a teacher at school is much the same as being a kid at school. You need mates. Allies. Steph was one of my closest allies. She taught Year 8, the 12-year-olds, and I loved her for her no-nonsense attitude – she didn’t take lip from the kids or grumbles from the parents. Outspoken and somewhere in her mid-forties (I’d never dared ask), she lived in Surbiton where her own kids were at the local school and where her husband, Tim, worked as a GP.
‘Morning, love,’ she said, coming through the staffroom door laden with bags, red in the face and with wisps of hair sticking to her forehead.
‘Hiya. Coffee?’ I replied, still hovering beside the kettle.
‘Mmm, please,’ said Steph. ‘Victoria was a fucking nightmare this morning.’
I spooned some Nescafé into the least grimy cup I could find on the tray and poured hot water over the top. It often sounded more like a working men’s club than a staffroom in here, although Miss Montague took a dim view of swearing among her staff. She took a dim view of many things – beards, the internet, staff on their mobile phones, parents who picked their boys up late, parents who dropped their boys off too early, parents who took their boys out of school before the holidays for skiing in Val d’Isère, and parents who threw their son’s birthday party at Claridge’s.
‘Fuck knows where all my lesson plans are this morning. I thought I had them but couldn’t find them anywhere on the train so I’m going to have to print them all off again,’ added Steph, collapsing on a chair next to her bags and bending down to take off her trainers. ‘I hate the bastard Anglo-Saxons.’
I put the coffee on the table next to her.
‘Ta, love. How was your weekend?’
‘Good.’ Then I paused and lowered my voice. ‘I had that date on Saturday night.’
‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ said Steph, looking up from untying her trainers, cheeks puce from the effort. ‘Tell me everything.’
Other staff members were drifting in and hanging their coats up. ‘Morning, Renée,’ I said, waving at the art teacher, then I lowered my voice again. ‘It was… nice.’
‘Nice?’ shrieked Steph. ‘Lilian, love, I’m an old married woman who gets her leg over once a year. You’ve got to do better than nice.’
‘All right all right. It was better than nice. Lovely. Will that do?’
‘So you shagged him?’ she said, narrowing her eyes at me. ‘A proper shag?’
‘Shhhh!’ I inclined my head towards the door, which Miss Montague had just drifted through, like a battleship coming into port.
‘Hiya, Mrs M,’ said Steph, who’d taught at St Lancelot’s for over a decade and was one of the few members of staff who could get away with referring to her as such.
‘Good morning,’ said Miss Montague, loudly, so everyone heard.
We dutifully murmured mornings back and looked round the room for seats. Every Monday morning we had a staff meeting. Sometimes the meetings were five minutes; sometimes they were twenty. The trick was to grab a seat as fast as possible, because if you had to stand throughout the meeting the chances were Miss Montague would catch your eye when she was after a volunteer for something – cleaning out the guinea pig cage or taking that week’s Lego Club.
As Miss Montague made her way to the front of the room, colleagues parting for her and Pasta to waddle their way through, I reached into my pocket to check my phone – nope, still nothing from Max. And because I was momentarily distracted, I missed the spare seats, so I had to hover awkwardly behind Steph’s chair.
‘Undivided attention, please, everyone. There’s a serious matter I need to bring to your attention,’ said Miss Montague, standing underneath the painting of Captain Bower. He looked like he’d been a stern, imperial chap and I imagine that was where she’d inherited her authority from. If Stalin and Joan of Arc had had a lovechild, it would have been exactly like Miss Montague.
Her face darkened as if ahead of a storm. ‘Joel Glassman in Year 6 arrived at school in a Range Rover last week,’ she announced.
Steph glanced up at me and frowned. I shrugged. What was the problem? Most of the school arrived in a Range Rover every day. Dmitri, the Russian in my class, arrived in a blacked-out one each morning, and only jumped down, clutching his schoolbag, once a security guard from the front of the car had opened a back door for him. He had two security guards, actually, who he referred to as his uncles. ‘Uncle Boris’ and ‘Uncle Sasha’. Burly, with necks thicker than their heads, I still hadn’t worked out which was which but one of them had winked at me during the first week of term and I’m afraid to say I did feel a frisson of excitement.
‘I don’t mean a normal Range Rover,’ went on Miss Montague, her voice louder and more menacing, as if she was a party leader building to a crescendo. ‘What I am talking about is one of those electric, toy Range Rovers.’ She said the word ‘toy’ with absolute disgust. ‘Joel had been given it for his birthday and decided to drive it to school, accompanied by the nanny, but we simply don’t have room in the scooter park for electric vehicles. So I’ve had words with Mr and Mrs Glassman but I would like you all to keep a vigilant eye on the situation and alert me if you see this happening again.’
The toadiest teachers – mostly the language department – all nodded back dutifully before Miss Montague moved on.
‘I’ve also had an email from Lady Fitzalan over the weekend. She and her husband are divorcing so can whoever is little Rupert’s form teacher – ah, Miss Cookson, yes, there you are – can you keep an eye on him, please?’
Steph sighed heavily in her seat and I saw Mike slip through the staffroom door. He was our other ally. Head of music.
‘Good of you to join us, Mr Abbey,’ said Miss Montague.
‘Ah yes, um, sorry,’ he said. ‘Tube was terrible.’
‘But of course it was,’ she said, blinking at him with a deadpan expression. ‘And could I remind you all that it’s our Harvest Festival in few weeks so if you could talk to your forms about it that would be appreciated. An email will be going out to all parents this week.’ We all nodded dutifully while I caught Mike’s eye and smiled. He was always charged with assembly rehearsals for the Harvest Festival and, for several weeks last year, arrived at the pub after work humming songs with titles like ‘A Very Happy Vegetable’.
‘Finally, could I have a volunteer for someone to help Mrs O’Raraty with Harry Potter Club on Wednesday afternoon?’
Mike winked back at me and I stifled a laugh with my hand, turning it into a cough. He was always late and the Tube was always the excuse but the truth was that he was hung-over and slept through his snooze button. This meant he always looked crumpled – creased shirt, scuffed shoes, curls of hair springing out from his head at odd angles, as if he’d slept on it while wet. I winked back.
‘Miss Bailey, how kind of you to volunteer,’ said Miss Montague from the front. ‘Please could you liaise directly with Mrs O’Raraty as to what she needs you to do.’
Shit.
I nodded.
‘And that’s everything from me. So I suggest we all get on with our day. Unless there’s anything else?’ said Miss Montague, gazing out at her teachers like Napoleon about to send troops into battle.
Silence.
‘Very good,’ she said, and the room started moving again.
Mike hurried over to Steph and me. A pillow crease was still imprinted on his cheek.
‘Either of you got any Nurofen? My head feels like it’s about to fall off and I’ve got to give a Year 6 his French horn lesson,’ he said.
‘No, sorry,’ I said.
‘Go see Matron,’ said Steph. ‘She’ll have some.’