Page 37 of Am I Allergic to Men?
She gives me a look. You don’t remember my daughters but you remember the words to that wretched anthem of our youth?
‘Excuse me, are you here for the day camps? They’re not in here,’ a voice suddenly booms across the parquet, making us both jump. A figure is standing by the doors, peering over at us. Emma still has her smart workwear on but I literally threw on some cycling shorts and have a three-day-old hoodie hanging over my frame with a T-shirt I slept in underneath, no bra, sliders on my feet, and a baseball cap on my head to cover the mess of my post-op scars and shorn head.
‘I’m sorry. We were just having a look round. We used to be pupils here,’ Emma says, flustered. ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, I’m sorry… we should have called ahead. My name is…’ But as she goes to shake the woman’s hand, she stops for a moment. ‘Gemma Chadwick and this is my sister, Victoria.’
The teacher has a harsh silver bob, tinted glasses and wears a boring navy skirt suit with in-between nude heels. She studies our faces closely.Please don’t recognise us, please don’t recognise us.
‘It’s lovely to see you again after all this time, Mrs Willett,’ Emma says. ‘I can’t believe you’re still here.’
‘They’ll have to prise me out of here…’ she says, laughing, still trying to place us. ‘I stayed so long, they made me head teacher too…’
Please don’t look at my flared nostrils. Please don’t.She narrows her eyes at me, her eyes drawn to the tattoos on my ankles, obviously making assumptions about me.
‘You were pupils, here?’ she asks.
Emma’s eyes climb to the top of the building. ‘Yes, I was here a few years ago for the centenary celebrations actually. I made a donation to the funds for the new sports hall.’
Mrs Willett seems less suspicious now, like we’re not here to rob the place of whiteboard markers and benches. ‘Well, do come in and I can give you a brief tour perhaps.’ She turns for a moment and Emma/Gemma upturns her palms at me in confusion. We’re going in? After this bitchface? To shank her? I mean, I could do the shanking and Emma could sew her up afterwards. I guess we’re going in.
‘Remind me, what years were you here again?’ she asks. I’m glad I came with the sister who’s decent in maths and can help us fake this.
‘I left in 2002, Vic left in 2011.’ I nod. I’m Vic now, we got casual real quick. I know it’s my middle name and it was an easy go-to but if we’re reinventing ourselves then at least give me a more exotic name like Magdalena or Emmanuelle. That said, it’s mildly hilarious to see Emma doing this. Emma doesn’t fib, she’s as straight as they come. Has this more mischievous side emerged in the last ten years? I’d like to think so but she’s also sweating hard to play along here.
‘What line of work are you in?’ Mrs Willett asks.
‘Oh, Gem became a doctor. She’s a paediatric heart surgeon,’ I say, on the brag. Mrs Willett looks mildly impressed. She waits to hear what I’ve done for the last ten years since leaving this place. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction so just hope I’ve retained all my skills as a convincing actress.
‘I, too, went into medicine but I went to live abroad. Médecins Sans Frontières. I’ve just spent the last years working in different refugee camps.’
‘Oh yes,’ she exclaims. ‘I remember you both. Such talent in the sciences.’ You old lying goat. ‘You are both a credit to this school, we obviously did right by you then.’
We nod. Seriously? I was rubbish at science. It was something that never really computed and I once burnt off part of my fringe on a Bunsen burner. I wouldn’t let me near a sick person. I smile though, glad I can dispel her initial assumptions of me. She’s still full of her own self-importance and prejudices then. She was the teacher who used to have the biggest go at me about my skirt. She’d follow us around with a thirty-centimetre ruler and tell us short skirts meant we were looking for trouble. I think I once retorted that it went against my rights as a woman not to wear what I want. I got a term’s worth of weekend detentions for that.
‘So, I heard you built a new drama block here a few years ago?’ Emma asks.
‘Oh, we did. The old drama studio was literally a room and a broom cupboard full of props. It was time to develop the department as a whole. The productions we put on now are really quite tremendous and the girls’ grades really reflect that. Let me show you.’
Emma eyeballs me. It really feels like we’re being led deeper into the dragon’s lair and I’m literally only in sliders and bare legs.
‘Are you all right?’ Emma asks me. ‘With the walking. Tell me and we can head back.’
‘It’s all good. Just remember to log this with Igor in case he tells me I’ve not been doing the work.’
I link my arm into hers tightly, encouraging her to keep close, but Mrs Willett hears the conversation.
‘Are you ill?’
‘She’s just had an operation.’
‘Cancer?’ she asks, a little too brazenly.
‘No.’
‘Oh, I assumed with the shaved head.’
‘You assumed wrong…’ Emma adds, holding me even closer.
‘It’s not a contagious illness, is it?’ Mrs Willett asks, taking a step back, her face scrunched up. I should cough in her general direction now, shouldn’t I?
