‘I was going to go in the ambulance,’ she said, looking at her bag instead of anyone in particular, ‘but they didn’t know what was wrong with her. Could have been contagious.’
She turned her head and smiled beatifically in answer to a question that I didn’t hear.
‘My mum will probably drive me in to visit her after school, if she’s well enough to take visitors. I’ll tell her you said that, shall I? I’m going to organise a collection.’
I knew they were talking about Chloe – who else would have caused such interest? She could have had a hundred friends if she’d wanted them, but for some reason she preferred to have one at a time, and no one, not even me, could figure out why she’d picked me. Emma looked at me, and I expected some kind of special word, a privileged piece of information.
‘I’m here now,’ I wanted to say. ‘I can take charge.’
Emma smiled comfortably, flicked her coat over her knee, and said nothing.
She was a fucking liar – her mum wouldn’t be giving her a lift anywhere. Chloe had already let me in on the facts about that. Emma lived in Ashton with her dad and three older brothers – all crammed into a house with not enough bedrooms. She actually shared a bedroom with her seventeen-year-old brother, which was disgusting. Her mum got depressed and left them all when Emma was two. Now, according to Chloe, her dad had got religion and was all right with the boys, but didn’t know what to do with Emma – especially since she ‘started growing up and getting tits, you know?’ I’d seen Emma with her father once, walking between stalls at the school Spring Fayre. He never dared look at her – it was as if she was naked.
When Shanks came in to read the register he clapped his hands loudly. It made a good sound, a loud, hollow sound. Yesterday, the first day back, we’d had morning assembly so this was the first proper registration of the year and I’d not seen him in ages. He carried on clapping as he walked between the tables and to the front of the classroom, and by the time he was standing in front of his desk, leaning back on it and crossing his legs in front of him, everyone in the class was shuffling quietly to their seats and shoving their bags under the tables.
He was all right, like that, Mr Shanks. If we’d known his first name we could probably have called him by it when none of the other teachers were around, and he wouldn’t have minded, but wouldn’t have made a big deal out of it either, like he was trying to be our ‘mate’. He was just natural. And also, he always made jokes, but the sort of jokes that it didn’t really matter if you laughed or not. You could just smile at those jokes, or nod a bit, and that was enough, it wasn’t awkward.
‘I suppose I can assume from the noise that you’ve all had quiet, God-fearing, homework-filled Christmas holidays and come in fresh as daisies, free from hangovers, and anxious to start work,’ he started.
A few people who sat on the table along the back of the room groaned and said, ‘Whatever, sir,’ but he only smiled and clicked his fingers at them, making his hands into two little guns at the end of the click which he pointed at the back row, shot, and then blew the imaginary smoke away.
‘Chaps and Chapesses, let’s get coats in bags and the registration done before I let you loose on my unfortunate colleagues,’ he said, and reached for his book. There were more groans and shuffling as people reached for their coats, and then hush as he read out the names.
The school had a ridiculous rule. No one was allowed to carry their coat around with them. There weren’t any cloakrooms so you had to get a locker which cost money for the year, or put it in your bag. And there weren’t enough lockers. My coat was damp because it had snowed that morning: needles of frost flying about in the thickened air and collecting where they fell on my face and my hands and all over the new coat. So the wet coat was going to smudge the writing in the books in my bag and that would be one thing. It was also going to smell like old curtains by the time I got home, and Barbara would be checking it because it was new, and she would notice, and that would be another thing.
I struggled furiously with the coat and thought about Chloe being off school with a baby and her parents probably knowing everything by now and probably ringing up Barbara and Donald in the middle of the day – or even coming round to see them. They’d have long conversations about bad influences and Debenhams and things getting out of hand, and tell them that Chloe would be moving school again and it was probably best not to keep in touch.
Barbara would nod and look sympathetic and thank them for taking the trouble, then she would go up the stairs and take all the magazines and posters and hairspray out of my bedroom. I could see it. At the very least I was going to be on my own at school all day, and then back home to get a bollocking about the coat and the books and Chloe. Fucking Emma. I sighed and turned the coat inside out so the wet bit wouldn’t touch my books, then rolled it up as tightly as I could. When I looked up, registration was over, everyone had gone, and Shanks was staring at me.
‘You’re working that coat into shreds,’ he observed. ‘Leave it in my office, if you’re so determined to follow the letter of the law.’
‘Thanks, sir.’
We went to his office.
‘You’ve heard about Chloe, have you?’ Shanks said, and shook his head.
I nodded. ‘Emma was—’
‘Emma’s her best friend, yes?’
I didn’t dignify that with a response. ‘She’s gone to the hospital,’ Shanks said. ‘Not to worry though. It isn’t serious. I expect she’ll be back at school within the week.’
‘Sir, it’s nothing to do with a baby, is it?’ I asked, and bit my lip as soon as I’d spoken, hoping that he hadn’t heard me.
Shanks didn’t say anything. He sat down, leaned back on the stool and busied himself rearranging the things on his desk. There were mugs and mugs of pens and pencils and paintbrushes, an ashtray, empty bottles of water and jointed wooden models for drawing and half-eaten apples and jars of elastic bands and all sorts. He pulled them backwards and forwards and didn’t look at me. Shanks was the only grown man I’d met since the attacks started who showed no fear at being alone with one of us girls. I remembered the security guard taking his hand off my shoulder like I was a bomb about to explode. Maybe that means Shanks is the pest. The thought of it sent a stream of bubbles rolling down my spine.
‘That’s a question, isn’t it?’ he said, and then stopped. I cringed, bit the inside of my cheeks, and waited.
‘No,’ he said finally, ‘it isn’t anything to do with a baby. Not hers or anyone else’s. No babies involved. Which, from the look of you, I can see is something of a relief.’
‘Yes,’ I said, and looked at his hands, not moving the things about in his office anymore, but resting on his knees. There was paint right under his nails, and he hadn’t even started the lessons for the day yet. That must mean he never used a nailbrush, or he painted at home, even before breakfast.
I imagined him dipping a paintbrush into the soft yolk of an egg and painting something on a slice of toast. I wondered if he had a wife, or a woman who he lived with. Even the friendly teachers were still a bit mysterious. They ended up knowing loads more about us then we did about them, which wasn’t really fair.
‘Perhaps, when you do go and see our Chloe,’ Shanks said carefully, ‘you could let her know, in your own inimitable way, with all the compassion and subtlety of your sex –’
I blushed. I could not believe he had taken me into his back room and just said ‘sex’ to me like that. Chloe was going to have an absolute fit when I told her.