by Laura Tait
Then he whips it out.
An afro comb.
He stabs the implement sideways into his hair and sulks out of the room with a limp.
Flustered, I follow him, asking Ms Prichard to cover while I shadow Kenny through the door. I’m soon accelerating into a jog, striding past the toilets before going back on myself to inspect the cubicles. No sign. I shuffle outside onto the concrete yard where the pupils spend break and lunch, and that’s where I spot him, in the far corner, crawling underneath a wire fence that has come loose at the roots. He’s walking towards four or five older boys. They’re wearing baggy jeans and most of them have at least one hand tucked into their pants, and they greet him with a mixture of elaborate handshakes and simple nods. I watch them slope off away from the school grounds, and in that moment resolve to make Kenny Sonola my first pet project at Whitford High.
When the last of my year nines has disappeared I fall into my chair with a tired breath. If I’d been teaching years seven or eight, the room would smell of sweat; a lot of eleven- and twelve-year-olds haven’t been introduced to Lynx yet. But once they get to thirteen and fourteen they leave behind a whiffy amalgam of celebrity perfumes, marker pens, fake tan and lethargy.
‘I can’t stop thinking about what happened with Kenny before,’ I tell Ms Pritchard.
‘It was hardly your fault,’ she consoles in a melodic Irish accent that makes everything she says sound like she’s tucking you into bed. ‘That boy’s got issues.’
It turns out that at the age of fourteen Kenny already has as many letters after his name as I do. Kenny Sonola SEBD SAP, to give him his full title. Which means he has Social Emotional Behavioural Difficulties and is on the School Action Plus programme. Ms Pritchard doesn’t know much about his home life, other than his mum died when he was young and he’s spent some time in care.
‘You know what I thought when he put his hands down his trousers?’ I say. ‘I thought he was going to pull out a knife.’
‘So did I – that’s what anyone would have thought.’
I was too caught up with everything to notice yesterday, but her wavy auburn hair, pale skin and constant smile give her a beauty that’s enhanced by the fact she seems oblivious to it.
‘Yep, and that’s my point. He’s black and he’s not engaging in class so he must be a wrong ’un. I saw him outside with some other black boys and instantly I thought, He’s in a gang. I can’t believe I’ve fallen into that way of thinking.’
‘You’re being too hard on yourself.’
Ms Pritchard places a comforting hand on my forearm and I thank her with a dejected smile. She crouches for her handbag and in doing so a scarlet thong inches ever so slightly over the back of her trousers. It’s hard not to stare. She doesn’t seem like the type who’d dispatch such an overt sexual gesture, but then if my boxer shorts were on view above low-riding trousers, I’d know about it, wouldn’t I?
‘I guess I’ll see you later then,’ she says, grinning as I hold the door open.
Then I’m on my own, and suddenly I don’t feel so tired or weary or hungover.
The DLR to Greenwich is sliding into the station and I’m sidestepping towards where I think the doors are going to stop when I’m distracted by a female voice.
I swivel round and . . .
‘Ms Pritchard – I didn’t know you got the—’
We step onto the train together.
‘Please, call me Cassie. Short for Cassandra but I only get that when I’ve been bad. I guess you’re Alexander when you’ve done something wrong, right?’
She chuckles to herself while I try to recall the last time anyone called me Alexander. Several years at least.
For a moment I imagine her hair strewn across my chest: we’re in bed together, her head is resting on my shoulder and it’s the morning after the night before, a night in which she called me Alexander numerous times.
‘Alex!’ she calls, waving her hand in front of my face as we pull into Cutty Sark. ‘I’m getting off here.’
The train is just gathering speed again when a hooded boy who got on with us at Deptford Bridge turns around.
‘All right, Alex.’
Gareth Stones allows a piece of chewing gum to hang from his lips.
‘You shagging Ms Pritchard, are you?’
Chapter Twelve
HOLLY
‘So have you and Richard had The Talk yet?’
I peer around the office to make sure no one is listening in to my conversation.
‘Shit off with your TALK nonsense, Susie,’ I whisper forcefully into the phone.
‘But when is—’
‘Why don’t you ask him yourself at Chloe’s wedding?’ That shuts her up for a second and a half.
‘He’s coming?’
‘Course.’
‘As in coming coming, or as in your-birthday-meal coming.’
‘Coming coming. Now I have to go – I can’t talk about this here. Love you, bye!’
She returns the sentiment and I hang up.
So, Richard and I have never had The Talk. The talk most of my mates think is necessary to promote their bloke from This Guy I’m Seeing to My Boyfriend.
They obsess about it for ages, meticulously plan the time and the place they’re going to have it, practise the conversation in their head thirty-two times then breezily ask . . .
‘So, where do you see this going?’
Then hold their breath while waiting for confirmation that this is a relationship, or a stammering no-eye-contact assertion that This Guy They’re Seeing isn’t really looking for anything serious with anyone right now.
Or that he thinks she’s awesome but he’s just found out that his company is about to move him to its Dubai office for two years and he leaves next Tuesday. Jemma doesn’t know I saw the guy who told her that buying wine in Waitrose a month later.
Anyway, I’ve never bought into The Talk. I’ve never got to a stage when I’ve felt like I needed it, which is lucky because it sounds as much fun as poking my own eye with a rusty compass.
At school it was easy – you were the rightful owner of a boyfriend after the conversation:
‘Will you go out with me?’
‘Yes.’
Then Max saved me from any fleeting worries that we might need The Talk. Three weeks after we met, I overheard him on the phone telling his mate he was out with his girlfriend. I panicked for a second, looking around to see where this girlfriend he spoke of was, before I realized it was me.
But how can Richard refer to me as his girlfriend when the whole idea is that no one knows? Still, I’ve never felt the need to resort to ‘So, where is this going?’. But ever since my birthday dinner, Susie has taken to calling me daily to convince me otherwise.
Leah inadvertently started it after her husband Rob let slip that Max had a new girlfriend, Felicity, so she elbowed him to shut him up.
Rob and Max are best friends. Leah and I met them in the student union and, six years later, while Leah and Rob were getting married, Max and I were breaking up. Literally at the wedding. We looked at Leah and Rob, looked at each other and realized that there would never be a time when we could stand there and promise to be together for ever. It was pretty amicable. We don’t stay in touch but I let him share custody of Leah and Rob without him having to dress as Spiderman and scale a tall building.
‘Oh, sorry.’ Rob looked embarrassed.
‘Don’t be silly – why would I care if he has a girlfriend?’ I meant this. ‘The break-up was mutual.’
‘Yeah, but no one likes to lose the race,’ Susie joined in, as she beckoned the waiter over. ‘I’ll have another vodka, soda water and lime, please. Fresh lime – not cordial. Thanks.’
‘Um, lose the WHAT now, Susie?’ I asked once the waiter had disappeared again.
‘You know – after a break-up. Everyone wants to be first to get with someone else.’
‘Firstly, that’s crap, Suze – there’s no race. And apart from anything el
se, I’ve been with Richard for nine months.’
I won the race by a mile. I could have stopped and danced the Macarena at the halfway point and still Max wouldn’t have caught up with me.
‘Yeah, Susie.’ Leah smiled encouragingly at me. ‘She has her thing with Richard.’
‘Um, can we really class her and Richard as an actual thing, though? No one apart from us even knows they’re together.’
‘How come?’ asked Jamie, Susie’s new man. He’s her usual type – sweet, amiable, easily walked over.
So far, we like him. By we, I mean me, Leah and Rob. And Susie tolerates him, so that’s promising. It was touch and go when he offered her half his butter-laden garlic bread. Seriously, dude? Tempting her with an amalgamation of carbs AND fat? The rest of us stopped breathing for about a minute while she glared at him. But we got past it, and I feel like we’re all closer for it.
‘So let me get this straight,’ said Jamie, once I’d filled him in. ‘He’s never met your mates, you’ve never been on holiday together – in fact, you rarely go out together – and the first three months of your, um, relationship, you only ever slept together at work.’
‘Yep. What’s your point?’
‘It just seems—’
‘And don’t forget that Suze and I still have the “Sooooo, what do you think of Jamie?” conversation to come later.’
‘No point. Just making sure I’m following.’
‘Have you had The Talk?’ asked Susie, before I had a chance to change the subject.
‘What talk?’
‘The one in which you establish you’re boyfriend and girlfriend.’
‘Well, no – we were going to, but then we remembered we’re not fourteen.’
‘Yeah, and why would he be sleeping with her if he wasn’t serious about her?’ added Leah.
‘Sure,’ said Rob drily, while Jamie nearly choked on his garlic bread. ‘I can’t think of any other reason.’ He grinned in my direction but something in my face made him change it to an apologetic smile.
‘So have you told your mum yet?’ Susie asked, knowing I haven’t.
‘No. Now can we quit the Spanish effing Inquisition and you all give me presents please?’
‘Hols, come watch this video of cats being dicks on You-Tube,’ Jemma is saying, as Danny walks away, wiping a tear from his eye.
‘I’m busy,’ I call, turning back to the work on my screen.
I mean, it’s not like I don’t understand why my friends don’t get it. I can see how it looks from the outside. But they don’t see us when it’s just the two of us.
I’d never tell anyone this, but whenever I’m in a relationship I make a little montage in my head and put a song to it. Like in a film. In the early years with Max, the song was Savage Garden’s ‘Truly Madly Deeply’. The scenes playing in my mind were things like us lying together in my single bed in halls of residence, facing each other, propped up on our elbows as we talked late into the night. Or snogging in the sea on holiday in Crete, while Leah and Rob played with a ball a few metres away shouting, ‘Get a room!’ Or in the kitchen at a house party; me sitting on the worktop and leaning on his shoulders while he stood between my legs, facing outwards as we laughed with friends.
Then in the last couple of years with Max, after we moved in together, the song changed to ‘End of a Century’ by Blur. Us sitting at separate ends of the sofa watching EastEnders.
We would LITERALLY kiss with dry lips and then say goodnight.
Every boyfriend – right from my first in sixth form – has had a soundtrack montage.
Anyway, after the first night I kissed Richard, and in the following few weeks, my mind mingled scenes of us making meaningful eye contact in the office with him grabbing me passionately and throwing me down on his desk – all to the tune of Etta James’s ‘I Just Wanna Make Love to You’.
But it’s different now.
The song is ‘Better Together’. The scenes are me with my legs over his lap, talking about our day. And us dancing to the radio around his big kitchen while we cook dinner – him chopping veg and me scraping it off the chopping board into the wok, then clinking our big wineglasses together. High-fiving after finally completing a project following a late night at the office. Him grabbing me passionately and throwing me down on his desk.
Because, in the words of Jack Johnson, we really are so much better when we’re together.
Feel free to vomit.
The point is: it’s real.
He wouldn’t be coming to Chloe’s wedding otherwise.
Admittedly, Susie’s cynicism has got to me – I’d even started worrying she was right and that I’ve blown the relationship out of proportion in my head. But then I told Richard I was thinking of taking Alex as my plus one, and he was quite taken aback that I hadn’t thought to invite him. I realized it was silly assuming he wouldn’t want to come. Chloe’s an old mate from university so there won’t be anyone who knows him, and that’s the only issue.
‘Can I ask your advice or are you still too busy?’ Jemma pouts at me.
‘Go for it.’ I smile. I can multitask.
It turns out Jemma has invited Jonny, that banker who nearly ran her over on his bike – who she’s now had three dates with – to the quiz tomorrow. Which isn’t a problem in itself, except that after an initial hot date she’s feeling a familiar lack of enthusiasm from him the last couple of times, and is relying on tomorrow to bring it back from the brink.
‘I need your help, Holly,’ she whines. ‘I’m so bored of being single. How long have you been single?’
My eyes flicker to my boyfriend’s office door as I answer . . .
‘About a year.’
‘Have you been on any dates?’
‘No.’
‘Wow – have you even had sex in that time?’
‘Um. No?’
I’ve never had so much sex. Richard is one of those people who is ALWAYS in the mood.
Way to congratulate him after he nets a big account? Sex.
Way to cheer him up when client negotiations fall through? Touch his willy.
Way to alleviate his boredom? Take your clothes off.
Way to help him relax after a stressful day? Cook him dinner and serve it with Scotch and a shoulder rub.
He’s not a piece of meat, after all.
‘Wow, a year. That’s depressing,’ Jemma says.
Actually, the most depressing my sex life has ever been was Max’s final year. It wasn’t like we never did it – we were doing it about once a week towards the end, but it was more out of maintenance than passion. Like bleeding the radiators or cleaning the oven.
‘What’s my sex life got to do with it? I thought you were asking me for advice.’
‘Oh, yeah. Well, it sounds like it’ll be the blind leading the blind, but you’ve at least had a long-term relationship so you must have had it in you at some point.’
I find it hard to advise Jem as I truly have no idea where she goes wrong.
‘Did you kiss him?’
‘Course.’ Then she slaps her forehead dramatically. ‘Is that where I’m going wrong? Do I need to stop acting like a big whore?’
‘Nah, it’s important to be yourself.’
‘Oh HA HA HA.’
‘Maybe that’s it.’ I clutch at straws. ‘Guys love a challenge. Try it – no kissing on the first date.’
‘Great – thanks for the advice.’ She picks up her phone receiver. ‘Hi, is that Doctor Who? Hi, Doctor, I was just wondering if I could borrow your Tardis so I can go back two weeks and four days so I can not snog the face off Jonny on our first date.’
‘Well, obviously it’s too late for that,’ I laugh as she slams down the phone. ‘But maybe just hold out for a while before you sleep with him.’
She picks up her phone again. ‘Hi, Doctor, I was just wondering if I could borrow your Tardis so I can go back two weeks and three days . . .’
Then she notices Danny has got up to go to the lo
o, so she sneaks over to tip the contents of his hole punch onto his keyboard.
‘Can I get some relationship advice?’ Danny stops at my desk on his way back from the loo and perches himself on the edge.
‘Why not? I’m putting out fires all over the place today. What’s up?’
Danny comes across as a bit of a lad with his tales of debauchery in Romford nightclubs, and waking the next morning in some unknown girl’s bed – but he’s a softie when he falls for someone. Which he does approximately four times a day. He’s currently hung up on Carla – the twenty-one-year-old temp who covered for Jemma when she was on holiday. They’ve been joined at the hip for the three months since, but on Saturday she leaves for a year in Australia.
‘So I want to ask her to stay but I keep bottling it because I’m scared she’ll say no and I’ll look like a twat, y’know what I mean? Now I’m scared it’s too late. Should I turn up at the airport by surprise and beg her to stay? Girls love that shit, right?’
He needs to stop reading so much into his dates’ reactions to chick flicks. I tell him so.
‘We love it in films but in real life, Danny, we’d think it was kind of awkward and a bit stalkerish. Let her go. A year will fly by and if it’s real, you’ll pick up where you left off when she’s back. If you don’t, it was never going to work anyway. That’s better than her staying, then ending up resenting you for the fact she never travelled.’
‘Yeah. You’re right.’ He looks pained for a moment then forces a smile and ruffles my hair. ‘Cheers, Holly. You’re like the big sister I never had.’
‘Aw, and you’re like the little brother I never wanted.’ I comb my hair with my fingers, trying to rectify the damage.
The clock strikes 5.30 p.m. and we’re surrounded by a chorus of the DA DA DA DUM of Windows shutting down, so Danny leaves to turn his own computer off.
‘See you tomorrow, ladies,’ he says a minute later, stopping next to Jemma to empty her box of paperclips all over her desk. ‘Are we still quizzing tomorrow night?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ Jemma slips on her denim jacket without acknowledging the paperclip situation. It has made no difference to the state of her desk, so the joke’s on him really. ‘Oh, and I’m bringing a friend. A boyfriend, actually. So if you could act like I’m God’s gift to men for the evening I’d really appreciate it.’