Life Class

by Allan, Gilli

  This time there were even more hits. Fran gulped, but began to sift through the initial pages. A county councillor, a footballer, a clinical psychologist, and even a writer, though this time not the famous bestseller, but a British academic. Touchingly, some were simply graduates who’d put their CVs up on the web in the hope of inspiring a job offer. There were a few artists, but it didn’t take long to establish that those that appeared, at least on the first twenty pages, were multiple entries for the same man – but not the right man.

  She bookmarked a few other entries that might reward closer scrutiny, but Fran couldn’t imagine that Dan was now running his own UPVC double-glazing company or selling bar stools. But then, what did she know? Why assume he was doing anything art-related now? If he’d been trying to find her, he’d have made no progress if he’d presumed her to be painting landscapes or designing textiles. She was a housewife whose sole artistic expression was going to a life class once a week.

  After a while, she found several sites that offered to play private eye. Fran trawled through them but none, as far as she could tell, offered a free service. And she and Peter had joint bank and credit card accounts. He wasn’t so relaxed that he wouldn’t query unusual payments popping up on their statements.

  Where else to go? She clasped her hand to her head. Where to look? Melanie would probably know. Thinking of her daughter reminded Fran of Facebook, but that was a site for the young, wasn’t it? Then again, she was on it. She might only use it when alerted, but Dan might be an enthusiast. Nearly an hour later, she’d exhausted this avenue too.

  Even if Dan had no domain name, wasn’t running a business that had a presence on the internet, and wasn’t on Facebook, he must surely own a computer. Everyone owned a computer, didn’t they? And if you owned a computer you’d get it linked to the internet, if only for the convenience of having an email address? She sat up straight. A wave of fear-fuelled elation thrilled her nerves. All she had to do was type in every variation of the name she could think of – ‘dbrown@’ or ‘danielbrown@’, or ‘brownd@’. And then put in the server names – Yahoo, or BT, or AOL or Virgin or …

  As she went through the list of all the email hosts she could remember, her optimism faltered. There could be just as many again that she didn’t remember or had never even heard of. Then there were so many possible permutations just in the placement of dots and dashes. In any event, Dan might be married with a family, and the address could be ‘thebrowns@’ or even more sickeningly, ‘danandjuliebrown@’. All at once, another fatal flaw in the plan hit her with sick, stomach-dropping dismay.

  Get a grip, woman! Multiple emails – even if none hit the mark – could generate multiple replies. Peter’s business emails were directed to his laptop, but all the others, from their daughter, from family, friends, and committee related, went to a separate address on the desktop. Though Peter hardly ever came into the study to use it – leaving all the personal stuff to her – the possibility could not be discounted. And she couldn’t stand guard for days or weeks, fielding the possible replies from unknown D.Browns.

  She knew it was possible to set up another identity to which specific emails could be directed, but had no idea how to go about it, nor if it would be confidential. From looking feasible, the task to find Dan had gone through various phases. Now, again, it looked daunting. Pessimism gripped her.

  When she walked into her sitting room, Fran was prevented from appreciating its beauty by her husband, sprawled across one of the sofas, taking up two of its three seats. His presence alone is enough to make a room look untidy, she thought. Evidence of his lunch, surely several hours old, sat amongst piles of receipts, letters, files, and handwritten notes which cluttered the surface of the low table. The overspill of documents was stacked in piles on the floor and more were propped up around his laptop, which occupied the third seat of the sofa.

  Both dogs were now curled up together on the facing sofa. Nelson raised his head and looked at her anxiously, as if expecting a peremptory ejection. His feathery tail gave a few placatory wags. Peter looked up from his work and smiled. It was the smile she’d fallen in love with nearly twenty years ago, but all she noticed now were his greying, rumpled hair, his scruffy, crumb-strewn clothes.

  ‘Some people are so disorganised,’ he said, referring to the client whose tax affairs he was sorting out. She bit back the obvious retort and strode briskly across the room to the Georgian desk. All that was on it was a pristine, leather-bound blotter, an address book, an unused letter rack, and a vase of sad chrysanthemums. As she grabbed the vase and left the room, a sudden gaseous exhalation from the rotting vegetation turned her stomach. In the kitchen she pushed the offending flowers, head first into the compost bin. It was almost full, compounding the degree of impatient force required to crush them in.

  ‘You’ve left a petal trail.’ Peter had come into the kitchen behind her. Still bent over, head virtually inside the cupboard under the sink, she continued to fold and break the protruding stalks in order to get the lid closed. ‘That bin must be full, I noticed it earlier when I made a sandwich. I fancied some salad but the cucumber in the chiller drawer was turning liquid.’

  Fran’s spine became rigid and she counted to ten before she straightened. Peter was smiling that smile again and holding out his hand, palm full of petals. He patently had no idea he had said or done anything wrong.

  ‘And I think I’ve just found it!’ Trying to control her voice, she asked, ‘You didn’t think of emptying the bin yourself?’

  ‘It wasn’t completely full.’ He’d apparently not noticed any edge to her voice. ‘I thought it could take a few more vegetable peelings, not a whole vase-full of dead chrysanths. Here, give it to me, I’ll do it.’ Peter took the weighty bin from her hands, adding the petals he’d picked up, and left the kitchen.

  As she rinsed the slimy cucumber and plant matter from her hands, Fran watched him from the window. He crossed the large, leaf-strewn lawn, the Chihuahuas racing ahead of him. They disappeared behind the stand of beeches. The light was fading; beyond the far hedge a lazy curl of bonfire smoke was caught by a squall of wind and flagged out, spreading like gauze. Her annoyance had nowhere to go. Why did he have to be so bloody reasonable all the time? Several minutes passed before he came back inside.

  ‘Brr. There’s a cold wind. Inside, Jimbo! Nelson!’ The dogs pattered in and gave a few excited barks. Peter picked them up one by one and rubbed their paws with a towel, kept for that purpose near the door. ‘Anything from Melanie?’ Before Fran could come up with an answer, he continued, ‘You were on the computer, has she emailed?’

  Fran gathered her wits. There had been an email from Mel that she’d opened when she’d first come in. Since then, her own concerns had completely absorbed her attention.

  ‘Oh … yes. She’s fine, seems to be having fun, but nothing new. She was just touching base.’

  ‘No news is good news, I suppose,’ Peter said, but he made no move to go into the study to read the email himself. ‘Magical, isn’t it? Her out in Thailand with nothing more than her Blackberry. And her messages arriving here moments later.’ He shook his head at the wonders of modern science. ‘And it doesn’t cost her a penny.’

  ‘That’s because we pay! Her bills come to us each month!’

  ‘We chose the wrong package, but I’m not talking about the phone and ISP charges, I’m talking about her Hotmail account. Do you remember when we first discovered she’d set it up? Before the days of Facebook. We’d been so careful not to allow her to have an internet connection for her computer up in her bedroom. And under our noses she was conducting these “secret squirrel” communications with her chums on our desktop in the study! How old was she when she did that?’

  ‘Not sure, but she was very young.’ Fran’s reply was automatic, her thoughts elsewhere. Why hadn’t she remembered that? And if her daughter, still at primary school, could set up a secret email account, then she was damn sure she could do it herself. Ironic that
the solution to her problem had come out of the mouth of her husband. Suddenly, the muscles of her face had a life of their own.

  ‘And we knew nothing about it because nothing ever turned up for her in our email inbox! What are you smiling about?’

  ‘Well, secrecy was the whole point, wasn’t it?’ Fran said, struggling to repress an urge to giggle. Then she added, ‘If you think about it, her having her own Hotmail address was no different from you or me when we were young, expecting our parents to respect our privacy and not open our post.’

  ‘You say that now! We weren’t quite so laid back about it then. Do you remember how intransigent she was about keeping her password secret?’

  ‘The only fool proof internet monitoring system is to stand behind your children at all times and watch what they’re doing. We did the best we could by explaining the dangers of chat rooms and such.’

  He sighed. ‘These days, there are so many more pitfalls for youngsters. They’ve all got mobile phones, who knows who they’re talking to? In the virtual world, any old loony can pass himself off as hunky twenty year old.’

  ‘The world’s getting scarier by the minute. I don’t even want to think about the dangers Mel’s exposed to now.’ Fran shuddered. ‘Thinking about it makes it more real.’

  From concerned father, Peter’s tone changed to reassuring when he replied. ‘But Dory was right, wasn’t she? Mel’s not really in any more danger in Thailand than she is here. Try not to worry. Come on, let’s have a cup of tea. Are there any more biscuits? How is Dory, by the way? Did you go for lunch after class?’

  ‘Of course we went for lunch,’ Fran said. ‘We’re ladies, that’s what we do.’

  They shared the tea-making duties. She filled the kettle and warmed the teapot. Peter found a new packet of biscuits and laid the tray, a nicety that she insisted upon – left to himself, it would be a tea bag in a mug.

  ‘We went to the new bistro,’ Fran said. ‘Dory loved it.’

  ‘How’s her house-hunting going?’

  ‘It isn’t going anywhere, if you ask me. She’s not taking it seriously. No, I’ll bring it through,’ Fran said, as he went to pick up the tea tray. ‘You go ahead and clear a space on the coffee table. I don’t want to get the blame for disturbing your papers.’ The dogs, alert for the heightened possibility of a tit-bit that a tea break heralded, capered around Fran’s ankles as she followed him into the sitting room.

  ‘Isn’t she registered with any estate agents?’

  ‘She is now. We visited a couple on our way back to the car.’

  ‘So, what do you mean?’

  ‘She seems a bit laid back about it, and the only property details she picked up were completely unsuitable.’

  ‘It’s her choice.’

  ‘I’m convinced she doesn’t know what she wants. When I point out she could get a dear little cottage for a similar price, she either ignores me or goes on about damp and mice.’

  ‘Fran, darling … you can’t organise everyone else’s life. At the moment, she’s only looking. She may ultimately buy a place you approve of, but she may not. It’s up to her.’

  ‘But from only collecting the details of horrid little modern boxes with no character, she suddenly goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and picks up the spec for a great big old house on Bull Hill. You should have seen the price! And it’s not even detached.’

  ‘She’s got the money. Why shouldn’t she buy what she wants with it, however much you might feel she’s making a mistake?’

  ‘But some of that’s the money she inherited.’

  ‘So? You want to be the arbiter of what should happen to your mother’s money?’

  ‘Of course not, but it should be something sensible.’

  ‘Fran, you couldn’t prevent your own daughter spending it the way she wanted. What makes you think Dory should listen to you?’

  ‘I don’t. The trouble is she’s vacillating; she’s got no focus.’

  ‘Collecting specifications is one thing, actually making a decision to buy a place is something else entirely. Looking at a variety of different places might help her sort out what she really wants. Did she say why she’s interested in this “big old house”, despite the possibility of mice and damp?’

  ‘Curiosity, to do with an escapade when we were kids. We climbed into the garden of a house near the common. I doubt if it’s even the same one. She says the main reason is because it’s got outbuildings. Wants to set up a business and work from home.’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with that? Sounds focused to me. So she’s thinking of viewing some of the properties?’

  Fran shrugged. ‘If she is, I’d like to tag along, I love looking at houses, but I’m getting the message she doesn’t want my opinion.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true, but maybe you should try to be a little less dogmatic.’

  ‘Dogmatic?’

  ‘You may be the eldest, but Dory is a grown-up now, remember? Old enough to make her own decisions and her own mistakes.’

  Fran shook her head. ‘You’ll never guess what kind of business she’s got in mind.’

  Chapter Thirteen - Dominic

  As usual, Dominic had arrived at the class well before the other students. He’d carried the box of reference books up from the car and unrolled a poster and pinned it up where Stefan had said – next to the classroom’s whiteboard. Stefan had brought in the skeleton and set it up in the middle of the room. Over the following twenty minutes, as the rest of the students filtered in, it was a laugh to see the variety of reactions – from shock through to disgust – to this new member of class. To Dom, the skeleton looked sinister and laughable, hanging there limply askew – a bit like how he imagined a gibbet from the olden days.

  Years ago, he and a group of other boys from the care home had been taken out for a picnic. An event like that, away from the city, was rare. The two staff members who’d supervised the trip had parked the minibus in a lay-by, at a spot where three lanes met, up above Sheepswick. The place was called Bear’s Cross, and around it were wide green verges, and woods, and unfenced meadows, and views into the hazy distance. It was summer; he could still remember the warmth and the buzz of insects and the fields of long grass and wild flowers that reached up above their waists. Most of all he recalled the acute sense of liberation when told that this bit of countryside wasn’t part of anyone’s farm or garden – it wasn’t even a park, where they were expected to behave themselves.

  They’d ranged far, playing at zombies, space-legions, orcs – anything that involved shouting and running and clashing in amongst the trees and up and down over the drowsy, heat-soaked meadows. Dom had speculated about it later, but at the time he’d been too intoxicated to wonder why their carers, Phil and Karen, had allowed them such freedom to roam unsupervised. Why they had preferred to stay in the heat of the minibus for several hours. The most memorable aspect of that unusual day had been towards the end. Tired and thirsty, they’d come together to loll on the ground. As they sat amongst the wreckage of the picnic, drinking cola and munching crisps, Kyle – who said he’d come from nearby – had told a story.

  He’d said how once, hundreds of years ago, there’d been a famous highwayman who’d held up stagecoaches at Bear’s Cross. He’d shot the men dead with his blunderbuss, and nicked jewellery and kisses off the women. But he’d been caught and sentenced to death, and hung on a gibbet just there, on that triangle of verge. The man had died slowly. His body had been left to rot as a warning to others who passed that way. Most spooky of all, the highwayman was said to haunt the place.

  How long had he taken to die? How long to decompose to a skeleton? Even now, looking at the slightly pathetic collection of bones dangling in the centre of the room, Dom felt a subdued echo of that original icy chill down the back of his neck. He imagined the man, still in his raggedy, rotten highwayman garb, dangling from the gibbet at Bear’s Cross – the empty eye sockets of a skull looking out from under his tricorn hat.


  ‘I thought it would be an interesting exercise, and a bit of a change if we used this last lesson of term to think about human anatomy,’ Stefan said. Looking at the assembled class, Dom saw what Stefan saw – expressions of dismay, boredom, and resistance. This was the last session before Christmas and some of the women had dressed up in fancier clothes. The woman called Fran was wearing a string of fluffy tinsel draped round her, like a kind of twinkly scarf. The other blonde – the pair always seemed to be together – was wearing stupid earrings, like little Santas.

  ‘By the way, this fellow here …’ Stefan continued, lifting the skeleton’s hand and shaking it, ‘… is Oscar. He’s plastic. It’s hard to get your hands on the real thing these days, so he’ll have to do. Before any of you say you’re not doctors, so you don’t need to know anatomy, just think for a minute. When you come to draw or paint a clothed figure … imagine, for instance you’ve been commissioned to do a full-length portrait … your experience examining the unclothed figure will be a help to you. Let’s face it, your subject is not going to strip off just so you can see his crossed arms more clearly? The same goes for drawing the nude. It’s helpful to have a basic understanding of what’s going on beneath the skin.’ With his other hand, Stefan tapped the large poster Dom had put up, its simple anatomical diagrams of the body showing the major muscle groups.

  ‘But I was hoping to paint.’ Bill’s tone was plaintive. At the start of the morning he’d come in with a small canvas under his arm, a palette and brushes poked up out of his bag of equipment. ‘We’ve always had a long pose on the last day of term. Gives those that want to an opportunity to get stuck in with oils.’

  Dom was impressed with how well Stefan controlled his face.

  ‘Look,’ Stefan said. ‘I do realise I’ve been asking more, some might say less, of you over the term than you were expecting. I don’t want to force anyone to do anything you really don’t want to do. But I haven’t misled you. Today, if you look at the schedule, I have written “surface anatomy”.’