The School Gate Survival Guide (32 page)

Through the glass front of the garage I could see the cashier squawking her head round, trying to get a better look at the two grown women, one in a very wet Prada coat and soggy Uggs, one in Asda jeans, parka and wellies, screaming at each other across the forecourt. Fear, shock, death wish – I don’t know what it was but for the second time in twenty-four hours I started to kill myself laughing.

I had to go. Mr Harrison was waiting. At least I didn’t have to go in and pay for petrol.

I paused outside the solicitor’s office to look at myself in the rear-view mirror. Anger was still pumping round my body, tinged with panic that I might have got the wrong end of the stick. My left cheek had a clear four-finger outline. My hair was hanging down in wet, wavy strings. I was already ten minutes late so there was no time for a last-ditch effort to make myself more presentable.

The receptionist smiled as though I was dressed in a twinset and pearls, glanced down at her appointment book and pointed towards the stairs. ‘He’s expecting you, just go straight in.’

Walking up with dread in my heart took me back to the day Harley had given Hugo a thumping and we’d sat in front of Mr Peters waiting to hear our fate. That seemed so long ago, I felt as though I’d lived a whole extra life since then. I hesitated on the top step, then strode towards Mr Harrison’s office. He could look down on me as much as he wanted for messing up the Stirling Hall chance. I bet he wasn’t going home worrying about whether the leccy would be cut off or someone would turn up to make off with the microwave. My fighting thoughts became a feeble knock on the door.

‘Come in.’

Mr Harrison stood up, offered to take my parka and pulled out a chair for me. I bumbled some apology about arriving late and dripping wet. He waved it away politely and lifted a big box file onto the desk.

‘So, Ms Etxeleku, how have things been?’

Clover was right. I did have a pathetic respect for people in authority. I choked back the honest answer of ‘My partner has gone off with the slapper next door. I’ve shown my kids the good life and am now going to plunge them back into the bad life. We’ve got no heating and I’m up to my eyes in debt. I’ve just thrown a bucket of muddy water over someone who is so far up her arse she can’t see daylight, and the man I think I love, although I’m not sure I know what love is, is in love with someone else.’

Instead I said, ‘I’m not going to be able to keep the children at Stirling Hall. I can’t afford all the extras, the uniform, the books.’ The defeat in my words rushed out like bleach down a drain.

He steepled his fingers. I hated men who did that. It was always men. He wasn’t sneering at me, though. In fact, he looked quite concerned. ‘I have had some communication from Stirling Hall. I understand the children are to leave at the end of next term, the summer term?’

‘I had to give a term’s notice, and I knew the fees would have to be paid next term anyway, whether they went or not. I didn’t want to waste Professor Stainton’s money, I mean, she’d put her trust in me, like.’ I pulled a face. I gave a mental nod to the prof. Yes, yes, I knew, ‘like’ was for friends. I hardly ever said that any more. ‘So they’ll go for next term, I’ll just have to manage. I don’t know how, actually. Then they are going back to Morlands, the school they were at before.’

‘Is it purely a financial consideration? I mean, all things being equal, are you happy with the school?’ he asked.

‘I love the school. The children have really started to settle in and improve so much.’ I looked away. ‘It’s been quite exciting to watch.’ I could hear my voice starting to catch.

Mr Harrison smiled. ‘The professor’s library has not yet been distributed. Do you think there would be anything useful there to help you get through the next few months?’

My heart quickened. The prof had loads of classics, Austen, Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf. I used to pull them out every couple of months or so to dust the shelves thoroughly. It took me ages because I couldn’t resist reading a few pages before I put them back. I’d kill to own them but I couldn’t pretend they were for the children. Bronte had loved the prof’s collection of Lewis Carroll poems. An image of the prof sitting in her armchair, reading Bronte
Jabberwocky
came to mind. Harley used to beg her to read
The Hunting of the Snark
. Maybe it was her facial expressions, her voices, her hand movements that had given him his love of drama.

‘You can’t just give her books to me. What about, I don’t know, her relatives? Don’t they want them? Surely she must have left them to someone?’ I tried to remember her mentioning anyone apart from her son, Dominic, who died in a car crash in Australia.

‘As it happens, Professor Stainton appointed me executor of the will, so I can assure you it doesn’t present a problem. Would it be convenient for you to accompany me to her house now? Then perhaps you could choose some books that might be useful to you.’

‘I loved her books but I don’t want to take anything that belongs to someone else, don’t want any comeback later, a big fuss because the cleaner made off with her first editions,’ I said.

‘I promise there hasn’t been a stampede to claim the professor’s library. Shall we go?’

I followed Mr Harrison in the van. The prof’s house wasn’t on any of my usual routes so I hadn’t been past it since she died four months earlier. The gates to her long driveway were already open. The daffodils were out, lovely golden clusters all over the garden. Tulips – the prof loved tulips – nodded away in tubs by the front door. Perhaps the powers that be had kept the gardener on until the house was sold. Mr Harrison pulled his Jag into what I considered to be my spot, a little clearing by the weeping willow, where the prof’s pet poodle, Iago, had been buried a few years earlier.

Mr Harrison produced a bunch of keys, fiddling away to find the right ones.

I held my hand out. ‘Would you like me to do it? I can tell by looking which ones fit the locks.’

He handed them over. I had to remind myself that the prof wouldn’t be sitting in the drawing room with her
Chambers Crossword Dictionary
beside her. As the front door clicked open, dust danced in the daylight that filtered through the Edwardian bay windows. The house had missed me at least. I’d expected it to feel hollow and damp but in fact, it felt warm and comfortable. The boiler was obviously working better than mine. I waited for Mr Harrison to take me through to the library. He hesitated in the hallway, looking from one door to the other. ‘This way,’ I said, nodding to the first oak door.

I stood in the doorway while the memories crowded in. The prof shouting the answers to
University Challenge
. Cursing her knotted arthritic fingers as she taught Bronte how to knit one, purl one. Showing Harley pictures of her father posing in his goggles at the Brooklands racetrack in the 1920s. My heart lurched as I spotted her little silver-rimmed glasses on the side table, sitting on top of
The Times
. I wondered who had cancelled the papers. Mr Harrison coughed behind me. ‘Feel free to enter and have a look at the books. See if there are any you’d like. I need to get something from the professor’s study, so I’ll leave you to it.’

I walked over to the built-in bookshelves that stretched from floor to ceiling on two sides of the room. I pulled out
Great Expectations
. It felt solid and smooth in my hand. I held it to my face. I loved the old smell, slightly fusty, of all those words put together so cleverly. The prof had always encouraged me to borrow books but I never did. I couldn’t bear the thought that Colin would leave a coffee ring on one. I used the local library instead. I ran my hand along the bookshelf until I found my favourite book of poems with a shiny silver cover. Not for the first time, I read the inscription inside.

‘
To Mother, Sorry I can’t be with you but I will be thinking of you across the miles. Read the poem on P.31. Missing you! Love, Dominic. 15 August 1977.
’

The year I was born. I wondered how long afterwards he’d been killed in the car crash. I glanced at the photo of him on the mantelpiece, trapped forever in his twenties, suntanned and smiling, posing next to a kangaroo. I shook my head to chase away the thought of Harley or Bronte dying before me and turned my attention back to the book.

It fell open naturally at page 31. I smiled as I read it, hearing the prof’s voice in my head as she read out Jenny Joseph’s poem, ‘Warning’, about becoming an old woman in purple and blowing her cash on booze and fancy sandals. I could almost hear her giggle, a light bird-like sound. I missed her.

I shut the book quickly as Mr Harrison’s footsteps echoed on the parquet floor in the hall. I should have been gathering up the books I wanted. I hadn’t even looked to see if there was anything to help the children. Harley had said something about studying First World War poets, bursting in at odd moments with ‘If I should die, think only this of me’. I looked along the bottom shelf for her anthology of Rupert Brooke’s poems. And Shakespeare. They would definitely study Shakespeare. I started pulling out the tragedies, then the comedies, feeling a flutter of panic. Too much choice. I didn’t want to look greedy. But I couldn’t stand the idea of these beautiful books being packed into cardboard boxes and left to rot in some spidery attic.

I turned round as Mr Harrison came in. ‘Sorry, I haven’t quite finished yet. I won’t be a sec. Are you in a hurry?’

‘No, not at all. The professor left this for you.’ He held out an A4 envelope.

‘For me?’ I took it. ‘Amaia Etxeleku. To be opened at the end of the first term at Stirling Hall’ was written on the front in her old lady’s writing, neat, flowery letters.

‘Where did you find this?’ Something in me was backing away. The whole thing of people speaking from the dead freaked me out.

‘It was in her safe.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes. She sent a copy to the office a few days before she died. She was quite clear that you were to have the version from the safe.’ Mr Harrison had that blank gaze back again, very ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’. I wondered how many times he had quietly sorted out stuff left to mistresses without the wife ever knowing.

‘Do you know what’s in it?’

‘As the executor of her will, I have been party to all of Professor Stainton’s paperwork whilst dealing with probate.’ He wasn’t going to give me any clues.

I tipped the envelope up and felt something heavier than a letter slide to the other end.

My fingers were all clumsy, ripping the envelope as I opened it. A pile of photos, some black and white, some coloured, fell to the floor. I knelt down to gather them up. The prof with Dominic as a baby in one of those huge Silver Cross prams. Dominic and a gorgeous dark-haired girl standing in front of, was that Big Ben? She looked foreign, but there was a London bus in the background. The same couple dancing, Dominic looking very handsome in a DJ. The woman was in a bright red halter-necked maxi dress, a bit like the one Mum had when I was little.

My eyes were drawn to her dangly gold and jade earrings. They were very familiar. That
was
Mum.

‘What’s going on? That’s my mother’s photo in there. With the professor’s son.’

‘Why don’t you sit down and read the letter? It will explain everything. Would you like me to sit with you? Or would you rather read it on your own? I really don’t mind.’

‘I think I want to be on my own.’ I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo of them dancing. They fitted together, as though they had melted into each other somehow, the chemistry between them shimmering in the stiff little Polaroid picture.

Mr Harrison tucked a pen into his inside pocket and nodded towards the car. ‘I’ll wait outside for you.’

I scrabbled at the photos on the floor, all fingers and thumbs. I piled them onto the prof’s little side table, gently putting her glasses to one side, then sat down in her armchair. I’d never sat in it before. It felt wrong. But not as wrong as this flipping letter turning up from the prof several months after she’d died. I flicked through the photos until I found one of Mum, dark hair swirled up in a lovely chignon like a 1950s film star. I propped it on the side. I pulled out the letter, surprised to see that it was several sheets long. Basildon Bond. Of course.

Dear Amaia,

This will no doubt come as a shock to you, but when you have had time to process all the information, I do hope that you will have a clearer understanding of the events leading up to this letter. I must endeavour to be as clear as possible as it is not my intention to leave you with unanswered questions, however painful you may find the truth. For this purpose, I must start from the beginning.

My son, Dominic, met your mother, Josune, when she worked as a housekeeper with the Watson family before you were born. He had been at Charterhouse School with their son, Robert, and they were very good friends. To cut a long story short, Dominic fell in love with your mother. I think she was quite cool with him at first – she was three years older than Dominic and such a proud person. She would never let anyone pay for anything, even though she was clearly not well off. Dominic persisted with her. He was twenty-one and in his last year at Cambridge. He started to come home every weekend, staying in with Josune to babysit Robert’s younger brothers instead of going out with his friends. He was besotted by her.

When he graduated in economics and found a job working in a bank up in London, I suppose we thought that Dominic would meet a City girl and forget all about Josune. Instead, I think it was after two years (it is all so long ago now), when he’d been promoted at the bank, he told us he wanted to marry your mother. I have to be truthful. I loved your mother and although she was not what I expected when I had imagined a daughter-in-law, I could see how happy they were. Her heart was a good one. I greatly admired her. She was such a capable woman. She’d made her way to England and forged a life for herself.

I feel ashamed to write this next piece knowing it will hurt you. I am asking an awful lot of you, but you must try to take into account that this all happened nearly four decades ago and times were different then. Herbert, my husband, thought Dominic could do better. He liked Josune but he was always a little xenophobic. He was a good man but his horizons were limited. He’d been a bank manager for years. Everyone he knew, everyone we socialised with, was English, white and middle class. He’d had almost no need to confront any variation on that in the real world. Your mother was so tactile, so enthusiastic and gregarious, I think he was almost scared of her. He used to stand behind the armchair in the drawing room whenever Josune came in until he was absolutely sure she wasn’t going to try to kiss him.