Page 50 of Between Us

That was the thing about losing control of a class: it was a build of momentum, and you either stopped it in time or you didn’t. They emboldened each other, not least becauseit became progressively harder to nick anyone for the crime if everyone got involved.

Roisin turned away, on the pretext of writing something on the white board. Her hands were visibly shaking and she had to abandon that idea.

That was the moment she tasted disaster.

‘Right,’ she said, in a wobbling voice, and when she turned back to the class, their faces were expressions of amazement, fascination and malicious glee.

They had her.

Logan pulled out his iPhone and started playing a clip of the show, audible grunting and huffing coming from his handset. He whacked the volume up sharply, so the classroom was filled with the disembodied voice of Jasper commanding,‘You like that? Tell me you like that!’

Roisin could recognise Joe’s voice in their intimate moments. She’d blocked the memory of those few seconds of homage out since the screening: there’d been so much that was difficult to think about, no wonder some of it had escaped her.

Roisin struggled to breathe. Shooting pains ran up and down her arms, her legs feeling like they were going to give way underneath her. She started dissociating, the classroom becoming scenery. She didn’t care how she looked any more, she was merely trying to survive. Roisin gripped her desk and recognised she was having a panic attack. It was her second: her first had been when she was sixteen years old and saw her brother Ryan running down the street towards her. A police car was parked outside the pub behind him.

‘Miss, are you going to be sick? Miss Walters!’ she heard someone male ask.

‘Is she, like, literally having a heart attack?’ a female voice said dispassionately.

Roisin gave up bracing herself on the desk and sat down on the cold, hard floor.Concentrate on what’s real. The floor is real.

She heard Amir saying, ‘Pauly, get Mrs Copeland!’

‘No, I’m alright,’ Roisin said, unconvincingly, in a voice that sounded like an echo down a long hall.

Within a minute, Wendy Copeland was in the doorway. Her shrewd gaze took in Roisin’s position on the floor and the toadish smirks and otherwise avoidance of her gaze from the members of 10E.

The bell that signalled the end of the day rang in a piercing shriek. The pupils started throwing their bags over their shoulders and piling towards the doors, moving extra fast in the hope of avoiding consequences.

Roisin got unsteadily to her feet.

‘Excuse me, everyone!’ Wendy bellowed.

They froze as if in a game of musical statues. Mrs Copeland was not to be, and did not get, fucked with.

‘I’d like to remind you that phones in lessons arestrictly forbidden. If I hear of any making an appearance again, they’ll be confiscated and locked in a drawer in my office for as long as I see fit. You won’t get another warning. Use it, and lose it. Understood?’

They muttered assent.

‘Good. Go.’

Wendy knew what had happened: Pauly had briefed her on the way. Roisin moved into a new zone of shame.

‘Let’s go to my room,’ Wendy said, once the last pupil had left.

Wendy’s office always felt like a diplomatically protected embassy, while civil war raged around its walls. A Tamara de Lempicka print of the green Bugatti hung on one wall, some Aztec-print cushions arranged on chairs beneath.

Wendy Copeland was in her late fifties, with swishy, bobbed bronze hair, beautifully cut clothes, and an air about her that said she should be running MI5, or perhaps just the country. She was a caring and supportive manager, while brooking not an inch of idiocy from anyone. Roisin revered her, tried to emulate her, and craved her approval, above most things.

‘Talk to me, Miss Walters,’ Wendy said, after gesturing for her to sit. ‘What’s up?’

Roisin gulped. ‘… I think I’ve got food poisoning. You’d think I’d learn not to reheat Chinese takeaways for breakfast aged thirty-two, but …’ Roisin made a comic grimace.

Wendy nodded and let a silence stretch between them that was more eloquent than any verbal contradiction.

31

‘You are one of my most buoyant, capable, unflappable members of staff, Roisin. Youbrimwith Can Do attitude andjoie de vivre. Heathwood is very lucky to have you. I feel sure that if a Kung Pao Chicken with Cashew Nuts was on its way back towards civilisation, you’d have told the toerags to read quietly while you ran to the lavs,’ Wendy said.

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