Page 69 of A Class Act

‘It’s only local TV,’ I said. ‘And they film you from the front – no one would ever see your bum. It’s a very nice bum anyway. You really have to get over this hang-up with your bum, Jess.’

‘Will you stop sayingbum?’ Jess frowned, starting to laugh. ‘Even if I had alittlebum like… like… Kylie Minogue, I still wouldn’t go in for this daft competition.’

‘Of course you have to,’ Lola said calmly, her manner belying her ten years. ‘Come on, Aunty Robyn, let’s both fill in these new forms with the further details they’re asking for, then she’llhaveto do it.’

‘Is it just for northerners, then?’ Jess asked, peering over our shoulders as Lola and I started filling in the new form. ‘Do you have to come from Yorkshire?’

‘I would imagine so.’ I nodded, smiling as I saw Jess begin to relent. ‘Anyway, you probably won’t get chosen. There’ll be loads of people all wanting their five minutes of fame with their Yorkshire puds onFocus Northand they’re just choosing ten from the application forms for just one heat. And then three will go forward to a grand final. Don’t get your hopes up too high!’

24

At the end of that first half-term at St Mede’s it felt as though I’d never known any other life than the one that had me up at six every morning banging on Sorrel’s bedroom door, chivvying her out of her pit and into the shower. There was always a huge sense of relief that she was there, burrowed under her duvet like some little woodland creature, and had actually come home.

It had been cold and miserable all week, the rain coming down in vertical stair rods, the kids cooped up and unable to let off steam in the yard or the one bit of remaining water-soaked and muddy grass over on the playing field. Days like this were dreaded by teaching staff throughout the land, but particularly those in inner-city schools and in areas of abandoned industry, where whole communities had been left to rot, and where the ensuing unemployment and social deprivation, after the closure of factories, pits and textile mills, were rife. The last day of this particularly wet week of the first half of the term, then, was more hellish than usual, resulting in disorganised chaos in my drama sessions, as well as the exclusion of a child.

The torrential rain being the very best autumn could muster, the drama studio had sprung several leaks, with thecaretaker, Ken – an ex-army jobsworth perennially sporting an immaculately pressed brown overall – insisting (health and safety, love) he arrange several small orange cones around the resulting puddles. This was a gift made in heaven for Whippety Snicket, who proceeded, not only to stamp in the puddles like the five-year-old he still appeared to be, but to kick the cones around the room, shouting ‘goal’ every time he scored a hit on one of the girls’ backsides. My furious intervention had resulted in him turning on me, kicking the cone at my gammy knee while shouting at me to, ‘Fuck off and get back where you came from.’

With no Joel Sinclair to protect me (I’d actually begun to consider paying the sixteen-year-old protection money) I had no alternative but to call in the senior leadership team to remove the boy from the studio. The other kids in the class were left restless and sullen at one of their own being escorted off the school premises.

Mason had formally excluded Whippety from school for a week for racial harassment (although as it was half-term the following week, there appeared little point) and, too upset to talk and debrief with either Mason or Petra, all I wanted was to cry on Jess’s shoulder. Sorrel was nowhere to be seen, not appearing at my classroom door for a lift home as she sometimes did when the weather was inclement. But that wasn’t unusual and, to be honest, I was relieved I wasn’t having to face yet another truculent teen. How many prospective parents, longing for their own little bundle of joy, would, if they could only have a snapshot of said child fifteen years hence, abandon all plans for the pastel-painted nursery and convert the room into a study or recording studio, a gym or Airbnb? As well as blowing the quarter of a million pounds this child would eventually cost them on a round-the-world trip?

I went straight over to Jess’s, but her cottage appeared as dark and unwelcoming as Mum’s. I assumed she was either ona late shift or had gone to the hospital with Lola to visit Mum, who was hopefully being discharged during the half-term break. Unwilling to face the cold house with last night’s unwashed dishes in the sink without alcoholic sustenance to see me through, I went back out to the car and headed for the village Co-op. I bought a bottle of cheap red and a box of Mr Kipling mince pies (hell, Christmas already?) and, once home, downed the lot in an orgy of self-pity.

I lay on the sofa, red throw over me, while a sardonic Roger eyed me with a mixture of pity and contempt. Until, unable to stand the cheap wine and burp-inducing festive tarts’ fumes I was breathing over him, he offered one final disdainful stare at me before heading for his basket by the unlit wood burner.

‘Don’t you abandon me as well, you supercilious rabbit,’ I sobbed in Roger’s direction before reaching for the TV control, which, I remembered too late, needed new batteries. Heaving myself off the sofa to manually change channels, I searched for a nice escapist thriller or at least a wildlife documentary, but instead found a rerun ofFatal Attraction. Watching the bunny being boiled, I chortled drunkenly over at Roger, turning his basket towards the TV in revenge for his abandoning me, but then felt so mean, I got up, changed channels and gathered him up into my arms, apologising profusely for my behaviour.

And there on the TV was Fabian.Fabian Mansfield Carrington.MyFabian.Myheart.Myracingpulse. Jesus. Was I having a heart attack? The news channel – some obscure Japanese or Taiwanese programme with subtitles – was reporting on the UK’s Rupert Henderson-Smith’s alleged murders and the cameras were outside Fabian’s apartment. Actually outside his apartment! I clutched at Roger, staring at the screen, reading the subtitles and trying to work out what was going on and why there was a crowd of mainly women with banners on Fabian’s doorstep as he hurriedly disappearedinside. I needed to rewind, see Fabian again, but Mum’s TV control was no longer capable of such sophisticated action. Instead, I watched in fascination as first Julius Carrington, followed by Judge Gillian, walked grimly through the banner-waving women before disappearing together through the West London apartment’s main entrance.

I couldn’t quite work out – not helped by my alcoholic state and a struggling, disgruntled lop-eared rabbit – whether the TV news programme was live or, as probably was the case, a few hours or even several days old. I did the only thing that I could: brushed off mince-pie crumbs and rabbit hair and, with as much acting ability as I could muster in order to counter my inebriation, immediately rang Fabian’s number.

Which came back as number not known.

Fabian was no longer on that number. He’d erased me from his life. I was blocked. Persona non grata.

To my utter shame, I took myself off to bed, the front door unlocked, the TV still on, and crashed out, still in my school clothes, teeth uncleaned, not caring that my little sister, Sorrel, wasn’t back home.

‘So, absolutely no reason, then, to not have a date with Mason,’ Jess opined the following Wednesday as the pair of us, under Jess’s direction, did our best to give Mum’s cottage a thorough bottoming in readiness for her coming home at the weekend.

‘It’s not a date,’ I snapped, breathing heavily as I found fresh linen for both Mum’s bed and the single in the box room, which I knew I’d be demoted to once she was home. ‘Jeez, my fitness has gone,’ I puffed as we turned mattresses, re-made beds, hoovered and dusted.

‘Not a date?’ Jess grinned as she pummelled pillows into submission. ‘You’re off to the theatre with one of the most attractive men I’ve ever come across.’

‘You’ve not met Fabian…’ I started.

‘Oh, Fabian Schmabian,’ she scoffed. ‘I’ve seen him. On TV… Well, to be honest, just the back of him… Yes, on TV, Robyn. I wasn’t going to tell you…’

‘You didn’t need to tell me.’ I sniffed sadly. ‘I’ve seen him too.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. And I tried to ring him. He’s at the centre of a hate campaign, by the looks of it.’

‘Not surprised,’ Jess said tartly. ‘You can’t be on the side of that misogynist Rupert Henderson-Smith, trying to get him off so he can be back out there to do awful things to more women, without consequences.’

‘Everyone has a right to a fair hearing, Fabian said…’ I began, wanting to put his point of view.

‘Don’t you try to defend him, Robyn,’ Jess snapped. ‘Anyone who defends a serial killer, to get him off to menace women again, deserves the same contempt as the murderer himself. His hands are tainted with those women’s blood.’

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