The Teacher's Secret (19 page)

There is something at her ear. Something that tickles. Something that makes her shoulder jerk up to stop it, to stop the tickling. A voice, then, a familiar voice.

The tickling is becoming stronger and the voice louder, so loud it vibrates inside her. ‘Up, up,' it says. ‘Get up.'

There is something at her eyes now, too, something that is both pressing on her eyeballs and pulling at her eyelids. What is it? She feels herself blink, and blink again.

‘Hello, Mummy.' Emily is lying on top of her. ‘It's morning, Mummy,' she says.

‘What time?' Nina asks, her voice throaty. With the curtains drawn, the room is night-time black, but when the little girl jumps down to pull them open, it is already light outside.

Looking over at the window, Nina wonders at that: how one moment it can be night and the next it is morning.

And late, too, as it turns out, so late she scarcely has time for a shower. She has one anyway. But God, she's tired. She's so tired her eyes close in the shower and her body twitches her upright when she threatens to topple.

No complaining
, she tells herself as she's getting dressed.
Head up, eyes open, mouth smiling.

It's a big ask, especially as they tiptoe past Steve and make their way to the door. When she looks at him, she becomes angry: angry that he should still be asleep while she, the walking dead, is not. She has an urge, then, to slam the door hard; to slam it hard enough to startle him out of sleep so that he, too, will be as tired as she feels. But she doesn't. Instead, she closes it softly, a finger to her lips so that Emily, too, will stay quiet.

She makes it to school on time, but only just. Almost immediately, she finds Paige is at her door, an expectant look on her face. When Nina looks at her blankly, her face falls.

‘You said to come when the bell went. You said to come
straightaway.' The girl's accent—so broad, so harsh—grates on her, and instead of rushing to reassure her that yes, she has come at the right time, today Nina lets her silence weigh on the child and watches as her brashness gives way to uncertainty.

It is difficult, after that, to get anything out of her.

‘Tell me,' she tries, ‘what did you do on the weekend?'

Paige keeps her head down. ‘Nothin',' she says.

Nina is too tired for this. ‘I'm going to need a bit more than that, Paige. Think back. Did you go anywhere?'

The girl shrugs her shoulders and slumps in her seat.

‘Your weekend. At least two sentences. Now.'

Her curtness forces an answer from the girl. ‘I went to me dad's place and on Saturday we went to the drag racing.'

Drag racing, Nina thinks. God help me.

‘And me dad got plastered so Karen had to drive home even though she didn't want to.'

Nina nods. Keep her talking, keep her talking. ‘And how do you know Karen didn't want to drive home?'

Baulking at the question, the girl looks over at Nina, her chin tilted down, her lips pushed together. Nina nods her encouragement.

The girl takes a deep breath. ‘I knew Karen didn't want to drive home because she said to me dad,
You're a drunk fucker and I'm fuckin' sick of being the fuckin' driver
.'

Leaning back, Nina rubs a finger along her lips. Fair enough, she thinks, she'd asked for that one. ‘So,' she says, ‘if we were to summarise what you've told me, we could say something like this:
On Saturday, I went to watch the drag racing with Karen and my dad. Karen drove us home but she wasn't happy about that.
Is that a fair way to describe what happened?'

The girl lifts her head so she can take a better look at Nina.

Nina gives her a moment before she taps a hand on the table. ‘If you're happy with that as a summary, I'd like you to write it down for me.'

Again the girl hesitates before she opens her exercise book, turns to a fresh page and starts writing. When she is finished, she passes her work across to Nina.

Nina nods as she reads it. ‘That's good,' she murmurs, and when she looks up, she sees that the girl's face is flushed with pride. ‘You've done well,' she adds, pleased. ‘You've done very well.'

That evening, after she's put Emily to bed, Steve rings to say he won't be home for dinner. She doesn't want an argument so she doesn't protest, even though the dinner is in the oven and she has been waiting for him.

When, later, she is in bed alone, she finally lets herself cry; she lets the tears run down the side of her cheeks, lets her nose run until her face is completely covered in tears and mucus. There are no tissues by the bed and, spent now, she is too exhausted even to get up. Taking a corner of the sheet, she wipes her face and blows her nose.
It's okay
, she says to herself.
It's okay, it's okay.
Because tomorrow she'll think of a way to make things better.

Joan

Once a week, on a Wednesday, Joan goes to Brindle Library. It's a small library, and Joan likes that: likes that there are enough books to choose from but not so many as to overwhelm her; likes that there is only one librarian, whose name is Kim and who always greets her with a warm smile. Although Kim is many years her junior, she calls her Joan and not Miss Mather. Part of her wants to be offended by this, but only a small part.

When her mother was alive, the two of them would go to the library in the morning. Only once did they venture there in the afternoon; Joan's mother was so appalled by the behaviour of the schoolchildren, she vowed never again to set foot in the library after 3 pm.

Joan had not been upset by the noise of the children. She had been amused by the snippets of childish conversation trickling past. And now that she is without her mother, she has taken to visiting the library in the afternoon, when it is awash with children. It has become her habit to arrive just before three, return her books,
choose a few more then settle down in one of the lounge chairs at the front of the library. There are floor-to-ceiling windows there and even though the weather is starting to cool, still the sun warms her.

By 3.30, the library is filled with children from the local school, each of them in some variation of blue and white.

A book open in front of her, she settles down to watch them. Today, there are two boys waiting at the counter. Kim isn't there—she must be somewhere down the back of the library—but the boys don't seem fussed; they just slouch against the counter and wait. One of them reminds Joan of a bulldog: his shoulders are wide and square and pushed forward. His head, too, is square, and although his legs are long, his torso is even longer. His friend is half his size: small and skinny with bleached hair that needs a wash and a brush and a cut. His school shirt is misbuttoned so that one side of the shirt hangs lower than the other. The bulldog boy hasn't fastened even one button and his shirt hangs open to show a white undershirt. In her day, students would have been expelled for less.

The little one is still leaning over the counter when he spies a bell on the desk. ‘Hey, Kurt,' he says, ‘reckon we should give this a ring?'

Kurt—the bulldog—puts a large hand over the bell. ‘Looks like a bike bell, eh?'

‘Except you don't give it a flick, you just bang it down.' And to demonstrate, the little one does just that. For a small bell, the noise it emits is surprisingly loud: loud enough to fill the library. This makes them laugh so much they start to snort, bits of spittle spraying into the air. Her mother would be horrified but, to be honest, and although she keeps a serious look on her face, Joan thinks it's funny too. And besides, it has the right effect: Kim comes rushing back to the counter.

When she sees the boys just about doubled over with laughter, her face tightens. ‘This is a library, boys,' she tells them, her voice severe. ‘It's not for mucking around.'

‘They giving you strife, Kim?' Now there's a man behind the boys and he's clamped a hand down on each of their shoulders. Joan can't see his face—he has his back to her—but his voice is somehow familiar.

The little one twists up to face the man. ‘Mr P told us to come to the library for our assignments and that. To get some books and that.' Kurt the bulldog nods hard. ‘Yep, Sid, about planets. That's what it's about: it's about planets.'

The man keeps a hand on each of the boys. ‘Well, I don't know what the ruckus is about then. But I think you should be apologising for the disturbance.'

Joan's not even pretending to read anymore. Instead she's watching as Kim's mouth starts to twitch, as though she herself is trying hard not to smile.

The boys keep their heads down as they mumble something. The man gives them a bit of shake and tells them to look up. They mumble something else, but this time they keep their heads up. Once they're done, the man swings them so they're facing Joan. Embarrassed to have been caught listening, Joan ducks her head and picks up her book. ‘And now you can apologise to this lady here for disturbing her peace and quiet.'

Joan feigns surprise as she looks up. ‘Sorry for disturbing your peace and quiet,' the boys chorus, almost in unison.

Once they've finished, they keep their eyes on her. They are waiting for her to say something, to make a reply. But what? she wonders. For the truth is this: it is for precisely that reason she has
come here—to have her peace and quiet disturbed. And so, as it happens, they have done her a favour rather than a disservice. But she can't actually say that, can she? She needs to think of something more appropriate, something serious. Something like,
Well, I appreciate your apology, boys.
Yes, something like that. So she takes a little breath and lets the words out. Only then does she focus on the man standing between them. It's him, she thinks, her stomach leaping a little, it's him. It's the man from the bakery. The man with the nice eyes. The man who likes chocolate-chip biscuits.

‘Well, hello again,' he says as her pulse quickens; not only has she remembered him, he has also remembered her.

She is surprised to hear herself giggle. ‘Hello,' she says.

Loosening his grip on the boys, he gives them each a gentle slap on the back. ‘Sorry about these two hooligans,' he says. ‘Year 6, too, so they should be setting an example for the younger ones.' But his voice is soft now and as he directs them back to Kim, he cups the backs of their heads in a way that is almost tender.

‘They're all right,' he says, once they're out of earshot. ‘Just a bit energetic, that's all.' He has such a nice voice, sort of slow and calm, a voice that makes Joan feel relaxed; more than relaxed, a voice that makes her feel happy.

He's not speaking anymore but he's still looking at her. He's waiting for a response now, too. Suddenly nervous, she has to swallow before she can answer him. ‘They weren't really bothering me,' she says, her voice so thin and soft she has to repeat herself.

He points to the empty chair next to her. ‘Is that free?' he asks.

When he sits down, she feels her spine straighten as she tries to think of something else to say. He beats her to it. ‘Good book?' he asks, with a nod to the novel on her lap.

Well, she wouldn't know, would she, seeing as she's only been pretending to read it and hasn't got past the first sentence. ‘So-so,' she tells him.

‘I don't read novels as a rule. Information books, that's what I look for. To educate myself a bit.'

She doesn't like information books. She only likes novels: romance or crime, one or the other. The one she's reading is a romance novel; on the cover, a couple is locked in a tight embrace. She wishes she'd chosen a different book now—something less frivolous. She is careful not to lift the book so he won't see the cover.

But he's not even looking at her book anymore, he's just chatting, and it is with some wonder that she listens to him. She's never been much good at chatting. Words have never just tumbled out of her; she practises everything in her head before she says anything at all. She wishes it wasn't like that; she wishes she was a chatting person, like he is. More than that, she wishes she knew him better, she wishes that they were friends.