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He winks and pulls a chair over to join me at my desk.

“Why are you smiling so much?” he asks. “I thought you’d be freaking out about the presentation?”

“Claire just texted saying she had exciting work news. And she sent me a cat picture.”

He tips his chair back. “You can never go wrong with a cat picture.”

“Yep, I’m using it to avoid thinking too much about later."

It’s been a full-on day. Packed with lessons, a pastoral care drop-in session over lunch and ongoing existential dread about presenting to the board later. You’d think I wouldn’t be worried about presentations given that I spend my days standing at the front of a classroom, but a bunch of board members are distinctly more terrifying than even the fifteen-year-old girls. Also with the wind down at the end of term my lessons have been more relaxed over the last week.

“Want to run through it again with me?” James asks.

I give him a grateful nod. Even though I ran the whole thing for Claire multiple times last night, another dress rehearsal doesn’t hurt.

Turning my laptop to face James, I launch into my prepared speech. Afterwards, we spend fifteen minutes running through a few possible questions together.

“Don’t worry about it.” James waves me off when I thank him again for his help. “Anyway. You’ll be fine. You’re great at this stuff. And you’ve been working on this for months. The board would be mad not to say yes.”

I try to rediscover my enthusiasm from earlier, but the nerves are hitting me hard. “You’re right. It’ll be fine. I just hate this sort of thing.”

“Do you want me to bring a sacrificial goat or something? Isn’t that what the Romans would’ve done?”

“You actually listen to me wittering on about the Romans? I’m touched.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

I glance at the clock. Fifteen minutes until the presentation.

“I’d better go.” I pick up my laptop. I want to make sure the room is set up perfectly.

James claps me on the back and I wind my way through the corridors to the boardroom, a place I’ve only been twice in my entire career at this school. It smells faintly of furniture polish and coffee, and the long mahogany table is already laid out with glasses of water and neatly stacked agendas. I nervously plug my laptop into the connector and the slides flicker onto the screen. I’m grateful to all the work Claire put into them, they look so polished behind me. Now I just have to hope I can live up to how professional they look.

The headmistress Marina arrives, giving me a small nod before going round and talking to some of the people who are trickling into the room. I decide I need to do the same, and start making my way around the table, shaking hands, exchanging pleasantries and trying to control the tremor in my fingers.

But as the next person walks in I do a double take.

Is that… Is that Mrs Robinson?

It is.

It’s Claire’s mum. A woman I haven’t seen since that disastrous lunch that Claire and I walked out of.

What the fuck is she doing here?

Her hair is pulled into a sleek twist, and she wears a crisp suit that looks like it came with its own dry-cleaning contract. She smiles at Marina, murmuring a greeting, and then takes a seat halfway down the table. She hasn’t seen me yet. I stand very still, praying she won’t. Not that I can avoid her for long given the fact I actually have to present here.

My mind whirls faster and faster. I need to go and talk to her, to acknowledge that I can see her, but I really don’t want to. She’ll probably say something cutting about me to try and ruin my confidence, or say something about Claire.

I’m generally a glass-half-full guy, but that lunch with the Robinsons threatened that. It’s not fun to sit there, essentially being told that you don’t make enough money, don’t have a big enough house, and aren’t good enough for the girl you’re in love with.

Claire. My brain snags on her.

Did she know about this? She can’t have, or she would have told me.

But I’m sure her mum knows what school I teach at. I think we discussed it at lunch, and anyway, Claire’s been working on a project here for weeks. Her mum must have said something. And surely Claire would have had to fill in all sorts of conflict of interest declarations.

My pulse is racing more than it was just moments ago. Maybe this is just an awful coincidence. Still, the unease crawls up my spine. I try to push it away. I need to focus on the situation at hand.