The School Gate Survival Guide (14 page)

I parked next to Mr Peters’ Audi round the back as he had told me, expecting one of the crusty old secretaries to come flying out at any minute to tell me deliveries were round the other side. As soon as I got out of the van, he was at the door.

‘Good morning. Come on in. I’ve made some coffee. Morning, Harley. You can go straight up to your classroom. Hello, Bronte, how are you?’

Shyness made her whisper.

‘No need to be embarrassed. We all make mistakes. It’s part of growing up. Remind me to tell you about my eagle tattoo one day.’

Bronte looked at me, grinning at this unexpected gem of information that would no doubt fly round 4H. I wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not. He looked over at me and winked. Apparently it didn’t take much to make me blush these days. Harley raised his eyebrows and gave me a little wave as he disappeared off down the corridor.

In Mr Peters’ office I sat in awe as he talked Bronte through what had happened at the school when she was missing, what the other children knew, how to handle their questions. He was serious but kind, and by the time he had finished Bronte was sitting up straight and answering in a strong voice. That alone was choking me up. Bronte was picking up where she left off. I, on the other hand, felt as though I was held together with a paperclip. I didn’t want to leave her.

‘I’m going to get one of the Year Sixes to take you down to your classroom now while I have a word with your mum,’ he said, picking up the phone. Bronte hopped up without a care in the world as though Fucked-up Friday was just a summer fly to be flicked away. I was holding on to myself with the tiniest thread of control, everything sucked in as though I was doing the longest pelvic floor exercise in the world. Luckily, a well-spoken boy arrived and started asking Bronte about a picture she’d painted for the display in the corridor.

‘Bye, Mum, see you later.’ No kiss. No ‘Don’t worry about me, I won’t do anything stupid’. Then just as she got to the door, she ran back and threw her arms around me. She whispered, ‘Love you.’ I managed my own strangled reply and clung on to the tears that were gathering along my lower eyelids until Bronte had left the room.

I headed for the door. ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to talk to you another day.’

Mr Peters walked in front of me and closed the office door. I heard the lock click. He pulled me round to face him. ‘Maia. It’s really normal to feel like this. You’ve been through such a lot. Here.’ He passed me some tissues. I wanted to blow my nose but instead opted for some ineffectual dabbing. I was trying to laugh it off, shrugging and making cracked-voiced jokes about winning the award for the wettest mother in the world.

He took me by the shoulders. Up close, he could have persuaded me to do anything with those eyes. ‘Look at me. You’re doing a great job. It hasn’t all come together in the way you wished yet, but you are your children’s best chance of a good future. Trust me. You’re doing the right thing.’

Obviously being nice to me was a mistake. No amount of lip biting could get the blubbing genie back into its box after that. I looked away. Stared down at those shiny shoes in between great swipes of Kleenex. I saw him step closer and felt the light touch of his arms go round my shoulders. Tentative, polite.

‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Something in me gave up trying to get a grip. I leant into him and sobbed, while he stroked my hair. At some point I realised that his fingers were massaging my scalp. It was so soothing, I wanted to close my eyes and stand there all day but as my snivelling subsided, I became aware of the sounds of the school, the banging of doors, voices, footsteps. This bloke had a job to do beyond offering the feel-good factor to screwball parents.

I looked up. I had to tilt my head right back. He must have been a good eight inches taller than me.

‘Sorry. Sorry about that. I’d better go. You’ve got work to do,’ I said.

His fingers left my hair and he loosened his grip on me but didn’t let go. Cold air settled between us in the warm space where his chest had been. He stared down. ‘You’ve got nothing to apologise for.’

The 8.30 bell ringing outside his office made us both jump. I pulled away, smoothing down my T-shirt and pushing my hair off my face.

He cleared his throat. ‘No need to rush off. Take your time.’ I searched his face for clues that scalp massage didn’t come as part of the package with Stirling Hall’s fat fees. That given two bottles of wine, Marvin Gaye and a darkened room, we would have had skin against skin. He rubbed his hands over his face. His eyes found mine. Again, that tiny glint of amusement. He looked away before I did. When he looked back again, he’d decided to say something. It was all there in the set of his jaw, and those eyes, no longer laughing.

Before he said a word, there was a knock at the door. I wanted to dive underneath his desk. Mr Peters pointed to a chair and mouthed, ‘Sit down’ at me. He straightened his tie and threw the door open.

His secretary busied in with a bundle of papers, which she put on his desk and then launched into questions about coaches for rugby matches. Mr Peters brushed her off with ‘I’m just finishing my meeting with Ms Etxeleku, then I’ll be right through’.

The secretary looked round at me. ‘There. I could have saved myself the trouble. I’ve just printed out a reminder for you. Your lunch fees are overdue. I know what it’s like, everything’s so busy, the little things get overlooked. If you could let me have them as soon as possible.’ With a jolly smile, she trotted out. I could have taken her bustling little arse and kicked her into next week.

Mr Peters turned back to me, rolling his eyes. ‘Anyway, where were we?’ His voice was clipped, any trace of teasing gone. ‘Right. I will keep a close eye on Bronte and let you know how she gets on. In the meantime, take care of yourself. You’ve had an appalling shock and it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a delayed reaction. Try and get some rest if you can.’

Rest. There was no time for me to rest. I couldn’t fit my life in as it was, and I certainly didn’t have time for nice little siestas in between buckets of bleach. That silk tie I’d managed to bawl all over probably cost more than a term’s lunches. I got up. ‘Thanks for everything, I mean, the stuff with Bronte, but with Harley as well. You’ve been very kind to us, Mr Peters.’

He sighed. ‘You can call me Zac.’

As I was driving out of school, Clover was in front of me. Her hazard lights came on and she pulled up onto the verge, scoring deep grooves into the turf despite the stern ‘No Parking on the Grass’ signs. She ran towards me in mud-encrusted jodhpurs, a backless mohair jumper and silver wellies. She scooped me into a bear hug, all pillowy bosoms and patchouli oil perfume, with a tinge of greasy hair and booze.

Squeezing my hands tightly, she pulled back from me and launched into her usual scattergun approach. ‘Maia, thank God. Are you okay? Christ, you look knackered. Then, fucking hell, what do I expect? Is Bronte all right? My two were inconsolable on Friday night. They wouldn’t even go to the disco. Said they couldn’t dance while they were worrying about Bronte. Is Colin all right? And Harley? Bless him, he must have had a terrible fright.’

I thanked her for searching for Bronte and filled her in, cutting corners in the telling as the minute details didn’t seem so important any more. In particular, I skated over the community centre and my reunion with Tarants. Clover had welcomed my kids as though they snorkelled in the Bahamas on a regular basis and clip-clopped about with the pony set at the weekends. She didn’t need the gory details of our real lives. I didn’t want to scare her into locking up the family jewels every time the Caudwell/Etxeleku children visited.

I kept stumbling over what I was saying anyway because Clover’s appearance was putting me off. She always looked a bit eccentric but today she’d taken the term ‘bedhead’ to extreme. She resembled one of Bronte’s trolls, which was not a kind thought to have about my one posh friend. Her face looked ruddier than normal as though she’d been walking on craggy peaks in wind and rain. As I spoke, she seemed to be struggling to concentrate. When I got to the bit about Bronte turning up late in the evening, soaked to the skin, she started to cry, her face crumpling up like an old piece of tinfoil.

‘Clover, it’s okay. She’s back safely. Really. You don’t need to be upset. It’s been a horrible time, but it’s going to be all right now.’ Clover’s sobs grew louder until her shoulders were heaving and I was asking myself at what point you should smack someone to stop them getting hysterical. Belting someone when they’d already lost the plot had always seemed like such an odd thing to do but I was definitely considering it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jen1 driving past, craning her little chicken neck to see what was going on. Bloody ambulance chaser.

I put my arm round Clover. ‘Come on, we can’t stand here. The whole of the school will be pointing us out as the freak show.’

‘Have you got time to come back to mine for a coffee?’ Actually, it was more of a ‘glub, glub, sniff, coffee, sob,’ but I got the gist. Clover looked so done in, I resigned myself to staying up till midnight to do the pile of ironing I’d taken in for one of my customers. I was puzzled that Clover was still in such a state over Bronte. I didn’t have her down as a drama queen.

‘Are you sure that’s all right? Will Lawrence be there?’ I asked.

The mention of Lawrence seemed to turn Clover into a sprinkler, waving about and squirting water in all directions. It was a slow process but a light was beginning to go on in my brain.

‘Come on, I’ll follow you.’ I poked Clover towards the car and opened the door for her. ‘Go really slowly.’

We came into Clover’s drive. Instead of parking right up by the house, she stopped inside the gate. It didn’t take me long to see why. Two panels of the drawing room bay window had shattered across the drive and part of the wooden frame was buckled in the middle.

‘Christ. Have you been burgled?’

Clover shook her head and heaved open the front door. I followed her into the kitchen.

The state of the house today made the last time I came look like a trip to a hi-tech isolation ward. Parrot shit covered the slate floor tiles. At least three days’ worth of plates, mugs and bowls sat among piles of crumbs and toast crusts on the pine table. Two bin bags overflowed, balanced against the kitchen units. Jesus. There had to be a rat in there somewhere. I guided Clover to a chair.

‘Let me make you a drink,’ I said. There was no bloody way I was using a mug I hadn’t washed personally. Clover sat down, rubbing her face on her jumper. I plunged my hand into the murky pool in the sink and pulled out a couple of slimy mugs. I sucked some water into an empty bottle of washing up liquid and prayed that the hot tap would deliver on its promise. Thank heavens for the Aga. I made the coffee and watched in dismay as globs of milk curdled on the top. I didn’t want to embarrass Clover but I couldn’t let her drink cottage cheese.

‘The milk seems to be slightly off. Is there any more anywhere?’

‘Fucking hell.’ She didn’t answer, just leaned onto the table with her head on her arms and started crying again. ‘I can’t do anything right.’

‘It’s okay. I’ll drink mine black.’

‘I’ll have water.’

I felt exhausted just managing to produce two drinks that weren’t going to give us diarrhoea.

I waited. It was a technique I’d learnt from Mr Peters, who could probably winkle out the true extent of my debts and the colour of my underwear by sitting there silently. It worked. Clover lifted her head. ‘Lawrence has left me.’

‘God, Clover. You poor thing. Why?’

‘He won’t speak to me at the moment but he stormed out on Friday night after I’d got back from looking for Bronte. Said some quite horrible things that I didn’t realise he felt.’

‘Do the children know?’

‘No, they think he’s away on business. He’s been such a grump lately, I think they’re glad he’s not around.’

I was still trying to get the hang of acceptable middle-class conversation. Talking money, especially the exact numbers Sandy and I liked to discuss – earnings, the cost of a new telly, size of mortgage or in our case, rent – was as ill-mannered as picking your nose at the dinner table. I was less sure about the boundaries when it came to husband shortcomings, though I was pretty sure Clover wouldn’t do a Sandy and start telling me the noises Lawrence made when he was having sex. I sat patiently waiting for Clover to open up, pulling a face at my milkless coffee.

She got to her feet. ‘You’d better come and look.’ We walked through an oak panelled hall, where the early February sunlight streamed through a stained glass roof dome. Dust swirled around us as we walked. Clover showed me into the ‘drawing room’. It looked as though a bunch of ravers had recently packed up. The remains of a grandfather clock lay split open, poking through the broken bay window, brass guts everywhere, like something from the Dalí paintings the prof loved so much. A cold breeze was blowing in through the gaps. No one had thought to take down Clover’s lovely silk curtains, which were watermarked from the rain.

‘The kids were so worried about Bronte that they couldn’t settle, so I suggested making a camp in the drawing room to distract them. Just a bit of fun with blankets and cushions and stuff. Orion wanted to convert it into a racetrack for their mountain bikes. I wasn’t that keen but it’s a hard floor so I didn’t want to be the fun monitor either. We moved all the furniture to the side of the room, but when I went out to make some popcorn, Orion had the bright idea of leaping the coffee table. He managed to clip his back wheel and crashed into the grandfather clock at a bit of a pelt. Which, as you can see, smashed through the window.’ She kicked at some glass fragments on the floor.

‘Was he hurt?’

‘He bruised his shoulder but he was okay. More pissed off that he’d lost the bet with the twins, I think.’

‘I’m guessing that when Lawrence came back, he was pretty hacked off?’ I was gobsmacked at Clover’s easy-come, easy-go attitude to the damage. The clock on its own must have been worth several thousands.