Page 47 of Hot to Go

He takes a minute to step back and look at me, putting his palms to the air. ‘You’re a double for your father, you know? It is astounding.’ I take a deep breath and smile back. ‘He and your mama would be so proud of you, you know? The way you are raising your siblings, the way you keep the family together.’ The comment would be all the more heartrending if he wasn’t slapping my cheeks at the same time. ‘Beautiful boy.’

I look over back at the table. The option was that or shipping my ten- and thirteen-year-old siblings to my aunt in York. Brooke would have hated me forever. I don’t know if I’m doing a good job. I don’t know how my parents would feel about any of this this, but I think they’d like the fact we are still together, celebrating all our family birthdays in the same restaurant theyused to take us to. I’ll start tearing up if he doles out any more compliments so I pat Enzo back on the cheeks.

‘Love you, Enzo,’ I say.

‘I love you more, Charlie boy.’

‘Can I see the cake?’ I ask him.

‘Sure thing. I was bit surprised but Max said it was the last one in the shop. He thought it would be funny.’

Oh dear. I know Max’s sense of humour. Please don’t be rude. He beckons me to look beyond the bar at the mermaid cake below, complete with shells for boobs. I laugh under my breath. ‘It’s perfect.’

TEN

Suzie

‘Dans la photo, il y a un grand chat.’

‘That’s right, there is a big cat in the photo, or we can use the word, un lion. Because it’s a lion,’ I tell the student.

‘The French for lion is lion?’

‘Well, not quite, try a ‘lee’ sound at the front. Like the town?’

The student looks at me blankly.

‘Or we can stick with big cat, which is accurate.’

They nod and continue to look down at the picture. This afternoon is the first of my Voice sessions, my newly named club where students can come and practise their language skills after school. It’s a decent turnout but I think that might be because I’ve bought biscuits and made posters on Canva on which I deliberately avoided the word oral for obvious reasons. The only thing missing is the other teacher who was supposed to be ‘collaborating’ on this project and who has been decidedly missing from this working relationship. Do you know how he’s been answering my emails about this? With a thumbs up, which isthe same sort of apathy you expect from a teenage boy. It tells me volumes about his character but then since last week, when I found out about his ‘family’, I’d already cast my assumptions. And in reality, it sucked because in my head, Carlos was some perfect man, someone I had put on a pedestal, and now all the layers are being peeled away to reveal someone who is work-shy and lazy. A smidge of internet snooping helped too because what did I find? A selfie of him with a kid. Charlie looked younger and the boy was about ten but I guess that could have been feasible. He would have been super young when he had him but, in reality, Charlie was a padre. This meant that there was possibly a girlfriend or wife out there. It explained a lot, too much, and lodged a huge seed of disappointment in my guts. There are some dynamics there which complicate matters. I don’t want to break up a family or be a secret holiday fling. I don’t want to be with a cheat. I’ve seen enough of that this year.

‘Oh god, I’m so sorry. I’m so late, everyone. I got held up in a pastoral meeting and…I’m…oooh, biscuits…’ Charlie enters the room like a whirlwind, placing his coat over mine, which strangely annoys me, and chucking his rucksack to the floor. He searches the room for me and does a weird salute action as his hand grabs two biscuits at a time. Two. Greedy and late. ‘Where are my Spanish kids at?’

A table at the back of the room all put their hands up and he walks over to them, his hands going to the resources on the table. Yes, I made those laminated vocabulary support prompts that they are using. I made ones in Spanish too as I didn’t want kids to miss out. Charlie sees them and turns to me.

‘You bought Nice biscuits,’ he says.

Is that it? Seriously? Is that how you are entering into this conversation with me?

‘I did. They weren’t for you. The Hob NOBS were for you,’ I whisper so it’s out of earshot.

He breaks into a smile. I wasn’t being funny. I was trying to offend him. Instead, he puts a hand to his chest.

‘I’m sorry I was late and I haven’t really bought into this. I will be better, I promise. I will contribute. It’s just been a killer first week.’

I try not to react but smile and return to the kids I was working with. We’re just very different teachers. Organisation and preparation is my bag, and I guess when you have a family then your time and priorities are shaped differently. From what I’ve seen, Charlie is a run to the photocopier five minutes before the lesson kinda teacher, his worksheets all in Comic Sans, my personal teaching bugbear. That said, the kids really like him, which is annoying. He has a good teacher voice which I occasionally hear echoing through the walls and down the corridor, he calls the kids ‘amigos’, and I hear him playing his class random Spanish songs like ‘Despacito’ which isn’t on the curriculum but I will assume keeps the kids onside.

‘Miss, how do I say annoying?’ a student asks me.

Charlie overhears this and looks at me.

‘Oh, you can say agaçant? Or my favourite is embêtant? Who are you talking about?’ I ask the student.

‘I’m preparing my questions about family. My brother. I want to say he cheats at games.’

I smile, my gaze returning to Charlie’s. ‘Then you can call him un tricheur or un fraudeur. Like the English word for fraud.’

Charlie laughs under his breath to hear that. ‘Sorry to interrupt, do you know what the Spanish word is for cheat? Una tramposa.’

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