster to deal with, a burden they didn’t deserve. They were so busy talking about the bully and the problem outside—the "school drama"—that they didn't stop to listen to me, to what was actually happening inside me.
(Sound: A high-pitched, frustrated yell, instantly muffled.)
VICTOR: I was trying to tell them that I feel lonely, that I feel like I’m the thing that's wrong, that the flaw is me. I was trying to talk about the feeling that I don't belong anywhere, that I’m socially defective. But they kept cutting across with solutions aimed at the external threat. "We’ll sue them!" Dad said, his face tight with anger that wasn't directed at me, but felt like it. "We’ll move you to a different school!" Mum said, talking about removing me from my life as if it were a simple broken part. They were focused on stopping the school drama, but the real problem is internal. It's the persistent feeling that I'm flawed. That I am inherently unacceptable. And because they didn't get that—because they were fixing the wrong thing, attacking a visible problem instead of listening to an invisible pain—it just feels like I'm responsible for making them feel bad. I saw the worry in their eyes, the stress I had caused, the way they suddenly looked older and overwhelmed. Their big love, their rushing in to wage war on my behalf... it just makes me feel smaller, more helpless. It chips away at the feeling that I might be an okay person because my existence has clearly caused this catastrophic reaction. They didn't hear Victor; they just reacted to the crisis. They reacted to the label: Victim of Bullying. And now, I’m stuck with the knot, the worry still clinging to my chest. And I just feel bad that I even told them. I wish I’d just kept quiet and dealt with the pain alone, so they wouldn't have to carry this terrible weight I gave them. It feels like I failed them by not being strong enough to keep their life simple.
(Victor slowly pulls his knees to his chest, hunching over himself, seeking a physical barrier against the world and his own emotions. The heartbeat slows and fades as the light snaps off.)
ACT III SCENE 1
(A warm, flickering light—suggesting a single lamp or fire—snaps onto ELEANOR, who is sitting at a small table, nursing a cold cup of tea. Sound: A distant, repetitive drip, drip, drip.)
ELEANOR: I am absolutely shattered. Look at me. I haven't slept properly in weeks, not since the last time Marcus and I... well, not since the last time things got loud. The tension here, it doesn’t just stop when the shouting does. It hangs in the air, a thick, metallic smell, and it suffocates any chance I have of just resting. I lay awake, replaying the fights, the things I shouldn’t have said, the things he did say, and I dread the morning. Then the school calls. The school calls, and they just lay into me, telling me my son is a menace, that he’s physically attacking little boys and destroying their property. They act like I have some kind of perfect, peaceful home life, where I just need to apply the correct, gentle parenting technique. But they don’t see it, do they? They don’t see what I deal with when I walk through that front door. I feel like I'm drowning, honestly. Overwhelmed every single day. The minute I walk in, the house feels smaller, the walls feel like they’re closing in, and the noise—even the silence is a noise. I’m completely and utterly stressed out, aggravated to the point where my nerves feel like frayed wire, constantly humming with low-grade anxiety. Marcus and I—we’re fighting constantly. The quiet rows are the worst, the ones where we don't even look at each other, but the air is so thick you can barely breathe it. It’s a battle fought with slammed cupboard doors and sharp intakes of breath. And when we do shout, it’s always about the money, the constant pressure of the bills, or the house, which is falling apart just like we are. Or, of course, Liam. Liam has become the lightning rod for all the anger we can't direct at each other. It’s easier to agree he’s the problem than to admit that our marriage is the toxic source.
(Sound: A single, hollow thud.)
ELEANOR: I know my head isn't right. I haven't felt truly calm or happy in years. (She gestures vaguely at her chest.) My emotional health is shot to pieces. I spend my days rushing, working, pretending, and then I come home to this mess, this battlefield. And I know, deep down, that the mess here—the way we are—it just makes everything worse for Liam out there. He’s taking the chaos we create and acting it out in the world. It’s like I'm feeding the fire, even when I think I'm putting it out. I’m the primary caregiver, the one who’s supposed to be the anchor, and instead, I’m the storm. When that pressure mounts, when Mr. Wallace is on the line, delivering his stiff, formal disapproval, that’s when I lose it. I just resort to the only thing I know that shuts down the problem right now. I just lash out. I admit it, I use the yelling. I ground him until he can’t see straight. I yell, I scream, I punish. It's just this immediate, blinding need to assert control, to show him who’s boss, because if I don't, I feel like I’m going to collapse. If I can't control him, then I have zero control over my life, over Marcus, over the bills, over anything. Making him scared, making him small, gives me five minutes of feeling powerful enough to survive. And it doesn't even work! That's the maddening, truly soul-crushing part. My punitive approach is useless! I scream, I take everything away—his phone, his console, his entire life—and what does Liam do? He just gets more aggressive, more closed off. He stands there and gives me that look, that pure defiance, and I know I’ve lost him. I've only taught him to hate me more. He doesn't see a loving mother correcting him; he sees a tyrant trying to crush him, and he fights back. And he should. He really should.
(Sound: A high-pitched whine fades in and then out.)
ELEANOR: Sometimes, when the school calls, I resort to denial. I dismiss it. "Oh, it's just boys being boys, isn't it? He’s just being boisterous." I make excuses to the teachers and to myself. I minimise the behaviour, because I’m so afraid of the truth. But that’s a lie. That's a huge, cold lie I tell myself because accepting what the school says... accepting that my son is hurting people, that he’s becoming a bully... that feels like admitting I’m a failure as a mother. A complete, total failure. It means everything Marcus and I are doing is wrong, and that our broken home is permanently scarring our child. (Her voice cracks, betraying a surge of fear.) I’m scared, you see. I'm terrified that this isn't just a phase. I'm terrified that I’ve raised a child who’s going to turn into his father, or worse. I watch how he squares his shoulders when he gets angry, the way he uses silence as a weapon, and it’s a grotesque mirror of Marcus. I escaped one angry man, only to be raising another, and I’m contributing to it every time I open my mouth and scream. And I don’t know how to stop the cycle. I can’t fix Marcus, and I can’t fix my own head, and so I just resort to shouting at the child who needs me the most. I should be hugging him, talking to him calmly, showing him a better way to handle the pressure he’s feeling. I’m the mother, I’m supposed to be the safety net, the buffer against the world’s unfairness, but right now, I’m just part of the disaster. I’m the one pushing him over the edge. And I don’t know where we go from here. The only certainty is that tomorrow, the exhaustion will be deeper, the tension will be higher, and I’ll probably fail him again. I’ve run out of emotional reserves. I’m empty.
(She puts her face in her hands, her exhaustion overwhelming her. The light fades and the drip, drip, drip stops.)
ACT III SCENE 2
(A soft, amber light snaps onto HELEN, standing by the dining table, folding a clean school uniform. Sound: A delicate, slightly distorted music box tune.)
HELEN: I was just tidying up. Tidy, perfect, like everything else I try to keep here. I try to maintain this bubble of calm, this illusion that if the surfaces are clean, the house is safe. And then I found this. (She holds up the notebook.) Victor’s journal. I read this one line, scrawled in a frantic, childish hand: "Billy tripped me up at lunch, but I told Mrs Davies I just fell. I don't want Mum to worry." He was ten. And he was already hiding his scrapes so I wouldn't worry. He was protecting me from his pain. God, what have I done? (Her voice breaks.) We thought we were giving him everything. Hugs, warmth, a perfect bubble of a home. A house with no shouting, no conflict, just endless, gentle validation. I thought that was enough. I thought love was a sufficient shield. But I see it now. Our constant terror of him being sad, our absolute, crippling need to shield him from every little bit of bad news or argument—it hasn't protected him, has it? It's left him utterly defenceless. We wrapped him in a velvet rope, a soft, beautiful barrier against the world. We've been so obsessed with making sure his world was easy that we never taught him how to handle the hard parts. We denied him the chance to learn how to stand up for himself, how to absorb a hit, how to push back. We kept the world out, but in doing so, we kept the necessary skills in. We built a beautiful, climate-controlled greenhouse, and now he’s a fragile orchid that can’t survive a single gust of wind.
(Sound: The music box tune warps slightly, becoming dissonant.)
HELEN: (She throws the notebook down on the table, a sound of frustrated despair.) It's my fault. It has to be. I was so scared of turning into my own mother—that cold, critical voice, the constant, low-level emotional warfare—so scared of conflict, that I just taught him to run from it, too. My instinct is always to appease, to avoid the fight, to pretend the problem doesn’t exist until it goes away. It’s an endless, awful cycle, and I’m the one who passed it on, genetically and behaviorally. Did I ruin him? Is he fragile because I am fragile? Is he passive because I taught him that confrontation is dangerous? And look at us now. When he finally told us about Liam, what was our immediate reaction? We panicked! We didn't slow down. We wanted to call everyone, threaten the school, tell the other parents they were failures! Anything to shut down that raw, awful truth he was giving us, anything to stop the uncomfortable feeling of helplessness. I wanted to minimise it, then externalise the blame, then control the outcome. Anything but sit there and hear my son actually say, "I feel like a joke." We rush in, we panic, and we completely miss the one thing he actually needs us to do—to listen! We turn his vulnerability into our crisis.
(Sound: The music box tune breaks into static.)
HELEN: (She presses her hands to her temples, overwhelmed.) Our panic, our big, dramatic reaction, just reinforced his original impulse: that his problems are too big and too stressful for us to handle. We've taught him that the consequence of telling us the truth is not comfort, but immediate, catastrophic parental distress. His confession resulted in a full-scale parental mobilization, not simple, calm validation. We have to stop. I have to stop. I need to be brave enough to sit in the horrible, terrifying silence with him. We need to stop talking at the crisis and start talking to our son. We need to promote real, honest dialogue and understanding now, even if it forces me to face my own deepest fears. We need to ask him a question, and then just shut up and listen for once, for five full minutes, even if what he says makes me want to scream with fear and rush into action. The only way to teach him strength is to model calm strength ourselves. Because what if he gives up on us? What if he decides we're too weak to handle his truth, his anger, his humiliation? Our current pattern of avoiding the difficult stuff is destroying him. If he doesn't feel like he can talk to us about the ugly stuff, about the mean feelings and the injustice, where else is he going to go? He’ll keep hiding. He’ll keep folding up on himself. I love him so much, but I've just realised that love without being truly open and calmly present is useless. It’s a soft blanket that suffocates, an overprotection that becomes a vulnerability. And right now, Victor doesn't need a blanket; he needs a voice—his own—and he needs to know we can handle the sound of it. And I have to be brave enough to hear it, even if it confirms that I have been a terrible mother. I have to accept the blame to start the healing.
(Helen sinks slowly into a nearby chair, the weight of her guilt crushing her. The light fades.)
ACT IV SCENE 1
(A harsh, unflattering yellow spotlight snaps onto MARCUS, leaning against a desk, still wearing his work shirt. Sound: The muffled rattle of distant traffic and a quick, irritated tsk.)
MARCUS: I try to keep my distance, you know? Work is demanding, absolutely batters you, and then I come home, and the house is just... a mess. It's always a mess. You walk in, and you can practically smell the tension, the arguments that haven't even happened yet. The whole family is just out of sync, broken, and I’m meant to fix it? After a twelve-hour shift? I spend all day dealing with impossible deadlines, demanding clients, and people who don’t know how to do their jobs, only to come home and find the environment is even more hostile, even less controllable. It’s like clocking in for a second, unpaid shift where the only currency is stress. Then you get the news. The latest call from the school. Liam. Again. Sending some other lad to the nurse's office and destroying his work. The headteacher’s voice on the phone—that calm, judgmental tone—it slices right through whatever peace I was trying to find. When I hear that, I don't feel much besides anger. Just pure, red-hot anger. It boils up because I feel like I'm losing control of the one thing I should be in charge of—my own son, my own house, my own legacy. Everything I work for, everything I sacrifice, feels undermined by one fourteen-year-old’s inability to just behave.
(Sound: A quick, sharp smash of glass, followed by immediate silence.)
MARCUS: So, I yell. Of course, I yell. It’s the easiest, fastest way to stamp the whole thing out. I scream, I assert my authority, and I dish out the punishment. It's not a conversation; it's a shutdown. I tell him he's pathetic, or I tell him to grow up and stop being such a weak fool, or I tell him I’m ashamed of him. It's loud, it's instant, and yeah, it’s probably too harsh. But what am I supposed to do? Let him think he can just walk all over us? Let him think that his actions have no consequences? If I don't lay down the law hard, right then and there, the problem just festers. I’m giving him the boundaries he needs, even if they’re delivered with a hammer. The thing is, I struggle with the soft stuff. The cuddles and the warmth, the "how do you feel?" rubbish. It wasn't how I was raised—we were taught to bottle it up, man up, and deal with it. And it's not how I work now. Vulnerability is a weakness, and in this family, in this world, you can’t afford to be weak. Instead, I use what actually hits him—I use the language of obligation and guilt. I try to make him feel the weight of what he's done, the real-world impact. I'll look him dead in the eye and say: "Do you have any idea what this is doing to your mother? She's distraught, and it's all down to you. You are going to ruin her health if you carry on like this." Or I'll tell him: "I sacrificed everything for this family, for this house, for a better life than I had, and this is how you repay me? You just make me wish I hadn't bothered. I wish I hadn't worked myself into the ground for this."
(Sound: The tsk returns, louder and more insistent.)
MARCUS (He pauses, his voice dropping slightly, laced with self-justification.) I know I shouldn't say it. I know it’s low, focusing on Eleanor’s fragile state, but those are the words that actually sting him. Those are the words that make him shut down and stay quiet. When I attack his mother’s feelings, or when I question the worth of my own effort, that’s when his defiance cracks. It’s effective. And I know, logically, that this only makes him resent us more. I know this only makes him go out there and pick on some other kid to regain the power I just stripped away. But in the moment, when my own head is screaming with fatigue and frustration, it's the only way I can think of to make him listen. To get the result: silence and temporary compliance. I know I don’t help by keeping my distance. I know I should engage, but honestly, talking about feelings in this house feels impossible. It’s too dangerous. It opens the door to deeper conversations about me, about Eleanor, about the things we’re failing at. I can't handle that. So I step away. I go up to the spare room, I just try to ignore the mess and focus on anything else—a news report, a project proposal, the walls. We're in this brutal cycle. I shout, he gets angrier, Eleanor gets more stressed and guilty, and then the marital fighting starts again, fueled by our mutual blame over Liam. Every time, the whole thing just escalates, and now Liam’s always miserable, always ticking, like a bomb I can't defuse. I know I’m contributing to his bad state. I’m aware I’m not being a good father, but I look at that boy, and I look at the chaos, and all I can think is: I work hard. I pay the mortgage. I provide. Why can’t they just behave? Why can’t they just make it quiet for one evening? Why can’t my sacrifice just result in the simple dignity of peace? It just feels like there’s no way out. The more I try to control the situation, the more it spins out of control. I’m trapped between my need for quiet and the destructive methods I use to try and achieve it.
(Marcus rubs his temples, his gaze distant, staring through the wall as if searching for an escape route. The light fades.)
ACT IV SCENE 2
A cool, fixed, isolating light snaps onto GARETH, who is gripping the small, smooth river stone. Sound: A deep, resonant thrumming underscores his speech.)
GARETH: God, the guilt. It’s just immense. It settles on my chest, a proper physical weight, like a paving slab laid right across my sternum. We spent two decades building this life, this routine. Every early start, every late payment—all of it dedicated to security. Stability. We thought that was the entire brief, didn't we? Buying him the safe, sound world we never had, a world free from the financial uncertainty and emotional cruelty I experienced growing up. We bought the cage, and now we’re surprised he can’t fly. We missed the single, most crucial thing: equipping him for the rough terrain outside. We focused only on the infrastructure of happiness—the nice house, the good school—and ignored the actual survival training. When he finally told us about the bullying, our answer was immediate, automatic. A reflex born of our own fear and avoidance. “Just ignore them, son. They’ll get bored.” I hear my own voice saying it now, replaying that pathetic, dismissive phrase, and it sounds so hollow. It was utter cowardice. We handed him this useless, flimsy piece of paper—the adult platitude—and told him it was a shield. We told him to take the hits, to bottle it up and wait for the problem to vanish. We expected him to manage an adult-sized problem with a child’s resolve. That was the wisdom of his father. Pathetic. I taught him the worst lesson: that silence is safer than speaking up.
(Sound: The thrumming becomes metallic.)
GARETH: And then the school called about his grades. The slip was noticeable. His math scores were falling off a cliff. Our reaction? Never a proper, probing conversation about whether he was okay. Never that vulnerable moment of connection. We went straight for the observable, manageable target: the laptop. “Too much screen time,” we muttered, shifting the blame onto an inanimate object. We seized the damn thing. Quarantined the Wi-Fi like we were fighting a viral outbreak. Control the environment. That was the knee-jerk reflex, the easiest lever to pull. We thought if we eliminated the device, we eliminated the worry. It was a perfect piece of misdirected action. We were so busy playing the chief constable and searching for the fault outside—the screens, the friend group, the school itself—we missed the poison eating away at him inside. We were fixing the chairs while the house was burning down around us. We confused symptom management with emotional health. We thought we could solve a psychological crisis with a simple technological ban. It shows how afraid we were to face the real answer: that the failure was systemic, and it started with us. We taught him to hide his failures, and he learned that lesson perfectly.
(Sound: A single, sharp gasp.)
GARETH: The silence here. That’s the real sin. We’re superb at being a family when things are easy. The Sunday lunch is excellent—everyone smiling, talking about films. Christmas is a masterclass of gift-wrapping and forced cheer. But the minute the chat drifts into anything genuinely heavy or difficult—our mortgage stress, Helen’s anxiety, or Victor’s pain—the temperature drops. We clear our throats. We change the subject. That quiet, unwritten rule that unpleasant things are simply not discussed—it’s a structural failure. It’s the air he breathes. He was suffering, and the atmosphere we cultivated told him, in no uncertain terms, to be quiet about it, to keep the surfaces smooth. He learned avoidance from us, the masters of polite denial. It stops. That pattern, that miserable avoidance, ends today. I can’t live with this knowledge anymore, this crushing certainty that I was a coward when my son needed a warrior—not to fight a bully, but to fight the fear in his own head. That stone. This smooth, simple river stone I always keep in my pocket for luck. It’s coming out. It’s going onto the table tomorrow morning. And I’m going to tell him the story of the time I absolutely made a spectacle of myself at the divisional meeting, how my voice cracked when I presented, how I forgot my own name, how I wanted to hide under the table for a week. I’m going to stop protecting him from my own fallibility and start showing him what it looks like to be scared, to be embarrassed, and still speak up the next day. That’s the modelling he needs. We listen now. We stop jumping in with the clever fix. We offer no easy answers, no rash threats to sue. We simply hold the space. We will watch for the actual relief, the moment the weight visibly leaves his shoulders when he talks. That moment—that’s the only measure that matters. He needs to know he can tell us everything. He just needs to be heard. Truly heard, without the filter of our own parental fear. No more control. Just support. And uncomfortable honesty. That’s the only way we repair this. That’s how we teach him to fly.
(Gareth rubs his temples, his gaze distant, staring through the wall as if searching for an escape route. The light fades and the thrumming ceases.)
ACT V SCENE 1
(A soft, intense white spotlight snaps onto MAYA, looking towards an imaginary door. Sound: A steady, quiet ticking begins.)
MAYA: I see it. I see it all the time, every day, right here in this house. It's not just that Victor is quiet; he’s completely shrunk in on himself. He used to be loud and annoying, always playing his music too loud, fighting me for the bathroom, being a typical younger brother. Now he’s just a ghost, moving through the house like he’s trying not to make a sound. And you can see it in his schoolwork, too. He used to be brilliant at Maths, the one subject I always had to ask him for help with, but now he just stares at the pages like they’re written in a different language. He’s hurting, and it’s not just Liam doing the damage; it’s the constant worry that follows him right through our front door, the fear of not being safe anywhere. I wish he would just talk to Mum and Dad. We’re a good family, we really are. We have that close thing—we eat together, we hug, and they always back us up for the important stuff, like school trips or curfews. They’re amazing with the small stuff, the easy stuff, the logistical stuff. They're masters of the predictable. But when something big and messy like this happens—when it really counts, when the emotional stakes are high—they just lose it. They go straight into full-blown panic mode. They confuse true support with dramatic intervention, and they can’t seem to turn it off.
(Sound: The ticking speeds up.)
MAYA: He finally told them about the bullying, after hiding it for months, and it was a disaster. It was like dropping a bomb in the middle of our peaceful living room. Mum cried instantly, her face crumpling with guilt. Dad went ballistic, red in the face, talking about how he’d go down to the school and "sort out that kid." They went totally over-the-top, talking about moving him, calling the police, making these huge, immediate, and utterly unrealistic plans. Anything, anything at all, to stop from talking about the real mess: how he feels, how the shame has settled in his bones, how he thinks he’s a nobody. They can't deal with the sadness. They can't bear the thought that their perfect son is suffering, so they displace the entire problem onto an external threat. They can only deal with the problem they can shout at, or sue, or physically remove from the equation. They just can't have a proper, calm chat about feelings when it matters most because it feels too much like admitting failure. So, someone has to.
(Sound: A single, long, tired exhale.)
MAYA: (She steps slightly forward, adopting a resigned, protective role.) I feel like I have to. I'm the older sister, but sometimes I feel like the parent they both come to when they can't handle the truth. Victor comes to me, usually late at night, whispering things about how alone he feels, about how he thinks the problem is that he’s just weak. And I just sit and listen. I don't give him legal advice or plan a school transfer. I try to be his protector and his secret keeper, trying to fill the hole they’re leaving with their panic. I tell him it’s the situation that’s awful, not him. I tell him it takes strength to feel things, not weakness. I try to normalize the anxiety and the shame, telling him he’s not broken, just hurt. It’s exhausting, constantly having to be the one who listens and holds the space, having to translate the family's stress into something manageable for him. I’m carrying his emotional weight on top of my own coursework and college applications. I’m the bridge between my distraught parents and my damaged brother, and sometimes I feel like I'm going to snap right down the middle. And the worst part is watching them. I worry that if Mum and Dad keep panicking and keep avoiding his real feelings, Victor is just going to feel completely shut out by us. He'll learn the terrible lesson that his deepest self, his most vulnerable feelings, are too much for the people who are supposed to love him most. I worry that the sense that he belongs here, that we actually get him, will just disappear. And if he feels alone even in his own house, with his own family surrounding him, his struggle is just going to get so much worse. That's how kids really break. They're trying, I know. They're good people who love him fiercely. But they're so scared of messing up, so afraid of facing their own inadequacies and the messy reality of life, that they're actually messing up the chance to truly help him. And that gap they’ve left open—that emotional chasm between the crisis of the moment and the core pain—I just hope I can keep standing in it until he's strong enough to stand by himself. I just have to be the adult in the room, until they remember how to be the parents.
(The light fades and the ticking stops.)
ACT V SCENE 2
(A single, small, cool blue spotlight isolates CHLOE, sitting very still on her bedroom floor. Sound: A faint, high-pitched whining vibration.)
CHLOE: I spend a lot of time in here. In my room. It’s the safest place in the whole house, even though the ceiling light flickers sometimes and makes weird shapes on the wall. Up here, I feel like I'm tucked away, like I’m hiding inside a blanket fort, even when I’m not. You can hear everything from up here, though—all the sounds travel right up the stairs—but you don’t have to see it. It’s better that way. Seeing their faces when they’re really angry is the worst. The bad sounds, they always start downstairs. Liam and Mum. Or just Mum and Dad, sometimes. They start small, like a kettle whistling, and then they just get louder and louder until they’re explosions. But the worst is when they all start going off at once. When Liam and Mum start that shouting match, the whole house just starts vibrating. It feels like the furniture is shaking inside my chest. It’s loud, but it’s more than just loud. It feels… jagged. Like something is tearing, or breaking, and I worry it’s the house, or maybe just our family.
(Sound: The whining vibration increases in pitch.)
CHLOE: I know Liam is doing mean things at school. The headmaster calls, and then the screaming starts, and then he gets his phone taken away, and he just glares at everyone for three days. Liam doesn't look sad when he glares; he just looks hard, like a rock. But when Mum and Dad fight, when Dad comes home late and just walks past everyone and doesn’t speak, it feels like that nastiness, that bad feeling, is everywhere. It doesn't stay on the ground floor; it follows us up the stairs. It doesn’t stay at Liam’s school; it lives in the air we breathe. It seeps into the walls and the floorboards. It’s the invisible rain that falls inside the house. I get this tight knot of worry right here. (She presses her hands flat against her stomach.) It never really goes away. It just squeezes and squeezes. It's always there, a tiny, hard stone under my ribs. If I hear a door slam, it squeezes. If Mum and Dad are whispering behind a closed door, it squeezes harder because the silence is worse than the noise, sometimes. The noise is loud and scary, but the silence means they’re hiding something important or bad, and I don't know what it is. It makes my chest feel heavy, like there's a big, grey rock inside that weighs me down. It makes it hard to run around and laugh like the other kids at school.
(Sound: The sound of a door being gently closed.)
CHLOE: I’ve learned to be quiet. Really, really quiet. Like a mouse. I try to walk on the edges of the carpet so my shoes don't squeak, and I keep my head down when I’m going into the kitchen to get a drink. It's like a game where the rule is: If you don't make a shadow, you don’t become a target. I don't want them to look at me, because if they look at me, they might find something wrong. They might see the fear on my face, or they might notice that my clothes aren't right, or they might just start shouting at me instead. Liam always gets all the shouting, but what if they run out of steam for him and turn around and see me? I don't want to find out. So, I just stay in here, and I don't really tell anyone what’s happening in my head. Not Mum, because she's too busy and stressed about Liam and she looks like she might start crying all the time. Not Dad, because he barely sees me; he's always working or hiding in his office. He wouldn't understand. If I told my friends, they would look at me funny, like I was the weird one, and then maybe they wouldn't want to play anymore. So, I keep it all to myself. I write things down sometimes, but then I tear up the paper into tiny pieces and throw it in the bin outside so no one can ever find it. I just watch them. I watch Liam getting angrier and angrier—he's like a volcano that's about to blow—and I watch Mum getting colder and colder. And I worry that if Liam is doing bad things, and Mum and Dad are so unhappy all the time, then maybe... maybe our whole family is bad. Maybe that tightness in my tummy is because I’m waiting for them to find out that I’m bad too. Maybe the badness is contagious, and it’s spreading from Liam to me. It's like we're a broken toy, one of those porcelain dolls, and I’m scared if someone tries to fix it, or even just touches it, we'll just shatter into tiny little pieces and no one will ever be able to glue us back together. So I just stay quiet, and I hide. I just keep everything to myself. It feels safer in here, where I can pretend it's just me and the quiet. It just does.
(Chloe shrinks slightly, burying her face into her knees, seeking comfort and avoidance. The light fades and the whining vibration stops.)
ACT VI SCENE 1
(A sterile, cool white spotlight snaps onto MR. WALLACE. He stands behind a large, clean desk, wearing his impeccable suit. He does not look at the audience, addressing a small, unseen dictation recorder. Sound: The low, constant, monotonous HUM of an air conditioning unit underlies the entire monologue.)
MR WALLACE: I swear, some days, it feels less like a school and more like a FTSE 100 company with a highly sensitive public relations brief. The stakes are immense. People forget that. They see a Head Teacher, they think assemblies and afternoon tea with the Governors. I see budget reconciliation, I see the league tables, I see a staff payroll that relies entirely on maintaining the confidence of our catchment area. That is my job, my true duty. And every single minor upheaval—every complaint about a dinner queue, every ill-judged social media comment—threatens the brand integrity we’ve spent a decade building. We operate on a razor's edge of perception, and I cannot, I simply will not, allow one volatile boy and his... frankly, weak victim, to derail the entire institution. That is the sacrifice of leadership. The needs of the many, James, must always outweigh the emotional needs of the few.
(Wallace smooths the crease in his trousers, a small, controlling action.)
MR WALLACE: When I saw that boy, Victor, holding his wrist, yes, I felt that sharp, cold stab of failure. Of course I did. I have children of my own; you don't survive in this profession without a heart. But the first thought, the immediate reflex - and this is what Henderson will never understand — is: How do I contain this before it destroys everything? Because if I let the floodgates open now, if I let the media paint us as a failing, violent school, it isn't just me who loses my career. It's fifty teaching jobs, it's twenty support staff contracts, it’s the entire future of the disadvantaged kids who rely on our funding streams. That fear, that burden of responsibility, is crushing. I honestly believe that by calling this "rough play," I am doing more good for 1,200 students than Henderson is doing for one. It's a horrible calculus, but it's the one I must perform to survive.
(Sound: A soft, rapid thump of his finger repeatedly tapping the desk once.)
MR WALLace: And what was the incident, truly? A boy, Liam, clearly under immense, violent pressure — the kind of home life you wouldn't wish on anyone. He pushed another student, Victor, who frankly, is already so withdrawn you can barely get a sentence out of him. It’s an issue of environment and consequences. And Henderson argues for "root cause analysis" — he wants to talk about the "shame cycle." That is therapy, James. That is a private clinic function. We cannot afford the time or the destabilisation that deep emotional archaeology requires. I can’t fund a therapist for the entire Lackland family when I need to buy textbooks for the next academic year. My hands aren't tied; I'm choosing to use them to shore up the foundation, not tinker with the symptoms.
(Wallace suddenly taps the desk sharply, the sound magnified and jarring against the quiet hum. Sound: A loud, single RAP.)
MR WALLACE: The paperwork reflects a Grade Two incident of physical aggression, and that's where the investigation ends. We contain the problem, we administer the punishment, and we move on. If we follow Henderson’s lead, we expose the school's vulnerabilities, and who suffers? The system suffers. And when the system suffers, the children suffer most. This is not coldness; this is pragmatism born of survival.
The system must survive. If the reputation of this school falters, the consequences are severe. I worry constantly. Every night, I replay the calls. I imagine the headlines. I imagine the waiting list dropping to zero. It gives me sleepless nights; it ages me. But I refuse to be the Head who watched this institution collapse because I failed to manage the optics of a playground scuffle. It is cold, yes, but it is a required choice. I choose sustainability over sentimentality every single time. That is what pays the salaries and keeps the lights on.
(Wallace retrieves a printed report from the desk and taps it lightly. Sound: The crisp, faint rattle of paper.)
MR WALLACE So, the records stand. Liam receives a fixed-term exclusion, not a permanent one — that would invite too much external scrutiny and appeals. Victor receives counselling, documented simply as "support following peer friction." The Vances have been told the official classification. They may complain, but they will comply, because they know the alternative — a school branded as chaotic — is worse for Victor’s own prospects. Henderson can continue his quiet conversations; I have no issue with the effort, only the administrative classification. The optics are managed. The brand is intact. The system holds. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to finalise the draft of the newsletter for the parents, focusing heavily on our exceptional GCSE metrics and the launch of the new drama club. Focus on the positive. Always focus on the positive.
(He clicks off the dictaphone and stares at the report on his desk, the quiet HUM returning to dominance. Sound: A sharp, final click of the recorder.)
ACT VI SCENE 2
(A general, cool light snaps onto MR. HENDERSON, standing near the window. He runs his hand lightly across the back of a small, wooden chair. Sound: A low, constant, monotonous machine hum begins.)
MR. HENDERSON: (A quiet, frustrated sigh escapes him) Look at this chair. Small, solid. Designed for one, but it held the weight of a whole storm this term. When a child sits here, it’s not just one person; it’s an entire system of learned behaviours, unspoken rules, and inherited anxieties. And yet, the official position, the one Mr. Wallace insists upon, is that this is simply a "Grade Two Disciplinary." That is the systemic block, right there. He looks at a child’s broken wrist and sees a PR problem that threatens his budget, not a family screaming for help. This crisis isn’t simply about a fight in the bike sheds, which is what the incident report focuses on; it’s about two family systems that failed to connect—not with each other, but internally, within their own walls. The distress is everywhere.
(Spotlight snaps onto the location of VICTOR. It is a harsh, isolating light.)
We see the Vances, a family that built their life on emotional containment. Victor, shrinking into his blazer, eyes searching the floor, never the person speaking to him. His posture is a defensive curl, a physical manifestation of his strategy: be small, be silent, and the danger will pass.
(VICTOR's light snaps off. Spotlight snaps onto MAYA, lit from above, holding herself rigidly.)
His sister, Maya, sits bolt upright, always pulling her cardigan tighter, as if trying to hold the whole family together with knitted wool and sheer will. She carries the silent, impossible burden of parentification, trying to manage the grief and distress her parents are too afraid to touch. When their parents leave, the air in here sighs with a silence heavier than any shouting. It’s a silence built on years of avoiding anything that might make the table rock, an agreement that unpleasant truths are simply too dangerous for this perfect home. They prioritized peace over honesty, and control over resilience. They created a life built for comfort, yet left Victor completely unfurnished for a real fight. Their solution to his confession was panic and external fixes—suing, moving schools—anything to bypass the terrifying reality that his pain was emotional, not logistical. They taught Victor that his vulnerability was too much for them to bear, forcing him into a pattern of shame and secrecy.
(MAYA's light snaps off. Sound: A single creak of a chair.)
(Spotlight snaps onto LIAM, agitated and pacing within his tight space.)
MR. HENDERSON: Then you have the Lacklands. Their system is built on the opposite dynamic: chaos and control. Liam doesn’t sit still. He moves. He shifts the chair, he kicks the table leg—constant, unfocused energy looking for a release. He communicates by creating noise because that’s what he's been taught gets attention and results.
(LIAM's light snaps off. Spotlight snaps onto CHLOE, small and huddled.)
When his mother speaks, it’s often in short, sharp bursts, like a drill bit. Her hand is heavy, always on his shoulder, not a touch of comfort, but a lever of control. It’s a physical assertion of authority designed to suppress the eruption, not address the heat beneath. And Chloe, Liam’s younger sister? She is simply not there. Her presence is the quiet space she doesn’t fill; she’s a quiet shadow in the corner, holding her breath, waiting for the inevitable noise. She’s learned that aggression is modelled as the only means of getting attention, of getting things done, but silence is her only defence. Their failure is equally profound: they taught Liam that his worth is tied to his dominance, and that his anger is a tool, not a feeling. I don’t need the files; I can hear the echoes of their homes in their posture. Victor’s family taught him shame and secrecy by keeping things too polite. Liam’s family taught him to communicate with a fist and a frown. The failure, for both, was the same: the inability to truly occupy the same emotional space as their children. They stood over the problem, not beside the child.
(CHLOE's light snaps off. Sound: A quick, clean whoosh.)
MR. HENDERSON: The repair won’t be found in a new rule or a disciplinary note; it’s here, in the shift in posture. It’s in the father who stops pacing and simply puts his own hand flat on the table and says, “I don’t know what to do,” admitting vulnerability instead of masking it with aggressive confidence. It’s the mother who, instead of correcting Liam, finally watches Chloe for the first time and asks her what she sees, validating her existence. The solution is not a quick fix; it’s the slow, difficult work of keeping the dialogue going when every instinct tells them to run or shout. It means teaching the parents that genuine warmth is a better shield than control. That the best discipline is simply explaining the damage done—the real, human cost of the action—rather than just imposing a penalty. It means normalizing the mess. The trauma for both Victor and Liam is rooted in their respective family's failure to model authentic emotional processing.
(Sound: The machine hum softens dramatically.)
(The four individual spotlights snap on again, landing on VICTOR, MAYA, LIAM, and CHLOE, and they remain lit.)
MR. HENDERSON: We need to teach them all — parents and children — that connection isn’t built on silence or rigid control. It’s built on the messy, truthful exchange. Maya needs to be allowed to just be a child again, not a stand-in parent who shoulders the emotional weight. Chloe needs to know that her quiet observation has value and that her voice, when used, won’t be met with more noise. Victor needs to whisper his shame without the floor opening up beneath him, and Liam needs to drop the heavy burden of having to be the toughest person in the room to gain validation. He needs to learn that softness won’t invite disaster. That commitment to honesty and empathy is the only safety net that actually holds. It’s the only way to heal the shame and diffuse the anger. That’s the work that begins when they walk out the door. The hope is that the silence they leave behind is no longer empty, but ready to listen.
(As MR. HENDERSON speaks the final line, the two family units—the LACKLANDS and the VANCES—move slowly into pre-designated formations, representing their rigid, isolating family structures, forming the final tableau.)
(The four individual spotlights remain intense, freezing the actors in their positions. The main stage light fades slowly to black, and the machine hum cuts off, ending the play.)
