desperately if perhaps I could set his laser printer to ‘Stun’? My Headmaster’s moods ranged from obnoxious to Satanic. And that was on a good day. His rage, when it came, was tornadic. ‘YOU LEFT YOUR CLASS?!!!’
For the next half an hour, he just went off, like Hurricane Katrina, words pouring out of him instead of rain. He was apoplectic with rage about breaches of Health and Safety. The cords of his neck stood out like cables as he screamed about the risks, the dangers and hazards, the possible outcomes of such a reckless act. I was irresponsible, immoral, immature . . . If it were up to him, he said, he would sack me on the spot. Yes, teachers had to receive three written warnings before they could be fired. But this was so serious that he was going to take it before the Board of Governors and ask them to consider dismissing me immediately.
I should have stood up for myself, but now I simply wondered how I could ever have thought I would get away with it. If I wrote an autobiography it’d be called It’s Time To Take a Good Hard Look at Your Pathetic Excuse of a Life, You Bloody Ldiot.
I kept my eyes on the wall behind him which was painted institutional beige and, as he ranted, found myself pondering what subjects he’d been good at teaching before his inexplicable rise to Headmaster? Cringing and Quaking perhaps? Torture Techniques? My parting gift would be a sign for his office which would read You don’t have to be a misogymstic, misanthropic bastard to work here, but it helps.
After Scroope had ushered me from his sight, no doubt so that he could play some more with his gun collection, I thunked my head against the wall. But the school and all its tribulations might as well have been on Pluto. They seemed so paltry by comparison to the rest of my woes. I had lost my husband’s
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heart. And embarrassed my daughter, which meant Fd practically thrown her into Bianca’s sinister embrace. I had a feeling that the light at the end of the tunnel was from a train. And I was tied to the tracks.