The Good Girl

by Fiona Neill

  7

  As Romy slumped back on her bed trying to work out what exactly had just taken place between her and Jay, Ailsa sat in her office reviewing the record list of candidates planning to sit Chemistry A level that summer. There still weren’t enough girls, but even the notoriously difficult-to-please new head of governors had been impressed by the figures. Matt Harvey was right. Breaking Bad had probably inspired more children to study science than any policy the government could dream up. It brought chemistry to life.

  The head of Chemistry, Paul Taylor, had bristled at his comment, saying that even a monkey could make crystal meth and that the trend might have more to do with the inspired teaching in his department. A heated debate about the accuracy of chemistry in Breaking Bad threatened to derail the entire meeting. Paul said it was impossible to make blue crystal meth; Matt pointed out that there was a Chemistry professor consulting on the series. Paul, possibly the most thin-skinned member of staff, said he might not be a university professor but what he lacked in expertise he made up for with experience. Or maybe it was the other way round. Ailsa firmly told them they were going off on a tangent. Sometimes she felt like the ringmaster of a shambolic circus trying to find its rhythm with a truculent set of new performers vying for her attention.

  In a diplomatic intervention that seemed to placate Paul she commended his inspired teaching and the improvement in results since he had taken up the post, but privately she thought that Matt’s theory made more sense. Especially when they turned to the next point on the agenda – whether to bring a drug expert into the school to talk to students about legal highs. There were now more than 250 recognized by the European Drug Commission, Mrs Arnold had explained.

  Forget the pupils, it was the teachers who needed educating first, suggested Matt, explaining that he had heard a couple of boys talking about something called M-Cat and asked whether it was something to do with pet food. Everyone had laughed, including Ailsa. He knew how to lighten an atmosphere without undermining his authority or distracting colleagues from the serious point he was trying to make. Ailsa reluctantly acknowledged that he was a positive presence in the school, popular with staff and teachers. If the school managed to be the first in Norfolk to become a business and enterprise specialist, it would in good part be down to him. As Romy might say, he had good energy. Which reminded Ailsa how she had to shut down a conversation with Rachel the other night when she tried to embark on a discussion about their sex life. ‘Not appropriate, Rach,’ she said, citing the need for professional distance but secretly wondering if she was jealous.

  Ailsa checked her phone. It was almost eight o’clock. She messaged Luke and Romy to check whether they had got home and called Harry but he didn’t pick up. He was probably putting Ben to bed. There was no point dialling the landline because Adam couldn’t hear the phone. Her phone buzzed. Yes, it read. Ailsa felt a guilty stab of gratitude towards Romy for being the only reliable member of the family and marshalled the last pile of papers on her desk.

  She confirmed her attendance at a conference for head teachers at the Institute of Education the following week. ‘Seizing Success’ it said at the top of the paper. Who came up with these titles? Almost certainly not someone who had become head of a school where so many girls wanted to become hairdressers that there was a teaching salon on the premises. She skim-read a document on how the Pupil Premium had been spent on each child eligible for a free school lunch, put it in her bag to edit at home and checked through a twelve-page application for the school to be granted the Investors in Families Award. Someone in Whitehall needed to be told that all this bureaucracy stifled initiative rather than encouraged it.

  After that she reluctantly flicked through a couple of brochures for old people’s homes with optimistic names that belied the fact that they were places where people went to die. Ocean Heights. The Pastures. Sunshine Dreams. With all their talk of staff ratios, singing groups and puréed food, they sounded like the nursery schools she had scouted for Ben in London. She chose one to take home and leave on the bedside table to appease Harry. There was no way she was sending her father to one of these places. Since Adam had moved in with them and started eating and sleeping properly, he had begun to recover some of his old bluster. It would kill him to go into a home.

  Rachel had announced she was coming this weekend to review options for their father. Review Matt Harvey more like, thought Ailsa, but she was pleased about her sister’s attack of conscience. She hid the brochure for Sunshine Dreams at the bottom of her bag beneath a pile of prospectuses from English departments at universities that Luke would never get into, resolving to leave them at strategic points around the house in case he picked one up. Finally she jammed a thick government report on children and the Internet into her bag.

  Reading this was a priority. Before the Breaking Bad debate, much of the meeting had been spent discussing the issue of a boy in Romy’s year who had had a fake Facebook page set up in his name where vile comments, presumably but not necessarily from anonymous classmates, had been posted. His head had been superimposed on a photograph of a naked man with a deformed penis. The parents insisted the school should take the lead on pursuing those responsible and try to get Facebook to take it down. Ailsa had agreed, even though she didn’t know where to start. The Internet had totally blurred the line between school and parental responsibility.

  Satisfied her desk was in reasonable shape for the following morning, she headed towards her car. It was parked in the space reserved for the head of school, the only one delineated with a border of pot plants. Even after a term in the job it still gave her a burst of pleasure to know this space belonged to her. She had been working for this from the moment she had taken up her place at the Institute of Education after leaving university almost two decades earlier. Although she had always envisaged running a school in London because she had never taught anywhere else, now she was back in Norfolk she realized she could be more useful. It was all about creating aspirations, building bridges with local businesses, making sure every member of staff shared her vision and that every student had a plan. Schools in London were way ahead of the curve. Here there was an opportunity to make a real change.

  As she walked she deconstructed the staff meeting, summarizing priorities and gauging how the different personalities around the table worked together. The head of Physics was dead wood. Closed to innovation. Cynical about her students. Unwilling to introduce a syllabus with more challenging practical work. She would have to go. The head of Drama, Lucy Drummond, was like every head of Drama Ailsa had ever come across: hugely enthusiastic but in constant need of hyperbolic praise, which Ailsa had duly given when Lucy announced that she was going to direct Love and Information as this year’s school play. If she pulled it off Ailsa would reward her with promotion to head of Year 7, a position currently vacant. What is your best quality? she had been asked by the head of governors during her final interview for the position of head teacher. Decisiveness, she had responded so quickly that the interview panel had burst out laughing.

  The rain had turned to hail that blew sideways across the car park into her face. She opened her mouth to catch a few nuggets. Winter empowered her. She didn’t feel the cold like other people and it made her feel superhuman. Rachel said it was because they had grown up swimming in the North Sea. As she rummaged in her handbag for the car keys a radical thought crossed her mind: if she could hold out for another hour or so she would miss Harry’s chicken cacciatore.

  His meals were announced in advance amidst great fanfare, and his need for immediate affirmation as she picked up her knife and fork at the end of another production exhausted her. The way he watched and waited as she ate the first mouthful, alert for her response, reminded Ailsa of a sheepdog.

  In almost two decades of marriage I have cooked chicken cacciatore a thousand times and not once have I demanded anyone reflect on the tenderness of the meat, the superiority of the field mushroom over the button mushroom or the way the r
osemary infuses the stock with a flavour reminiscent of freshly mown hay, Ailsa reflected wryly.

  If she got home at ten she could also miss the predictable drama of a school night. She could avoid arguing with Ben over when to switch off his light, and trying to ascertain if Luke really was revising for his A levels up in his bedroom. She could have a break from the low-level hostility that emanated from Romy and the competition for her attention waged between Harry and Adam.

  It was decided. She would play truant from her family. She would go to the pub at the end of the road, read all the papers she was now piling into the boot of the car and because there would be no interruptions it would take half the time. It was a gastropub, one of the biggest gifts to women since the development of the washer-dryer. A place where she could eat a home-cooked meal without making it herself, where no one would stare at her for being alone or make lewd remarks about the size of her breasts, which, unlike Loveday’s, weren’t attention-seeking in any way. She slammed the boot shut and the car quivered. The bumper was still in the garage at home, where it would remain for the next year.

  ‘Poor old thing,’ she said, patting the vehicle on the bottom in the same way that she did with Ben when he hurt himself. ‘Most faithful friend.’ They had been through a lot together.

  ‘Ailsa,’ a muffled voice shouted.

  Ailsa jumped.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked, squinting through the hail.

  ‘It’s Matt. Matt Harvey.’ He came closer until she could see him. He was wearing a raincoat with the hood done up so tightly that only the upper part of his face was visible. ‘I know. I look like Kenny from South Park.’

  ‘I don’t watch South Park.’

  ‘I was in the Biology lab and saw you out of the window.’

  ‘Right,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘I wanted to have a word. I couldn’t find the right time after the meeting. Too many people milling around. Do you have a moment?’

  ‘I need to get going. Homework crisis.’ She patted her bag and forced a laugh.

  ‘It’ll take ten minutes. Max.’

  ‘Any more than that and we’ll freeze,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry about the Breaking Bad diversion. That was one for the staffroom. We got carried away.’ He paused for a moment and tried to unravel the toggles on his hood.

  ‘It didn’t matter. It was entertaining after all the Facebook nastiness, and I think you’re probably right.’ Ailsa opened the car door.

  ‘That’s not why I wanted to speak to you.’ He pulled at the toggles again, making the knots ever tighter. ‘It’s something more personal. But I think it has to be said.’ Ailsa sighed. She understood what this was about now.

  ‘Look. I really don’t have a problem with you and Rachel. But I don’t have anything to say about it.’ She should have put a comma rather than a full stop between each statement. The space in between sounded too defensive. She looked at the top half of his face. His brow crumpled. Even before he spoke she knew that she had totally misread his intent.

  ‘That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about either,’ he said finally.

  ‘Right,’ said Ailsa, trying to sound more composed than she felt.

  She headed round to the driver’s side to avoid his gaze and opened the door. Matt followed her and leaned his forearm on top of the window so that she couldn’t close the door without appearing rude. She put one hand across her face to shield it from the hail and the other on top of the car door, a few inches away from his, to underline her desire to get home. They now faced each other.

  ‘And why would you have a problem?’ he asked, sounding almost hurt.

  ‘I realize that scientists aren’t big on empathy,’ Ailsa said drily, ‘or imagination. But surely you can see this from my point of view.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you’ve been feeling lonely because you’ve moved somewhere new and you need some female company to get you through your first winter out in the sticks, why don’t you go and pick someone up at the pub down the road? Or use one of those apps where you can meet strangers for sex.’ She was about to add, ‘like Rachel’, but loyalty prevailed.

  ‘I thought that pub was where people go to eat organic beef with beetroot mousse and locally sourced seasonal vegetables. I wasn’t aware it was a hotbed of steamy sexual liaisons. Otherwise of course I would have gone there as soon as I arrived at Highfield.’

  Not bad use of alliteration, thought Ailsa. She struggled to wrap her anger around her.

  ‘Don’t you think some people might think it’s a bit strange, arriving at a new school and hitting on the headmistress’s sister after meeting her for less than sixty seconds? Some people might think that the fact she is almost forty and you are twenty-seven is a little embarrassing, if not inappropriate. Some people might think that the right thing to do would have been to let me know what was going on so that I didn’t have to discover it for myself at a New Year’s Eve party.’

  ‘Some people might think you’re behaving like the bloody Taliban. Why don’t you dig a hole on the sports pitch and bury me in it up to my neck and get some people to throw stones at me?’

  ‘Because the ground’s too hard, and health and safety regs don’t allow boulders in the school grounds. Otherwise I would.’

  Matt looked down at the ground and swept a few hailstones away with the side of his foot. His shoulders shook with anger. Ailsa began to construct further barbs in her head, wondering where this would end. He was a great teacher and her first recruit. She recognized enough of herself in him to know that he was in the job for all the right reasons. He loved his subject, cared about his students and took pleasure in their achievements. She was lucky to have persuaded him away from London. It wouldn’t look good if he left after a term. Her judgement would be questioned. She waited for him to fire off another volley. Instead he laughed.

  ‘You’re so funny. You don’t mean to be. But you are,’ he said. ‘Like the way you talk to your car as if it was a friend.’

  This was not what Ailsa expected. She was relieved that somehow they had managed to pull back from the brink, but his reaction wrong-footed her. At least now he might reconsider before offering his resignation. Good Biology teachers were an endangered species and here was one who had not only offered to initiate an after-school David Attenborough club but also promised to shoot his own rabbits for students to get experience with dissection.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be harsh. I love my sister. But I wish she wouldn’t shit on my doorstep.’

  ‘My intentions are honourable,’ he said, doing a small bow. ‘Rach is great. She’s a right swipe come good.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Right swipe. Tinder. I met her through Tinder. She came to your office when I was there so that we didn’t have to explain how we met.’

  He stood upright and finally liberated himself from his hood. The top of his thick dark hair had been flattened. He shook his head and a few hailstones tumbled around his face.

  ‘That wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. But I’m glad we’ve cleared the air.’

  ‘There’s more?’ asked Ailsa.

  ‘Something came up with one of your kids. I was in two minds whether to say anything but I think you should know.’

  ‘How long will it take?’ Ailsa asked, knowing that everything to do with Luke took time.

  ‘We could freeze to death out here or I could tell you over a beer in the local lap-dancing club,’ he suggested, going round to open the passenger door before she could respond. His confidence was both reassuring and unsettling.

  The pub was practically empty. This was a place for out-of-towners. Not enough people in Luckmore had twenty pounds to spend on dinner during the week. The barman was sitting on a stool engrossed in a book. Ailsa smiled as he dragged himself back to reality. She recognized that feeling.

  ‘Think we need to wa
rm up. Both literally and metaphorically,’ said Matt, heading towards a table beside the huge open fire. A couple with a toddler sat the other side of the hearth. The father was aimlessly scrolling up and down messages on his BlackBerry, trying to ignore his daughter’s grizzling.

  Ailsa sat down with her back to the window on a bench that was so deep that if she leaned back her legs wouldn’t reach the ground. So she perched on the edge. Matt volunteered to buy drinks. He put his bag abruptly on the table. The salt and pepper toppled over. Ailsa righted them and requested a half of cider.

  ‘Whatever they’ve got. Organic preferably. Or French. Or the weakest one they have. If there’s an organic French pear cider I’ll take it over an inorganic English one made from apples. The French use fewer sulphates.’

  He held up his hand. ‘Remember, the male brain finds it difficult to hold on to more than one instruction at a time,’ he said, mimicking something she had said about teenage boys in the meeting. She grimaced at his teasing tone and then felt irritated that he made her want to pull rank. His informality was unnerving. She focused on the couple with the child on the other side of the fireplace.

  ‘We need to get on with it,’ said the mother. ‘Otherwise the gap will be too big.’

  ‘We should have gone away on our own,’ said the man without looking up. Ailsa recognized the symptoms. A row was brewing.

  Her thoughts turned to Luke. Whatever Matt wanted to tell her, it wouldn’t be good, because it never was. She closed her eyes for a moment. Two terms. Luke had roughly five months to turn things round, to conjure up some reasonable exam grades and fix on a university course. Hopefully find a nice girlfriend to steady him. The first two problems might be resolved by the third. Though his high rate of preliminary success with girls didn’t seem to translate into anything more enduring than one-night stands.

  Luke had always been like tumbleweed, blowing back and forth wherever the wind took him. She smiled as she remembered the way he used to tear off his nappy at baby massage. As a small child, he made a friend who loved football. For a couple of months he played non-stop. Ailsa bought all the kit for him to play for a local team. Then he fell into a different crowd who hated football but loved World of Warcraft. He gave up football and took up gaming. Soon afterwards he met a girl who played the guitar and he insisted he wanted lessons. For eight months he thought he was Bob Dylan. Then he got into electronic music.