An hour before lunch she told them to get out their maths books; there were fewer petty insubordinations or requests for help than mathematics lessons normally provoked, and Emma took this as a bad sign. She walked up and down the rows of desks, as if stalking the whispering sound she could still hear, but her ears were ringing slightly and all her instincts seemed lost in the haze of her illness. And even though she knew the flu was going round every time one of the children coughed or sneezed she was irrationally sure it was faked and somehow mocking. But when she glared at them was their reaction innocence or just a good pretence?
She walked around the tables, observing each child’s large, unsteady numbers adding up to the wrong answer; she was looking over Carl Burke’s shoulder when behind her a girl screamed.
Emma turned round, so quickly that the room seemed to tilt around her. Lorraine Chambers had leapt from her chair, causing it to clatter over. The girl was cowering up against one wall, visibly shaking, on tip-toe as if to get as far away from the floor as possible. Her small hands were held up to her face, just beneath her eyes, which were starring at the floor.
“What is it? What’s wrong, Lorraine?” Emma asked, her voice slightly more shaken than the situation demanded (Lorraine was one of her favourites). The girl looked at her with large, nakedly afraid eyes.
“A rat!” she said. “I saw a rat under the table!”
Emma felt her worst fears die – it was just something the girl had imagined. But the girl was obviously scared, she obviously believed, she’d seen a rat, so Emma walked towards her, mumbling maternally, and went to put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. Lorraine shrank back from her, her eyes wide.
“Keep away from me!” she said. “Don’t touch me!”
Emma recoiled from the seven year old’s harsh and terrified words, not knowing what to think or do. She was aware of all the other children watching the two of them, not gaping as she would have expected, but with narrow lips and eyes and adult expressions. Emma’s heart was pounding and for a dizzy second she had to steady herself against the wall. She couldn’t let the situation slide out of her influence.
“Lorraine,” she started, “Lorraine, listen to me. There wasn’t a rat, you just imagined...”
“There was!”
“There wasn’t,” Emma said firmly. “Listen, no one else saw a rat did they?” She appealed to the class: “None of you saw a rat did you?” But none of them answered, they just sat and stared and smiled. Emma ignored the way they were smiling, she had too much to deal with already. She closed her eyes, and tried to gather strength behind them.
“You see Lorraine, sometimes our imaginations can play tricks on us. It’s just like part of our dreams left over in daytime. But that doesn’t make them real...”
After much persuasion Lorraine grew calmer and returned to her seat. She avoided the gaze of all the other children, who seemed angry with her, as if her behaviour reflected badly upon them all. They said nothing to her; Emma tried to imagine it was because they didn’t know what to say. The whole incident had left her even more tired and drained than before, and her head and sinuses were throbbing abominably. She tried not to think about the way Lorraine had recoiled from her; it seemed too confusing to think about right now. She was relieved when the bell rang for lunch and the children filed out, talking amongst themselves. Lorraine Chambers trailed after them, alone, looking down at her dragging feet. The girl glanced at her briefly, and her eyes still seemed afraid. It seemed to Emma that she and Lorraine were in a way united, although she had no idea how or against what. But she liked the idea. Lorraine was one of her favourites.
~
“Miss Anderson? Are you... Miss Anderson?”
The voice roughly shook Emma awake, suddenly blinking bolt upright in her staff room chair. Slowly the shape of the face of one of the other teachers came into focus; Mrs Bennett had her hand on Emma’s shoulder and she was still shaking her even though Emma was now obviously awake. Emma felt the dream she had been having fall away, for a few seconds its dark images lingered in her mind, before real life swung fully back into focus.
“You were asleep,” Mrs Bennett said in the same voice she used to talk to the children.
“I... yes, I...”
“You may have been able to stay up all hours when you were a student,” Mrs Bennett said, as if the word were distasteful and she had never been one, “but now you have to be responsible. You’re lucky Mr Hall didn’t catch you. You’re lucky I won’t tell him.”
Emma bit back her instinctive response and instead muttered something humble. She felt the other teacher was crowding her, standing too close, and so she stood up, but too quickly and the blood seemed to drain from her head. Mrs Bennett still looked at her disapprovingly but turned ponderously around.
Acting on instinct, Emma called her back.
“I just wondered,” she said quickly, “the substitute teacher who took my class while I was sick? What... what was he like?”
When she turned back around Mrs Bennett’s eyes were the only hard points in her flabby face. But they gradually defused and looked further away; her pinched mouth parted slightly.
“He was...” She paused, changed tack. “I’m sure they wouldn’t send anyone inappropriate. But...”
“But?” prompted Emma. A boy ran past the staff room window, screaming and laughing – “Keep away!” Mrs Bennett appeared not to notice.
“He was odd. Always dark clothes but very pale skin. I mean it is March but... Very slim, too slim surely? To be healthy...”
“Urgghhh! Keep away!” the boy outside screamed.
“He seemed to think he was better than everyone else,” Mrs Bennett continued tartly. “And spoke to us in put on voices....”
“Urggghhhh! You’ve got the lurgee!”
Mrs Bennett shuddered slightly (Emma wasn’t sure the other woman realised she was doing so) and returned to the present. Her eyes hardened again as they saw Emma.
“Why?” she said loudly, fat wobbling. “Is there a problem?” Her tone suggested it would be Emma’s fault if there was.
“Oh, no problem,” Emma said. And there wasn’t, was there? She sneezed suddenly and with no warning, and Mrs Bennett shuddered and walked away without a word. Emma sneezed a few more times (“Atishoo! Atishoo!” her mind chanted) and then sighed as she realised she’d slept through her break and didn’t have time to eat. She just took two painkillers, washing them down with cold coffee from the mug by her chair, where she had dreamt and then forgotten.
~
Emma shouldn’t have been on playground duty that afternoon but another teacher was off sick (“It’s this damn flu going around,” Mr Hall said, looking at Emma) so she’d volunteered. She had no desire to sit with the rest of the teachers anyway. Nevertheless she wondered if it had been a mistake as she stood in the cold and tried not to shiver. Maybe she was too sick to have come back to work so soon...
She looked around the concrete sweep of the playground, at the pale and poorly looking sun already sinking. She looked to see if her class were again playing on their own, singing that old song under the shadow of the climbing frame. But she was relieved to see they weren’t; her class must be playing with the other children again, mixed up in all the running and screaming...
She stared and stared, trying to peer through the mist and sleep-lack smudges that stained her vision – she couldn’t see any of the children from her class at all. Where were they all? She tried to think but everything conspired to make it difficult – she turned round slowly, as if the air were clinging, and when she started to run towards the school the bell rang and a hundred, a thousand, children rushed past her, as if she were moving in slow motion; a school of children tight together as fish, knocking her aside – but not hers, not Lorraine or any of the others.
She burst into Mr Hall’s office without knocking; he was on the phone and gestured angrily for her to leave but she refused.
“My class have disappeared!”
Mr Hall looked at her, his eyes dangerously bright.
“Ah, you’ll have to excuse me,” he said calmly into the receiver. “One of the children is playing up. Yes. Yes, goodbye.” He put the phone down, then said, “Please explain yourself, Miss Anderson.”
“In the playground... none of my children were there!” Emma said.
“I’m sure you’re mistaken about that,” Mr Hall said.
“We have to call...”
“We have to do no such thing. I’m sure your children were there, you just didn’t see them among all the others, what with the fog and your, ah, tiredness. After all you were sick for such a long time you must be tired. I’m sure your class is sitting in their classroom, waiting for their teacher.”
“But they weren’t...”
“Let’s just check the classroom before doing anything rash, shall we?”
They walked towards her classroom, and when they got there she saw all her children sitting there, starring.
“There you are, Miss Anderson,” Mr Hall said, enjoying himself. “All present and correct.”
But Emma wasn’t listening for she was starring at Lorraine Chambers, who was trying to avoid her gaze. But the girl had obviously been crying – was she still doing so? Emma saw the girl’s body shake. She went towards her, making soothing noises, careful not to touch her for she remembered how the girl had reacted previously. Lorraine just stared with miserable intensity at the desk in front of her.
She glared around the class. “Have any of you been bullying Lorraine? Picking on her?”
The class shook its head. “No, Miss Anderson,” it chorused.
“Where were you all during playtime?”
Mr Hall snorted, and left. Emma ignored him for her question seemed to have caught the children off guard; they glanced at each other before answering. Emma felt her paranoia deepening, and tried to struggle above it. Eventually a few kids answered reluctantly:
“The playground.”
“No you weren’t,” Emma said. “I was on playground duty this afternoon and I didn’t see any of you.”
There was a pause, then Michael Potts said,
“You weren’t supposed to be on playground duty today, Miss,” and she realised they had planned to do something, something somewhere, when they thought she wouldn’t realise. But what? They were seven year olds – surely her thoughts were ridiculous?
Emma decided they were, they must be. She shook her head, the outward reflection of her inner denial. She told the children to get out their spelling books, and she ignored (with a pang) the still snivelling Lorraine. Her head started to ache painfully again, setting the tone for what remained of the day.
~
She couldn’t sleep that night, her fever a suffocating thing keeping her awake in the darkness. She alternately kicked the duvet off because she felt hot and stifled, and drew it up to her neck shivering. There was a streetlight outside Emma’s room which was faulty, and its flickering light kept making the shadows change shape around her. The people in the flat above were having noisier sex than her parents had ever had, panting and screaming like it was their last night alive.
Emma turned, trying to get comfortable, trying to block out the noises from above. The light outside flickered and her eyes opened, and the shadows were like stick-thin arms reaching for her...
The Black Death killed one in five Europeans she thought – she had looked it up that evening on the internet. She wasn’t quite sure why she had, but thoughts about her children, about Lorraine, had tormented her and it had at least felt like she was doing something. One in five – that was about the same as cancer she supposed. She tried not to think that we had just exchanged one plague for others, ones that left us a little longer, but it was hard to push such thoughts aside in the darkness. She didn’t want to think of her own mortality; how could she die? Emotionally it held no truth for her – surely a cure-all would be found, the rules changed before death claimed her...
Aunt Jess, she thought, and then sneezed herself fully awake. She remembered how she had used to be scared that her dying aunt had been hiding in wardrobe, on sleepless nights very much like this one. She opened her eyes – because of the shadows it was impossible to tell if her wardrobe was open or not. It never shut properly anyway, so it wouldn’t signify anything if it was open. Wouldn’t mean it had been pushed open – you’re not a child anymore, Emma told herself angrily, and turned over and curled up before finally willing herself asleep.
~
The next morning, during break time, Emma went out into the playground again, not offering the other teachers a word of explanation. The fog was if anything thicker, semi-solid and twisting. The school children’s enthusiasm was undampened however; they played their games just as noisily and chaotically, as if the mist were only in Emma’s eyes. But she had no problem spotting her class, clumped together and sneaking off round a corner of the school building, thinking they weren’t being watched. The corner led to the back of the school kitchens, where the large dustbins stood. The children would be undisturbed there to... what? Emma tried to think, but her thoughts seemed lost in the fog and impossible to focus on... and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see anyway. She decided she wouldn’t go and confront the children yet. She would wait and try and speak to Lorraine alone (Lorraine was her favourite). And who knew – maybe there was a perfectly natural explanation and Emma’s fears were groundless.
She was sitting at her desk waiting for her class when they filed back in, and she tried to give them the same all-knowing look that Mr Hall or Mrs Bennett could manage so effortlessly. But the children just glanced at her and smiled; could they see the uncertainty in her eyes? In any case the effect was ruined when Emma started to cough and sneeze; tears filled her eyes and the children all merged in her eyes as she blinked them back. The class seemed to smile to itself as she stood up to teach, as if they were the adults and she the child, and they were just tolerating her infantile games.
They were still smiling in the same way when Emma noticed that there was an empty seat in the classroom. Lorraine had not returned from break time.
Emma felt nauseous; her throat felt dry and tasted of phlegm.
“Where’s Lorraine?” she managed to say.
No response save for twenty-six smiles.
“Where’s Lorraine?” she repeated. “I know you were all playing with her at break.”
“She wasn’t with us, Miss Anderson,” Jo Webster said. Emma turned and banged her hands on the desk in front of the girl, causing her momentarily to flinch.
“I saw her go with you!”
Jo glanced at her classmates before replying. Her words seemed tightly controlled.
“She wasn’t with us, Miss.”
Emma stared at her class, but couldn’t meet the gaze of any of them for more than a few seconds. She felt a sick feeling in her stomach and head that was more than just the lingering effects of her illness.
“Stay here all of you,” she said, and headed towards the classroom door.
“She was chosen. She was it,” a voice said behind her.
She wasn’t sure who had spoken or which direction the voice had come from, and when she turned all of the class wore identical expressions of innocence.
“Who said that?” she said. There was silence. “Who said that?” she said, her face flaming. She wasn’t used to such anger and she felt her hands trembling slightly as she walked slowly back towards the children. She wasn’t sure what the expression on her face was like, but finally they looked like they were frightened of her...
“Just what is going on in here?” Mr Hall said from the doorway, smirking.
~
Lorraine’s family couldn’t be contacted, but Mr Hall didn’t seem concerned. He had the caretaker search the school grounds but refused to phone the police until he’d spoken to her parents. He assured Emma that the girl would turn up soon, and treated the whole thing like an annoyance that was somehow her faul
t.
“What about the substitute teacher who took my class?” Emma said. “He might know something; shouldn’t we call him?”
“Mr Markham?” Mr Hall said, frowning. “What on earth would he know? He was just a substitute teacher, despite what he might have thought.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He won’t be coming here again, sickness or no sickness, put it that way. I’d rather teach the children myself.” The headmaster seemed to shudder slightly as he spoke.
“But what...?” Emma started.
“Miss Anderson, he was a bad teacher, that’s all. We do get them you know.” He stared at her meaningfully. “If you must know he worked to undermine me. Harried some of the other teachers...”
“Harried how..?”
“And he wasted my time,” Mister Hall said. “Much as you are now. It is lunch time you know.” He got up and left Emma alone in his own office, ignoring her continued questions.
She wasn’t hungry, and during the lunch break when she knew all the children and teachers were in the dining room, Emma went to the place where she guessed her class had been sneaking off to at playtimes. It was a small quadrangle round the back of the kitchens, blocked off from sunlight on three sides by the school buildings, and it was full of tall bins. The shadows were so thick as to be like fog, even in the daytime, and the tight box-like dimensions of the place made Emma feel claustrophobic. The bins were higher than she was, and stank of decay. Black flies buzzed and jostled; some had fallen and lay on their backs, spinning occasionally with high cries, their legs feeble. Something larger had seemed to move behind one of the bins, and Emma’s first thought was that it was a rat, until she told herself that was ridiculous.
She didn’t know what she was looking for – she certainly didn’t expect to find Lorraine – and she actually found nothing at all. But she knew with an unshakable belief that her class of children had been here. There was room for all of them certainly, between the stinking bins.
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