To Be Honest (10 page)

I croon I don’t know and hug my legs right up to my chest and rock on
Posy
the sofa, with the horrible taste of Mint tea and the memory of booze and I think about Taff and if he was here which one of us he’d choose.

The clock is at five and Dominic’s arms will be flailing and doors will be slamming if Josh’s not home. I think of his mum, of Edward’s soft head and how it needs toughening to cope with the new baby.

“Maybe I should go over now.”

She watches me rub her engagement ring, which I’ve taken to doing instead of shoving my nails in my mouth, and doesn’t say anything. So I get up and put her shoes on, but not the heels this time; she’s got Uggs by the door, which help make me feel solid.

I open the door and Josh’s there, walking home. I close it again, not all the way, but so he doesn’t see us, and watch as he swings his bag right up. He stands

for a millisecond

while it splays its straps, hangs like a penguin chick, awkward then

falls.

He goes into the house.

“Well,” says Miss Mint, “that’s one less thing to worry about.”

Alicia Payne doesn’t have to hate me. I’m just saying.

But last year in the woods behind school, she decided she did. It wasn’t my fault Tao barked and went bonkers, she shouldn’t have picked up that stick. I know it’s irrational; there’s no need to fear her but even with Miss Mint’s skin on something inside that girl’s fired up and furious and I see it.

I’m back at school and it’s Wednesday and Miss Mint’s Wednesdays are fine, she says. But that’s ‘cos she’s used to it. Year 11 English double, periods 5 and 6, might be her idea of fun but Alicia is making it hard. And ‘cos we’re deep down, proper sworn enemies in real life, it’s harder.

The
Menagerie
’s moved on so they’re on to fragility. Miss Mint prepped me, explaining the characters and themes and how relationships can get so intense things can break.

“Like glass animals might,” I’d said, “or friends.”

“Yes,” said Miss Mint. “But also like partners,” and that had been when I was rubbing the diamond and she’d looked at it like it might evaporate.

So anyway, Alicia Payne is maybe the least fragile girl in Fairmere, the south coast or maybe the world.

“Miss, this play’s fucking shit.”

“Thank you, Alicia. Outside.”

I’m learning to stop things before they spiral and leave the class unpicking fire escapes.

She properly hates me, Miss Mint or not. It’s there in her nose stud, taped over; gross. It’s there in her mouth, which is down-turned, primed for battle. Once in the corridor, she starts to volley.

“You can’t make me do this,” her eyes slide.

She’s served. “Make you do what, Alicia?” Pause.

But she heard.

“You’re well out of order.” She knuckles the wall.

“I’m not the one swearing,” I say.

Thirty-all.

She hesitates. Presses the stud in her nose. She winks at Lloyd Parker, then stares at her toes.

She looks at me sideways, then says quietly,

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s ok.”

It’s forty-forty.

I open the door and we traipse back inside. She fist-balls her eyes like I’m mean and she’s cried.

“Sit down, Alicia please. Take your book out now, hon.”

She settles; obliges.

I think the game’s won.

It’s all going well, though the sun’s slipped away and with it the will to live in the case of a significant few, whom I have come to rely on for answers to questions I have no idea of the answer to. Ten minutes from the bell we need something else. I think quickly.

“Donna. What are you wearing on Friday?”

Donna stops scoring the back of her hand with compasses and raises traced-on eyebrows, which if I didn’t know humans had, I would not think existed.

“Miss, that’s weird.” Felix, whose head’s been buried for a while in his jumper, uncoils.

“Head up please, Felix.” A Miss Mint bangle shake and he’s back in his box. “No, it’s not. It’s a perfectly ordinary question. Friday’s non-uniform day, in case you’ve forgotten.”

They haven’t; none of them have. You don’t forget non-uniform day; no one does. You sometimes forget your pound but you never forget to wear different stuff. It’s for some local homeless charity I think, but I’m not sure ‘cos I wasn’t really listening in year group meeting this morning.

“Um,” Donna looks around, making a ‘WTF?” face and a few girls lip-curl their support.

I wait.

Today, I’m wearing a pale grey, three quarter length cardigan coat from Jigsaw, made of the lightest silk wool that ever existed and underneath a scoop-necked, bronze top. My nails are silver. And my classroom’s cold.

The radiator’s stopped working for some reason; I noticed at lunch but it’s taken ‘til now for anyone else to comment.

“I’m well frozen,” Alicia snipes. “Miss is too.”

“Oi, Miss, I can see your ...” Lloyd does a pointed throat-clear; taps his pecs.

I think Donna must feel sorry for me, ‘cos before I can even worry about if Kai’s looking, she swoops.

“Went shopping at the weekend Miss. Got boots like yours.”

I smile a thousand suns at her. “That’s very flattering, Donna. Harry, how about you?”

Harry Brigham sighs deeply and looks like he’d rather be shot. “Dunno, Miss.”

I do. It’ll be black tracksuit bottoms and an Arsenal shirt with stains. But I choose to be kind.

“I’m sure you’ll look fantastic, whatever it is. But what do you think Tom would wear?” He looks blank. I prompt. “From
The Glass Menagerie.
Tom Wingfield. Or Laura. Or Amanda.”

More stretching, looking at watches, “Miss, can we pack up now?”-ing. I hold my ground.

“Because what I want each and every one of you to do is come to school — if you’re brave enough — on Friday, wearing what you think one of the characters would.”

The classroom froths, spills over: I’ve done it. I’ve managed to give them the biggest laugh of the day so a part of me’s glad and I smile too but I’m really cold now in the flimsy cardi-coat and another part’s scorching ‘cos I feel like they’re laughing at me. And it’s horrible.

They pack up and paw the ground, stamping while I make them put chairs up and stay ‘til they’re quiet ‘cos I’m the teacher so they do what I say. Right?

Then the floodgate’s released and they empty the room in thirty seconds flat; hoodies all over the place; one chair falls down, but there’s someone who’s left at the end and it’s Alicia. She’s knocking on the edge of my desk and ‘cos I’m standing on it to turn my speakers off I have to grip the board to stop the wobble. She looks like a child from where I’m standing but I suppose that’s ‘cos she is.

“Miss?” And I think, did I take her phone? Do I need to sign her report? Is she here for another verbal spar? I study her whitewashed cheeks and feel something like sympathy. It’s never good when you choose the wrong foundation. Someone should tell her.

“Yes, Alicia. What can I do for you?”

And slow, like it’s agony, she shifts her eyes away from the field and Velcros mine.

“I need help, Miss.”

And I nearly fall off the desk, I swear.

But instead, I clamber down carefully, in case she turns bad in the five seconds it takes me to find my feet and her eyes let me slip. When I’m down, she slumps in a chair. Her neck claims her chin like quicksand.

“I wish I was better at English.” The words pierce me somewhere up left, ‘cos it’s a mumble, but the meaning’s sparklingly clear. She really wants help. From me.

I have options here. It’s three fifteen and I have no meetings, no detentions coming in and to be honest I could spend some time with Alicia Payne, helping her make sense of things. Or I could revel in the fact that I know she’s crap at English and tell her to go away ‘cos I don’t have time.

But that would be lying.

So, mainly because I have to and only a little bit ‘cos I want, I sit down, pull up my chair, indicate she does the same. Turns out she missed last controlled assessment. So Miss Mint sorted her out and she’s got to do it again, on her own and after school. Next Thursday. That’ll be with me, then.

So of course, she’s come to me for help now, just as she’s realised there’s no way out; nowhere to go to make it not real. She thinks she can’t produce creative texts. She thinks she can’t imagine. She thinks she can’t write right. And I think who am I to tell her no problem, it’ll be fine, you can do this; you just need to concentrate.

But I do.

And we open her book and we think about viewpoint; finding original voices. Something she thinks she’s crap at, ‘cos her brother’s a quite well known actor now and he’s always been good and she knows she’s just rubbish.

But I don’t.

We talk about the poem she has to dive off,
Charge of the Light Brigade
and I know this one; did it in year 8 and the only way I got into it was with sound. So I take off my heels and I
almost
make her snicker with my ‘half a league, half a league’ drumbeat, so then I ask what character she liked or who she thought of and she says none and I say there has to be one, what about the soldiers on horses? She says she hates horses.

So then I change tack and ask what she’s into and amazingly she says fashion and after I’ve choked a bit on my water, then we’re away: what can she think of that’s a terrible mistake and means life, death ...

“Sugar Berry.”

“What?”

The name of the popular London clothing label’s infamous and everyone knows it was set up by an ex-Fairmere student in James Payne’s year. Fact, I think they were mates, but I’ve no idea why she’s said it.

“Got the idea from your shoes, yeah? Sugar Berry’s well nice but have you
seen
their spring summer collection?” She head-jolts on ‘seen’. “My bro James won’t be seen dead in it. Says it’s a big mistake.” And then I remember Alicia worships her brother. He’d tell me in mentoring, during our chats, “my sister loves me,” and I used to think, well, good ‘cos she hates everyone else.

She sits there like a floodlight turned on, all pleased and alert and pops gum in her mouth and I don’t say a word ‘cos I might now be sitting but she’s floored me.

“I’m sorry, Alicia; you’ll have to elaborate a little.” I
am
turning into Jane Eyre.

Her eyes swallow me; chew me up like the gum; I am putty; I’m thick. So what, I think. Really I’m younger than you; I’m allowed to not know. She measures her words like spooning out salt on a very slow slug.

“Maybe I can write from the povvuv some designer that orders models down the catwalk on shoes she knows they’ll fall off, then when they start walking, they know they’ll die but they do it anyway to show off the clothes ‘cos the clothes, well, they’re worth it.”

She hair-swishes ‘worth’.

“Povvuv?”

“Point of view of.” She sighs. I’m clearly so not worth it.

“No,” I say. I refuse to shrivel.

“Why?”

And we lock horns and I think, because it’s a ridiculous idea, but then I think fine, I have tried and I can’t actually think of a reason why not to write about models toppling off a runway and splatting so we start making notes and it turns out there’s quite a lot of clothes we both like from Sugar Berry and quite a lot to write about from the povvuv a clothes horse.

* * *

Another thing I learn is Kai’s being a dick. This is what Alicia says:

“Kai’s being a dick.”

Because I’m her teacher, it’s ok to say,

“That’s not nice, Alicia,”

but probably not,

“Don’t be a cow,”

which is what comes out.

She looks at me, then gets up and comes over and shouts some abuse in my ear on one side, then the speakers which I failed to turn off screech in the other and she’s in my face, snapping that gum and those lips and that stud meet neatly as she grins and it’s not the world’s best smile. But it’s not far off.

“Sorry, Miss,” she says. And I shrug graciously.

She only makes pen sounds, then stops; looks at me.

“You don’t like him, Miss. Do you? Not in
that
way?”

My pulse slows. Time stops. I don’t know what to say.

But then cannons pass. She puts biro to page.

“He’s well sexy, Miss, but he
is
half your age.”

After an hour; after I’ve busied myself shuffling papers to drawers, moving piles of books from one side of the room to the other and checking my phone for excuses to leave, she’s done. I’m surprised.

“So you’re ready?”

She nods, but our cosy time’s not over just yet. She helps me put chairs up, then toys with my word of the week sign and says, “I don’t really get boys, Miss.”