Perfect Little Children

by Sophie Hannah

  “I can’t. There’s an intercom, and I don’t know the code.” Her face appears at the window next to the door, which is open. She opens it wider. “Quick, climb in.”

  “What? Are you kidding? I’m nowhere near agile enough to—”

  “Mum, it’s a ground-floor window. It’s easy. You might not be able to do it gracefully, but you can do it.”

  “All visitors are supposed to go through reception. If someone sees me . . .”

  “They won’t. Why d’you think I chose this room? In Bankside Park terms, this is the middle of nowhere. No one’ll see you, unless you take four years to climb in.”

  “Can’t you climb out?”

  “No! Someone might see us together. Just do it, now.”

  I manage to get inside, but not quickly and not without injury. I land inelegantly on the large table that’s pushed up against the wall beneath the window—perhaps by Zannah, to catch me—then roll onto the floor. The room I land in doesn’t look like an Art room. It looks disused, like a semiderelict space awaiting redecoration. There are no pictures up on the peeling walls.

  “Please tell me this isn’t really the Art room,” I say.

  “Was. This whole block’s unsafe or something, so it’s going to be done up. Oh, my God, have you ripped those trousers?”

  “And grazed my knee.” I bend down to inspect it. “Do you want to tell me why these indignities were necessary? It had better be good, Zan.”

  “Have you watched it yet?” she demands.

  “Watched what?”

  “You haven’t!” She looks aghast. “I emailed it to you!”

  “I was with a client, then rushing to meet you. I haven’t had time to check my emails.”

  “Get your phone out,” she orders, nodding at my bag. “You need to watch it now.”

  “All right, but . . . can you calm down?” Her rapid-fire manner makes me think someone’s going to burst through the door at any moment and try to kill us both.

  “Calm down, yes. Slow down, no,” she says. “It’s a time-sensitive situation. You’ll need to log into school Wi-Fi, there’s no 4G here. It’s BanksideParkStaff, no spaces, capital B, P, and S and the password’s—”

  “Wait, there’s no . . . Oh, I’ve got it. Password?”

  “banksideparkers, no spaces, all lower case.”

  “Okay. Done. How do you know the staff Wi-Fi password?”

  “Everyone knows it. Solid spy network.”

  I go to my email inbox, open the message from Zannah and click on the link that’s the only thing in it.

  It’s a video clip of extremely poor quality, with muffled, shaky sound. I can just about make out Zannah’s jeans and trainers, the ones she’s wearing today, and another pair of legs that also end in Nike trainers—red ones that I recognize, with orange laces. “Is this you and Murad?” I ask. Zan nods. They’re allowed to wear their own clothes when they come in for revision days.

  In the film, Zan is laughing, telling Murad that he’d better put his panini away because “She’s coming. I can hear her.” A close-up of the panini fills the screen for a second. Then we’re back to the trainers.

  “It’s fine,” I hear Murad say. “S’a revision meeting, not a lesson. No one’s ever said we can’t eat in those.”

  Zan laughs. “Hosmer’s going to say it in like, five seconds. No eating in classrooms.”

  “No, it’s no eating in class,” says Murad. “This isn’t a class, per se.”

  “Oh, per-say?” Zan giggles. “Just put it away! Seriously, you want to provoke Hosmer? Why give her the chance to make your life a misery when you know there’s nothing she likes more?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Is it just you and Murad at this revision class?” I ask Zannah.

  “Yeah, these sessions are voluntary. Everyone else was a no-show. And you think I’m unmotivated. Shh, listen.”

  “This is going to be brutal,” says Recorded Zannah. “I’m going to film it: your blood dripping down the walls after she’s cheffed you. Here we go. Too late to back out now!” There’s another wobbly shot of the panini, then gray fuzz, then Murad’s trainers again.

  “What’s that on the desk?” I hear an Australian voice ask.

  Camilla Hosmer: head of History and a walking, impossible-to-solve, pros-versus-cons dilemma. She’s conscientious, well organized and expert at transferring knowledge of her subject from her brain to her pupils’ brains, which can’t be said of most Bankside Park teachers, unfortunately. She’s also a vigilant and passionate enforcer of every tiny rule on every single occasion, even if it makes no sense. The word “flexible” is not in her vocabulary. Murad knows this better than I do. I suspect his panini stunt is a deliberate attempt to entertain himself and Zannah by winding her up so that there will be less time for History revision.

  “It’s a panini, miss,” says Murad in the video clip. The visuals have disappeared. I think I’m looking at the underside of a desk: just semidarkness with a few bumpy imperfections in it. “Bacon, avocado and Brie. It’s delicious. Want some?”

  Deliberate cheek. This isn’t going to end well. I’m fairly sure that my being here is something to do with the forthcoming unhappy ending to this little scene. Cheers, Murad. It’s not like I need to earn money or anything.

  “This is a revision session, not a bistro,” I hear Miss Hosmer say.

  “But, miss, I’m starving.”

  “Get out! Now.”

  “All right, I’ll put it away, miss.”

  “I told you to get out, Murad.”

  “But look, I’m putting it in my bag. There, it’s gone.”

  “Take it out of your bag, put it in the bin and then. Get. Out.”

  “Miss, I’ll go if you really want me to, but I’m not throwing my panini away. If I do that, I can’t eat it later, can I?”

  “How would you like it if I told your parents I’d caught you eating a bacon sandwich?” Miss Hosmer snaps at him.

  “What do you mean, miss?”

  Murad says something else, but I can’t tell what it is. Zan’s voice obscures it; she whispers something.

  “You know what I mean,” says Hosmer. “You’re letting yourself down, and you’re letting your family down.”

  “Why? Because he’s eating bacon?” Zan’s voice. She sounds angry.

  “Oh—do you think my family’s Muslim, miss?” Murad laughs. “My dad kind of is. But my mum isn’t. She’s whiter than you, and a hippie. And we all eat bacon.”

  I look up at Zannah. “Fucking hell,” I say.

  “Watch,” she orders.

  Her recorded voice in the video says, “Why have you turned bright red, miss? Is it because you’ve realized you’ve messed up and you owe Murad an apology?”

  “Throw the panini in the bin, and then leave this classroom, please,” says Hosmer. She doesn’t sound angry anymore, just cold and remote.

  “No, I won’t,” says Murad. “I’ll leave if you want me to, but I’m not throwing my lunch away.”

  “And I’ll leave too, but only once you’ve apologized for your racism,” says Zannah.

  “I haven’t got a racist bone in my body, Suzannah.” Hosmer sounds tearful now.

  “It might not be a bone,” Zan quips. “Maybe it’s a racist intestine.”

  “Or a kidney,” Murad says.

  I nearly drop my phone when there’s a sudden burst of loud noise. Miss Hosmer has started to shout in a hysterical way that borders on shrieking. I can’t make out her words but it’s something about going to the head teacher right now. The clip ends abruptly, while she’s still in the middle of yelling.

  “Jesus,” I say quietly. “So . . . ?”

  Zannah’s ready. She starts talking faster than I’ve ever heard her talk before. “So, what happened next is, I held up my phone and told her I’d recorded it all. She started screaming at me, how dare I record her without permission, how dare me and Murad accuse her of racism when she was the least racist person in the
world, she was going to go and get Mr. Stevens right now and we had to wait there while she did, that was our only chance, or else if we dared to leave the room before she came back with Mr. Stevens, we’d be expelled, and she wouldn’t care about the impact on our GCSEs to expel us right before them. All of that—how we wouldn’t even get good references. It was scary, Mum! Not only her psycho screaming, but the threats—like, I reckon she could make Stevens expel us if she really wanted to? He hasn’t got a clue what’s going on half the time, and he relies on her to run the school, basically. Then she was about to leave the room to go and get him, and she turned back suddenly, marched over to me and yelled, ‘Give me your phone!’ Before I could agree or disagree, she pulled it out of my fucking hand and ran out of the room. I ran after her, because, like, she can’t just do that? I couldn’t see her. She wasn’t in the corridor, and I should have been right behind her. You know where I think she was?”

  I shake my head, stunned. Zannah cannot get expelled. That can’t happen. This is a disaster. Dominic will think this is the end of the world.

  “Hidden away in a classroom or a stationery cupboard, deleting the recording off my phone. She pulled it out of my hand before I’d had a chance to turn it off, so she had full access, no passcode needed. And guess what?” Zannah blinks away tears and sniffs. “When Stevens turns up and I tell him I’ve got footage of Hosmer being racist and then denying it, and he asks to see it, there’s nothing there. No film. All gone. I tell him Hosmer’s deleted it, she denies it—”

  “Wait. Did she deny making the racist comment?”

  “Yes!” A tear rolls down Zannah’s cheek. “She flat out denied it. Said me and Murad had made up this lie, and it was serious and you can’t just call people racist, you can’t just lie about people, and I mean, like . . . exactly! You can’t just lie!”

  “But we can prove she’s lying,” I say. “I’ve got the film on my phone. How did you—”

  “Soon as she started screaming at us, I thought, ‘Shit, why did I tell her I had it recorded?’ I was angry and I wanted to scare her, but then she lost the plot and starting yelling about me recording her without permission, and we’re not even allowed to bring phones into school in the first place. They’ve decided to be really strict about it this term. I thought, ‘She’s going to confiscate my phone,’ so I quickly put it on my knees under the desk and emailed the proof of her racism to you, while she ranted like a loony and stomped around the classroom.”

  “But, Zan, we’ve got the film. We’ll go and see Mr. Stevens and—”

  “Mum, I’ve accused a teacher of racism. Not just any teacher, either—one of the few who can actually teach. Don’t you get it? They’re more likely to expel me if I make them look bad than if I’m bad. They’ll find a way—like the fact that I shouldn’t have recorded Miss Hosmer without permission or even had my phone with me . . .”

  “Zan, calm down. This is going to be fine.”

  “I’ve been told I have to go and see Mr. Stevens at eleven, on my own. We’ve told him our side already, and then they said they wanted to talk to each of us again, separately. They didn’t like it when we were together because we backed each other up. Murad’s in with Stevens now. He dropped his phone into my pocket before going with them, so I contacted you . . .”

  “So that I’d bring my phone in with the video on it,” I say when Zannah stops to breathe.

  “No, so that I could ask you what the hell I should do, before I see Stevens. I don’t know what to say. Part of me thinks if it was that serious he’d be ringing our parents, and he isn’t, but, like, it felt very serious? And he and Hosmer love bringing parents in to make them as disappointed in us as the school is—so why’s that not happening? I think he’s going to offer us a deal: we apologize for disrespect, admit we lied about Hosmer being racist and then we’ll get let off with some minor punishment. If we don’t say we lied about the racism and the recording, we’re going to get expelled.” Zannah pushes her hair away from her face. “What should I do? I mean, I could just lie. It’s not like I’ve never lied before.”

  Eleven o’clock. It’s now ten to. Damn. I’m going to have to postpone another client, since its looks as if an important meeting has just added itself to my schedule.

  “You’re not going to lie and you’re not going to tell the truth,” I say, passing Zannah a tissue from my bag. “Wipe your eyes. You’re going to sit quietly and let me do all the talking.”

  * * *

  Duncan Stevens remains seated behind his desk as Zannah and I walk into his office. It’s Camilla Hosmer who rises to greet us. She’s surprised to see me and not in a good way; she can’t hide it either. “Oh! Mrs. Leeson.” She manages to produce a polite smile eventually, but it takes her some time. “We only . . . I mean, there was no need for you to . . .”

  “You wanted Zannah on her own, I know. But I’ve got something to contribute, so here I am.”

  “That’s probably a good idea, Mrs. Leeson,” says Mr. Stevens. “This is quite serious. Miss Hosmer, since you’re on your feet, can you pull over an extra chair for Mrs. Leeson, please?”

  “There’s no need,” I tell him. “I’m not staying long.”

  “I think it might take longer than you think,” says the head teacher. “I’m sure Suzannah has briefed you already, so . . . you’ll know, I imagine, that a serious incident has occurred.” Behind him, all over his office wall, are framed photos of Bankside Park pupils looking like happy high achievers: holding aloft trophies, cute rabbits, iced cakes, or with sports medals draped around their necks, or shaking hands with grateful-looking elderly women in wheelchairs.

  I’d like to hit Miss Hosmer with a wheelchair. Even leaving today’s disaster aside, I’ve had a petty grudge against her for more than a year, ever since she invited me in to give a talk about my massage therapy business. It was part of a series of lectures she was organizing at Bankside Park, designed to inspire the older girls to become the next generation of female entrepreneurs, rather than just the proud owners of cleavages rated “peng” and “flames” on Instagram by the upper school’s male population.

  Part of my talk was about why I’d been unable to stay in my original career. I’d told the girls that I’d felt my true talents were wasted in my old job, and that, although leaving felt like a huge risk at the time, I was so glad I’d taken that risk. Then I went on to say that fear stops so many people from fulfilling their dreams and ambitions, and that bravery is required to overcome the fear. All pretty standard stuff, I thought. The girls seemed to like it; they all applauded. Some stared at me vacantly throughout, but others looked inspired. Miss Hosmer thanked me afterward and I went home thinking it had gone well.

  That afternoon, Ben came home from school red-faced with fury, having heard from one or two pupils in the older year groups that Miss Hosmer had used her afternoon registration period with her form group to undermine me. The girls, it seemed, had been a bit too inspired, and evidently this had annoyed her. “Please remember that Beth Leeson is extremely lucky that things have gone well for her, and she’s probably the exception, not the norm,” Miss Hosmer had apparently told them. “She left a well-paid, secure job and started a business that happened to be successful, but that doesn’t mean it always works out that way. Job security is important too, and not everyone can be their own boss.”

  “But that makes no sense,” Dom said when Ben told us. “Why would she bring you in for entrepreneurial inspiration and then say that?”

  “It makes perfect sense,” I told him. “She’d love to resign from Bankside Park but she’s too scared to do it.”

  None of this is relevant to what’s happened today, except that when I check the drawer of my benefit-of-the-doubt cabinet marked “Camilla Hosmer,” I find it empty.

  “I do know how serious it is, yes,” I tell Mr. Stevens.

  “Good, good. I’m surprised, because we’ve never had any trouble with Suzannah before, not in all the years she’s been here, but Miss H
osmer has described her behavior this morning as disrespectful, disobedient and dishonest.”

  As he speaks, Hosmer brings a chair over—the rigid, plastic one that’s clearly the least comfortable one in the room—and places it behind me, then gives it a little push so that the edge of the seat digs into the backs of my knees. Pointedly, I step away from it. “Disrespectful and disobedient, yes, but not dishonest,” I say. “Zannah shouldn’t have brought her phone in to school, so there’s the disobedient bit. She spoke disrespectfully to Miss Hosmer, so a tick for that box too. And she did it because she doesn’t respect her. Neither do I.”

  “I beg your pardon?” says Hosmer.

  “You heard.” I turn to face her. “You made a racist assumption about Murad and it turned out to be wrong. Just because he’s got brown skin, that doesn’t give you the right to tell him he shouldn’t be eating bacon. If you saw a white kid eating chocolate during Lent, would you assume he came from a family of devout Christians and tell him he was letting his parents down, and Jesus?”

  “Miss Hosmer is adamant that she said no such thing to Murad, Mrs. Leeson,” says Stevens. “That’s where the dishonesty comes in.”

  “True, if you mean Miss Hosmer’s dishonesty,” I say. “Before she grabbed Zannah’s phone out of her hand, Zannah had had the presence of mind to email me the film she’d recorded of the incident. Would you like me to play it for you now?” I brandish my phone.

  Camilla Hosmer’s mouth has dropped open. Stevens looks at her.

  “Miss Hosmer? Shall I play the video for Mr. Stevens?”

  Hosmer bursts into tears and runs out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  “She deleted it from Zannah’s phone without permission, then lied about it to you,” I tell Stevens.

  He nods slowly, playing for time while he decides what to say. Whatever it is, it’s not going to start with the words, “I’m so sorry,” which means I’m not interested in hearing it.

  “Mr. Stevens, one of my regular clients is the editor of a local newspaper that has a circulation of 8,000. She’s become a good friend over the years. She’s fond of Zannah, too. If I ask her to, she’ll run a story about Bankside Park’s racist head of History who lies and tries to punish pupils who call her out on her racism. The little film Zannah made would go up on the newspaper’s Web site and get loads of hits. It could easily go viral. Do you think OFSTED will be impressed? I don’t.”