Page 13 of Second Song

I might as well start the engine again right now.

This teacher doesn’t think so. If anything, he’s sympathetic. “Oh, I’m so good at that. Failing and me are old friends. I failed at almost every job I had until I got here.” He studies me for a long moment. “But you’re not done trying?”

I must shake my head.

His smile brightens if that’s possible. “Fabulous. In that case, your timing is perfect.”

“I’m not too late?” I know that I must be. Proof is right there on the phone that I take from the dashboard to show him.

“Oh, no, no, no,” he insists. “There’s all the time in the world. No hurry, no worries.” That’s delivered with the same confidence as Liam telling me to go get this job. It’s also just as unlikely, but this teacher nods like he’s convinced. He gets up from his crouch. “That means there’s plenty of time to tell you about my own interview so you can swerve all of my cock-ups, and I made plenty.” He gestures at the passenger seat. “May I?”

I guess that I must nod this time. I’m not sure it would matter if I hadn’t. He’s rounded the car already, getting in to tell me about an interview from hell that he punctuates with laughter and with a final, smiling comment. “And that’s how I met my husband, the school padre.”

Part of me registers that queer-friendly acknowledgement. The rest of me is still hyperaware of time passing. “I’m really not too late? I meant to be here early, only…” I don’t even know where to start with what delayed me.

“Today didn’t get off to a good start for you?”

That’s such an understatement, I can’t verbalise it. All I can do is nod at what else he admits to already knowing.

“You were in that singing contest, weren’t you?” He tells me what I’ve had six years to live with. “You lost. And how it happened was all a bit catastrophic, wasn’t it? I watched it live. Saw you hold up the mic and open your mouth and…”

Nothing good came out. Not then and never again since.

He’s still sympathetic if blunt. “You failed spectacularly and now you’re here.” He gets out of the car. The passenger-side door closes behind him, but he doesn’t leave me. He comes back to my open window and tells me the one and only thing that could make me get out and follow.

“How incredibly lucky for our children.”

6

ROWAN

I’m not sure that anything about me is lucky, but I do go inside with him, only not through the gate leading to his outdoor classroom. Instead, he leads me up the steps to the school’s imposing entrance. That’s where I grind to a halt, which makes no sense.

I’m not on a ledge about to crumble. I have both feet planted on a green and white mosaic tile telling me Welcome to Glynn Harber. I still can’t cross the threshold.

He turns, and there’s no way he can hear the drums in my chest, but his smile dims a fraction before he comes back to me. “Don’t let the way the school looks put you off. The same goes for the headmaster. They’re both a little bit forbidding at first glance, but this really is the best place I’ve ever worked. And Luke Lawson?” He names this school’s headteacher. “He’s as soft as butter. He’ll be so pleased to meet you.” He crosses his heart. “I promise.”

I can move again then.

I can also hear the click of our heels on polished floor tile. They tap out a quick rhythm matching my internal drumbeat. It doesn’t slow when I stop at an office to sign in and I’m given a visitor’s lanyard. The teacher points at his own. “Fill it out like this.” His says Charles Heppel-Eavis with Early Years Teacher printed on the line beneath it. A third line asks for a specialism.

His handwriting is terrible. I can make out the word playing. The rest surely can’t say with my maggots. He sees me squinting. “Because my children do a lot of wriggling. It’s my job to get those wriggles out of their system so they’re good and ready for lots more learning.”

I go ahead and write my own name then, aware that his lips move almost as if he’s sounding out each letter. “Rowan Byrn. Why did I think you were called…”

“Ciaran?”

His frown disappears once I tell him the reason.

“That’s my middle name. The production company thought it sounded more Irish. That’s where they wanted more votes from on their premium-rate phone lines.”

“You aren’t Irish? You sound a little…”

“I’ve lived there for the last few years. I didn’t at all before the contest.” I see his eyebrows raise. “I know that isn’t how they painted my background, but almost everything about that contest was a lie.” I meet his gaze and see more of that sympathy from the car park as I touch the name I’ve written. “I’m Rowan.” I also print trainee next to the teacher designation followed by music therapy as my specialism, and I hope to fuck I get to achieve at least one ambition. “I’m just Rowan, not a boy band member.” That was another production company fabrication I should have refused instead of going along with. “And I’m not anything else they said about me.” This is what has lingered for the longest. “Or that I said about the other contestants. I’m not… I’m not that person.”

I never was.

I don’t know why he peels that brave-boy sticker from his shirt. If he watched the show, he must have heard me parrot whatever backstabbing poison was fed through my headset all too often. He still presses that sticker to the underside of a lanyard he loops around my neck as if awarding me a medal for being honest.

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