Page 3 of Between Us

‘That’s what I meant,’ Queenie said, nodding. ‘He is saying: “it was slow, but fast at the end.”’

Roisin barked a small laugh. People glanced over and her mother angrily shushed her.

‘How can it be slowandfast?’ Roisin whispered, and Lorraine glared.

‘Clive wants you to know you did everything right. He loves you very much. He says it’s lovely where he is,’ Queenie said.

There was audible weeping, and more expressions of gratitude. Roisin squirmed. Queenie clearly knew it was time to go out on a high.

‘Thank you for being here and sharing what I call mymoments of clear seeingwith me,’ Queenie said, and the room broke into rapturous applause.

The arc of history was long, and it bent towards sick humour. When Roisin and Joe broke up, twenty years later, Roisin could only think that it was perfectly summarised by the paradox of Queenie Mook.

It was slow, but fast at the end.

1

‘Miss, Miss,MISS.Miss? Dirty weekend with your boyfriend? Miss!’

Amir gestured at the trolley case standing sentry behind Roisin’s desk, which she was poorly concealing by draping with a cagoule. He was in the naughty-yet-good-natured category among her students, and she responded accordingly.

‘Very clean actually, Amir. A spa weekend with some of my girlfriends.’

If there was one thing that both her childhood and her career had taught Roisin Walters, it was that lying to kids might not be noble, but generally got the job done.

‘A SPA. Like, a sauna?’ He chewed his pen and made a cheeky face.

‘Back to the text, please. I’m going to collect your papers in …’ She glanced up at the wall clock, her ever reliable teaching assistant. ‘… five minutes’ time!’

‘Miss,’ Amir persisted, then seeing her under-her-brow look of scepticism: ‘No no no – it’s about the book!’

Roisin rolled her eyes. ‘Go on.’

‘Right, everyone thinksGreat Expectationsis good, like. Aposh book. Which is why we’re studying it in an English Lit lesson.’

‘Yes?’ Roisin knew a time-waste trolling when one began, and so did Amir’s peers, waiting with delighted anticipation for the payoff.

MPs who ran the parliamentary session down with pointless, aimless debate werefilibustering; online arguments that involved repeated requests for evidence, made with faux-sincerity and excessive civility, was an exhaustion tactic calledsealioning.

Roisin felt neitherfilibusterersnorsealionerscould hold a candle to a class of restless Year 10s in a so-calleddoss subjecton a sunny Friday afternoon, right at the end of term.

Last week, one of Amir’s accomplices, Pauly, had arrived at Roisin’s lesson with a breed of tiny, furious-looking dog she was told was called a ‘Brussels Griffon’ in an old-fashioned white-wheeled pram. Pauly was allegedly ‘childminding’ this creature ‘for his nan’. The canine, known as Sprout and resembling an abandoned Jim Henson project, had caused a disruption akin to the President landing in Air Force One.

‘And this Dickens book is well old. 160 years old,’ Amir continued, in his quest for enlightenment.

‘Correct.’

‘So, in another 160 years – that’ll be … the 3080s,’ he said, pretending to count off his fingers. Comic pause. ‘Will everyone in here readingFifty Shades of Grey, yeah? It will be a well old proper book.’

The class responded with the required laughter, Amir grinning proudly. Roisin waited it out.

‘I doubt it, but that’s still a question worth asking, thank you, Amir.’

She judged that with what was left of this lesson, subverting Amir was more fruitful than trying to get everyone back to pondering the motives of Abel Magwitch.

‘It’s because the worth of literature is not only determined by the passage of time,’ Roisin said.

‘My mum and my auntie really like it though,’ Amir said, to more cackling. ‘My auntie reads it on her Kindle … in the bath. If you catch my drift.’

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