This Secret We're Keeping (14 page)

Oh, fantastic. Very original, Landley. A-star for effort
.

To her credit, Jess smiled. ‘Have you been practising this?’ Her breath was freezing in tiny little clouds between us.

‘No,’ I said quickly, frowning, ‘why?’

She looked relieved. ‘Thank God. It’s
rubbish
.’

I went for solemn but ended up laughing. ‘Sorry.’

She settled back against the bench and crossed her legs, probably to help her keep warm. ‘No, don’t be,’ she said, biting her lip like she was really trying hard to take me seriously. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed.’

How can she be so cool about this? When did girls this cool ever exist?

‘Well,’ I said, clearing my throat as she offered me another stab at saying anything that meant something, ‘I shouldn’t have kissed you.’ And then I stuffed my hands into my pockets because I was really starting to feel cold.

She smiled into the folds of her scarf. ‘Wasn’t it me who kissed you?’

True.

No – irrelevant. Get a grip
.

I shook my head. ‘Jess, I kissed you back and I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m your teacher. You shouldn’t have even been in my house.’

She looked more serious now. The smile had melted off her face. I wanted to quickly reconstruct it, put it straight back where it belonged.

‘I was the one who knocked on your door, Mr L. It wasn’t like you came looking for me.’

Another tick to confirm my good character. If Jess didn’t think I was a pervert, then maybe –
maybe
– I wasn’t. ‘The point is,’ I said softly, ‘we made a mistake and we have to pretend like it never happened, okay? There’s a lot of people who’d be really angry about this if they found out.’

Even though she was the person whose opinion should have mattered least to me, Sonia Laird was for some reason in my mind as I said this.
Bloody Sonia Laird.

Jess frowned, looked down and picked at a tiny hole in the leg of her black tights. She was starting to shiver with the cold. I wanted to grab her hands and blow some warmth into them. ‘Well,
I’m
not going to tell anyone,’ she said. ‘But I want you to know that Saturday night was the best thing that’s happened to me all year.’

We both froze as a clatter of footsteps rounded the other side of the shrubbery. Girls were laughing, gossiping about boys.

‘Jess,’ I said as soon as their voices had receded, ‘you shouldn’t say that. You’re young; you’ve got plenty of great experiences ahead of you.’

‘I told you we’re moving to London after Christmas,’ she said, with a slight shake of her head. ‘I’m really going to miss you.’ She looked across at me then, her grey eyes small and sad.

I remembered what she’d said to me about her mother needing to take off to bed for six months. ‘Is your mum going to be okay?’

‘Define okay,’ she said softly, the shadow of a smile across her face.

I didn’t need to attempt it to know that amateur mental health analysis was unlikely to be one of my strengths – but I also didn’t want Jess to think I’d just been asking out of courtesy. She got that all the time: teachers checking up on her with one eye on the clock before they dashed off to supervise hockey practice or back-slap each other for being the world’s biggest egghead.

‘Is it …’ I hesitated. ‘Because of your dad?’ Even as I said it, I knew I should have at least tried to pretend I didn’t actually think things were that simple.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Actually, my mum was sort of relieved when my dad died. She’d always wanted to travel the world, but he wanted her to have us, so …’ She offered me a little such-is-life shrug. ‘She was finally free.’

Jesus Christ.
‘Who told you that?’

She blinked at me, shivering a little more intensely now. ‘She did.’

‘Jess …’ I struggled to find the words, probably because I’d never before been challenged to find the upside of someone telling her kids she was glad their dad had carked it. So I decided to position it as some sort of good-natured
misunderstanding. ‘She didn’t mean it. You know that, don’t you?’

‘She did,’ Jess replied simply, shooting down my ignorance. ‘She tells us all the time.’

‘It’s probably the alcohol talking.’

She smiled. ‘What you’re really thinking comes out when you’re drunk, Mr L.’

Well, if that was true, then I was definitely some sort of child molester.

‘How long has she been like this?’ I asked her, slotting my hands under my thighs and jiggling my legs gently, an attempt to generate some warmth.

‘Forever,’ she said. ‘She fell off a horse when I was five and got addicted to the painkillers. Then she got depression and started drinking. My dad hated it. They were hardly speaking – you know – at the time he died. She only cried at the funeral because she was hung-over.’

For a mother to afford her own comedown more pity than her dead husband or grieving children was not really defensible in my book, so I didn’t even bother trying.

Fortunately, Jess didn’t seem to be waiting for me to put a positive spin on the behaviour of egotistical lunatics at major life events. ‘I miss my dad,’ she was saying, ‘but it’s made me more determined to follow my dreams. I’m going to be a chef when I leave school.’

Admittedly, I was slightly relieved that her goals didn’t in any way rely on her being good at maths. ‘That’s great,’ I said with feeling. ‘You should do it.’

She smiled and then paused. ‘So what’s your dream, Mr L?’

Caught off guard, I wavered, wondering if her question somehow meant I habitually appeared jaded or pissed off around my pupils. I hoped not, since that would have put
me in the same personality category as the unsmiling Derek Sayers and his unwashed comb-over.

‘Er …’ I scratched my chin. ‘Well, I like teaching.’

‘No!’ She brushed my thigh with a fingertip, probably reflexively. ‘I mean … what’s your
dream
?’

I smiled. It was sort of nice to indulge the thought for a moment that my life’s desire might not actually be to hang around with Sonia Laird and play pretend karate with Steve Robbins all day.

‘Well. To travel, I guess. I always wanted to, but …’ I trailed off then and glanced at her, aware that the last thing she probably needed right now was another adult whining on at her about unfulfilled ambition.

But her eyes were wide. She seemed to be hanging on to my half-sentences like they were the most fascinating thing she’d ever heard.

I couldn’t really come up with a meaningful conclusion that wasn’t something predictable about the Hadley job having been a real opportunity, and not wanting to let Mackenzie down. ‘Life takes over sometimes, Jess. That’s why you need to do this stuff while you’re still young. Which you are,’ I added cheerfully, because I was conscious I’d started to sound a bit like my dad, who spent most of his time complaining about his knees and writing to
Points of View
.

‘So, go somewhere next summer,’ she said. Her teeth were chattering now, though she hadn’t seemed to notice. ‘You get long holidays. There’s nothing stopping you.’

I looked across at her, trying to recall at what point the focus of our conversation had shifted from her alcoholic mother to my motivational shortcomings.

‘Where would you go?’ she pressed me.

‘Italy,’ I said, without hesitation. ‘It’s not exactly exotic,
but … my grandmother’s Italian. We’ve got family out there.’

‘You’ve never been?’

‘Well, for holidays and stuff when we were kids. But I always sort of promised myself I’d go out there one day, maybe do some teaching. Learn the language. I mean, I know a few words and phrases, but it’d be great to learn properly.’ I rubbed my hands together and blew into them, briefly envisaging Italian sunshine.

She brushed her hair from her face and looked into my eyes then, like she was about to make a confession. ‘I’ve always dreamed of having my own Italian restaurant. You know – a little trattoria.’

That was a good dream. ‘Yeah?’ I said, leaning forward.

‘Yeah. Mr Michaels was telling us about this amazing little place in Puglia.’ She became animated, her eyes widening. ‘They built it into a cave, but there’s no signs, and they don’t have a menu, and it’s all lit up with candles inside. And they serve you wine straight from the barrel. I mean, they actually have the barrels
in
there.’

(I had to smile. On the one hand, it was encouraging to hear that Brett Michaels, Hadley’s head of languages and long-time advocate of Kentucky Fried Chicken, had updated his definition of a good dinner spot to include whether or not it sold wine by the vat. On the other, it was mildly concerning. I liked the guy a lot, but if there was ever the embodiment of a functioning alcoholic, he was it.)

‘Have you ever been?’ I asked her. ‘To Italy?’

She shook her head. Her teeth were chattering more sharply now.

‘Well, what about the Venice trip in February? Mr Michaels is running it. There’s still spaces.’ (Hadley Hall pupils didn’t go to Stonehenge or Hadrian’s Wall for their
field trips. Oh no – they went to the Dolomites, Barcelona, Stockholm, New York. And now, it seemed, Venice.)

‘I’ll be living in London by February, Mr L,’ she reminded me with a sad smile.

I must have sighed then, because my breath became a fleeting patch of fog in front of my face. ‘Oh, yeah.’ I frowned. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ she said mildly. ‘My mum would never pay for me to do something like that anyway.’

I’d overheard talk in the staffroom before about Mrs Hart’s substantial inheritance, a portion of which had apparently been ring-fenced for the children’s school fees. Much of the (admittedly rather presumptuous) conversation had then proceeded to centre on why the woman was still so bloody tight with money. I could only assume that having a full-time drinking habit left one with very few available hours in which to generate a stable income – as well as an accumulation of ruptured facial capillaries that no amount of charm or foundation could make up for at interview.

‘Are you going?’ Jess asked me now.

I shook my head. ‘There’s enough teachers already signed up.’

‘Well, you should go to Italy by yourself. Next summer. Find your family.’

I glanced over at her, feeling strangely grateful that she was so willing to share her optimistic outlook. In truth, I was mystified as to where she found the strength for it. Most girls in her situation would have been arrested by now for shoplifting and dabbling in recreational drugs. ‘Yeah,’ I told her, feeling suddenly inspired. ‘Maybe I will.’

She smiled. Her lips were beginning to tinge blue from the cold. ‘Well, don’t forget to send me a postcard.’

I almost said it. Ridiculously, in that moment, I almost said,
You should come with me.

Fortunately, a small but crucial cluster of my brain cells kicked in just as the words were leaving my mouth. ‘You should get home, Jess,’ I ended up mumbling without conviction. ‘It’s freezing out here.’

But instead of nodding and leaving, she reached out and placed a hand on my leg. It was the softest and lightest of touches, but –
whoosh!
– I felt exactly the same as I had on Saturday night.

You’ve not been drinking, Landley. There was no excuse then and there’s even less of an excuse now
.

It shocked me to realize I could do this sober.

‘Jess,’ I said, but my voice caught clumsily in my throat. I moved my hand down to gently brush her fingers from my leg but I ended up just taking her hand and holding it. Our fingers were squeezed tightly together: hers felt marginally warmer than mine, which were ice cold. I closed my eyes.

‘This stops now,’ I whispered.

‘I like you so much,’ she breathed, reaching up with her other hand and placing it against the back of my neck, her fingers through my hair, sending unbelievable little waves of something electric down my spine. I thought about gabbling some further protest, but I knew by then that it was pointless. I shut my eyes.

If she kisses me,
I’ll kiss her back, just to let her know I like her too, but after that, it stops. I don’t know how, but I’ll make sure it stops.

Just as I was coming up with this remarkably shoddy action plan, I felt her mouth against mine. Her lips were shaking with the cold. Straight away I dropped her hand and took each side of her face between my palms, just as I had done on Saturday night, and kissed her, hard. Our tongues began to do battle, a fierce friction that got more intense by
the second. Her hands slid inside my jacket, ran over the ridges of my ribcage, worked down to the small of my back. I pulled her in tight, mouth still locked on to hers, and then even tighter, until finally she hooked a leg over my thigh and eased herself quickly on top of me. She was so light I barely realized she had done it until I felt the rub of her crotch against my own.

The sensation was incredible and alarming all at once.

I pulled back urgently from her then, ashamed to discover that I was on the verge of tears. ‘No! This is wrong – this can’t happen.’

I shifted sharply underneath her and she slid off me. With some effort and an amount of inelegant reorganization, I managed to get to my feet.

‘Okay,’ she nodded. ‘Okay.’ And now she was actually crying, whereas I was just scuffing round the edges of it, almost numb with shock that I’d just been kissing one of my own pupils behind the drama studio while all her classmates were doing shuttle runs around plastic cones.
How did I let this happen? What sort of guy have I become?

I ran a hand through my hair. ‘Jess, I like you a lot but this has already gone way too far.’

She nodded, doing her best to stem her tears with her fingertips. ‘Okay. I’m sorry.’

I shut my eyes briefly, tried to gather myself. ‘Please don’t say that,’ I told her. ‘This isn’t in any way your fault.’

Jess picked up one edge of her scarf and quickly wiped her mouth. That small, self-conscious movement finally did it. I started to cry. ‘I’m so sorry, Jess,’ I said, crouching down and kneeling in the mud, taking her hands between my own. She was shaking, and trying not to; sobbing, but attempting to stop. Even now, she was being braver than I was.