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Unrequited Love
Present Day, Monday, 7th November
‘Miss?’
‘Yes, Beth?’
‘What does unrequited love mean?’
Terrific question. I take off my reading glasses and place them on my desk, blinking at my Year 7 English literature class.
‘Does anyone want to have a go at answering?’ I ask the sea of blank faces.
Not a clue. Good for them. No one should know a thing about it. But I happen to be an expert in this field. The unrequited bit, I mean. I don’t know how many crushes I’ve had in my twenty-seven years of life, or how many times I’ve fallen desperately in love without any chance of success. None of my relationships have ever lasted beyond a month. The phrase ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ was a dead cert in my case. But now I’m engaged to Stephen Stone, my headmaster at Boynton Academy, the expression ‘sleeping with the boss’ assumes a whole new meaning.
Not that there had been much of that going on lately. Blame it on the stress of my job or the stress of his job, but since we got engaged, things have been getting a little stale. Let’s just say that we never had been swinging from the chandeliers in the first place. But there’s always hope, right?
Because at this particular moment in his career, Stephen and I are just like employer and employee. You’d think he’d make an effort to duck out of a meeting for just one minute to call and say hi, but no. He’s one of those staunch workaholics who gladly spend all waking hours in their chair and have to be pried kicking and screaming from their desk.
I started out that way, too. There was nothing I loved more than teaching English literature to my students and working at Boynton. But lately—
‘Miss?’ Beth prompts me as the class’s attention is now piqued by the fact that their English teacher is stumped by a simple question.
I clear my throat. ‘Well, uhm, unrequited love means that they don’t love you back, no matter what you do. That’s what it means.’ But as far as the word love on its own is concerned, I’m a bit confused myself.
Another blank look from my crowd. I should have stopped when their eyes glazed over and Joe nearly fell off his chair from chronic boredom. How can I get a man interested in talking about love when I can’t even get a boy interested inMuch Ado About Nothing, which is a comedy to boot?
As if on cue, a few ignoramus die-hards at the back begin to snicker. What do these young lives know about the pains of humiliation and loneliness, of never being loved back? Of always being the first to call or the last to fall asleep? Or to bake his favourite cherry pies even if you’re allergic to cherries?
And, just as I’m about to dive into a monologue of unrequited love and ask my students if they’ve ever felt the sorrow of such an experience, the bell rings, saving us all from further embarrassment. I watch them with a certain sense of defeat as they spill out of the classroom for their break. I once had high hopes that, by learning from the great works of literature, I could still spare them the existence of love pains. But now I seriously doubt it. Kids seem to grow up faster than we ever did.
I squeeze through my throng of escaping students, plunge upstream like a salmon into the hallowed corridors and head straight for the staffroom. Halloween decorations still linger on the walls, curling where the drawing pins or Blu-Tack had fallen off. The ghost-, pumpkin- and witch-shaped choccies in the sweet basket on the counter are already being replaced by much plumper Santa ones. Someone is willing the time to fly between now and the Christmas holidays.
Keeping an eye open for Maisie – one of the French teachers and my best friend – I grab a chocolate muffin from the box on the coffee table. Ignoring the din of the other desperate teachers, I sink into my chair and dig out yesterday’s mail from my bag. What with marking and prepping, I’ve only remembered it this morning.
At the bottom of a useless pile of planet-killing flyers is a white envelope from Cornwall, no less. I don’t know anyone in Cornwall, despite the fact that I was born there. The heading reads Lister & Associates (if he says so):
Dear Miss Weaver,
We regret to inform you that your grandfather, James Heatherton-Smythe, has recently passed away. His surviving wife, Mary Heatherton-Smythe, wishes to make your acquaintance at your earliest convenience to discuss your attendance at the service which will be held in All Saints’ Church in Starry Cove, Cornwall, on Friday, 25 November.
The Heatherton-Smythe residence is 1 Rectory Lane, Starry Cove, TR17 0RS.
Please accept our condolences.
Sincerely,
Norman Lister & Associates
I sit back against my chair, reading the same lines over and over.
I have aliving relative? In Cornwall? You’d think that my parents would have mentioned that I had two real people I shared DNA with. And now I’ve lost the only grandfather I could ever have known without having met him. I’ve spent my entire life as lonely as the poet Wordsworth’s cloud thinking I was the last one standing while, in effect, I wasn’t. What was wrong with my parents? Who would do such a thing? Why keep all this from me? And how did they even find me?
And what are the odds of the funeral service being on the same day as my engagement party?
All this news is too monumental for me to take on board in the space of a fifteen-minute break. I need time to think and right now, my heart is beating so erratically, I can barely hold the envelope, so I stuff it back in my bag just as Brad Day, one of the PE teachers, saunters by.
