Page 52 of A Class Act

‘This is Robyn, everyone,’ Petra said hurriedly, shooting a look of utter disdain at the man. ‘She’s joining us tomorrow, covering some English and drama and PSHE, but, fantastically, because she’s been working in the West End, no less, will be able to give us direction in dance and theatre studies.’

‘I don’t think…’ I started, a rictus of a smile on my face, but she’d turned to the man lavishly buttering toast in the kitchen area of the staffroom. ‘Dave? Going to leave Robyn with you now. If you can go over the English stuff she’ll be doing?’ Petra turned back to me. ‘Dave’s Head of English,’ she explained and then, looking at her watch, added, ‘Sorry, going to have to scoot. Got a meeting with Mason and then I’m teaching Year 7 games. Half these kids can’t catch a ball. And the other half are convinced they’re the next Messi and it’s only a matter of time before they’re signed up by Man U.’

I spent the next ninety minutes sorting out more admin and being given the low-down on the English curriculum by Dave Mallinson, Head of English at St Mede’s, who I found helpful if a little distant. He and Sandy Head were old retainers, he told me, been at the school for years and would probably be carried out, covered in chalk dust, breathing their last gasp.

‘You still enjoy it, then?’ I asked. ‘The teaching, I mean?’

‘Must do or I’d have taken early retirement years ago. When we really were at rock bottom, in special measures and the authority was intent on closing us down, I was about to go then. But Mason came along and started turning the place round.’ He looked steadily at me. ‘It’s a good place to be if you can get a handle on the pupils. Kids are not born disruptive, badly behaved you know? Most want to learn, to fit in, to please. Unfortunately, the crap they’ve had to put up with at home, how they’ve been brought up, the challenges they’ve had to face before they even started primary school, let alone high school, have had them at a disadvantage from the get-go.’

‘I know, I know.’ I smiled, slightly irritated. ‘I do understand that. I’ve obviously done the child development, the psychology, the behaviour modules…’

‘Ah, but you don’t start really understanding what it’s all about until you’re hands-on. You’ll be fine, Robyn. Just take it a day at a time. Oh, and if you need some work on that knee – ACL, is it? – my wife’s a physio. I’ll give you her details.’

I was starting to feel a little calmer. A little more, you know, I can do this. Maybe until Christmas? Just a term; sort my knee; sort Mum and Sorrel and then get myself back to London. Go and find Fabian and tell him I knew my bloody prideand prejudicehad been to blame… It was all my fault…

By lunchtime I felt as though I’d never been away from the chalkface. Petra came back to the staffroom as the lunch bell sounded, inviting me along to the canteen where I’d be expected to not only do a couple of dinner duties, but actually – on Mason’s insistence – sit with the kids and eat as well.

While not overly impressed with the fare on offer – the ubiquitous pizza and chips with a lettuce leaf and half a tomato masquerading as salad – I was more so with the orderly queues and level of noise. Then I understood: Mason Donoghue was not only tucking in at a table with the younger kids, but apparently keeping a friendly, if steely eye on the older ones as well. (I’d not thought it possible for an eye to be both friendly and steely until I’d seen Mason in action.)

‘Mason insists he’s in situ here every lunchtime,’ Petra explained. ‘And if he can’t be, then at least one of us from the senior leadership team must be.’ Her tone was reverential as she spoke of her leader, who now was making his way over to a girl sitting at a table by herself looking solitary, a look of defiant anger on her pretty face.

Sorrel.

Petra put a warning hand on my arm. ‘Leave her, Robyn. Mason’s going to chat with her. The last thing she needs is her big sister fussing over her. That really would have her heading for the hills. Pizza and chips?’

And I would have found myself calmer, more able to meet the challenge, had I not followed Petra back to the staffroom for the last ten minutes of the lunch hour and overheard a conversation.

‘Woah, he isfit,’ one of the younger members of staff was saying as four of them stood gathered around a table, perusing the front page ofThe Daily Herald. ‘What’s he called?’

‘Carrington,’ another said, reverentially. ‘Fabian Mansfield Carrington. Blimey, look at those eyes. He looks like Jamie Dornan…’

‘Who?’

‘You know! That gorgeous actor inFifty Shades. Hell, I wouldn’t kickhimout of bed.’

‘You should be so lucky,’ another scoffed. ‘But yes, I know what you mean. He’s all dark and smouldering…’

‘You’rejoking.’ A petite Asian girl in the white coat of a science teacher was indignant. ‘How could you fancy him? He’s defending that misogynistic murderer Rupert Henderson-Smith. How could you want to be anywhere near, let alone in bed with, someone who’s making a shedload of money trying to get that bastard off? Blood money. What about the poor families who’ve lost their daughters? For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter with all of you?’

19

Thursday morning, 5.30a.m. Fabian was there with me, his dark eyes full of love, and I lay, my own shut tight, desperate for the images that played behind them to crystallise into the actuality of his being beside me. Then, in his apartment, I’d wake from sleep knowing he was smiling down at me, watching me in the already light hours of another summer’s day in the capital. He’d reach for me, pulling me out of sleep and towards him, and make love to me in such a way that, still half asleep, I wasn’t quite sure where I ended and he began. I was a part of him, and I never wanted to be without him ever again.

I tried desperately to hang onto the dream but, like a fading memory that refuses to focus and eventually disintegrates, he was gone. I opened my eyes to being alone, back in Beddingfield, with the nausea-inducing knowledge of my first day in a new job I didn’t want. I turned over, my knee aching and heavy, unwilling to get out of bed and into the first-day-in-a-new-job outfit I’d carefully set out neatly for myself, before allowing myself the luxurious, but dangerous, game of ‘What if?’

There’d never been any side to Fabian; never been any time when I’d thought he might have been flattering me simply toget me into bed, to make me fall in love with him. As far as I knew he’d always been honest with me (apart from pretending, that first night in Graphite,he didn’t know who I was) and had so much integrity, which, knowing I’d deliberately not told him about my grandfather murdering my grandma and her lover, I’d not been able to match.

His bloody integrity, I reminded myself crossly, had vanished down the pan when he’d taken on the defence of a misogynistic and sadistic murderer. This thought had me more than awake and, by the time the shrill call of my alarm shattered the tiny box room – as well as my lovely memories of Fabian – I was well and truly brought rudely back down to earth with the reality of my new but unlooked-for life.

With a deep sigh of resignation, I headed for the bathroom before waking Sorrel. She took more than a couple of shakes and threats to have her up out of her pit, but she did eventually acquiesce. And, once up, came down sporting not too much make-up as well as eating the porridge I put in front of her.

‘You look lovely,’ I said, meaning it. ‘How did it go yesterday? You said very little on the way home.’

‘You didn’t ask,’ she said.

‘I didn’t want to treat you like a five-year-old on your first day at school.’

‘The history was good,’ she conceded grudgingly. ‘The rest was shit.’

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