Page 49 of Between Us

‘My phone isn’t on! Airplane mode in lessons, always. It’s the rules, isn’t it, Miss,’ Caitlin said, as if she was explaining trig to someone thick.

‘Why can I hear Adele from roughly where you’re sitting, then, Caitlin?’ Roisin said politely.

‘You love her Prosecco Mumrock so much she’s playing in your head all the time, probably?’ Caitlin drawled, to laughter.

‘Haha. Turn it off, please.’

Caitlin, chewing gum and eye-rolling extravagantly, opened her bag. She found the phone, in a case adorned with a photo of her own heavily filtered face, cuddled up to a scowling older lad. She turned the screen towards her teacher.

‘See? Not mine. Can I have an apology, Miss?’

‘Who’s is it then?’ Roisin said.

A silence opened up, albeit one that contained a tinny version of ‘Set Fire to the Rain’trickling out in the background.

Amir started quietly singing along.

‘Right, either the person playing it turns it off or everyone gets detention, how’s that?’

The room erupted into the sort of jeering howls and boos of objection that were heard when a wild claim was made by an MP at PMQs.

It wasn’t much of a threat: they were too close to the summer break to go through the rigmarole of letters home, punishing non-attendance. Feasibility always counted less than attitude, however. Hold your nerve.

As one of her morbidly pessimistic colleagues, Andy, once observed: persuading up to thirty people that one person stood in front of them was more powerful than them was a sort of mind trick, anyway.

‘The short arse mob could kill you if they wanted,’ Andy said, cheerfully.

‘Then go to prison for a long time,’ Roisin said.

‘Under the age of responsibility, with lawyers for each to spread the blame around thinly? They’d do less time than I’ve got booked away in Crete.’

‘Thank God our Cheadle kids simply have too much conscience to goLord of the Flieson us.’

‘There speaks someone who hasn’t taught 10E yet.’

It wasn’t a good moment for Roisin to recall that conversation, as her management of 10E disintegrated like wet tissue.

‘Last chance. Is anyone going to admit to Adele, or does everyone get in trouble?’ she said, hand on hip.

‘Miss. Miss!’ Amir said. ‘What song was that at the end of your fella’s show, Miss …? Was it Metallica?’

‘When he was with that waitress, behind his girlfriend’s back …’ Pauly supplied, knowing his role was to keep it going. ‘What was that about, Miss?’

Amir and Pauly didn’t usually upset Roisin. She struggled to find a different gear for them, now ‘rueful chiding’ wasn’t sufficient and outright losing it would expose how sensitive she was.

The Adele song mysteriously shut off, and with a bilious lurch, Roisin intuited it wasn’t a good sign.

30

Zoe Farmer said, ‘Oh my GODS, it was SO DIRTY,’ mock-affronted. ‘Like, ewwww. Old people having sex, lol.’

‘The bit in the toilet,’ said Logan Hughes, snickering. Oh no. Roisin had forgotten he was there. He’d not been in her class but last month he’d been regrettably transferred from another form, after fighting or having sex with pretty much everyone else in it. His tutor ended up on beta blockers.

He was what Wendy Copeland codenamed ‘FCCC’: Future Crown Court Case.

Amir said, ‘Miss, you know how you said Charles Dickens wrote about his life? Has your boyfriend done loads of the things in that show?’

Roisin should know what to say to shut this down; she didn’t. She had not war-gamed how it would feel for fourteen-year-olds to ask her about her partner’s sexual fantasies, or how she should respond. Pretend It Isn’t Happening had hit a wall and was about to burst into flames.

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