Visions (4 page)

6

Despite Amelia looking intensely miserable, both Morgan and I agreed that she looked healthy in comparison to how she had looked before the weekend. The main difference was how clean she looked. Her uniform was stain and crease free, her hair had been washed and was tied back. She apologised quietly to Morgan and asked to be returned to classes immediately, as this was what her mother had asked for. Due to the circumstances, Mr Briggs had announced there would be no seclusion as punishment. He wanted normality for the girl and her mother had asked that she wasn’t removed from lessons under any circumstances. This meant that she couldn’t be withdrawn to talk to Carrie during the school day but, as the police were now involved, it would be better for the school to comply with requests from home.

              The week passed without any major drama. My year tens continued to be the most difficult class and challenged me lesson after lesson. Darren was the worst. Each lesson, he turned up late smelling of cigarette smoke and would refuse to stay behind after lesson. Corinne would pick him up at lunch or at the end of the day, bring him to me where he would apologise reluctantly and then do exactly the same the next day. Scott and Phil were trying to avoid being kept behind. Unlike Darren, they would stay to get it done and over with and although they showed complete disdain for me, at least they did what I asked.

              Friday came and I found I had butterflies in my stomach from nerves. Morgan spent every spare second gossiping with the other young female members of staff about what they were going to wear and when they were going to meet. I found myself sat on the side-lines, listening and wondering whether I had anything to wear that would fit in with what they had. Maybe it was my own personal inferiority complex, but they all seemed so sophisticated in comparison to me. I was relieved when Morgan suggested that we meet up beforehand to get ready together. When I told her where I lived, we were surprised to find that we were only a couple of blocks away from each other. Morgan went home, picked up the stuff she needed to get ready and came round to mine with a bottle of wine. Not being a big drinker, one glass was enough to calm my nerves.

              Once we had discussed my wardrobe and Morgan had showed me how to make a flick at the edge of my eye with eye-liner, she wanted to discuss the ‘dream’ about Amelia. “It’s creepy though, don’t you think?” she said. “I’m sure it’s just a strange coincidence.”

              “I hope so.” As we made our way through the wine, my tongue started to loosen. “It’s all the more worrying because I saw her wearing a pair of pink, tattered slippers and her school uniform,” I confessed. Morgan stopped what she was doing and looked at me, her eyebrow arched in disbelief.

              “Do you believe in psychic ability?” she asked and then, stifling a laugh with a snort, “you aren’t pulling my leg, are you?”

              “No, I’m not pulling your leg and I don’t know whether I believe in psychic ability, but it beats what I was thinking.”

              “What were you thinking?” she asked, seriously.

              “That I’d lost the plot and needed locking up!” We both laughed. The alcohol had kicked in and we were ready for our night out.

              “We’ll pretend you’re on day release then, and I’ll take care of you,” Morgan
said, chuckling as we climbed into our taxi. We were headed to a place called Louie’s where I’d never been before. Morgan said they liked it because the people in there tended to be older than twenty-one, often teachers or staff from the hospital, so it wasn’t a cattle-mart, like the clubs catering for teenagers usually were. I liked it as soon as we walked in. The other four girls from work had already arrived and sat at a table near to the dance floor. The lighting was low and the tables were decorated with small church candles.

              “Hi Morgan! Hi Gillian!” shouted Hazel Murray, a Maths teacher who always went out of her way to speak to me in the staffroom.  “I’m just going to the bar. Care to join me?” Morgan motioned for me to sit, but I shook my head.

              “You brought wine over to my place. I’ll get these.”

              “You been here before?” Hazel asked cheerfully.

              “No, but I like it already.” We chatted while we waited to be served. Hazel was telling me about her new husband, Dean, and I was starting to feel quite jealous of how happy she was in her relationship, when she cut off and seized my hand.

              “There’s an absolutely gorgeous man staring at you on the other side of the bar!” she announced and then grabbed a barman as he walked past to order drinks.

I looked up. She was right. He was gorgeous and he was definitely looking at me but probably not for the reasons Hazel thought. It was Dr Arnold. He shook his head as if to remind himself of where he was and waved shyly. He’d probably just realised where he knew me from. I waved back and smiled.

“Get in there, babe!” Hazel cried, gleefully. “Serve my friend next, yeah?” she said to the barman, who seemed entranced by her. With a sigh, he turned to me and I ordered wine for Morgan and myself. Hazel started to manoeuvre back to the table, with the barman following the sway of her hips. I looked up, but Dr Arnold had

disappeared, so I re-joined the girls where we had a rather raucous toast to Fridays.

“Oh my God, I love this song!” Hazel shrieked as Katy Perry came on, singing about California Girls. She got up to dance, grabbing my hand and Morgan’s as she strutted towards the dance floor. I willingly followed. After dancing to several more songs, we returned to the table and continued chatting and drinking.

              It was later on, when I returned to the bar, that I found myself standing next to Dr Arnold. He blushed when he saw me and I remembered the cross words I’d thrown at him on the ward. “Doctor, how are you?”

              “I’m fine. Please don’t call me Doctor, though. I didn’t come in the Tardis. Just Theo will do. Although, now I’ve seen your response to that, perhaps Doctor would be better!”

              “I’m sorry,” I said, stifling a giggle. At least he was smiling.

              “It’s fine. I’m used to it. We come from the generation that automatically thinks of a t-shirt wearing chipmunk when they hear that name. My mum wasn’t a fan, though. She’s Greek, so I got the name from my grandfather,” he explained.

              “No, I like it. My name is…”

              “Gillian” he interrupted. “I remember your name. Look, I know you’re with your friends and,” he gestured to a group of people laughing in the corner, “I’m with mine, too, but I wondered if I could buy you a drink?”

              “I’m fine for a drink, thank you. I’ll just take this back to my friend,” I said, as the barman handed me two glasses of wine. “I’ll leave the other here and be right back.” Walking back to the table, I realised how inebriated I was. I’d probably had far too much already, but Dr Theo Arnold was gorgeous and when I told the girls where I was going, they all cheered for me.

              “Sorry about that!” I said as I got back to Theo, but he simply looked

amused by their clamour.

              “So, you’re all healed, then?” he asked, looking at where my cast and bruises had been.

              “Physically, yes. Mentally, I’m not so sure. I want to get another car but my mother is against it massively and, to be honest, I’m scared of it happening again,” I admitted.

              “Scared of what happening again?”

              “You know, me drifting off into a daydream.” I knew I was saying too much because I was drunk, but it didn’t seem to matter. I was out with friends and talking to a beautiful man. It was the most fun I’d had since well before the accident.

              “Is that what it was?”

              “Well, it hasn’t come true yet so I suppose it can’t be anything else.” As I said the words, my wine seemed to lodge in my throat. The blurred face of the dark-eyed, furious boy appeared right in front of me. He seemed so familiar. If I could just bring him into focus…

Theo took the glass out of my hand and the next thing I knew, he had led me outside. “I’m sorry. I think I’ve had too much to drink.” It was too late to rewind or recover though. I’d envisioned Amelia Carr running away and it had happened. I’d envisioned that boy looking like he wanted to kill me so what if that happened?

              “Do you want me to take you home?” Theo asked, his voice low with concern.

              “You’re so nice to me. Why?”

              He laughed softly. “I try to be nice to everyone if I can. There’s about half an hour before they close this place up. Do you want to wait until then and go home with your friends?” he asked, walking towards a bench and sitting down. I nodded and joined him, leaving enough space to ensure he didn’t think I was being overly flirtatious. “So, do many of your daydreams come true?”

              “Can you put people away?” I asked, seeing myself in a strait-jacket again.

              “Like a police officer?”

              “No, as in put me in the psychiatric ward?”

He shook his head and laughed again.

“I’m not sure whether it’s happened before,” I admitted. “I have a feeling it has but I had a sort of daydream, if you can call it that. Anyway, in this whatever-it-was, I saw a particular school girl running away. I saw the street she was on and what she was wearing. Two days later, she ran away, wearing the same clothes I saw her in.” I looked up to see what his response would be, but he was simply looking at me and listening. Either his face betrayed nothing, or I was too drunk to see.

              Just then, Morgan and Hazel seemed to tumble out of the door. “Gillian! There you are! Come on back in! Sarah has managed to get the DJ to play the Dirty Dancing song as the last dance.” They had hold of my arms and were dragging me in, but I looked over my shoulder and Theo was right behind. His friends were already on the dance floor and he made his way towards them, smiled to let them know he was there, and then came back to me. We shared the last, slow dance. I rested my head on his shoulder and took in his scent, knowing that when we both sobered up, he would be the serious, sophisticated doctor and I would be the delusional freak whose psychosis caused her to crash and nearly kill herself.

Between that moment and going to bed was a drunken blur. The girls and I were climbing into a taxi and then a girl we didn’t know stuck her head in and pushed a piece of tissue in my hand. “Dr Theodore wants you to have this!” Then she ran off, giggling. Morgan high-fived me as the taxi was pulling over to let a nauseous Sarah out. Hazel followed her, managing to grab her hair while she threw up on what I hoped was her lawn. Hazel shouted back that she would stay and get Dean to pick her up in the morning. Then it was just Morgan and me, and she was talking to me about cats, but I didn’t know why. The next thing I knew, I was climbing into bed fully dressed. I didn’t recall who was last to get out of the taxi, but I sure hoped it wasn’t me because I couldn’t remember paying!

7

In the morning, despite the incessant pounding in my head and churning of my stomach, snippets of the night were determined to torture me with their cringe-worthiness! Once I was able to keep water down, I started to strip so I could rinse the night off in the shower. While I was wriggling out of my skin-tight jeans, a scrap of tissue fell out of my pocket and I remembered the strange girl thrusting it in my hand. I unfurled it. It had a mobile number with Theo’s name written above. Shame flooded over me as I remembered confiding in him about Amelia.
What a freak he must think me to be!
The last thing anyone working with children needed was a mental health problem. How could I have been so stupid as to confide in a doctor? There must have been loads of other available men in the bar that I could have made a fool out of myself with. I rooted for my mobile and texted him an apology, asking him to forget about everything I’d said. Then, so I wouldn’t wait obsessively by the phone for a reply, which admittedly is my style when it comes to men, I got in the shower and attempted to boil myself clean.

              There were no texts on my mobile when I got out, much to my disappointment, but the house phone was ringing.

It was my mum. “How was your night with the girls, Gilly-Bean?”

              “Oh Mum, it was great, but I feel so poorly!” I moaned. “My head feels like it’s going to split open.”

              “Have you eaten anything?”

              “No, not yet, but I’m sipping water now.”

              “You’ll be fine, love, and believe me, you’ll have forgotten all about the morning after, next time they ask you out!” she joked. “Do you want me to ring back later?”

              “No, it’s fine. I think I just let my hair down after a really difficult couple of weeks.”

              “Are you not enjoying it?” she asked, her voice high.

              “It’s not that exactly. It’s just that it’s much more difficult than it was on my teaching practice. I’m starting to think that I got an easy time of it with my placements. I mean, I like my form. They’re so sweet. And my year eights and nines aren’t too bad,” I contemplated, rubbing my temples. “My year ten class students are the worst. I’m really struggling with them.” I went on to tell her about Ally and Darren and all the disruption that was caused lesson after lesson. She listened without comment until I’d finished.

              “The thing is, Gillian, you knew what you were taking on when you accepted the position. I told you how difficult schools like Logford are, but you were determined that it was what you wanted and now you’re having second thoughts. You’ll just have to stick it out.” Her words were so far from being comforting that my stomach turned violently.

              “Mum, I’m going to have to go. I feel sick,” I mumbled, slamming the phone down. After I’d thrown up the little bit of water I’d managed to sip, I went back to bed and curled up on top of the duvet, clutching my aching head. It was two hours before I woke up again.

              At two o’ clock, there was a knocking at the door. It was my mum

clutching a container that smelled like vegetable soup. “I think I may have been unnecessarily harsh before, Gilly-Bean. This is a peace-offering, as well as being a proven hangover cure, and it’s still warm,” she said, holding out the container.

              “Come in, Mum. I’ll put the kettle on.” We sat down to bowls of soup and cups of tea at my small dining table. I still had my pyjamas and dressing-gown on, but she didn’t mention it.

              “I worry about you, love. I probably worry about you far too much because you’re a young lady now, but I can’t pretend that you still aren’t my little girl. When you were little and things were difficult, you always seemed to suffer more than other children. I don’t know whether it’s because you were more perceptive or just overly sensitive, but you could be sick if there was a problem paying a bill or your dad and I argued. I guess I just always saw you working in a school like mine, where the kids are raised to have manners and actually want to get somewhere in life. Even there, I have problems with discipline from time to time, but Logford is a completely different kettle of fish. I’m just not sure that Logford is for you.”

              “I can be as tough as you when I want to be,” I objected.

              “I know, I know. Listen, I have an idea for this year ten class.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out some sticky post-it notes. “You need to think carefully about the space within your classroom and how you can use it to make teaching this class easier for yourself. Who are the main problem children?” she asked.

              “I guess Darren, Scott, Phil, and Ally are the worst, but there are others who cause low level disruption.” She was writing their names down on separate sticky notes as I spoke.

              “Draw a plan of the tables in your room and decide where would be best to sit

each child. Write each child’s name down on a separate sticky note. Make sure you are at the classroom before they are due to arrive and stick their names on the tables that you want them to sit at. That way, they come in and you can watch them find their places. It prevents any attempted negotiations or arguing because you are showing them that you have already made your mind up and won’t budge on your decisions. What do you think?”

              “I think it’s worth a try!” I said, feeling positive about the situation. By the time she had left, I felt much better. My hangover had subsided and I was not feeling so anxious about the week ahead.