wouldn’t have let her visit their scruffy new home anyway. And the kids at her new school laughed at the way she spoke and wouldn’t let her join in with their games, turning their backs on her if she ever dared pluck up the courage to edge her way over to them. She gave up in the end.
Life got better when she moved to high school and found friends. In the big impersonal city school she felt less alone, there were more people like her – struggling to find a place to belong.
But she still lived on the roughest estate, in the scruffiest house. And she promised herself that one day she would have a decent job, and a house of her own. A clean tidy home, on a clean tidy estate where she felt in control, a home that nobody could take away from her.
And the sacrifices had seemed worth it. Until now.
How could this have happened to her? She’d done everything right, she’d worked hard, she’d had a plan – and had been discarded, thrown out because she was too qualified. Too expensive.
She wiped the fresh tears away angrily. Except this time it was different. She was in control, she wasn’t some kid who had no say in the matter, and she did belong here. She did.
She fished into the box that represented her time at Starbaston and pulled out a pen pot (empty), a packet of ‘star pupil’ stickers, a box of tissues, a spare pair of tights, an assortment of plasters, notepad and then spotted a slip of paper. Which had been placed so the eagle-eyes of the headmaster’s secretary didn’t spot it.
‘Can’t believe they did this to you, don’t know how I’ll cope without you Miss Crackers. Love Sarah x’
The lump in her throat caught her unawares and Lucy crumpled up the note in her fist and hung on to it. It had been one of their many jokes, she was Miss Cream Crackers after little Jack, he of the hand-me-down uniform and mother with four inch heels and a scary cleavage, had declared on her first day at the school that ‘he could only eat them Jacobs cracker things with a lot of butter spread on them or they made him cough’ and did she make them when she got home from school?
Jokes got them through the day.
She didn’t know how she was going to cope either. The feeling inside her wasn’t just upset, it was more like grief, as though a chunk of her hopes, her future, had been torn from her heart.
The cup of tea wasn’t making her feel better. Halfway through her drink the feeling of grief had subsided, but it had been replaced with something worse.
She thought that she’d left the waves of panic behind – along with the spots, teenage crushes and worries that she’d never have friends or sex – but now they started to claw at her chest. She closed her eyes.
She just had to breathe. Steadily. In, out, the world would stop rocking, her heart wouldn’t explode, she wasn’t going to die. Everything would be fine.
She would think about this logically. Sensibly. With her eyes shut.
The redundancy money would cover the bills for a while, but she urgently needed to find another job before it ran out. There was no way she was ever, ever, going to go back to living in that horrible neighbourhood she’d been brought up in. It hadn’t been her mother’s fault that she hadn’t time to keep on top of the house or garden, and that they could never afford anything new, but Lucy wanted her life to be different.
Putting her mug of tea on the table, she flipped open her laptop. She wasn’t going to mess around, or waste another second.
She’d show David bloody Lawson. She’d get another job, a better job, a job where the headmaster wasn’t a self-satisfied arse who didn’t give a monkeys about his staff or his pupils. Blinking away the mist of unshed tears she typed two words into the browser ‘teaching vacancies’, and hit the enter key with an angry jab.
***
Lucy opened her eyes with a start. It was dark. One cheek was damp and plastered to her keyboard. She probably had an imprint of the keys on her face. She sat up slowly and blinked.
The outside security light, which must have woken her up, went off and plunged the kitchen into darkness.
She sighed and stood up, wincing as a pain shot between her shoulder blades. Her back felt stiff as a board, she had a horrible dry taste in her mouth and her hair was sticky against her cheek from either dribble or tears. Or both. So, life was going well. She’d only been jobless for a few hours and look at the state of her.
So much for the no tears strategy, she’d failed there as well. But did crying in your sleep count?
This would look better in the morning. It had to. Before falling asleep she’d looked at every conceivable (and inconceivable) teaching vacancy website and come up with a big fat zero. The trouble was, teachers were being laid off faster than they were being taken on. And even supply jobs were thin on the ground, as an increasingly large number of people (many with more experience than she had) competed for them.
She looked into the biscuit tin. My God, had she really emptied it, eaten every single one, even the broken bits? She was going to be fat as well as jobless.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow would be better. She’d be thinking clearly. She’d find a new job. She’d be back on track.
Lucy slowed the car to a halt. Did the satnav really want her to turn down this road?
Turn left. Yep, it did. Turn left.
‘Okay I heard, but you’re kidding me?’ The stern voice didn’t reply, but her phone did. It buzzed. Maybe it was a last minute reprieve, the agency with a much better job offer back in civilisation.
She picked the mobile up. No reprieve, more a reminder of her old job, the challenges that came with working in a city centre school.
The life she loved.
She suppressed the groan, and smiled. Didn’t they say the positivity of a smile was reflected in your voice?
‘Hi Sarah.’ She really didn’t have time to chat, but she knew what the classroom assistant from Starbaston was like. Persistence was her middle name. If she didn’t answer now she’d be getting another call mid interview.
‘How are you doing, babe?’ Sarah’s normal sing-song happy tone was tinged with concern. Okay, so maybe her megawatt smile wasn’t having the desired effect.
‘Fine, fine.’
‘Really? Then why haven’t you rung?’
‘Well no, well yes.’ Fine was relative after all. ‘I’ve got an interview, in fact I’m just on my way.’
‘That’s fab.’ Her words hung in the silence. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘I think I’m lost.’
‘You always were crap at following directions, babe. Why aren’t you using that satnav you got?’
‘I am.’
Sarah giggled. ‘And you put the right place in and everything?’
‘I put the right place in and everything. It keeps telling me I need to turn left here for Langtry Meadows and it’s this tiny lane.’
‘Where? Lang what?’
‘Exactly.’ The back of beyond. ‘Some village not even my satnav has heard of. Oh God, I’m throwing what’s left of my life away.’
‘No, you’re not, you’re making a new one, a better one. Away from this stink hole and loser Lawson.’
‘But I don’t need a new one.’ She’d quite liked the life she already had. New house, nice car, job.
‘Yes, you do, Lucy. The old one’s gone.’ That was telling her.