Page 42 of Hot to Go

‘Did you get stuck in a yoga pose?’ she retorts.

I stop before this gets any more barbed. I don’t know what to tell her.

I spent two days in hospital and when I was discharged, I went straight to that villa to look for her because she was all I could think about. Except she wasn’t there. There was a German man at the gate in gold budgie smugglers who invited me in for ‘party times’ but I politely declined. And I tried my darndest to look for her. I trawled through every Aurelie from Nice on Facebook, and I shed tears as my plane was taking off from Mallorca knowing I’d lost her. I told Max it was indigestion.

‘Hi!’ I tear my gaze from her face to see the people who’veappeared next to us. One of them is my tour guide, Ed, and the other I recognise from the screensaver on his phone. She grins. ‘I just thought I’d come and introduce myself. I’m Mia. I know Beth.’ She points to the other side of the room where Beth stands, knowing to keep her distance. She keeps looking at me like she’s seen a ghost.

‘Nice to meet you, Mia,’ I say, putting a hand out that she shakes animatedly.

‘Suzie,’ she says, still a little hot and flustered.

Mia notices it and puts an arm to her. ‘I hate it when they do those staff introductions too. Making you stand up in front of everyone like a muppet.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t…I mean…’ Suzie fumbles.

‘Can I say though? It’s brilliant to have some younger teachers in the school. Ed and I were trying to work out when the next gen were coming through. And which languages?’

‘Spanish?’ I say putting a hand to the air. ‘I think Suzie may be…French?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, catching my eye and half smiling.

‘Well, let’s see what cunning linguists you both are, eh?’ she cackles at her own joke. Ed closes his eyes in embarrassment. Suzie and I don’t react. At all. Not one little bit.

NINE

Suzie

‘And tell me what the ending of that word might look like?’ I ask the class.

‘It’s got another e and an s, Miss,’ the boy answers.

‘Can you tell me why?’ I say, my pen hovering over the smartboard.

‘Because it’s a lady word and there’s more than one of them.’

I laugh under my breath. ‘Feminine noun but yeah, excellent…’

‘Josh, Miss.’

‘I’ll get there with the names eventually. Très bien, Josh.’ I think he smiled at me and that today is a win after the largest baptism by fire you could imagine. Because imagine you’re being baptised in all that fire and you also have one hundred and twenty children you have never met before watching, judging and waiting to be entertained at the same time. But Josh has saved this day, so I will give him an achievement point and hope that means I will be his favouriteteacher, forever. ‘And with that, let’s pack up, folks. Dictionaries back where you found them, please tuck those chairs in.’

The kids do as they’re told. There’s still a silence that descends over the room because I’m new and it’s the first day back, but to be fair, I expected worse with Year 10. I wait by the door and exhale loudly, waiting for the bell.

‘Long day, Miss?’ one girl asks, her hair bound tightly into plaits, the skirt perhaps three inches too short. I think her name is Poppy or maybe it’s Polly. There are too many names to remember, there really are.

I nod. ‘First day too so I’m a bit frazzled.’

‘Time to go home and get the rosé out?’ Josh, next to her, says.

I laugh. ‘Possiblement. How was that by the way? The class? Was it OK?’ I ask, hoping their judgement about my teaching isn’t too harsh.

‘You’re cool,’ the girl says, looking me up and down.

‘Anything was going to be better than Monsieur Flock-It,’ Josh says.

‘Pardon me?’ I ask.

‘It was pronounced Flock-ay,’ he says, waving his hands about, ‘but truth is he was French, thought a lot of himself and he constantly smelt of wine.’

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