Chapter 5

On the first morning of the new school year, Holly was alarmed to find herself briefly paralysed from the waist down. The problem arose when she was leaning against the kitchen counter, draining a glass of orange juice. Claude had just come through his catflap and was diligently washing himself in a patch of sunlight on the floor. Even though she was already late – the getting out of bed process hadn’t gone particularly well – she allowed herself to be mesmerised by him. He looked so calm and untroubled. Ignoring the fact that he almost always looked calm and untroubled, she couldn’t help but draw an unpleasant comparison with her own state of mind. It was eight twenty. Forty minutes. She had forty minutes left in which to be merely single, as opposed to pathetically, tragically, irrevocably single. Five more minutes went by as she watched Claude make a little washcloth of his right paw before applying it liberally to his face. Then he suddenly stopped what he was doing and gazed up at her. Look at the time – I’d get a move on if I were you. She sighed, swore under her breath and placed her glass on the counter.

It was then that she found that her legs no longer worked. They weren’t numb. They weren’t disembodied. They just wouldn’t carry her in the direction of school, that was all. The effect was more interesting than alarming; she imagined that it must be the same sort of feeling that stage hypnotists induce. She pondered her predicament for a little while and then began to feel deeply silly. “Come on,” she said, peering downwards. “You have to . . .” She paused. Talking to yourself was bad. Talking to your legs specifically was much worse. The distraction of realising this did the trick, at least. Her brain re-established relations with the lower half of her body and suddenly she was in motion. The best approach, she quickly decided, was to keep going and not look back. She went straight past Claude, not even pausing to give him a little stroke, grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair and sped off down the hall. Her car keys were in a wooden bowl on a console table by the door. She grabbed them, undid the latch and more or less threw herself out in one fluid movement. Within seconds she was in the car and pulling out of her parking space in a manner that owed more than a little to Starsky and Hutch. It wasn’t until she was a couple of minutes away from the house that she did a scan of her body and found that every single muscle was clenched tight. She made a conscious effort to relax and smiled with relief as the tension eased. Then she remembered why she’d been tense in the first place. Her muscles re-clenched, her smile disappeared and she slowed to twenty kilometres an hour.

The main building of St Brendan’s secondary school was a large, two-story C-shaped affair, set far back from the main road and partially obscured by a line of stubby trees. The relative abundance of greenery on the site and the long, snaking avenue that bisected it combined to give a false impression of wealth and privilege, Holly had often thought. A first-time visitor could be forgiven for thinking that they were entering an establishment where the pupils wore blazers, owned horses and had neat partings in their hair. That, of course, was very far from the truth. The mistaken visitor would begin to realise as much when they got closer to the main building and noted its many cracks and blemishes. A quick glance through a classroom window would shatter the illusion forever.

There was a small car park on the left at the end of the avenue. Holly slotted into the one remaining space and killed the engine. A peculiar aspect of school life that the teachers often discussed amongst themselves was the phenomenon of car-park abuse. Classroom abuse was really quite rare, despite what the newspapers said, but for some reason the students seemed to think that anything went in the car park. It might not have been so remarkable if the same had been true of the playing fields or the courtyards or any of the other outdoor areas that counted as school property. But it wasn’t. The most popular theory among the teachers was that the area represented a sort of no-man’s land between school life and civilian life. It was nothing to do with indoors versus outdoors. A teacher who was getting into or out of his car wasn’t quite at work and had no real right to complain when someone popped up and called them an arsehole. There were rules, of course. Only in extreme cases – the legendarily nasty Seán Cooper came to mind – would the abuse be a face-to-face affair. Usually, it was more akin to having your pocket picked; you’d realise you’d been hit and would spin around looking for the source, but they’d already have melted away into the crowd. Holly counted herself as one of the lucky ones in this regard. Her name was such an obvious gift that there was no need for anyone to get any more personal. They sang carols at her. They threw tinsel at her. They Ho-Ho-Ho-ed as she went by. Understandably, this last was far and away the most popular. Singing carols took a certain amount of gumption and throwing anything, even tinsel, was a little too close to violence for most. Any fool could Ho-Ho-Ho. And they did. On this particular morning, she had only just emerged from the car – hadn’t even locked it yet – before the first volley sounded. Holly spun to her left and saw immediately who the culprit was – a boy called Fintan Scully. She’d taught him for the previous two years. He wasn’t difficult to spot. For one thing, he had made a real mess of melting away into the crowd, largely because it was still early and there was no real crowd to melt into. He was standing completely exposed with two smaller boys, both of whom were in hysterics, more at his incompetence than his nerve, Holly suspected. There was another factor that made him stand out. He had raised his hands to his mouth for amplification purposes and, worse, said mouth was wide open. Apparently, he had been drawing breath for another Ho-Ho-Ho and when Holly turned to face him, he had simply frozen. It wasn’t until she stepped towards him that he finally dropped his arms to his sides and allowed his gob to close.

“Hello there, Mister Scully,” she said.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot. His two associates took a couple of steps back, as if he was in danger of combusting and taking them with him. “Miss.”

“You do know that you don’t start until tomorrow, don’t you? Just first years today.”

“Yes, miss. Me ma wanted me to see him to the door.” He pointed to his right with his head. “That’s my wee brother. Starting today.”

“Which one of you is the brother?” Holly asked. One of them raised his hand. “And what’s your name?” she asked.

“Cillian. Miss.”

She returned her attention to Fintan. “Did you have a nice summer?”

He nodded. “Miss.”

“What did you get up to, then?”

“Nothing much, Miss. Football, Miss. Hung around. Xbox. That sort of thing.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Yes, Miss. I suppose it was.”

“So. Junior Cert this year. I’d say you’re really excited about it.”

He shrugged. “Not really, Miss. No.”

“You look a bit discombobulated, Fintan. Is something up?”

He frowned and gave “discombobulated” a bit of thought. “No, Miss.”

“You’re not mad at me, are you?”

“Mad . . . at you? No, Miss. Why, Miss?”

“Ah, you know. You were in the middle of a big ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ there and I turned around and ruined it on you.”

The smaller boys went rigid. Fintan screwed his face up into what he presumably thought was an expression of puzzled innocence; in reality, he looked as if he’d swallowed a bee.

“Miss?”

“I’d hate you to get your year off to a bad start, Fintan, and you not even in uniform yet. Why don’t you give it a lash now?”

“Miss, I wasn’t –”

“Go on. You’ll feel better.”

“You want me to . . . What do you want me to do?”

“The old ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’. Go on. Let ‘er rip.”

He swallowed. “I don’t think I will.”

“No? You sure? This is your last chance, you know, Fintan. If I hear a single ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ out of you for the rest of the year, you’ll be in detention until you’re forty. But if you don’t want to take me up on the offer . . .”

“No, thanks. You’re all right.”

“Fine,” she said. “It’s up to you. But remember, Mister – until you’re forty.”

He nodded, looking deeply unhappy with the way his life was turning out.

“Go on then,” she said. “On your way.”

They scarpered.

It was remarkable, Holly thought, as she made her way to the front door, how quickly she had slipped back into teacher mode. As soon as the chance arose, it was “Mister Scully” this and “discombobulated” that. She had used the latter word perhaps ten times in her life and all of them had been attempts to wrongfoot a student. In her own schooldays she had often wondered why teachers spoke and acted the way they did. It wasn’t just that they were adults; they seemed to be a particular species unto themselves. Where did the schools find them, all these weirdly different creatures? Now she knew the answer. They weren’t different – they just felt compelled to act that way as soon as they got on school premises. It was all but unavoidable.

“Hello there!”

It was Eleanor Duffy. Of course. She was waving for all she was worth as she approached from the top of the avenue, as if Holly was a barely visible figure in the hazy distance.

“What’s the problem?” she asked when she caught up. “Are we not friends any more?”

“Sorry,” Holly muttered. “I was miles away.”

“Not there now. At the entrance. You drove right past me. You nearly drove over me, actually.”

“Did I? Sorry. I didn’t see you. I was –”

“Miles away? Looked that way, all right.”

“Why are you on foot? Health kick?”

“God, no. Car’s on the blink. Timing belt, whatever that is. I should have it back tomorrow. I had to get the bus across and that took a lot longer than I allowed for and . . . Anyway, never mind that, how was your summer?”

She started walking and didn’t pause, apparently assuming that Holly would trot after her. Holly did so.

“Grand. It was grand. How was yours?”

“Great. We had a couple of weeks in France, which was lovely. Mind you, my youngest got a terrible stomach bug as soon as we got back, which kinda took the good out of it, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“So! Tell me. How’s the love life?”

Holly very nearly stumbled. Then she very nearly screamed. Then she very nearly turned for home. She’d known it was going to be bad but . . . she hadn’t even made it inside yet.

“Not bad,” she squeaked for the want of something better to squeak.

“Oh? Brilliant! What’s his name?”

“Robbie,” Holly said. It just slipped out. As her eyes widened and her tongue flapped around in her treacherous mouth, these were the words that filled her mind. It just slipped out. She’d heard a Robbie Williams song on the radio on the way over. That, presumably, explained where the name had come from. The general concept of inventing a boyfriend where none existed remained thoroughly unexplained. They reached the main door then. Eleanor held it open and ushered Holly through.

“Where’s he from? What does he do? Details, woman, details!”

Holly swallowed. “He’s a . . . musician. Robbie’s a musician. From . . . he’s from . . . Galway, originally, but he lives here now. In Dublin. Here in Dublin.”

“Ooh, a musician,” Eleanor cooed. “What does he play?”

“He plays bass guitar.” This lie came quickly and sported none of the hesitation and false starts that had accompanied its predecessor.

“In a proper band?”

“Uh . . . yeah.”

“And what are they called? I’ll have to look out for them.”

“They’re called The Puny Humans.” Again, the lie came easily to her lips. The Puny Humans was a band that Mark had briefly drummed for in his college days. They’d lasted for a couple of months and had eventually split over musical differences: the lead guitarist could play his instrument and the others could not. Lizzie brought out the photos once in a while when she felt like a giggle. To Holly’s relief, her answer seemed to pour cold water on Eleanor’s enthusiasm for the musical line of questioning. Unfortunately, she simply changed tack.

“How long have you been together, then?”

Holly tried to give this one a little thought. She felt sure that one particular lie might do more damage than another, but she couldn’t work out which was which. They’d taken a few steps in silence when Eleanor glanced across to make sure that Holly hadn’t gone deaf.

“I said, how –”

“About a month.”

This seemed like a reasonable compromise.

“Oh, you’re getting close to your record!” Eleanor said. “Well, I’m delighted for you. Only delighted. I hope he works out. God knows, you deserve it after the luck you’ve had. What does he look like? Sorry, that’s very rude. But still – what does he look like?”

The expression on her face was a combination of cheek and mild embarrassment. Holly guessed that Eleanor fancied herself to be getting too old for what-does-he-look-like conversations and was greatly enjoying the novelty.

“He looks a bit like . . . um . . . ”

Faces flashed through her head. None of them seemed suitable. They were at the staff room door now. Voices and laughter came from within. Holly had a moment of clarity. The lie was unsustainable. She couldn’t keep this Robbie character around indefinitely, which meant that sooner or later there would have to be a break-up, at which point her reputation as love’s greatest loser would only be enhanced. In the meantime, even if Eleanor didn’t tell any of the others – which was tremendously unlikely – she would still have to be conned on a daily basis herself. No, there was nothing for it. Holly stopped walking. Eleanor carried on for a couple of steps, then came back.

“Are you all right?”

“Listen, Eleanor. Listen. I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Oh?”

She sucked in some air. “There is no Robbie, Okay?”

“Excuse me?”

“I made him up. Just now.”

The news took a second to sink in. “You made him up?” Eleanor rested her hand on her forehead where it gently trembled. “Oh, Holly . . . you poor thing. I knew things were bad, but I never dreamed they were this bad.”

“Well, things aren’t all that bad, it’s just –”

“You know, I was thinking about you on my walk in. I had my fingers crossed for you. Honest to God, I did.” She shook her head. “Inventing boyfriends. I don’t know what to say. How long has this been going on for?”

“What? About a minute.”

“Holly . . . come on. You can tell me. I won’t judge.”

“Honestly! About a minute! I just panicked a bit when you asked me. I panicked and I made someone up.”

Even before she spoke, Holly could tell that Eleanor hadn’t taken this in.

“Friends, family, God knows who else . . . you must be in a terrible mess.”

“Eleanor. Pay attention. There are no friends involved, no family, no God knows who else. Just you. Got it?”

The last couple of words came out with a degree of venom that she hadn’t meant to inject. Although this was a phenomenon with which Holly was intimately acquainted, it still rankled. She was about to apologise but didn’t get a chance.

“Why me?” Eleanor asked. She looked a little spooked now. “I mean . . . what have you got against me?”

“I haven’t got anything against you, Eleanor. It’s just. . .” She failed to complete the sentence. They stared at each other for a moment. Then Eleanor shook her head and opened the staff room door.

“After you,” she said.

Holly squeezed through. When she turned back, she saw that Eleanor was moving away from her as quickly as she could, given the crowded conditions. “Hello”s and “How are you?”s came from every direction (more were aimed at Eleanor than herself, Holly noted). She gave a general wave to the assembly and tried her best to smile. Then she became aware of a presence by her right shoulder. It was Peter Fogarty. As was his wont, he seemed to have simply materialised beside her.

“I really think this might be my last year,” he said, as he did every September. “What’s the point in having loads of time off if you want to kill yourself when it ends? I’d rather have normal holidays. No highs, no lows, just a nice smooth ride.”

“Yeah,” Holly said. “Hello to you too.”

“Computers,” Peter continued. “I like computers. I could start again, get a new degree or qualification of some kind, anyway. ‘Systems Analyst’. I’ve always liked the sound of ‘Systems Analyst’. It has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know what it means, mind you. Something to do with analysing systems, I suppose. They say –”

The door swung open then and in swept Ursula McCarthy. Almost immediately, the noise in the room fell away to nothing. Holly wondered if Ursula ever tired of it happening every time she appeared.

“Hello, everyone,” Ursula said, and without even waiting for reciprocation, launched into her Welcome Back address. She expressed her hope that everyone was well-rested and made a couple of limp gags about the disappointing nature of the recent meteorological conditions. With the preliminaries out of the way, she moved on to speaking loftily, yet hopelessly vaguely of the challenges that lay ahead.

As ever, her performance was stupefyingly dull. This was a phenomenon that Holly had never been able to understand. Up close and personal, Ursula was bright, chatty, friendly, sometimes even funny. She smiled almost as much as Eleanor and was one of those people who are given to sudden, frantic gesticulation. Provided she didn’t knock the coffee mug from your hand or poke you in the eye – both fairly regular occurrences – her flailings about could be quite endearing. Put her in front of a crowd, however, and she was immediately bleached of all personality. It was like staring at a shop-front mannequin while listening to a recording of the shipping forecast, played at the wrong speed.

After about five minutes of horrendous tedium, Ursula raised a finger and said, “Oh, as you have no doubt noticed, Louise Dillon isn’t here today.”

All around the room, heads swivelled. Holly hadn’t noticed, actually, and took the swivelling to mean that nobody else had either.

Ursula made another attempt at humour. “What are you all looking around for? Do you not believe me or something?”

Everyone looked in her direction again.

“There’s some bad news, actually,” she went on. “Some of you may know that Louise was a keen mountain-biker.”

“Oh no!” someone cried.

From her unfortunate position, wedged in against a wall behind Peter, Holly couldn’t make out who it was.

Ursula frowned in confusion and then realised what she’d said. “Sorry, sorry – is a keen mountain-biker.”

There was general tittering, followed by some embarrassed coughs as people reminded themselves that this was no laughing matter.

“I got a call from Louise’s husband late last week, informing me that she’d come off her bike while going very fast down a very steep hill somewhere in, uh, Wicklow, I think he said it was.”

Someone said, “Oh no!” again. It was an exact replica of the first “Oh no!” Holly wasn’t sure if it was the same person but it didn’t really matter; the comic effect was too much for her. She barked out a guffaw, catching it at the source with her cupped right hand. A few of her colleagues in the immediate vicinity heard her aborted outburst and half-turned in her direction. She stared straight ahead.

“I’m sorry to say,” Ursula went on, oblivious, “that she did a fair bit of damage. A minor skull fracture and a broken collarbone, amongst other things. A broken wrist, for one.”

Gasps were issued. Holly braced herself for another “Oh no!” but none was issued. She breathed a sigh of relief. There was no way she would have been able to hold it together.

“Yeah,” Ursula said. “Pretty horrific. Needless to say, Louise won’t be teaching for quite a while. By the sounds of things, she won’t be doing anything for quite a while. I’ve organised a sub. He should be here any minute.”

Holly rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a fan of subs; they had it easy. Because they knew that they didn’t have to hang around for the long haul, they had the luxury of choosing the persona that they would present to the pupils. If they felt like being Mr or Mrs Cool, they could project that image in the short-term, knowing they’d be long gone before they were unmasked. If they wanted to act like a strict, no-nonsense hard case, they could do so and, chances were, no one would ever discover them crying in their car one lonely Tuesday lunchtime. Just then, a firm knock rat-tat-tatted on the door. Ursula pulled a face and opened it.

A strange man stepped into the room. The sub, Holly presumed. Her first thought on seeing him was that he appeared to be utterly calm. If he was experiencing any new-guy nerves, he was doing a great job of hiding them. He wasn’t smiling exactly, but he looked as if he had only recently stopped and would probably start again any second now. The second thing that struck her was that he was wearing a suit. There was a teachers’ dress code at St Brendan’s but Holly doubted that anyone, not even Ursula, could quote it to any great extent. It boiled down to “No Jeans, No Trainers”. The men, in particular, seemed to find this directive a little vague and often had trouble finding the right tone, clothes-wise. None of them ever wore a full suit; there was an unspoken consensus that suits were overkill. They were, however, given to showing up in jackets and ties, often of dubious pedigree. It was only a short step from there to the fabled elbow patches and this, astonishingly, was a mistake that one or two of them had made. Not only was the newcomer wearing an entire suit, it looked seriously expensive. His tie hadn’t come from Dunnes Stores either, by the look of it.

“Talk about timing!” Ursula cooed. “My last words were ‘He should be here any minute’.”

The sub nodded. “I was listening through the keyhole. Just wanted to make a big entrance.”

Judging by the expression on her face, Ursula seemed to be on the point of taking this literally. Then she smiled and turned back towards her colleagues.

“I’d like to introduce James Bond,” she said when she was sure that all eyes had turned in her direction. This, Holly presumed, was an attempt at humour that was possibly going to be followed by some gentle ribbing of the school’s normal sartorial standards. It earned a couple of chuckles.

“I know,” the newcomer said. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” He did a little What-are-you-gonna-do? shrug.

There was a pause and then a collective gasp as the penny dropped. It wasn’t a joke. He really was called James Bond.

“Wait a minute,” Larry Martin said. “That’s your real name?”

“That’s right.”

“Your real, real name?”

“Yes.”

“James Bond?”

“Yes,” Eleanor Duffy said. “How many times do you want him to say it?” She stepped forward and extended her hand. “You’re very welcome, James. I’m Eleanor.”

He took her hand and shook. “Hi, Eleanor. Nice to meet you.”

“Short notice, eh?”

“Yeah. But that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, subbing? I’m glad to be here. There’s only so much Dr Phil a guy can watch. ‘How’s that workin’ out for yeeewww?’”

This last line was delivered in a reasonably good Texan accent. No one seemed to understand that it was an impression of said Doctor. Holly felt sorry for the guy, although he didn’t seem to be at all embarrassed by the ensuing silence.

“You’ll be glad to hear,” Eleanor said then, “that you won’t be alone on the unusual name front.”

Holly’s toes curled.

“Is that so?”

“It is. Believe it or not, we have a Holly Christmas.”

Peter nudged her in the back, as if she hadn’t recognised her own name. Although she didn’t particularly feel like doing so, she thought she’d better step forward and say hello.

“Hiya,” she said. “Holly.”

“James. Nice to meet you.” They shook hands.

“You know what you should say,” Mike Hennessy said, standing on his toes to make himself more visible from his position at the back. “You should say, ‘Bond – James Bond’.” This drew a few moans. Mike swiftly backtracked. “Sorry. You probably get that all the time.”

“Well, I can’t say that was the first time,” James said cheerfully. “But don’t worry about it. If you’re going to have a name like mine, you can’t expect people not to crack jokes. You must get something similar, Holly.”

“Yeah. But I’m not as nice about it. I usually stab them with whatever’s handy at the time.” She gave him a smile and retreated to her original position.

With the introductions out of the way, Ursula went back to the important business of droning. When she eventually ran out of things to say, those teachers who were taking the first classes of the day took final sips of coffee and brushed past her into the corridor. Holly was one of them. She hadn’t gone very far before she heard rapid footsteps behind her. They belonged to Peter.

“James Bond!” he said as he caught up. “Imagine that. And I thought your name was bad. I mean . . . I didn’t mean bad, I meant –”

“I know what you meant, Peter,” she said.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“James Bond! Imagine going through life being called James Bond! I can’t decide if I’m jealous or not.”

“Let me clear that one up for you right now. You’re not jealous. Or at least you shouldn’t be. I know he lets on that he doesn’t mind the jokes, but I bet you any money he’s slammed a lot of doors in his time.”

“Maybe . . . Right, this is me.” He stopped by his classroom door and peered through the little window. “So peaceful,” he said. “So quiet. And half an hour from now . . . ”

“You’ll be grand,” Holly assured him. “Good luck.”

“Yeah. You too.”

The plan, as ever, was that the first years would gather in the assembly hall where they would be addressed and assigned to their classes by Ursula, the vice-principal Greg Tynan and a small sample of the less intimidating-looking staff. Meanwhile, teachers who were due to take the first classes of the day, like Holly and Peter, would prepare for the onslaught. Holly had done everything she needed to do inside five minutes and spent the rest of the time pacing up and down the aisles. It seemed fairly obvious that James Bond’s arrival would have repercussions for her, but she wasn’t sure whether they would be positive or negative. On the one hand, it was possible that there was only so much name-related hilarity to go around. If so, he would surely be the target for most of it; “James Bond” was undoubtedly a richer source of material than “Holly Christmas”. On the other hand, the presence of another person with a stupid name might merely serve to increase general consciousness that there was such a thing. If she wasn’t careful, she could take a lot of collateral damage.

Her class was due to start at ten thirty, which she took to mean eleven. It was something of a surprise then, when she heard activity in the corridor outside at ten thirty-five. She answered the knock at the door and found Greg standing at the head of what seemed like an endless line of boys.

“Miss Christmas,” he said in a voice that bore no relation to the one he used every day. “I have a special delivery for you.”

Holly made a concerted effort to make her own voice sound bright and friendly. “Great, where do I sign?”

She stepped aside, as did Greg. The boys trooped in and took seats. She kept up a steady stream of “Hello”s and “Nice to see you”s as they filed past. It was amazing, she thought, as she did every year, how much you could tell about them just by the way they entered the classroom. A few sauntered in as if they owned the place. Most came in sheepishly, staring at their feet. One or two almost had to be pushed in by the boy coming along behind them. None of them looked directly at her unless she spoke to them. Even then, they took only the briefest of glances.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Greg said when everyone was inside.

“Thanks,” Holly said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

When the door closed, she turned to her new class. The majority were settled in but a few were still squabbling over the seating arrangements.

“The chairs are all the same,” she said. “There’s nothing special about any of them, so you might as well just sit down in the nearest one. We did have some magic chairs that were worth fighting over, but we got rid of them a couple of years back.”

She immediately regretted this small joke. No one laughed or even smiled and, judging by his dropped jaw, one little boy in the front row seemed to take her seriously (she made a mental note to keep an eye on his academic progress).

“Okay then,” she said when at last everyone was seated. “My name is Miss Christmas” – cue giggles – “and I’ll be your science teacher –”

A hand shot up. It belonged to a mono-browed lump of a lad who looked at least sixteen.

“Yes?”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I know an awful lot about science. Go on – ask me anything.”

He frowned. “No, I mean, seriously, is your name really Christmas?”

“It’s really Miss Christmas, yes.”

“And is it true that your first name is Holly?”

For a moment, she considered denying it. “Yeah. It is.”

“No way.”

“Do you think I’m making it up?”

“No. Suppose not. Do you like Christmas or is just a name?”

There was no real logic to that, but she decided to answer as if there was. “Of course I like Christmas,” she lied.

Another hand went up. This one belonged to a red-haired, freckle-faced boy who looked, she couldn’t help but think, slightly coked-up. His eyes were wild and his fingers didn’t seem to be under his conscious control.

“Do people make jokes about it all the time?”

“Well, not all the time, no, they –”

“Are we allowed to make jokes about it?”

There was something about the way he said it that immediately endeared him to her. Where his predecessor had sneered, this one twinkled.

“No,” she said. “You’re not allowed to make jokes about it. But thank you for asking. Now, that’s enough about my name, we’re not going to get very far if I don’t know what you lot are called. Here’s what we’re going to do. I want you all –”

“My name’s Mickey Hallowe’en.”

This was Mono-brow again. He got a big laugh.

“Okay,” Holly sighed. “Thing one: when you want to say something, raise your hand first. If I’m interested in hearing what it is, I’ll let you know. Thing two: your joke doesn’t really work. My name is absolutely hilarious because ‘Holly’ and ‘Christmas’ go together. ‘Mickey’ and ‘Hallowe’en’ don’t go together. Or am I missing something? Maybe you could you tell us what the connection is?”

Mono-brow glared at her.

“No? Okay then. So we’re agreed: your joke didn’t work and you should never, ever try to be funny again. Now, as I was saying – I want you all to split up into pairs. I’m going to give you a few minutes to have a chat and then you’re going to tell us all about each other.”

This was something she did with every new class and it never ceased to amaze her how unpopular it was.

“I hear a lot of moaning,” she said, raising her voice. “But it’s either this or you stand up and tell us all about yourself – in the form of a poem.” The moaning doubled in volume. “I thought so. Okay, then, off you go.”

The room descended into chaos immediately.

“You don’t have to shout your entire life story!” she called out. “You can just whisper the important bits. All we’re looking for here is your neighbour’s name, what school he was at before now, what his hobbies are, is he married or single, that sort of thing.”

At last, she raised a laugh. She gave them five minutes and then called on the first student, who seemed to get to his feet in slow motion.

“Don’t be nervous,” she said. “We’re all friends here.”

He was a slight boy with a bad haircut and a hangdog look. Holly would have put money on him having bullying problems somewhere down the line. She mentally crossed her fingers, hoping he wouldn’t have a lisp or a stutter. He didn’t.

“This is Dylan Lawlor,” he said, pointing a thumb at his neighbour, who looked absolutely delighted with his fifteen seconds of fame. “His last school was St Mary’s. He’s from Rathmines. He’s into football and swimming . . . uh . . . What was the other thing?”

“Cars,” said Dylan.

“Yeah. Cars.”

“Well done,” Holly said as the boy collapsed gratefully onto his chair again. “Now, Dylan. Your turn.”

Dylan got to his feet. As he did so, Holly couldn’t help but glance at her watch. Ten minutes gone. Nine months to go.

The staff room was always hectic at lunchtimes, but on the first day of a new term it was almost unbearable. Everyone talked at once, each firmly convinced that he or she had the killer anecdote of the morning. The physical and aural chaos was amplified by the endless toing and froing that went on between the tiny kitchen area and the table where lunches were consumed. This combination of excited chatter and frantic face-stuffing always put Holly in mind of a student house on the morning after a party. If there had been a few sleeping bags on the floor and a home-made bong lying discarded in the corner, the illusion would have been complete.

By all accounts, it had been a perfectly run-of-the-mill start to the term. Greg Tynan had a puker. Eleanor Duffy had a crier. Mike Hennessy had an uncontrollable giggler. Almost everyone had identified an obvious troublemaker (or two, or three). Some had picked out favourites too, kids for whom they had already developed soft spots, based on almost nothing but the look in their eyes or the way they said their name. Nuala Fanning, in particular, seemed to be besotted with a lad in her class simply because he’d just had braces put on his teeth and seemed to be constantly on the verge of choking to death (“It was just so cute!” she marvelled).

James Bond hadn’t shown up at the eleven o’clock break, but that was not unusual; the time allotted was so short that lots of teachers used it as an opportunity to grab some fresh air or, conversely, a cigarette, rather than race to the staff room to throw back a cup of bad coffee. Holly had cut short her own visit when Larry Martin started to tell her all about his summer trip to Medugorje. James also failed to show up at lunchtime, however, and that did not go unnoticed. Around the table, a number of theories were put forward to explain his absence. He’d been captured by SPECTRE. He was in bed with a Russian agent. He was getting a briefing from M. As soon as the first of these feeble jokes had been cracked, the situation had been wrung dry of potential humour, Holly thought. She wasn’t surprised to find that no one else shared her opinion. The gags just kept on coming, each delivered with a little more desperation than its predecessor. He was flirting with Moneypenny. He was getting a new gadget from Q. He was fighting with Jaws. He was scraping gold paint off his girlfriend. He was strapped to a table with a laser pointing at his goolies. There was only so much of it that Holly could listen to. She was on the point of leaving when the door opened and in he walked.

Enda Clerkin spotted him first and, being the social H-bomb that he was, quieted the table with a “Shush!” that was considerably louder than any of their speaking voices. The subsequent silence seemed to go on forever.

“Hello, everyone,” James said as he got his lunch from the fridge. They responded with wildly over-enthusiastic greetings. He approached the table slowly, as if awaiting permission to sit down.

“Sit, sit,” Eleanor Duffy said, pushing her own chair aside to make room. “Did you have a good morning?”

“Not bad. They started cracking jokes as soon as they heard ‘Bond’. You can imagine the reaction when I told them about the ‘James’ bit.”

“You told them your first name?” Eleanor asked. “Is that not asking for trouble?”

“They always find out eventually anyway,” James said. “Might as well get it over with. And some of their jokes weren’t bad, I must say.”

Holly was sitting almost directly opposite him. She took a good, long look across the table at him as he sat down, all the while pretending, of course, to be thoroughly absorbed in her sandwich. He was still wearing that same expression, the is-it-or-isn’t-it-a-smile. What was he so pleased about?

“You poor thing,” Eleanor said. “You must be sick to death of it.”

He shook his head and then, at last, broke into a genuine grin. TV teeth, Holly noticed. And TV hair, too. Factor in the nice suit and there was something of the anchorman about him.

“Not at all. As I said earlier, you have to expect a few comments. Especially from kids. And they’re really good about it, usually. I’m sure I have ten different nicknames already but that’s fine by me, so long as they’re not nasty. And they never are. It usually settles down to ‘007’ sooner or later.”

There was widespread nodding.

“I have to ask,” Mike Hennessy said then. “Now, you can tell me to mind my own if you want to –”

“What the hell were my parents thinking?”

Mike nodded. “Well . . . yeah.”

“I wonder that myself sometimes. But it’s pretty simple, really. My grandfather – my mother’s father – was called James. She was very close to him, my mum. He died when she was a teenager and she swore that if she ever had a son of her own, she would call him James. The way she tells it, it was one of those graveside promises, you know, in the middle of a storm. All Wuthering Heights. She didn’t know then, of course, that she would end up married to a man called Bond. Anyone with a bit of sense would have changed their mind, obviously. Not my mum. ‘Stubborn’ isn’t the word for it. I’ve got three sisters, all older than me. My dad knew about this dopey promise and I think he was kind of relieved that he was getting away with it. And then they had one of those little forty-something surprises. He tried to talk her out of it, but she wasn’t having it. They still argue about it to this day, thirty years later. Damn, now I’ve given away my age . . . ”

“You don’t look a day over twenty-five,” Nuala Fanning said and then blushed as she realised that the line had come out with a lot more sauce on it than she’d intended.

James gave her an aw-shucks sort of look and began work on his lunch.

“I’d say you had an awful hard time of it at school,” Larry Martin said. “You must have had the shite kicked out of you every day of the week.”

“Language, Larry!” Eleanor said with a sideways glance at James.

He seemed to be on the point of reminding her that they were none of them children when James dabbed his mouth with a napkin that – Holly couldn’t help but notice – he’d apparently brought with him. He seemed to have brought his own disposable cutlery too.

“Nope. Never once. Just the opposite. It made me kind of . . . popular. I don’t mean that as a boast, I just mean that people liked my silly name. It made them smile. I’m sure you get the same sort of thing, Holly.”

He looked at her over the top of a plastic forkful of mixed leaves.

“Me?” she said and felt immediately ridiculous.

He munched and swallowed. “People must love that, surely? ‘Holly Christmas’? How could you not love that?”

“Holly seems to manage all right,” Larry said. “She fucking hates it, in fact.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes. She seemed to realise, as Holly did, that this particular swear-word had been inserted for purely mischievous purposes.

“I don’t hate it,” she said somewhat weakly. There was general murmuring and snorting. Larry issued a cackle. “Well, you do a very good impression of someone who hates it.”

“And,” Enda Clerkin said, “you’re always in filthy humour around Christmas.”

“More than usual, even,” Mike Hennessy said. That got a laugh.

Holly felt her cheeks begin to burn. “What is this?” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Kick Holly Day?”

“I’m sorry,” James said. “I didn’t mean to start anything.”

She sighed. “To answer your question: yes. People like it. They certainly mention it, anyway.”

“I bet. And – if you don’t mind my asking – what’s the story behind yours? Is there one? Were you born at Christmas?”

“Nope,” Holly said. “No story. Sorry. Christmas. Holly. Holly Christmas.”

“Cool,” James said. “Then again, I love anything to do with Christmas.”

“Really.”

“God, yeah. Love it. Love it. What’s not to love?”

“How long have you got?”

“You really don’t like it?”

“No. I don’t. I really, really don’t.”

“I presume that’s because you get more comments on your name at that –”

“I don’t think so. I mean, that doesn’t help. But I think I’d still hate Christmas if I was called Mary Smith.”

He nodded but not in agreement. “Carols? Turkey and roasties? Giving and getting presents? Seeing friends and family you haven’t seen in ages?”

Holly felt her cheeks flush. “Look, I don’t want to get into it. But it’s not the specifics. It’s this. It’s exactly this, now. You’re not allowed to say anything bad about Christmas. No criticism allowed. I read a quote somewhere: it’s like living in some brutal dictatorship where you have to smile on the leader’s birthday or they take you out and shoot you.”

Larry Martin made one of his infamous nose-noises. Those who had sandwiches on the way to their mouths put thoughts of eating aside for the time being. “Scrooge,” he said when the echo had faded.

“Also,” Holly noted, “you get called Scrooge a lot by morons.” Eyes widened. Gasps were emitted. “Just kidding. Larry knows I love him dearly.”

“I love you too, sweetie,” Larry said.

Holly was impressed, despite herself. He had managed to inject a level of sarcasm that made her own seem positively anaemic.

“If you don’t like your name,” James began, “why –”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like my name,” Holly interrupted. “I said I don’t like Christmas.”

“Yeah, but your name is Holly Christmas. It’s bound to remind you of . . . well, Christmas.”

He didn’t add “Checkmate”, but he might as well have done. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you change it?”

Holly looked right at him. He didn’t seem to be mocking her. His tone had been merely inquisitive.

“I have thought about it,” she said. “But it would annoy my mother. A lot.”

“What about your dad? Maybe he –”

“He died before I was born.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that,” James said. For the first time, Holly thought she saw some self-doubt on his face. But it didn’t last very long. No more than a couple of seconds had gone by before he returned to his default setting, the half-smile.

“One of my best friends is called John Lennon,” he said then. There was a chorus of “No way”s and “You’re joking”s, which he seemed to greatly enjoy. “Honestly. John Lennon.”

“That’s some coincidence,” Mike Hennessy said.

“To be fair,” James replied, “it wasn’t really a coincidence. He was a friend of a friend – actually, a friend of a friend of a friend – and they put a lot of effort into getting us both to the same party, just so one of them could say, ‘James Bond, I’d like you to meet John Lennon’. Which I thought was kind of admirable. The effort, I mean. They didn’t know we were going to hit it off and become proper friends. That must have seemed like a bit of a bonus.”

“We’ll have to get the three of you together,” Nuala Fanning said. “James Bond and John Lennon and Holly Christmas.” She frowned and bit her lip. “Although that doesn’t really work. James Bond and John Lennon are famous names. Holly Christmas is just weird.”

“God, I apologise,” Holly said. “‘Just weird’. How disappointing for you. Maybe I could change it to Marilyn Monroe, would that help?”

“This John Lennon character,” Larry said. “Is he a fan of John Lennon? John Lennon John Lennon?”

James chased some errant morsel with his fork. He seemed at first to be ignoring the question, but it soon became apparent by the slow shaking of his head that he was thinking something through. After he had cornered and eaten his quarry, he turned the shake into a nod and said, “What the hell. None of you are ever going to meet him. So I suppose I can tell you his deep, dark secret. He’s a Beatles nut. He lets on he can’t stand them. Says if you put a gun to his head, he’d admit that McCartney knows a melody when he hears one. Truth is, he’s obsessed with them, like, to the point of madness. And he’s into Lennon’s solo stuff too. He would absolutely kill me if he knew I was telling anybody that. No one can ever know, you know? He’s so embarrassed about it. He was only called John in the first place because his parents were shocking hippies, his dad especially, and, obviously, serious Beatles freaks. You know those old guys you see walking around with a ponytail halfway down their back and three wispy wee hairs on top? That’s John’s dad. He spent the sixties and seventies wishing he was called John and not Frank and, much like my own mother, I suppose, he did the old solemn vow business. ‘If I ever have a son . . . ’ She’s not far behind him. Valerie. Lovely people and all, just lovely, don’t get me wrong. But it’s one of those leave-your-shoes-at-the-door, don’t-hit-your-head-off-the-dream-catcher sort of houses. John pretends he only likes music that was made last week because they’d be unbearable if they knew his secret passion. They’re more or less unbearable as it is.”

“That’s so sad,” Eleanor said, staring into the middle of the table. “Not to get along with your parents like that.”

James was quick to correct her. “No, no. They get on great. It’s just the music thing. And it’s not just them. He doesn’t want anybody to know. And I can see his point. Wouldn’t it be odd if I’d showed up today saying, ‘My name’s James Bond and the big thing about me is, I’m really into James Bond’?”

“Yeah,” Larry agreed. “That’d be like Holly Christmas saying she was feeling jolly. It’d be all wrong. You’d think the world had gone mad.”

There was a ripple of muted giggling. Holly’s right foot started to tap on the floor.

“Tell me, James,” Eleanor said, somewhat over-formally. “What do you think of the movies? Or the books? Have you read the books?”

“I read one, ages ago,” he said. “Diamonds are Forever. Didn’t care for it. Really racist and sexist. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff he comes out with – Fleming. I do like the movies, though.”

“Who’s your f –”

“The new guy. Sorry, Eleanor. I should have let you finish your question.”

“That’s all right,” she smiled. “You guessed correctly.”

“Yeah, Daniel Craig is my favourite. He seems closest to the original character who is, let’s face it, a sociopath. Next is Sean Connery. Pierce Brosnan was pretty good, I thought, but the films themselves were terrible. That one with the media mogul, what was it called, Tomorrow Never Dies? Brutal. Absolutely brutal. Roger Moore started out OK, but he did it for far too long. He was getting really creaky by the end there. Plus, he got the worst scripts of any of them. People always have a go at him for playing the thing for laughs, but he’s just an actor. He can only read the lines they give him. And they gave him some awful toss.”

Holly looked around the table. He wasn’t saying anything particularly clever or insightful, but they were hanging on his every word.

“I thought Timothy Dalton was the best of all,” Mike Hennessy said then, in a small, uncertain voice. He sounded like a man declaring a fondness for crystal meth. Sure enough, he was immediately set upon. As the slurs and counter-slurs were traded, Holly pushed back her chair and went to get some more water. James followed her immediately.

“Listen,” he said. “I hope you weren’t too hacked off with all the name talk.”

“Nah,” she said. “And it was hardly your fault anyway.”

“If you’re sure.” He put the back of his wrist to his forehead and bent his knees. “I know your pain.”

“Liar.”

He was surprised by this; so was she.

“Well –”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that in a nasty way. I just meant that you seem so cool.” She gulped. And then smiled, too quickly. “About the name thing, I mean. You’ll have to let me in on your secret.”

“I don’t think I have one. But if anything comes to me, I’ll let you know.”

His half-smile turned into a whole smile. He had a pretty good one, Holly found herself thinking.

“OK then,” she replied. “You know what, I think I’ll go and get some air.”

“Okay.”

She nodded. He nodded. She left.