by Mandy Baggot
Emily put an ear to the wooden door of the shed. It wasn’t padlocked anymore, but the door was closed. She was sure she had locked up yesterday. She could hear nothing from inside. Was this another case of Alice’s imagination running away with her?
‘Maybe it’s something Newt Scamander forgot,’ Frema suggested.
‘Or something from Hotel Transylvania,’ Matthew suggested.
‘They don’t have vampires in Islington,’ his brother told him matter-of-factly.
‘My mum says she’s a vampire,’ Cherry Wheeler piped up.
There were gasps amongst the group and Emily watched Alice actually grin.
‘She works for the NHS Blood Donation Service,’ Cherry clarified. ‘Did you know, if you give blood, they give you crisps and chocolate and coffee for actual free.’
‘But what if they take too much and your blood runs out and then you die?’ Alice asked her.
‘They don’t take all your blood, stupid,’ Rashid snapped.
‘Thank you, that’s enough, Rashid,’ Emily ordered. And then a bang came from the shed and everyone squealed and drew back a couple of feet. There was definitely something in there.
Emily took a deep breath and prepared to pull at the door. What was the worst it could be? An angry swan with babies it was protecting? Well, it was the wrong time of year for cygnets and they weren’t that close to the river. Other than that, she was really at a loss to what could have crept inside. But standing here, letting her class come up with frightening suggestions was a pointless exercise. She needed them inside, in the warm, giving her ideas for this Christmas show she was in charge of…
‘Right, stand back a bit everyone, I’m going to open the door,’ Emily stated.
‘What, now?’ Alice asked.
‘Right now?’ added Lucas Jones.
‘Yes,’ Emily said. ‘There’s probably nothing even here. Something’s probably fallen down from the tidying we did yesterday.’ She took a breath. ‘OK, here we go.’
Emily grabbed the handle and pulled open the door. Immediately she gasped and fell back as her class screamed simultaneously, some running away, others snapping photos on their mobile phones.
‘It’s a man! It’s a man!’ Felix, a boy who lived with his aunt and uncle announced, running round and round in circles while Emily tried to catch her breath.
It was a man. He was sitting in the shed, surrounded by the sheets she had neatly folded onto the racking yesterday. He had a cotton bag-for-life on his head and what looked like a tea bag hanging from his beard. A down and out in the school shed! Did he really have nowhere better or warmer to be?
‘I know who that is!’ Rashid announced, mobile phone snapping away. ‘It’s Ray Stone. The singer. He’s been all over the news. My mum used to like him, but now she says he’s a drunk and hits girls.’
‘Sshh!’ This came from the man in the shed. ‘Keep your voices down!’
‘I know him!’ Cherry declared. ‘He was on the Royal Variety Performance after Lost Voice Guy.’ She took a photo with her phone.
Emily was so taken aback she was in danger of losing control of this situation. Was this really Ray Stone? He had a thicker beard than usual and he was currently half-sitting, half-lying on a thick pad of gymnastic mats wearing a cotton shopper as headwear. Despite the odd attire, anyone could see he was ridiculously attractive. Emily could certainly see he was ridiculously attractive…
‘Sshh!’ the man said again, struggling to get to his feet. ‘You’re going to frighten her.’
‘He’s drunk!’ Jayden announced. ‘My dad always talks nonsense when he’s drunk.’
‘Stand back, Frema, the news told us all yesterday how he gets when he’s drunk,’ Rashid said warningly to his classmate.
She needed to do something. ‘Year Six, you need to quieten down,’ Emily urged as the man stumbled out from the shed, pulling something out from under his Luther-esque coat.
‘He’s got a gun!’ Rashid yelled. ‘Everyone get down!’
There was screaming and half of her class dropped to the floor in hysterics. She had had enough of this!
‘Listen,’ she said, addressing the man. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing in here, but this is private property. This is a school and I’m afraid you’re trespassing.’
‘I tried to make a splint,’ the man said. His voice was rough, a little like he was trying to hold back a cough. ‘But she wasn’t having any of it. So, I wrapped her up as best I could… and then I must have fallen asleep.’
Was this man delirious? None of what he was saying made any sense. Until Emily saw what had been under his coat, what he was cupping gently in his hand. It wasn’t any kind of weapon. It was a…
‘It’s a hedgehog! Aww! Look, Cherry, it’s a hedgehog,’ Angelica Anderson said, rushing forward, past Emily to the bearded man cradling an animal in his palms.
Her whole class started to surge forward and Emily was pushed closer to the stranger from the shed. He smelt of whisky and oddly enough, Plasticine. His large hands were holding the rolled-up ball of spikes so tenderly, thumbs rubbing over its body. He had large, strong-looking hands…
‘Her leg’s broken,’ the man told Emily. ‘We should call an animal hospital or something.’
‘Aww, can’t we keep it?’ This came from Frema. ‘It’s so cute and we don’t have the stick insects anymore. Do we, Alice?’
‘Is it going to die?’ Alice asked, muscling her way through the growing throng of children keen to see the hedgehog.
‘It’s a wild animal,’ Emily stated. ‘Wild animals need to be in their natural habitat.’
‘Are you really Ray Stone?’ Rashid asked, snapping photos. ‘Because, if you are, you really need to get your beard trimmed, innit.’
‘Rashid!’ Emily exclaimed. ‘Apologise right now!’
To a man who had been sleeping in the school shed. Someone who was trespassing. Had he spent all night in there? She needed to remember who was in charge here. This was already set to be an even more bizarre day than yesterday…
‘And, all of you,’ Emily addressed firmly. ‘Put away your phones. You know you’re not allowed to have them out of your bags in school hours.’
‘But I want to take a Boomerang of the cute hedgehog,’ Frema stated.
‘Before it dies,’ Alice added.
‘What’s its name?’ Matthew asked, seemingly directing his question at the stranger from the shed who may or may not be a singing sensation. Emily was reserving judgement. He looked like Ray Stone but there were a lot of good lookalikes these days and she had never been much of a celebrity spotter. She wouldn’t trust herself to pick Elton John out of a line-up.
‘I told you,’ Rashid said, phone still in his hand. ‘It’s Ray Stone, the singer who won that talent show.’ Rashid did seem super-insistent and the man did have all the singer’s handsome…
‘I meant the hedgehog,’ Matthew said with a tut. ‘What’s its name?’
‘I don’t know,’ the man said. ‘But we should take her inside.’ He looked directly at Emily then. ‘Do you have a cardboard box and maybe a bowl of water?’
What was happening here? Did she really have a pop star and an injured hedgehog in the school shed, both seemingly looking to come into the school building? She was going to get fired if this continued and none of it was actually her fault… unless she had left the shed unlocked. Then it was possibly all her fault.
‘We have loads of cardboard,’ Cherry announced, bouncing up and down. ‘We’ve been making projects. Come on, it’s this way.’ She beckoned the man towards the school. That stranger danger talk obviously really needed repeating again.
‘Hold on a minute,’ Emily said. ‘Listen, we can’t do this like this. Stop moving.’ She held her arms out and leaned forward, her classic move for making the children listen and obey. She didn’t really know why her creating a pose like the statue of Jesus looking over Rio De Janeiro worked but it did.
‘The hedgehog is c
old, Miss Parker,’ Frema said with a sniff. ‘And the pop star looks cold too. Are you cold?’ She studied the man as if she was looking for signs of frostbite.
‘Well…’ he began, voice still a little rough.
He did look cold. Freezing in fact. He was shivering, the hedgehog in his hands bobbing up and down a little with the tremor of his fingers. But he was on school property, they didn’t really know who he was and he smelled like he’d spent the night in a pub not in a supplies shed.
‘Miss Parker! It is cold,’ Lucas said.
‘I’m frozen,’ Jayden agreed.
‘Listen,’ the man who was allegedly Ray Stone said, his words jolting with the shivering vibrations of his body. ‘I’ll go. If you just take the hedgehog and call London Wildlife Protection or the RSPCA or something.’
‘It’s going to die,’ Alice bleated. ‘I knew it.’
‘No one is going to die, Alice.’ Why didn’t she know what to do? Perhaps because this wasn’t in the average teacher’s workday or in any of the university course notes. Common sense. If in doubt, apply common sense.
‘OK, right.’ Emily put her arms down and nodded at her pupils. ‘Everyone into the classroom, get some pencils and paper, sit in your places and draw me pictures of hedgehogs while I work out who to call about its injury.’
There was plenty of cheering then rushing towards the doors to inside. They were supposed to be running through a maths challenge this morning… before she told them about the Christmas play and they all got carried away with things they could do that were beyond their budget and her capabilities.
‘I could carry the hedgehog in if you like,’ Alice offered, all smiles. ‘I promise not to squeeze him too hard.’ She made her fingers into steeples and looked slightly too keen.
‘I think it’s a girl,’ Ray informed her.
‘I won’t squeeze her too hard,’ Alice said.
‘Thank you, Alice,’ Emily said. ‘I’ll take it from here. You go inside.’
Seconds later and Emily was left with the apparent pop star and a hedgehog with a damaged limb.
‘Sorry,’ the man said, body still shaking. ‘For ending up in your shed. I was heading back from… the pub… late, well, you know, early, and I found this one who was walking less straight than me. I headed for the first place I thought might have something to help her and…’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Emily admitted. ‘I mean, you being here is probably breaking a million rules and if Mrs Clark finds out that will be me fired and I really really don’t need to be fired right now. And she wants to fire me. She really would use anything she could. I think a stranger sleeping in the shed would definitely do it.’
‘Sorry,’ the man said again. ‘I’ll go.’ He handed out the hedgehog.
‘Eww! No! I can’t take that. I don’t do… things like that.’
‘Animals?’ the man queried.
‘Well, it’s not really an animal, is it? I mean, it isn’t a cat or a…’
‘Lion?’
‘Quite.’ She was sure she had read somewhere that hedgehogs had fleas. She didn’t want fleas getting involved in the lovely three-coloured striped cardigan she was wearing under her coat. She really should go back to that little shop on Holloway Road…
‘So, what shall I do?’ the man asked.
He had a point. She wouldn’t take it. It needed to be inside until someone came to get it… and she needed to be with her children.
‘Bring it in and I’ll see if I can get you a coffee.’
‘You don’t have to do that,’ the man answered.
‘The way my week is going, if I let you leave without a warm drink, you’ll probably collapse on school grounds and I’ll be to blame and I’ll get fired anyway.’
‘OK,’ he answered, clearing his throat.
‘OK,’ Emily replied.
‘I am Ray by the way,’ he said with half a smile. ‘The singer who needs his beard trimmed.’
‘Emily,’ she introduced. ‘The teacher who needs this job to pay for someone to repair her central heating seeing as her landlord has disappeared off the face of the Earth.’
‘Nice to meet you.’ He smiled and, again, Emily could immediately see why he would be easy-on-the-eye star material even with the un-neat facial hair.
‘Right, well, let’s get this hedgehog inside… just, don’t let Alice touch it. She’s the one in the red hat… with black hair in plaits, looks like Wednesday from The Addams Family.’
‘O–K,’ Ray replied.
‘Believe me, if she gets hold of it, we won’t be needing the London Wildlife Trust.’
Twelve
Ray couldn’t believe he was in a school. When he was of school age, he had spent most of his time trying to avoid going into the place. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been bright, it was that academia simply hadn’t ever interested him. Music was where his passion had always lain and in music lessons, despite his talent in that area, it had been all Peter and the Wolf, introducing the orchestra and understanding scores. That wasn’t his bag at all. His mum had loved to dance, and it was listening to the music she played that had inspired him. Queen. Led Zeppelin. Fleetwood Mac. Those guitar riffs, the composition of the songs, even as a young teen he had been intrigued by how it all happened. How these musicians decided which notes to put together. What worked and what didn’t. His mum had never got to see how he put music together…
Sitting at the back of this classroom now, his hands around a steaming hot mug of black coffee, he began to realise exactly how bad his hangover was. How much had he consumed after the scene at his dad’s flat? He’d been angry and deflated and he had no home to go to. Yes, perhaps, if his platinum card had managed to offer him some sway at the nearest Hilton, he could have holed up in a suite with a dressing gown, slippers and the mini-bar, but the thought of a declined card and the press attention that would have drawn had been enough to keep him walking… until he had stumbled over Mrs Tiggywinkle or… Olivia Colman as the children had named the hedgehog. He shouldn’t have bothered. It was a hedgehog. Natural selection would decide whether or not survival would follow. But he’d looked at the creature, amid his half-drunk stupor, and felt a kinship with it. Two slightly prickly, injured individuals, simply wanting somewhere to stay. And here he was, sitting under precariously placed coat hangers with Christmas tat attached to them, spinning in his vision and catching the light from the window like very basic oddly shaped glitter balls.
‘OK, Year Six, that’s enough thinking time now,’ Emily said from the front of the room, whiteboard marker in her hand. ‘Let’s have some of you tell the class what you do on Christmas Day. Frema, thank you, you can go first.’
These children were all a lot more enthusiastic than Ray had ever been and it was apparent they all had a great deal of respect for their teacher. He wasn’t going to lie. Teachers had never looked like Emily Parker in his day. Even at ten years old, if he had had a teacher that looked like Miss Parker, he might have been a lot more interested in study. But there was something ultimately serious and restrained about her. As good as she was with the children, there was something else going on. Perhaps she had really meant it about being worried for her job. Even in his position he could totally empathise with the whole ‘running out of cash’ scenario. He had no idea how he was going to settle up with Dr Crichton if he had to go through with this operation. Or actually how much each consultation was costing his account…
‘Well, my dad is Jewish, so his religion doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but my mum is Christian and she does. My parents want me to choose my own religion when I’m older, so we practise bits of both religions. We have a Christmas tree and we have presents and lights and sometimes I go to church and sometimes I go to the synagogue. I like doing both things.’
‘Thank you, Frema. Rashid.’
Ray took a sip of his coffee and watched on. It was strangely nice just sitting here in the calm, listening to the children talk. He wondered how long the wild
life sanctuary would take to arrive…
‘I’m Muslim, Miss,’ Rashid said. ‘You know that.’
‘I do know that, Rashid. But I also know that you have before, taken some time during the school holidays in December to visit some of your family you don’t usually get to see, so why don’t you remind the class of that?’
Miss Parker was no nonsense. She also had quite striking eyes and a quirky dress sense. No, quirky wasn’t quite the word, ‘individual’ was a more accurate description. She was wearing a dark green corduroy skirt with little brown boots and a striped top. It was smart but also playful… God, either there was something in his blood stream he didn’t remember taking last night or there was something in the coffee.
Rashid sighed heavily and rolled his eyes for good measure. ‘We all get in the car and travel to Birmingham and my nan makes horrible food which we pretend to eat and then we get McDonald’s on the way home.’
Some of the children laughed.
‘That sounds better than my Christmas,’ Nathan piped up. ‘My mum and dad are both in the police so they always have to work. And my Auntie Ann is a vegetarian so all I get to eat is fake turkey.’
Ray was beginning to realise that his Christmases up to now hadn’t actually been that bad. Granted, his dad ordinarily found something to have an argument about, but the food had always been plentiful and he’d got good gifts. His mum had even bought him his first guitar. He still had that. Well, Gio had it, in whatever storage unit his stuff was now in. He needed to get Deborah on to that. Christmas with Ida, however, had always been less upbeat. She had never been a Christmas person. She blamed her mother. She had blamed her mother for a lot of things. They had had that in common, mothers who weren’t perfect. But that wasn’t exactly something to keep you in a relationship, was it?
‘What are you doing for Christmas, Ray Stone?’ Rashid asked loudly.
Hiding out at the back of the room, enjoying blending in amongst the collages of bonfires from the History of Guy Fawkes board, keeping an eye on Olivia Colman who had snuffled at the water they’d put in the cardboard box, he’d forgotten he was in the midst of a lesson, an interloper into their routine…