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NOT CONVINCED THAT I could persuade the pupils as easily as I had Miss Harnett that I was a credible English teacher, I’d been swotting up from GCSE and A Level study guides for the appropriate exam board since before my interview, hoping to reverse-engineer lesson plans from them. Fortunately I was familiar with all of the set texts such as Lord of the Flies and Macbeth.
And even better luck awaited me in my stock cupboard, nestling in the corner of my classroom. Here I found not only the expected class sets of the books on the curriculum, but also pinned to the wall an outline lesson plan for the whole year. On a small table in the corner stood binders of detailed lesson plans for each year group. My predecessor must have been efficient.
New exercise books, enough to distribute to every pupil, were in the English department’s allocated colour of lavender. My favourite colour was everywhere: in my flat, in my classroom, in the uniform. It was a sign. Things were starting to go my way.
* * *
HANDING OUT THE EXERCISE books to my first class, the youngest pupils, I realised they were even less certain than I was about how the lesson should proceed. These little girls wouldn’t call me out if I got something wrong. They were happy to spend the first ten minutes writing their names in lavish curls and flourishes on the covers of their new exercise books while I drew a map of the classroom layout, noting who was sitting at which desk, so I could start to get to know them by name.
Then I led a discussion about which books they’d read over the holidays and explained how to write book reviews. Their homework for the next lesson would be to write a book review on the best book they’d read during the summer. Relieved that most of them seemed to have read at least one, I realised I’d have to get attuned to the jargon here. It was prep, short for preparation, rather than homework, because as boarders they didn’t do it at home.
Second lesson I had the next oldest class, who were keen to see which book was first on our curriculum – a promising start. Particularly pleased was a cheery auburn-haired girl named Rebecca, though she might not be quite so cheery when she reached the end of Daphne Du Maurier’s book of that name. As per the lesson plan, after distributing the new exercise books and class set of novels, I set them the task of writing an essay in the style of a newspaper report on the most remarkable thing they had done during the summer holidays. They quickly set to work, emitting odd chuckles and gasps as they scribbled away, and I found myself looking forward to marking the results.
Could I really become a proper teacher at last? Perhaps I could. I had the right degree, the teaching qualification, the job. All I needed now was experience. Every teacher had been where I was now, and here I was too, starting to gain experience already. I was on my way. Perhaps taking this job had not been such a reckless idea after all.
* * *
“PERHAPS I SHOULD HAVE specified that I wanted fact, not fiction.” My free period first thing next morning found me sitting at the staffroom table, red pen poised over an open lavender exercise book.
Joe, busy writing the new term dates for the next year in his planner, looked up and grinned. “Why, what have they fobbed you off with? Missions to Mars? A fortnight on Atlantis?”
I laughed. “Might just as well be. A month’s scuba diving in the Cayman Islands. Cruising on a film star’s yacht. House guest of a minor royal in the Scottish Highlands.”
Joe shrugged. “It’s how these kids roll. You’d better get used it.”
He reached over and pulled the next exercise book off the pile I had yet to read. As he flipped it open to the first page, I noticed it was still almost blank, with just a single sentence across the top in a curling hand reminiscent of Cyrillic.
Joe read aloud in a Russian accent, “What I Did in My Summer Holidays – This is classified information. You have insufficient privileges. Access denied.”
* * *
AT MORNING BREAK, I settled down on the staffroom window seat to drink my coffee. I gazed down the winding drive, thinking how clever the landscape architect had been to design such tantalising views from the approach road. The meandering drive offered a different view of the mansion at every turn before the final dramatic reveal of its frontage from the forecourt.
It was equally tantalising for the residents to watch visitors arrive. Lord Bunting and his family must have been kept guessing as each new carriage approached, half-hidden by artfully planted foliage lining the drive. Now, glimpses of pillar-box red flashed in between the trees as a car wound its way towards the school.
“The postman comes a bit late here, doesn’t he?” I said to Mavis, who was sitting at the other end of the window seat blowing on her steaming cup of coffee. The staffroom coffee machine was like a caffeinated geyser, dispensing drinks so hot they were practically gaseous. As Mavis showed me how to work it without scalding myself, she’d referred to it as Old Faithful. “After the famously reliable hot water spout in Yellowstone Park. So at least there’s one thing in the school you can depend on.”
“The postman doesn’t come at all,” she said now, clattering a silver spoon about in her cup, as if to beat her coffee into submission. “First thing in the morning, Postman Joe fetches the school mailbag on his bike from the Slate Green sorting office and takes the outgoing post back after tea.”
“Postman Joe?”
I glanced across to the battered leather armchair in which he sat reading the jobs section of The Times Educational Supplement. He grinned.
“Forgotten me already, Gemma?” He winked and went back to his paper.
“Of course not.” In such a small community, I wanted to be friends with everyone. “It’s just that the vehicle coming through the trees over there looks like a Post Office delivery van. Well, it’s that colour, anyway.”
Just like Steven’s latest acquisition: a plush, silent electric sports car, the type more likely to be found outside a posh detached house than in the car park of a block of small modern flats like his. Steven probably hoped anyone who saw him driving it would assume he had the real estate to match. I’d thought it needlessly extravagant, but I’d long ago given up trying to influence his spending. After all, as he was quick to point out, it was his money, not mine.
I gazed at the red vehicle as it emerged on to the open part of the drive. Mavis was right. It was not a Post Office van, but a red car a lot like Steven’s. As it slowed down to cross the cattle grid, I noticed a light flash behind it, like a speed camera on the motorway. Max must have installed a security device to record the number plates of visiting cars. I pictured Max tracking the stranger’s progress on a surveillance screen somewhere in his underground lair.
Slowly I sipped my coffee, now at drinkable temperature, trying to convince myself that the sight of a car like Steven’s should no longer cause me to panic. I was safe here. Wasn’t I?
Then the car swung into the turning circle at the front of the house, slid into a visitors’ parking space, and Steven stepped out, footsteps crunching ominously on the gravel.
Heart pounding, I leapt to my feet, forgetting about the coffee cup balanced on my lap, and spilled the contents all over my skirt. Chocolate-brown rivulets ran down my legs. I’d never realised a half-empty cup could hold so much coffee.
Joe jumped up and spread his newspaper on the floor in front of me and beckoned me to stand on it. I felt like a dog that had just been swimming in a muddy river. Coffee dripped off me like raindrops from an umbrella in a storm.
“You OK, Gemma? You’re not scalded, I hope?”
“No, it’s not that hot now. It’s just – it’s just that –”
How to explain my alarm without embarrassing myself?
“It’s just there’s someone out there who I don’t want to see. He’s not meant to know I’m here.”
Oriana sidled across from the staff noticeboard where she’d been reading the day’s announcements. She looked languidly out of the window, peering round to see where the visitor had gone.
“Whose father is that handsome man? Must be a new girl’s.”
The front doorbell echoed down the corridor from the entrance hall. Steven must be seeking admittance.
I groaned. “He’s not a girl’s father. He’s my boyfriend, and I don’t want to see him.”
Oriana raised her eyebrows. “Why ever not? What’s not to like? Smart car, expensive suit, good looking.”
I didn’t know what to say. Given half the chance, Steven would mostly likely charm her as he did everyone else. As he’d charmed me too, at first. No-one would ever believe me if I so much as hinted at the truth about Steven.
Mavis drained her coffee cup.
“Not playing away, are you, Gemma? I wouldn’t have put you down as the type to carry on with married men.” She flashed a contemptuous look at Oriana as the doorbell rang again.
“A male visitor? Does he have any daughters with him?” asked the Bursar, coming to join us, morning coffee in hand. It was the Bursar’s duty to buzz visitors in via the intercom in his office, as the budget didn’t run to a receptionist. No wonder Steven was getting no reply. “We’ve still got a few spare places for this term. I’d better go and let him in.”
“Yes, Bursar,” said Oriana. “Go and make yourself useful.”
As the Bursar scurried off, Oriana fetched a hairbrush from her pigeonhole, although her hair looked tidy enough to me.
Nicolette eyed her preening. “Now, Miss Bliss, please behave. He is the boyfriend of Miss Lamb.”
I grimaced.
“Actually, Nicolette, he’s my ex-boyfriend. I don’t know what he’s doing here. He should be in the City at his bank. He’ll have just got back from a long conference in Geneva. I didn’t want him to know I was here, and I’ve no idea how he found out.” I turned to Oriana, trying to make light of my dilemma. “He’s all yours if you want him, Oriana.”
She brightened. “Shall I go and tell him he’s made a mistake and you’re not here?”
Joe laughed. “‘Gemma said to tell you she’s out.’ Won’t that rather give the game away?”
Oriana flashed me a beatific smile. “I’m perfectly willing to create a diversion for you, Gemma.”
“I think Gemma’s already done that herself,” said Joe, pointing at my caffeinated legs.
Fishing a packet of paper tissues from her jacket pocket, Nicolette knelt to pat my skirt dry. “There, now you do not drip on the floor. Now, vite! Vas y!” She clapped her hands to hurry me along, as if I was one of her pupils. “You just have time to change before the next lesson.”
Of course, that should be my priority. Never mind Steven. I’d be a laughing-stock if I turned up in my classroom covered in brown stains.
“A Swiss banker, you say?” Oriana’s eyes shone. “I’m free next period. I’m sure I can find plenty to talk about to distract him. You carry on, Gemma.”
Before I could object, she returned her hairbrush to her pigeonhole, straightened her pencil skirt, and glided out of the staffroom door as if on castors, leaving me to scuttle away like a daddy long-legs to the sanctuary of my flat.
* * *
“SO WHAT WAS ALL THAT about this morning?” asked Joe gently, as we stood outside the Trough waiting for the girls to arrive for lunch.
I pursed my lips. I had hoped to be starting a new life here where people would know me only as me, rather than as Steven’s appendage. In the absence of any better idea, I told him the truth.
“Steven is my ex-boyfriend. I left him because he was suffocating me.”
“Not literally, I hope?”
“No, but he might just as well have been. I realised a few months ago I was no longer my own person. Nor the person I wanted to be.”
Joe raised his eyebrows. “I don’t suppose he took kindly to your departure. What man of taste would?”
I looked away, wondering whether he thought I’d behaved like a child. “I don’t know how he took it. You see, I haven’t seen him since I moved out. I just left him a note to find when he came back from his business trip to Switzerland.”
“So you treated him like the milkman, telling him you no longer required his daily pint of gold top?” Joe looked incredulous. “And you didn’t leave him a forwarding address?”
“No. I didn’t want him to come after me. I thought he’d never guess where I’d gone. He wouldn’t even have heard of St Bride’s. Nor had I, to be honest, until I saw the job ad online.” I sighed. “I can’t believe he worked it out. It’s not as if I left a paper trail. All the correspondence about my application was done online.”
Joe narrowed his eyes, but there was a twinkle in them, as if he was teasing me. “So how do you think he found you? Tracking device? Electronic tag?”
I frowned. “Don’t. I wouldn’t put it past him to have microchipped me in my sleep.”
He grinned sympathetically.
“He’s probably just guessed your email password. That wouldn’t take a mastermind.”
“Oh, but that’s the thing. He insisted we had a joint email account, as he had no secrets from me. In order to apply for jobs, I had to set up another one of my own that he didn’t know about.”
Joe’s smile faded. “It’s one thing to have no secrets from you, but quite another to allow you no privacy. We’re talking about basic human rights here.”
I hadn’t thought of it like that before. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Perhaps he cracked your secret email too if he was keeping you on such a short lead.”
My face must have fallen, because he put his hand to his mouth.
“Sorry, that’s not an appropriate analogy. I’m not for a moment comparing you to a dog.”
“That’s nothing, Steven’s called me much worse. But I still don’t see how he could have found me. I only ever accessed my secret email at the local library.”
“How about your search history at home? I’m guessing you shared a computer. Even if you didn’t use it for your secret email, did you ever use it to view the school’s website?”
I closed my eyes as if that might shut out the truth. “How could I be so stupid! I should have used one of those secret search settings. What do they call it?”
“Incognito. But don’t worry, just tell Max to keep him off the school premises and you’ll be fine.”
“Really? You think Max can keep him out?”
Joe didn’t know how persistent Steven could be.
High heels tapping across the parquet floor heralded the arrival of Oriana, looking pleased with herself.
“I headed him off at the pass for you, Gemma.” She was twisting Steven’s business card between her long varnished nails.
“Whatever did you do with him, Oriana?” I pictured his scarlet car on its roof in a ditch, wheels spinning, after a hefty blow from her strong arms.
“I told him he’d got the wrong St Bride’s and sent him off down the road.”
“There’s another St Bride’s School near here? That must cause confusion.”
Joe laughed and put his hand on my shoulder. “Welcome to our parallel universe, Gemma.”
“Don’t be so stupid, Joe.” Oriana slapped his chest with the back of her hand. “No, there’s a church called St Bride’s a couple of miles away. That’s why the school’s called St Bride’s. We’re in its parish.”
Joe grinned. “The founding governors of the school, in their wisdom, thought the name suggested an educational institution full of unsullied, eligible maidens. A veritable Virgin Megastore of its day.”
Mavis caught the end of the conversation as she strode across the hall to join us. “Yes, the dirty old gits.”
I still needed assurance from Oriana. “How did you convince Steven he might find me in a church?”
Oriana focused on the cuticles of her left hand, pushing them back with the long nail of her right forefinger. “There’s a bookshop opposite. I can’t remember its name, I never go there, but I thought he might believe you would get a job in a bookshop. Some girl works there, and I think she’s quite new.”
Joe folded his arms. “She’s been there at least a year.”
“Even so, I wasn’t telling lies. Besides, it got him off your scent, Gemma, so job done.”
“Oh, charming!” said Joe. “You’re making her sound like a skunk. That’s even worse than me calling her a dog just now.”
Mavis pushed past all three of us to open the Trough door, pausing only to say over her shoulder, “And you, my dear Oriana, are nothing but a fox.”
