Uptown Girl (11 page)

‘I’m sure we have,’ he said hurriedly. ‘No, the reason I was looking for you was that a year 9 boy told me something rather disturbing.
At breakfast this morning.’

Henry’s face went pale. ‘What did he say?’ she said, her words coming out in a nervous rush.

‘He told me you’ve been setting off explosions in your lessons. It all sounds very unsafe – not the sort of thing that parents would condone. You shouldn’t be putting your students at risk like that.’

Henry heaved a sigh of relief.

‘I take it you’re not a science teacher, Mr Hughes.’

‘No, my subject’s English. Not that I’m teaching it much at the moment. I’ve got five periods a week timetabled but even that’s tough to manage. Why are you asking?’

‘Because if you knew anything about science… Oh, I’m sorry, that sounds rude and I didn’t mean it to.’

Will put his papers down on a lab bench and ran his hand distractedly through his hair.

‘Don’t worry. I’ve only been here for a week but the one thing I’ve learned is that there’s no point in being offended by things that don’t matter. But I’m intrigued to know why I can’t possibly be a science teacher.’

‘It’s simple,’ said Henry. ‘Any science teacher worth their salt does explosions in class. A plastic bottle, some methane gas – that’s all you need. It’s a really easy way to get kids interested in chemistry. And once you’ve done that, you’re away.’

‘It sounds exciting – I’ll give you that,’ said Will. ‘But when you’re running a school you have to consider other stuff. Like keeping your pupils safe. Look, I’m not joking about this. Can you assure me that your lessons are safe? All of them? They sound anything but.’

Henry was deeply offended. She was standing so close to Will that he could see her hazel eyes were flecked with green.

‘Of course they are,’ she said crossly. ‘If you think I’d do anything to put my pupils in danger, well… you couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve got a PhD in organic chemistry and I’m very serious about what I do.’

Will
gaped at her, aghast. Henry Mead’s friendly tone of a few minutes earlier had vanished. His heart sank. If he was going to lift the school’s academic results, he needed to get the teaching staff on his side – not alienate them the moment he met them.

THREE

After being deluged with rain during the first week of term, the school woke up to an Indian summer at the start of the second. Temperatures soared into the high 70s, the pupils were given permission to discard their thick woollen blazers and Tom Oliver, the head groundsman, agreed to open the outdoor swimming pool again.

After a meeting to discuss an alarming outbreak of nits with the school nurse and matrons on Tuesday afternoon, Will decided to stretch his legs and take a walk around the grounds. As he wandered through the French windows and on to the sunny terrace, he felt more optimistic than he had for days. Under his lead, Grace Foley had begun a review of the school’s academic performance, with a brief to work out where the weak areas were and the steps that must be taken to improve them. He’d learned the names of most of the sixth form and quite a few of the younger pupils, four out of five rugby teams had won their weekend matches and he’d launched a questionnaire on the school’s hideous bottle green uniform.

Looking for ways to modernise the place, Will had been inundated with complaints about the uniform. It turned out that a group of fifteen and sixteen-year-olds had even gone on strike at the end of the summer term, refusing to attend lessons for a whole day if it wasn’t changed. If he was honest, Will had a lot of sympathy with them. Even Cheryl Cole wouldn’t look good in the current one. The girls wore unflattering green kilts, matching v-necked jumpers and ankle socks, while the boys were kitted out in black trousers and garish green shirts. The rules also insisted that all the pupils, from thirteen up to eighteen, had to wear ghastly green and red striped ties. The older pupils knotted them at half-mast and the younger ones wore them absurdly short. Will thought it was totally ridiculous. He didn’t even bother with a tie himself most of the time.

Actually, the news that plans were afoot to change the uniform had done wonders for Will’s street
cred. In the days since he’d announced it at assembly, he’d been deluged with supportive emails. Pupils rushed up to him in the corridor to express their enthusiasm and one boy revealed that his friends had been planning another protest unless something was done. A talented sixth form art student had even left a portfolio of fashion drawings outside his office. He’d sent her a note praising her for showing initiative but adding that he wouldn’t get her designs - shirts and drainpipe jeans for the boys and cropped jackets and tiny shorts for the girls - past the governors in a million years.

Now Will stopped for a moment to admire the view across the Oxfordshire countryside. The school stood on a hill overlooking a peaceful Cotswold valley and all he could see were gentle rolling hills, woods and fields full of sheep. The only blot on the landscape was the first fifteen rugby pitch below the terrace. This was something else he was determined to sort out. The rugby players and their parents were bound to be horrified but it was complete sacrilege to let thirty hearty rugby players turn the area into a muddy wasteland every week. And besides, the rugby posts spoiled the outlook. He was determined to dig his heels in and move it elsewhere.

Once he got past the rugby pitch, Will turned and looked back at the school. Built from traditional honey-coloured stone, it boasted long narrow windows on four floors and a row of tiny gables in the roof. There had been lots of additions to the school over the years but the planners had insisted that nothing should detract from the magnificent façade. It really had the wow factor, though Will doubted the pupils appreciated it. To them Downthorpe was just a school. They didn’t give a stuff that it was a Grade 1 listed building. Or that it had been painted by a host of celebrated artists over the centuries.

Will couldn’t
help comparing it to his own secondary school, a 1950s concrete monstrosity in east London, with outdoor toilets and draughty, prefabricated classrooms. But despite the depressing surroundings, the teaching had been top-notch and he’d been inspired to aim high from the start. His English teacher, Bob Baker, had spotted his potential and encouraged him all the way. Will could remember the tears in the old man’s eyes the day he’d got into Oxford. ‘I knew you’d do it, lad,’ he’d kept saying. ‘I knew you had it in you, even when you were a shy eleven-year-old who wouldn’t say “boo” to a goose.’ Will suspected Bob wouldn’t be impressed by his decision to switch to a private school, even if he was running the show. In fact he could just imagine Bob’s caustic comment. ‘It’s all well and good, lad,’ Bob would say. ‘But it’s not why you went into teaching, is it?’

Blinking hard, Will forced himself to focus on the challenge that lay ahead at
Downthorpe. His brain was playing tricks on him. Bob had been dead for nearly ten years now, and he shouldn’t be standing in the sun, daydreaming. He had work to get on with.

From her vantage point in the staff room on the first floor, Grace Foley watched Will Hughes. She was trying to work on her academic review but it was hard to concentrate. The new head was definitely a bit of a catch, she thought. Grace had checked him out on Google and there was no mention of a wife or girlfriend. It was slightly odd that she couldn’t find him on Facebook but maybe he avoided all that social media nonsense.

Her reverie was interrupted by the sound of the door banging shut and a pair of feet stomping crossly across the wooden floor. Grace swung round to see who was making such a racket. Henry Mead, still wearing her lab coat and habitual trainers, was laden down with a stack of box files. Usually one of the more sunny-natured teachers on the
Downthorpe staff, Henry looked livid. She slammed the files down on a desk and took her mobile phone out of her pocket.

‘Are you OK, Henry?’ asked Grace.
‘Bad day?’

Henry was busy checking through her emails. ‘You can say that again,’ she muttered. ‘That bloody man. First he accuses me of trying to blow up the school and now he’s sent an email saying he’ll be sitting in on my first lesson tomorrow.
To observe my teaching. My year 10s are my trickiest group and they’re sure to behave appallingly when they see him sitting at the back. And besides, he could have given me more notice.’

Grace rolled her eyes in sympathy. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Henry. You’re not the only one. He’s observing all of us. Everyone’s up in arms about it. I mean, I know
it’s standard practice but he could have waited a bit. Let the dust settle after Jono’s departure and done the observations later on in the term. The two newly qualified teachers are quaking in their boots.’

‘Poor them,’ said Henry, absent-mindedly scrolling through the rest of her emails.

‘What do you think of him, by the way?’ Grace kept her voice light and casual. She didn’t want to sound like she was interested either way.

‘Who?’

‘The new head.
Will Hughes. I can’t work him out at all. So I just wondered what you thought.’

Henry glanced sharply at Grace. She tried to steer clear of Grace as a rule. Grace reminded her of a ruthlessly ambitious politician. Cool and calm in a crisis, she was always quizzing other people about their views but rarely gave anything away herself. The two women had nothing in common. They taught differently, dressed differently and never mixed socially. And while Grace and most of the other
teachers, lived on the school site, Henry rented a cottage in Buntingdon. The atmosphere at school got far too intense at times and by the end of the day Henry was always desperate to escape.

‘I haven’t seen much of him to be honest. And after the fuss he made about me carrying out explosions I plan to keep it that way.
Apart from him observing my lesson tomorrow. Anyway, what’s your verdict? You’ve seen more of him than me.’

Henry was quietly confident that Grace wouldn’t tell her anything. Sure enough, Grace quickly glanced at her watch and gave a theatrical sigh.

‘Oh God, busy, busy, busy. I’d love to stay chatting, Henry, but I must dash. I’ve got a meeting with the bursar in five minutes. I’m trying to persuade him to buy another couple of interactive whiteboards for the maths department. I’ll catch you later, OK?’

‘Sure you will, Grace,’ Henry muttered to
herself.

FOUR

Will slept badly the night before Henry Mead’s lesson. His brain was so
overladen with problems that needed to be tackled that he’d lain awake for hours, finally falling into a fitful sleep at around four am.

By the time he arrived in the chemistry lab at half past eight the next morning Henry was already immersed in a pile of marking. She briskly handed him a lesson plan and gestured to him to sit at the back. ‘We’re going to be doing a couple of experiments so it’s best if you’re well out of the way,’ she said. ‘And don’t worry, there won’t be any explosions.’

Will glanced at her sharply, unsure whether she was being sarcastic or having a joke at his expense. But before he could find out, the pupils filed in, talking at the tops of their voices. Their chatter died away when they saw him, although one of the cheekier students quipped ‘are you here to retake your GCSE, Sir?’ Actually, the boy wasn’t far out. Will had never got to grips with chemical reactions, energy transfer and the periodic table at school and had been discouraged from taking chemistry GCSE at all. Not that it mattered now. As long as the class was engaged and learning, it didn’t matter if Will couldn’t make head nor tail of it.

Keen to hit the ground running, Henry launched into her lesson at break-neck speed. As the session got underway Will was amazed to find that for the first time in his life he was quite enjoying science. Henry Mead was a good teacher, he thought. She’d got the boys and girls interested in double quick time by demonstrating how to grow crystals and then getting them to do it themselves. The forty-minute class whizzed by so fast that when the bell rang at the end, Will realised he’d been so absorbed he’d hardly made any notes at all.

‘That was an inspiring lesson, Henry,’ he said once the pupils had left. ‘If you don’t mind me calling you Henry, that is.’

Busy preparing her notes for her next lesson, Henry looked up.

‘It’s my name,’ she said drily.

A wave of annoyance swept over Will. He didn’t want staff to be sycophantic, far from it, but Henry was being plain rude. Maybe he’d been wrong about her. His first impression had been of a straightforward, highly committed teacher who, once he got to know her better, he could rely on. Yet today, despite her impressive lesson, she seemed boorish and unfriendly.

‘Fine,’ he said briskly, vowing to keep his distance from now on. ‘I’ll email my lesson evaluation to you by the end of the day.’

Next on Will’s packed schedule was a pep talk to the upper sixth about getting cracking with their university applications. This was followed by two more teaching observations, lunch with one of the governors and a speech to prospective parents. Once he’d got through all that, he planned to escape for the first time since he’d arrived at Downthorpe. With no meetings organised by his PA he was going to get right away and take a nostalgic trip into Oxford. He couldn’t risk popping into the King’s Arms at Buntingdon for a spot of supper. Loads of the teachers and support staff drank there and he desperately needed some time by himself.