One Christmas Star

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘Emily,’ Alegra said, using her ‘addressing the accused’ voice. ‘You do realise you’re not talking to one of your schoolchildren, don’t you?’

  She knew that, but she also knew that her class knew the difference between pencil and permanent marker, although, to be fair, not always the difference between a tissue and a jumper sleeve…

  ‘Sorry,’ Emily said. Why was she apologising? Apologising gave the other person power. Alegra had taught her that aged six when she had said sorry, on instinct, to a boy who had barrelled into her at the exclusive soft-play centre for professionals who didn’t want their children to mix with children in soft-play centres not for professionals – ones that didn’t have a waiting list, hand sanitiser or a parents’ lounge area that served caviar blinis.

  ‘A week on Friday. 7 p.m. the usual venue. Don’t be late.’

  Emily grimaced. The usual venue was a very upmarket cocktail bar with sharing platters that cost more than a family of four’s weekly shop. An ordinary family of four, not a family whose children went to the exclusive soft-play centres. It was nice in some ways, all dim lighting and bare lightbulbs on ropes with larger-than-average filaments, subtle piano music and mixologists with subtle beards, but it was like being part of an artsy film set. Emily much preferred cosy and soft to expensive and pretentious. She had once wondered if she had been swapped with another baby at the hospital and somewhere in London was a twenty-something female in a bedsit wondering why she couldn’t afford the Prada she felt formed part of her soul…

  ‘Did you hear me, Emily?’ Alegra repeated.

  ‘Yes. A week on Friday at seven.’

  ‘Right, got to dash. You know how it is.’

  Yes, she knew. All about Alegra. She never even asked about Emily. Her life had been pretty much inconsequential to her parents since she turned down law school. It jarred a little, more so at the time, but jarring was comparable to not owning her choices.

  ‘It was nice to—’

  Alegra cut her off literally, by disconnecting the call, and Emily was left looking at the receiver in her hand. Oh well, sometimes predictability was comforting. She returned the phone to its dock and looked around the lounge, taking in Jonah’s Christmas decorations anew. She supposed the small chains of silver stars weren’t that bad. Her eyes went back to the photo of Simon. He would have liked the new decorations, simply because Jonah had bought them to cheer her up. Maybe they should stay after all.

  Ten

  Stretton Park Primary School

  It was officially freezing, a full-on frost coating the playground as Emily wrapped her glove-clad fingers around her coffee mug. There were a whole collection of children running from one length of the Tarmac to the other, sliding like they were ice surfers, despite her warning them of the dangers. She had gone out with one of the bags of salt saved for these occasions in a bid to alleviate the worst of it, but it was still considerably slippery. Still, kids would be kids. Her breath was visible now, like it had been in her Arctic apartment when she woke up. Today the boiler was refusing to do anything – no lights on the panel, no pipes groaning – and if the shower was as cold this evening as it was first thing, she was going to have to call her landlord every hour until he was compelled to pick up.

  ‘Cola bottle?’ Dennis asked, a brown paper bag arriving in Emily’s face.

  ‘Eew! No! I mean, no thank you, Dennis. Not this early.’ Emily put her mouth to her coffee mug and virtually inhaled the rich creamy goodness like she had digested a much-nicer sweet by suggestion alone. She turned back to him. ‘Is that really your breakfast?’ That sounded a bit judgemental for someone who had only eaten half a crumpet because she’d run out of margarine to coat the whole of it. She’d pop into Sainsbury’s on her way home and see what Taste the Difference meals were on special offer. Or maybe there would be some marked-down expensive cheese…

  ‘Of course not,’ Dennis answered. ‘This is my…’ He pushed up the sleeve of his Parka coat to check his watch. ‘I was going to say nine-ses but it’s not quite nine yet so, early morning interlude shall we say? Mother made me leftover corned beef hash with two fried eggs this morning. You were meant to go to work on an egg back in Mother’s day.’

  Emily had to admit eggs did sound good. She did like eggs, particularly scrambled eggs. She hadn’t had them in ages. Simon used to… She urged her brain to stop. She really did have to stop every instance relating back to something Simon had done/made/vaguely once referred to. She was noticing it far more now Jonah had called her out on the whole ‘living in the past’ vibe. She knew Jonah meant well but it wasn’t that easy to move on. It wasn’t as if Simon had just got bored one day and dumped her for a Holly Willoughby lookalike. Although Simon had liked Holly Willoughby. Emily wasn’t simply recovering from a broken heart, she was trying to recover from a broken life. A future changed in an instant, her long-term boyfriend of two years killed just like that. There had been no warning, no chance to say goodbye or hold his hand and whisper how much she loved him. Just a policewoman at the flat, telling her the news and offering her a Murray mint. Surely everyone’s grieving timescale was different… and a year wasn’t really that long, was it?

  ‘Mind you,’ Dennis continued. ‘In my mother’s day, people actually went to work on trams.’

  ‘How old is your mother, Dennis?’ Emily asked him.

  ‘Eighty-five years young in January.’

  ‘Goodness!’ Emily exclaimed. ‘She’s very… mature.’

  ‘She’s a miracle, is my mother. Still got all her own teeth, own hair and her own hip and knee joints. She’ll probably outlive me.’ He shoved another palm full of cola bottles into his mouth and chewed. ‘She’ll probably outlive you.’

  ‘She probably will,’ Emily said, sighing. ‘If Susan has anything to do with it.’ Her attention was then drawn away from Dennis and his sweets, to a corner of the playground that had darkened from a line of red-faced children skidding across the icy terrain to an ominous huddle. She took a step forward, eyes seeking out any familiar heads of hair or stand-out coats of members of her class. Was that Jayden at the centre of it?

  ‘Could you hold my coffee?’ Emily asked, handing Dennis her mug.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Dennis wanted to know as Emily walked away from him. ‘I was going to tell you about my mother’s other secret to longevity!’

  Emily could hear about how you got to eighty-five later; right now she was intent on finding out what was going on in this close collective that was verging on appearing a little sinister in the misty half-light. As she neared, the raised voices were in complete contrast to the whoops of delight from ice sliders and some girls skipping and singing ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’.

  ‘I said that isn’t yours.’ That was Rashid’s voice, taunting.

  ‘Well, it ain’t yours either.’ Definitely Jayden. Emily quickened her pace, wanting to head off this situation before it escalated.

  ‘You don’t have money for football cards,’ Rashid continued. ‘You don’t have money to even wash your hair.’

  The group laughed and Emily felt her insides turn nuclear. Horrible little brat. But she had to maintain some level of teacher decorum.

  ‘And what’s going on here?’ she asked, slipping in between twins Charlie and Matthew from her class and facing Rashid. ‘Talking about the football at the weekend? Who’s playing?’ She had limited knowledge about football apart from the names of the teams and a few of England’s key players… the men and the Lionesses.

  No one answered her. The group of four all look decidedly sheepish, eyes now on the ice-covered floor. Emily willed Jayden to look up and tell her what this was about. If he said that Rashid was being unkind, she could take some sort of action.

  ‘No one watching the football?’ Emily asked. ‘Who is your favourite team at the moment? Is it Chelsea?’ She forced a smile.

  ‘You don’t choose a favourite.’ Rashid had raised his head now and was all but snarling at he
r. ‘My Dad supports West Ham, so I support West Ham.’

  ‘I support Fulham, Miss,’ Charlie piped up, snot bubbling from his nose.

  ‘I don’t,’ his twin answered. ‘They’re rubbish. I support Arsenal.’

  And then Emily saw something. Just poking out of Rashid’s coat sleeve was a glimmer of silver. Was this what he was goading Jayden about?

  ‘What’s that in your hand, Rashid?’ Emily asked him.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Rashid, I can quite clearly see you have something in your hand, and I would like you to show it to me, please.’

  ‘I don’t have to do that. My dad told me.’ Rashid adopted a smug look she had seen once too often in her classroom. It seemed he and his parents knew the school protocol handbook off by heart and weren’t afraid to pull out sections of it whenever it suited them.

  ‘It’s a football card, Miss,’ Matthew informed, his finger curling around a piece of his ginger hair poking out from underneath his woollen hat.

  ‘It’s Jesse Lingard,’ Charlie added. ‘A superstar limited edition Match Attax card.’

  ‘Oh really,’ Emily said, really none the wiser. ‘I would love to see that, Rashid.’ He had challenged her authority once, but would he really dare to do it again?

  ‘It’s not Rashid’s card,’ Matthew said boldly.

  ‘Really?’ Emily said. She was saying ‘really’ a lot and she wanted to get closer to Rashid and intimidate him a little. However, she had to remember he was only ten, and in her care and she was a teacher with a strong set of morals and guidelines to adhere to. She also wasn’t good at being intimidating and she didn’t relish confrontation. Apart from that one time when she and Simon evaded concert security blocking a shortcut to one of their favourite eateries after a show…

  ‘It’s Jayden’s card,’ Matthew stuttered a little, eyes roving to Rashid.

  ‘It can’t be his card,’ Rashid erupted. ‘They’re rare. You don’t find them in ordinary packets. And he said he had Leroy Sane too and he’s a gold card.’

  ‘I see,’ Emily said, her gaze falling on Jayden now. Jayden’s head was still bowed, looking at his very scuffed black trainers. They weren’t meant to be allowed to wear trainers to school, but Emily had long since suspected they were probably the only shoes Jayden had. It was obvious Jayden didn’t want to engage in this conversation at all. He seemed to have run out of energy for even standing up for himself in the playground and her heart ached for him.

  ‘Jayden,’ Emily said softly. ‘Is this your card that Rashid is holding but refusing to show me?’ If Jayden confirmed it was his she was going to wrench it from the arrogant little bully and get him cleaning the whiteboard at lunchtime after she had written today’s lesson planning in bubble writing and deeply coloured it in using all available space. Jayden was still, unmoving, unspeaking.

  ‘It is his, Miss.’ This came from Matthew. Brave little Matthew who she had just about differentiated from his brother by the fact he did love to play with his hair.

  ‘Rashid,’ Emily said, her tone no nonsense. ‘Give me Jesse Lingard right now.’ She held out her hand and beckoned with her fingers. If he dared to not give up the football card immediately, she would be sending him to Susan Clark before lessons even began.

  She glared at the boy, watched the defiance dying in his dark eyes. He very reluctantly slipped the card down from the sleeve of his coat, into his hand and curtly plonked it in Emily’s palm. She looked at the card. It wasn’t much to write home about for a so-called ‘rarity’. It wasn’t even a particularly flattering photo of the England player…

  ‘Right,’ Emily said, looking up at Rashid, Matthew and Charlie. ‘Mrs Rossiter is just about to blow the whistle, so I suggest you pick up your bags and line up.’

  ‘But there’s five minutes until we have to go in,’ Rashid complained.

  He was really testing her nerve this morning and she hadn’t drunk enough of her coffee to be mellow yet. ‘Rashid,’ she half-hissed. ‘I’ve asked you to line up… now line up!’ She’d shouted. Reasonably loudly. Loud enough to draw attention from the group of children who like to poke at worms with sticks. She cleared her throat and calmed. ‘I’ll be taking you inside as soon as the whistle goes.’

  Jayden picked up his bag and went to make a move too, but Emily stopped him. ‘Not you, Jayden.’ She waited for the other three boys to leave them before she said any more. Jayden’s chin was still resting on his chest, the top of his head the only thing at Emily’s eye level. He really did need a shot of self-confidence from somewhere. He wasn’t the brightest student in her class but, equally, he wasn’t the least academic. Given a chance, and a bit of a helping hand, she was sure he could find his way to achieving more than average at secondary school.

  ‘What’s going on, Jayden?’ Emily asked him. ‘We talked about Rashid yesterday and I thought you were going to tell me if he was mean to you again.’

  Jayden didn’t respond or even lift his head. This wasn’t good at all. Yesterday he had seemed much brighter. His dad had a job. The ‘What Christmas Means to Me’ project was almost complete…

  ‘Jayden, is this football card yours?’

  No response.

  ‘Jayden, I don’t want to get cross with you, but you need to look at me.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Jayden, come on, I want to help you.’

  ‘You can’t help me, Miss.’ Finally, he lifted his head from his view of his trainers and Emily took a sharp breath inwards. Jayden had a huge painful-looking red bruise on his cheekbone. She swallowed. She mustn’t jump to conclusions, but she was already seeing Mr Jackson and his more-than-ready fists…

  ‘Jayden, what happened to your face?’ Emily asked him.

  ‘I fell up the stairs,’ Jayden said robotically. ‘I was running. I shouldn’t run up the stairs. Especially when it’s icy. My mum’s always telling me not to run.’

  It was so practised, Emily winced. She needed to speak to Susan about this. That’s all the power she had. To raise her concern with the headmistress again. Not that that had changed anything the last time.

  ‘Jayden,’ Emily said. ‘You know, if someone did that to you, you know, if it wasn’t the stairs, you can tell me.’

  ‘I fell up the stairs. I was running and…My mum is always telling me not to run.’

  This was getting her nowhere. Jayden would no doubt keep blanking this out until she stopped asking. She held up the football card. ‘Is this yours?’

  Jayden nodded. ‘My nan came to visit. She got them off of eBay.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Rashid that?

  ‘He doesn’t believe anything I say.’

  Emily nodded. ‘Well, Jayden, I believe what you say and, like I said before, if you have any trouble from Rashid or anyone else in the school, you come to me.’

  ‘My dad says no one likes a grass.’

  ‘Your dad isn’t here at Stretton Park. And telling me that someone is being mean to you, isn’t being a grass,’ Emily assured. ‘OK?’ She needed to get this point across. She couldn’t be present in every corner of the school every day protecting the weaker children and she really shouldn’t have to be, but she was a realist.

  ‘OK,’ Jayden said, the words not really filtering into his eyes.

  ‘Here,’ Emily said, handing Jesse Lingard over to him. ‘Maybe it’s better if you keep the football cards at home.’

  Jayden accepted it and slipped it back into his pocket just as Mrs Rossiter blasted the whistle to indicate it was time for the children to line up to go into the school building for lessons.

  ‘Miss Parker! Miss Parker!’

  Emily turned around to the calling of Alice Monroe. Alice was a bright girl in her class, always neatly turned out with her dark hair in plaits and polished Clarks shoes. She did have an odd fascination with death though. Like the time she took the class stick insects home and they all died except one, who Alice attributed the blame to…

  �
�What’s the matter, Alice?’ Emily asked as the girl got to her, cheeks pink, hat falling off her head.

  ‘There’s something in the shed… like a ghost… or a badger or something.’

  ‘The shed?’ Emily put a hand to her head. Her class had been working in the shed last thing yesterday. They’d tidied it up and were preparing for it to be part of the Christmas bazaar. They were going to be dispensing hot chocolates and homemade shortbread for £1 a time to raise funds as part of their class initiative. How could a badger, or anything, have got in there? She’d padlocked the door herself and, although the wood had seen slightly better days, there were no gaps even the smallest of animals could have squeezed through, was there?

  ‘The padlock wasn’t on the door,’ Alice announced. ‘And there was shuffling.’

  ‘Shuffling,’ Emily said. ‘What kind of shuffling?’ She didn’t really believe she had asked that question. Were there different kinds of shuffling?

  ‘Like something’s half-dead,’ Alice replied, bottom lip trembling a little.

  ‘Miss Parker!’ It was Susan Clark’s voice now and Emily looked across the playground to where her children were lined up ready to go in. They were the last class to still be standing on the freezing Tarmac, their combined breath creating a blanket of mist.

  ‘Miss,’ Alice said pleadingly. ‘What if it’s a half-dead body of a badger?’

  ‘OK,’ Emily answered. ‘Listen, we’ll go inside, we’ll do the register and then we’ll come straight back out and check out the shed, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Alice replied. ‘I’ll tell everyone to bring their phones. I’ve not seen a half-dead badger before.’

  It seemed today was going to be just as wonderful as the day before.

  Eleven

  This was ridiculous, but she couldn’t leave the children unattended and she wasn’t going to tell Susan something was nesting in the shed. The Head’s opinion of her was pretty low as it was. And gone were the days when schools had janitors they could call on to help with this sort of thing. The cleaner only came every other day now.