Page 67 of A Class Act

OK, I lie: there were three other things that were keeping me from burying my head under my pillow and, like Sorrel occasionally, refusing to get out of bed. The first was, unbeknown to Jess – and she’d have gone ballistic if she’d had any inkling – I’d entered her for the Yorkshire Christmas TopChef competition: ‘to discover the county’s best talent through a series of extraordinary cooking challenges, watched over by the north’s most prestigious food judges’. While both Sorrel and Mum had said I was mad –barkingwas the word Sorrel had actually thrown at me – and that Jess, when she found out, would be even madder, Jayden had encouraged me to do it. Like a couple of underground resistance plotters, we’dgot started on the forms before, in his usual inimitable way, he was off back down to London once more, neatly dodging any flak destined to descend on our heads once my sister found out what we’d done. ‘You just cancel if she refuses to have anything to do with it,’ Jayden had said airily, reversing off the drive at speed, promising he’d call in at the hospital before hitting the road back to his other life, the one he loved best, once more.

The second good thing was that my knee, after much handling and manipulation by the area’s top physio – paid for by Jayden – was beginning to heal. ‘You won’t be doing anything with that knee, let alone treading the boards, for a good six months at least,’ Maria, the physio, had warned, ‘but do as you’re told, don’t try anything daft, do your exercises and you might eventually be able to go back to dancing.’

And the third little glimmer of light in the whole of this ridiculous pantomime darkness I’d found myself catapulted into? Well, unbelievably, Mason Donoghue.

After Lola had let out of the bag that she and Jess had been discussing me in terms ofRobyn and Mason, I found myself unable to be in his presence without thinking of him as a… well, as amanrather than as a head teacher – as my boss, for heaven’s sake. Instead of reading through the latest handout on ‘Funding and Budgets’, or ‘How Best to Disarm a Child with a Bladed Article’ with the other teachers in an early morning staff meeting, I’d find myself studying Mason, blushing slightly if he looked my way.

What did it say about me that I was lugging my broken heart around in its permanently shattered state, and yet I could sit back and view Mason Donoghue – actually enjoy the view – quite objectively as one very handsome, very hot, red-blooded male? I wasn’t the only one: a surreptitious glance around the room revealed the younger, single – as well as those older attached – teachers hanging onto his every word, stumbling overtheir own if he directed a question their way, pink-faced with pleasure if he praised, as he so often did.

This man had, what was the word? Charisma. Yes, Mason Donoghue was charismatic with a capital C.

Mind you, he didn’t think twice about bawling out any member of staff he felt wasn’t treating the kids fairly, wasn’t teaching how he wanted them to teach; ordering loitering drug-pushers to move on and then reporting them to the police; or breaking up fights between our kids and warring gangs from other schools who had, as one kid told me as he rushed excitedly out of the school gates, scores to settle.

So, my mind wandering from the government directives in front of me, I’d find myself appraising Mason Donoghue, comparing him – sometimes and sometimes not so favourably with Fabian. Both tall and well built. Mason had the upper hand when it came to sheer muscle power. A little subtle eye movement in the direction of our boss’s pecs beneath the blue striped shirt was de rigueur as he abandoned his navy suit jacket before either bollocking or praising us.

As far as I knew, from information gleaned from Petra Waters, who was always happy to wax lyrical about the main man, Mason was originally from the south but had migrated to the north for university, settling here after marrying his wife.

‘His wife?’ I’d asked, trying not to appear too interested or display my little flicker of disappointment.

‘Doesn’t talk about her much.’ Petra had nodded sagely. ‘Not even sure they’re still together,’ she’d confided. ‘He’s a bit of an enigma – doesn’t reveal anything of his personal circumstances.’ She’d paused. ‘Even to me, as his deputy, and you know, that’s what deputies are for – to be there for a bit of offloading when things get tough.’ Petra had pulled a face. ‘He doesn’t wear a wedding ring,’ she’d added, knowingly.

‘Doesn’t mean anything, these days,’ I’d replied. ‘How many couples do actually marry these days?Andwear rings to advertise the fact?’

‘Well,Icertainly do,’ Petra had said, holding up her left hand as proof. ‘Mind you, doesn’t stop me looking.’ She’d given a dirty laugh. ‘Blimey, most disconcerting having a head teacher who looks like Mason does. You know, when you’ve only ever been used to the dandruffed shoulders, comb-overs and men who’ve stopped caring about changing the lives of kids and are counting down to a full pension and the excitement of a tour of the Isle of Man in their new camper van.’

I’d laughed at Petra’s picture of a species of head teacher that probably went out with the ark but it gave me food for thought. Although I’d determined, on my next visit to Mum, I’d try to get her to open up about the headmaster and his wife who’d adopted her, and from whom she’d run away when she wasn’t much older than Sorrel, Mum was equally determined that her past was just that. She had, it appeared, no intention of opening up to us about her life as a child with these adoptive parents.

The weeks slipped by and, before I knew it, October, with its promise of mellow fruitfulness, was halfway through and I felt I’d never been anything else but a high-school teacher. That my former life with Fabian, and as a performer in the West End, was nothing more than a dream, blown into the ether every morning when my alarm went off at 6a.m. and I was brought back into the reality of my life. What with school, with visiting Mum in hospital and trying to keep Sorrel on the straight and narrow, as well as doing the laundry and making some sort of food for us to eat, I was absolutely knackered.

I was slumped over my desk at 5p.m., a couple of days before the start of the half-term break, trying to get my breath back from a particularly horrendous session with the most notorious of the four Year 9 classes. Catching sight of myself in the fly-blown mirror adjacent to the whiteboard (why the hell there was a mirror in a classroom I wasn’t sure, but can only assume it was there so the previous incumbent could have eyes in the back of her head while writing on the board) I put my head down on the desk, closed my eyes and let out a loud groan of utter tiredness and frustration. My hair, tied up with a rubber band, was in dire need of a good cut; any make-up I’d attempted at seven that morning had caked and smudged as I’d sweated my way through various dance and drama sessions with either totally over- or under-enthusiastic – dependent on age and disposition – pupils, and a familiar low-down ache heralded the start of my period.

‘Great stuff,’ I muttered into my sleeve. ‘Bloody great stuff…’

‘You OK?’ Mason Donoghue stood at the classroom door, arms folded, looking concerned. Or was it amused? ‘You’ll frighten the cleaners.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Absolutely fine, as you can see.’ I raised both a hand and a pair of bleary, mascara-smudged eyes in his direction, hoping he’d go away. ‘Two days to get through and then it’s me, a bottle of SB and my bed for a week.’

‘Oh, that’s a shame.’

‘What is?’ I peered across at him suspiciously.

‘So, there’s a production ofGreasebeing put on in Midhope over half-term. Petra and I have arranged to see it with the idea of our own kids putting on a performance of it at Christmas.’

‘Well, good luck with that!’ I laughed hollowly, stopping him in his tracks before he went any further. ‘A performance ofGrease?With this unruly lot?’ (As I say, I was feeling particularly shattered and belligerent, otherwise wouldn’t have had the temerity to offend Mason’s sensibilities re his pupils.) ‘And in…’ I counted off the weeks on my fingers ‘…just eight weeks or so?’ I laughed again, genuinely amused. ‘As I say, good luck with that.’

‘And,’ Mason went on, undeterred, ‘as we’d like you to choreograph, direct and produce our production, I’ve bought another ticket.’

‘Sorry, I’m washing my hair that day.’ I pulled at the rubber band but my hair, being so dirty, didn’t fall as a sexy waterfall around my shoulders but, instead, stood out at all angles so that I resembled one of those exotic, desirous-of-mating male birds from David Attenborough’sPlanet Earth.

‘Which day?’

‘Sorry?’ I raked a hand through my hair, meeting nothing but tangles, and in the end tied it back up again.

‘Which day are you washing your hair?’

‘The day you’re off to the theatre.Andall the days you think I’m prepared to be putting in producing some ridiculous Christmas concert. Any production like this should have started its rehearsals at the very beginning of term. Oh, and you have to have permission from the owners, whoever they are; copyright and all that. You can’t just glibly say you’re going to performGreasewithout getting permission.’

‘You see? You know all about this kind of thing.’

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