The Learning Curve (20 page)

Mark swore loudly in the back of the cab. Since when was the main entrance of a school closed to the public? How else were you supposed to get in?

‘Absolutely typical,’ he muttered to Ray. ‘They insist you come to school and then make it as difficult as possible to succeed. Just like bloody exams.’

Ray chuckled.

‘What’s the time?’ asked Mark.

‘Ten to.’

‘Right. We don’t have time for this shit,’ said Mark. ‘Ignore the sign and drop me off outside the front door. If anyone bollocks you just tell them Miss Hobbs told you to do it.’

The car stopped, he leapt out, slammed the door shut and raced up the stairs to the front door of the school.

Nicky leant against the sink and looked at her reflection in the Ladies’ cloakroom mirror. Two perfectly matched red patches under her eyes were all she had to show for such pain. She pulled the hair-band out of her hair. Respite was instant. Then she twisted the cold tap, slowly bent down over the sink, and cupped nearly freezing water on to her aching features.

It was official. Mark was lost. He had now passed the display board three times and knew without any shadow of a doubt that this was the Chinese Year of the Dog. He undid his tie as he ran, scanning each room for a sign on the door saying 6 and an old dragon sitting inside waiting to breathe fire on him.

Nicky watched her hand twist the cold tap until the water slowly stopped dripping. Her face was so cold she almost couldn’t feel it. She hoped it would last all evening. She patted her cheeks softly with the paper hand-towel and stared at herself in the mirror, sighed long and low, and closed her eyes. Pain tunnelled into her skull from them. Surely someone was tightening her eyeballs in their sockets? She thought of everything she had to get through before the sweet oblivion of sleep.

Then she left the loos, closed the door behind her, and came face to face with the man from the fireworks display with floppy fair hair and wide-set blue-green eyes.

Mark stopped dead in his tracks. The girl from the fireworks display was standing right in front of him, and she looked even more amazing than before. Her skin was almost
translucent, her eyes were bright and two perfect apples of pink highlighted her cheeks. Of course! She was a parent. The little girl with her at the swimming pool must be in Oscar’s class.

‘Hello!’ he beamed.

‘Hello,’ Nicky breathed, putting great effort into a smile.

She didn’t seem too pleased to see him, he thought. Maybe she didn’t recognise him. Or maybe her husband was down the other end of a corridor.

‘We met at the fireworks display –’ he started.

‘Oh yes!’ she said, smiling a bit more. ‘Of course. I remember.’

‘I thought I was lost for a minute there,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d never leave this place alive.’

‘Ooh, stuck in school! Horrid thought,’ she said.

‘Well, I wouldn’t mind now,’ he allowed.

Nicky’s girlie bits went all girlie.

He held out his hand.

‘I’m Mark. Pleased to meet you.’

She shook his hand.

‘I’m Nicky.’

‘Hi, Nicky.’

‘Hi, Mark.’

They smiled.

‘Well, well,’ he said, slowly letting go of her hand. ‘This is a pleasant surprise.’

‘Thank you.’ She smiled. ‘Likewise.’ They moved away from the wall and began to walk down the corridor together.

‘So, did you enjoy the fireworks display?’ he asked.

‘Ooh yes,’ she said. ‘My favourite yet.’

He gave her an unmistakable look. ‘Me too. Me too.’

To stop herself from giggling like a schoolgirl, she forced herself to remember that he had a family. ‘Are you here for the Parents’ Evening?’ she asked.

The question had an immediate and dramatic effect. The smile went, the flirting stopped, and he sucked in his breath. ‘Jesus, yes,’ he said, suddenly grave. ‘I’d managed to forget that. I had a three-line whip.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see.’ So. Not getting on with the wife.

‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘My boy’s having problems with this nightmare teacher.’

‘Oh!’ Nicky was shocked. There had been a couple of complaints about Amanda’s strict approach, but she had never heard her described as a nightmare before. If there were any complaints, she needed to know about them.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she told him. ‘Do you mind me asking what’s wrong?’

By now they were approaching her classroom. She wondered briefly where he was going, but he seemed content to follow her lead.

‘Oh,’ he went on easily, ‘nothing I can’t handle. But the old bat’s clearly using my boy as a substitute for her own lack of children. Desperate old spinster, you know the thing.’

‘Oh,’ murmured Nicky, fascinated. That didn’t sound like Amanda. Maybe it was Gwen he was talking about.

They reached her door and both walked in, hovering inside the door.

‘Tragic, really, when you think about it,’ confided Mark. ‘To be surrounded by children when you don’t have your own. I suppose I should pity her instead of being angry. But I’ll be giving her short shrift tonight.’

‘Crikey,’ said Nicky, shutting the door behind him before this got too personal. ‘Sounds serious.’

‘Well, yes it is. She actually –’ he interrupted himself with a laugh – ‘you won’t believe this – but, she actually sent me a prissy, school-ma’am letter insisting – not asking –
insisting
that I come tonight.’ He let out another laugh. ‘Like I’m one of her pupils. I’ve had to leave the office specially. We’re working through the night and I’ve left my whole team there. Unheard of. I’m a partner. It’s absolutely unheard of.’

Nicky blinked.

‘And that’s not the half of it,’ he continued. ‘She invited my son round to her place on Hallowe’en without my permission – how inappropriate is that? I could probably get her suspended for that alone – she probably bought the sweets specially – God! It doesn’t bear thinking about. And she cornered him outside school hours to tell him all about her own private life. He’s only ten years old! God knows what she’s doing to him emotionally.’

He looked at Nicky for reassurance. She was staring at him, wide-eyed. Reassured, he continued.

‘You see, Oscar – that’s my boy – hasn’t got a clue. He’s too young to pick up on these things. So he thinks she’s the bee’s knees. You know, loves him like the mother he doesn’t have. Doesn’t stop going on about her. You see, he’s vulnerable; hasn’t got a mum – I’m widowed – and of course she plays on that, doesn’t she? Uses it to her advantage. Even tried to imply they were in the same boat because she hasn’t got a mother either. Can you believe that? Here is a grown woman telling a ten-year-old boy that they can both be motherless together. If you ask me, the woman needs help.’

He looked at Nicky again.

‘I wonder if you know her?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Miss Hobbs?’

Nicky felt the floor tilt slightly.

‘Mr . . . Samuels?’ she heard herself say. ‘Isn’t it?’

He gave her a surprised beam. ‘Yes! Mark Samuels! How did you know?’

‘Oscar’s father?’

‘Yes! That’s right! Oscar Samuels! Do you know him? Cute kid, six freckles on his nose.’

Nicky put out her hand. Mark looked at it and then frowned at her.

‘Perhaps we should begin again,’ she said quietly.

He shook his head in bewilderment.

‘I am Miss Hobbs,’ she said faintly. ‘Nicky Hobbs. Oscar’s form teacher.’

Mark opened his mouth to speak, but it soon became clear to both of them that this was an empty gesture. A gargling noise came from the back of his throat, and then it stopped.

Nicky waited.

‘I didn’t –’ he began. ‘I –’

She raised an eyebrow.

‘You’re much –’ he began again. ‘Um –’

She raised her eyebrow higher.

‘I –’ he resumed.

‘Well,’ she said softly, ‘it gives me a warm glow to be pitied by such an eloquent man.’

She scraped her hair back into a ponytail and whipped on her glasses.

‘Oh,’ he said in some alarm, stepping back slightly. ‘Oh.’

‘Mr Samuels,’ she spoke quietly but firmly, ‘no one forced you to come here tonight, but I am not remotely surprised,
from what I have already gleaned about you, that this enormous sacrifice you’ve made – for the first time since your son’s been at the school – has been made under such duress.’

Mark started to open his mouth, but he was nothing if not a fast learner, so he shut it again fast.

‘My “prissy, school-ma’am” letter,’ continued Nicky, ‘was written after considerable thought and concern, and, of course, with the consent of Heatheringdown’s much-respected Headmistress. It was intended to be a kind, if last-ditch, attempt to create some glimmer of interest in your son’s educational and emotional life.’

‘How –’ Mark’s vocal chords gave a spasm.

‘A son’, she continued, ‘who lives with a constant, daily awareness of the loss of not one loving, full-time parent, but two.’

Mark’s voice gave a brief cameo appearance.

‘As for your concerns about me, let me assure you,’ she went on, ‘I have not confided one detail of my private life to Oscar that is in any way unsuitable. It just so happened that I too lost my mother when I was a child, and had an emotionally absent father. Unlike Oscar, I was lucky enough to have an older sister who became my surrogate mother, but I know, to this day, as an adult, which parental loss pained and confused me most. An absent dead parent you can grieve, an absent living parent you never get over.’

Mark made a small guttural noise.

‘When I happened to chance upon Oscar,’ she continued, ‘he was the last pupil to be picked up on the first day of a new school year. We have more than two hundred children at our school, Mr Samuels, and that includes some who live in
care, some from traumatically broken homes, and some whose parents still live in war-torn parts of the world. Oscar was The Last Child to be picked up and taken home. Unsurprisingly, he was crying. He was also vandalising the school gates, while waiting for an au pair whom he hated and didn’t even know the name of. I mentioned, briefly and in passing, my late mother, to allow him what I already felt (after knowing him for less than a day) might be a rare moment of adult empathy.’

Mark let out a low grunt.

‘Now, to your next accusation. I did not “invite him round” on Hallowe’en. As it happened, earlier that day in school he told me that you were going trick-or-treating with him that night. Allow me to tell you just how excited your son was at the thought of spending one evening with you. He could barely concentrate in class. However, it just so happened that he, along with Daisy and her mother, rang on my doorbell at nine o’clock – hours after everyone else had stopped – because he was so determined for you to join them that he couldn’t accept that you weren’t going to. They were all exhausted and hungry after a long night out in the cold. I don’t know how you’ll feel to know about this, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Daisy showed absolutely no surprise when she found out that you weren’t coming after all. She is ten years old. I asked them all in and so I happened to be there to pick up the pieces when you
texted
him to let him know that, yet again, you were going to let him down.’

Mark blew air out of his nose.

‘You have a wonderful son, Mr Samuels. And you are right. I don’t have any children of my own. But let me assure you, I would much rather not have any than bring one into
a world I had no intention of sharing with them. I am very fond of your son, but I do not need your cast-offs, thank you very much.’

‘CAST-OFFS? How
dare
y—’

‘Well, what would you call it, Mr Samuels?’ she shot, leaving Mark livid that when he had finally found his voice she hadn’t let him finish using it. ‘Leaving him chocolates on his pillow instead of being there for him? Abandoning him with another parent for days and nights on end –’

‘I have to earn a fucking salary!’ exploded Mark finally, glad to have found something he could say.

‘Oh of course!’ she exploded back. ‘The all-important salary. That male substitute for love.’

‘
What?
’

‘Do you have any idea how many single mothers I’ve seen tonight? And not one of them needed a letter to force them to come.’

‘WELL,’ shouted Mark, determined to finish one full sentence, ‘they’ve probably got some poor bastard working his balls off to pay them shitloads of alimony –’

‘Oh, poppycock!’ shot Nicky so ferociously that they both almost got whiplash. ‘They hold down two jobs and still manage to put food on the table – literally –
and
be there for bedtime. The difference is, Mr Samuels, they know what being a parent means. Look it up in the dictionary sometime. It doesn’t mention anything about a salary.’

‘How
dare
you –’

‘Oh I dare, Mr Samuels. I dare. The only tragedy is that, clearly, no one ever has before.’

They stared at each other.

‘Oh and by the way,’ she said primly, opening the
classroom door to indicate that their interview had concluded. ‘We don’t allow swearing in this school.’

With that, she turned her back on him and walked to her desk where she began to collect all her notes together.

Five minutes later, Nicky walked towards her car trying not to think about the fact that there was every chance she had just ruined her career. At this moment she just didn’t care. All she wanted was bed.

Just then a taxi roared past her across the playground.

‘Absolutely typical,’ she muttered, as she saw who was in the back of it.

Mark looked away sharply from Miss Hobbs as the taxi sped out of school. The expression of contempt on her face was unmistakable even in the dark. When the taxi drew up outside his office he opened the door before it had stopped. Then he stood on the steps of his office staring up at the front door. He walked up the steps and came to a final stop at the top. After a full five minutes, he buzzed the door and pushed it open, muttering ‘Poppycock’ to himself and trying to find it ridiculous.

THE SUN PEEKED
out at Mark from the edge of a neighbouring high-rise, promising a fine, bright winter’s day. He scrunched up his eyes, glanced at the clock and took out his mobile.