Caught!

by JL Merrow

  I cringed. “It’s nothing personal…”

  “Yeah, I get it. It’s just that I’m from a different world, isn’t that what you said?”

  “That wasn’t—I wasn’t talking about you!”

  “So who were you talking about, then?” Sean picked up his beer glass, frowned at it and put it down again.

  “Um. Bugs Bunny?” I cringed. It sounded so totally implausible, now I came to say it out loud.

  “Yeah, right.” He got out his wallet, pulled out a couple of notes and slipped them neatly under his beer mat. “You enjoy the rest of your wine. I think I can remember the way back to my bike.” Then he stood.

  “It’s not…” I started. But it was, wasn’t it? At least, even if he’d mistaken my motives, the end result was the same. I didn’t want to go out with him, did I?

  So I should let him go.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.

  It only seemed to make him feel worse, if the hurt that flashed across his expression was any indication. “Yeah. Me too. I’ll see you around.”

  And then he was gone.

  “Robert, you do realise you’re a total, utter lady-garden?”

  I cringed. “I wish you’d stop using that phrase.” I was beginning to question the wisdom of having hared up the hill to Rose’s little flat following my ignominious departure from Badger’s. Mr. Shiraz was no longer in residence, and Mr. Merlot was only half the man he used to be. Granted, I’d had some hand in reducing his circumstances. I hadn’t been able to stomach my sauvignon blanc after Sean’s departure.

  Much as he hadn’t been able to stomach his beer in my presence.

  “When—’scuse me,” Rose said, having interrupted herself with a burp. “When did I ever tell you I wanted you to set me up with Sean?”

  “You told me to ask him out,” I protested. “And you were the one flirting with him in the Chinese takeaway.”

  “Yeah, because if I’d waited for you to get your act together, we’d both have ended up dying alone.”

  “You might have asked me if I wanted to get my act together!” I took a fortifying swallow of Tesco’s cut-price merlot. Hopefully the high alcohol content would numb my taste buds sometime soon.

  “Well, why don’t you, then? You’re not telling me you don’t fancy the pants off him.”

  “I…well…” A further mouthful of merlot aided the brain power. “If you don’t want him yourself, why are you so keen for me to get together with him?”

  “Because you want to. Don’t you? And he’d be good for you. Chip a few corners off that ivory tower you grew up in.” She lolled back on the sofa, her fuzzy pink dressing gown parting to show a sticking plaster high on one leg where I presumed she’d cut herself shaving. I reached over and adjusted the fluffy material to a more respectable position.

  Rose rolled her eyes in exaggerated fashion. “Worried you’re going to get a glimpse of my la—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Prude. I am wearing knickers, you know. My mum taught me always to wear undies when entertaining gentleman callers. You know, ’cos they like taking ’em off themselves.” She sniggered. I ignored her.

  “So you knew about his profession, then?”

  “The pest control?” She smirked. “Might have. Did you do a spit-take when he told you?”

  “I did not.”

  “Bet you did really. Did they have to get out the smelling salts?”

  “Rat-catching is an ancient and honourable profession,” I said stiffly. “I don’t think you should be making jokes about it.”

  “See? I told you, you fancy him. So what’s all this about not wanting to go out with him?”

  I sighed. “I just don’t want to get into a relationship right now. Not with anyone.”

  “Hang on, I thought I was the brokenhearted man-hater, here. All my hopes and dreams shat on by that bastard. What’s your excuse?”

  I stared into my glass. The wine being somewhat murky, I didn’t find much in the way of inspiration there. “Apparently there’s something of an epidemic.”

  “What, are you serious? Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  “About Crispin? Not really my favourite topic of conversation.”

  “So go on, tell me about him.” She leaned forward, and her dressing gown gaped at the top this time.

  I shielded my gaze politely from the expanse of pale cleavage and purple lingerie that was revealed, and got another eye-roll for my trouble. Huffing, Rose made a show of adjusting her dressing gown.

  “There’s nothing much to tell.” Lies, all lies, but I couldn’t face her knowing the truth and despising me. “He was a fellow teacher at my last school, and we were together. I, well, I loved him.” It still hurt to say the words, as if I were ripping off a plaster from the half-healed wound in my chest. “And I thought he genuinely cared for me too. But I was wrong.” That, at least, was the truth.

  “Is that why you left your last job?”

  She didn’t know anything, I reminded myself. It was a perfectly reasonable supposition to make. “It’s…related to it,” I said and drank some more merlot. Worryingly, it was starting to taste almost nice.

  “Poor you. Don’t s’pose I’d have wanted to stick around somewhere I’d keep bumping into Shitface. Hah. No chance of that, with him buggering off to Dubai.”

  I leaned forward, gazing at her with focus. “Is that why you split up? Because you didn’t want to go out there?”

  “Not exactly. More to do with him just deciding he was going because that was what he wanted to do, and sod what I thought about it and whether or not I fancied tagging along as the dutiful little wifey, smothering myself in a burqa and giving up alcohol.”

  I frowned. “Would you really have had to wear a burqa?”

  “That’s not the point, is it? The point is, him just deciding he was taking this job and me having no say whatso-bloody-ever.” She hiccupped. “So I told him he had to choose. Dubai, or me. Bastard. Pass the bottle.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t had enough?”

  “I’m positive I haven’t had enough. And I’m double positive you haven’t had enough.” She cocked her head on one side. “Does a double positive make a negative? One of the kids is bound to ask me one day.”

  “You’re a credit to the state education system,” I told her gravely as I refilled her glass.

  “That’s a no, isn’t it? Gawd, it’s true, isn’t it? Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.” She stared morosely into her glass.

  “I’m taking that away if you’re going to get all maudlin.”

  She handed it to me anyway and lurched to her feet. “I think I’ve had enough. Gotta pee. Sorry, tinkle. Heh. Gotta tinkle, twinkle.” I watched in concern as she swayed across the room, nearly tripping over her handbag at one point, but with two full glasses of wine in my hands, the logistics of leaping to her aid were eluding me.

  It may also, it has to be said, have had something to do with the amount of alcohol currently coursing merrily through my veins. I put the glasses down carefully on the table and leaned back on the sofa to await Rose’s return.

  Five hours later, I woke up frozen and alone. Worried she might have passed out in the bathroom, I took my aching head and queasy stomach to investigate.

  Rose was curled up in bed, sleeping like a baby and snoring like a foghorn. Miffed, I stole the throw from the bottom of the bed and went back to sleep on the sofa.

  Chapter Six

  I didn’t see Sean for the next couple of weeks. His sister, clearly feeling better, was back on the school run with the twins, sporting a succession of ever-funkier headscarves.

  I’d thought the one with the skulls on was a laudably defiant reference to her own illness, but Rose informed me it was just the fashion.

  I wasn’t sure how muc
h, if anything, Sean had told his sister about our disastrous night out. I thought she seemed neither more nor less friendly to me than usual, but as her moods had always seemed somewhat changeable, it wasn’t easy to tell. I told myself it was ridiculous to miss him. We’d spent, in total, including all school pickups, less than three hours together. We’d had one drink together.

  But he’d liked Doctor Who. And bow ties. And Graham Greene. And when he’d smiled, his eyes had crinkled up at the corners…

  No. It wasn’t meant to be. Although I hadn’t intended it at the time, there had been a grain of truth in what Sean had thought I’d said. We were from different worlds. His was filled with small, scurrying creatures that had to be firmly controlled lest they cause a nuisance. Mine was filled with… All right, maybe our jobs weren’t so very different. But anyway, Sean was bisexual, wasn’t he? People always warned you about bisexuals—said they’d end up leaving you for a woman when they wanted to settle down. That was what Fordy had always said, anyway. And he was married now, to a girl called Linette, who’d recently given birth to their first child, an alarmingly blob-like infant whom they’d shortsightedly christened Georgie, so he should know. Although Fordy was only bi-curious, really. He’d made that quite clear.

  I missed Fordy.

  And Sean.

  No, no, I didn’t miss Sean. I didn’t.

  Things always went wrong when I started getting attached to someone.

  Sean didn’t appear at the classroom door again until the very last day before half term. Although school closed early, at two o’clock, the children were all overtired and hyped up in anticipation of Halloween. The twins had been particularly trying. It didn’t make it any easier to face their uncle.

  “All right?” he said warily when he reached the front of the line. Possibly my face had betrayed my misgivings over speaking to him again. “These two been behaving themselves?”

  I made a bit more of a business about letting them out than it really warranted: straightening coats, making sure they had their PE kit and generally doing anything I could think of to avoid looking Sean in the eye until I felt a little more equal to the task. “Um. There’s been a bit of high spirits,” I confessed to the doormat.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “They pretty much spent the whole day hiding around corners and jumping out at people shouting BOO!” I said, looking up in resignation.

  Sean met my gaze with a wry smile that lifted my spirits far more than it should have. “Sorry. Bit disruptive, was it?”

  I fought the impulse to grin back at him moronically. “Not only that, apparently several of the reception class wet themselves in fright.” Lucy Kemp, their not-very-gruntled teacher, had glared daggers at me as she’d complained. Of course, she’d only been at the school a year, so she hadn’t had to deal with having the twins as her responsibility.

  Sean gave his charges a stern look. “Oi, you two. You shouldn’t go scaring the littl’uns.”

  “We was just having fun,” they chorused in stereo.

  “Were. You were just having fun,” I corrected automatically.

  “See?” Wills grinned, triumphant.

  “Even Mr. Enemy says so,” Harry finished for him.

  “It’s Emeny,” Sean said firmly, surprising me. “Em. En. Ee. And no, he doesn’t. You’re not getting away with it that easy. Come on, I want you to say you’re sorry.” He stared unmoved at their mutinous little faces, Wills’s still with a smear of tomato sauce on his cheek from lunch. “Or I won’t be taking you trick-or-treating on Halloween.”

  “Sorry Mr. Enemy,” they muttered in sullen unison, staring at identically scuffed shoes.

  “Mr. Emeny,” Sean insisted.

  The muttering this time was barely audible, but it could conceivably have been “Sorry, Mr. Emeny.” Actually, it could equally well have been sod off, Mr. Enemy, but one soon learns, as a teacher, that there are some things it’s better not to hear.

  “That’s better,” Sean said, clearly having learned that lesson too. “Right, let’s get you home.” He paused and looked up at me. “They, uh, got all their kit?”

  I nodded. “Have a good half term.”

  “Yeah, you too.” There was another pause, and then they were gone.

  I felt unaccountably flat. Half-term blues, I told myself, and after I’d dispatched the last of my charges, I wandered next door to see if Rose fancied getting another takeaway tonight. Or any of the next nine nights, come to that.

  Rose was alone in her classroom. She clearly had her parents well trained out of tardiness. She was singing to herself and putting potted plants in a box to take home for the week’s holiday. At least, I assumed that was her intention. Possibly she was planning to chuck them over a hedge somewhere and trust her little darlings would have forgotten them by Monday week. The last verse of “I Want to Break Free” faltered on her lips as she glanced up at me and frowned. “Cheer up, for God’s sake. We’ve got a week off.”

  I shrugged. “I know, I know. I just—”

  “Shush!” Rose interrupted me.

  I frowned at her, a bit hurt, as she cocked her head on one side. Then I heard it too.

  Coming in through the open classroom door, there was a chant I remembered only too well from my own school days.

  “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”

  Rose and I exchanged looks of alarm. “I’d better go,” I said, asserting my manhood.

  “I’ll come with you,” she replied, which I chose to interpret as a gesture of solidarity rather than a comment on said manhood.

  We sprinted past the classrooms and across the playground, dodging buggies, skipping ropes and little clusters of mums who’d lingered to chat. A crowd of parents and children had gathered at the school gates, and in the centre I could see two furiously struggling figures. One had hold of the other’s long, bleached-blonde hair, while the second appeared to be trying to tear the sleeve from her opponent’s shirt and mostly succeeding.

  “Isn’t that Mrs. Nunn? You know, Destinee’s mum?” Rose said, breathing hard beside me. “Who’s the other woman?”

  “Not sure.” I took a deep breath and stepped in. “Ladies! Please! There are children present. Calm yourselves.” I ducked as the one that wasn’t Destinee’s mum took a swing at me, her bright red acrylic talons outstretched.

  Destinee’s mum shouted “Oi! You leave ’im out of it!” followed by a few words I really hoped the children couldn’t understand—at least, not the reception class—and made another grab for the other woman’s hair.

  I winced as a thick, blonde handful came free. “Mrs. Nunn! We’ll have…” I trailed off, realising that “none of that” would sound like I was making fun of her. “That’s enough.” My hand hovered by her shoulder, fearful of landing on the bare flesh exposed by the ripped seams.

  “Tell her that, why don’t you? Bloody home-wrecking bitch!”

  Oh. Evidently the other woman was, in fact, the other woman. I vaguely remembered Rose telling me that Destinee’s father was a little freer with his favours than was usually appreciated by a man’s wife, but surely that was all in the past now? Mrs. Nunn had had, ever since I’d known her, a new partner in the form of the deeply tanned and worryingly fit village tennis coach.

  Apparently not. The other woman bared frighteningly white teeth, one of them smeared with lipstick the same blood red as her nails. At least, I hoped it was lipstick and not actual blood. “You’re a fine one to talk. Shacked up with that bloke before Kev was even halfway out the door. He told me all about you, with your drinking and your bloody eating disorders—”

  Mrs. Nunn went crimson. A safe distance behind her, I could see Destinee’s normally pert little face, absolutely white and looking much younger.

  “Enough,” I said sharply, stepping between them and hoping I wasn’t about to lose the eye I’d fixed on Mrs. Nunn’s tormentor. “T
he school gates, with so many young children present, are not an appropriate place for this sort of discussion. Please leave, or I shall be forced to call the police.”

  For a tense moment, she stared me down, her clawed hands still upraised to strike. I reminded myself to stand firm. So what would it matter if I gained a few battle scars? Some people found that sort of thing quite attractive. I hoped. Then she deflated. “Oh, I’m going. Don’t want to stick around here with the likes of her.”

  “And you can take your cheap hair extensions with you,” Mrs. Nunn yelled, throwing the handful of blonde tresses after the other woman.

  Hair extensions? Thank God.

  The other woman stalked off with barely a backwards V sign. Mrs. Nunn clung to my arm. “You all right there, Mr. Enemy? That cow didn’t hurt you, did she? You could have the law on her for that,” she added, looking hopeful.

  “I’m fine,” I assured her. “But what about you?” Mrs. Nunn tended towards the petite, and the other woman had been easily twice her weight.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about me. I know how to look after myself. But you ought to watch it, she’s a vicious cow.”

  Her implications weren’t entirely flattering, but I let it pass. She meant well, at any rate. Apart, obviously, from the violence and profanity.

  I suddenly became aware of the sounds behind us. Was that…applause? I turned and was horrified to find a ring of parents smiling and clapping—Sean among them. Back at the school building, I could clearly see the Head looking out of the window. I must have blushed as red as the other woman’s nails.

  Emily’s grandmother was beaming at me. A couple of the other mums—and not a few of the older children—appeared to have been filming the event on their phones. I made a firm resolution not to go anywhere near Facebook for the next couple of days. I heard someone saying, “See? I told you it’d be good to have a man on staff. Even if he is a bit…” Thankfully, the general hubbub swallowed the rest of her sentence.