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‘Don’t you worry about us,’ he replies, Emily in his arms, the burp cloth that Samantha handed to him moments ago draped over his left shoulder. He looks a little like he does when he cooks dinner – the tea towel replaced by a milk-infused piece of muslin.
‘I should be back by half two, three at the latest.’
‘As long as you’re back by four. Go on, off you go. You’ll be brilliant. They’ll love you almost as much as I do.’
She walks. It’s strange, walking without first having to load the car seat into the pram chassis, make sure she has her rucksack with nappies, nappy bags, wipes. All she has is the lesson plan, the handouts and her purse, packed into an elegant burgundy leather satchel, as if her professional self is a change of identity made possible by a change of bag. Her limbs bounce, almost, as she strides down the hill, their lightness astonishing, new. By the time she reaches the roundabout – Bill’s Restaurant on the corner, the Odeon standing guard over the bridge – she has got used to her single status. But still when she passes herself in a shop window, she looks to see who she is. The woman who stares back at her is different from the one she was a year ago, but not noticeably a mother, not without Emily. She looks tired, a little puffy. More than anything, she looks young, too young for what she is, as if her life is a garment that doesn’t really suit her and doesn’t yet fit.
She arrives at the college fifteen minutes early. Taking advantage of the silent solitude of the empty classroom, she keys the password she’s been given into the computer and is relieved when it lets her in. She brings up the register and skims down the list of names, amused to see that one of the students is called C. S. Lewis. There is a Daphne, who makes her think of du Maurier, a Reggie, who makes her think of an East End gangster, a Jenny, a Thomas, a Svetlana, an Aisha and a Sean. Eight students in total.
A flash of nerves. Ten minutes to go. She has planned her lesson, her first ever lesson, sounded it out with Peter last night. She showed him her notes, told him she was planning to do limericks to warm the students up, have a few laughs and build their confidence, but taking the notes from her, he frowned.
‘Limericks? No, hon. Too basic, even for beginners. Anyone can write a limerick. If you want to break the ice, use the clerihew.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Exactly.’
Peter explained what a clerihew was and why it was better. He helped her to change her notes – so generous; he was working on her handout until eleven last night. Once he was happy with it, he hugged her and told her she would be brilliant, that he couldn’t wait to hear how she got on.
Samantha yawns, wonders how he’s coping on his own with the baby – he’s not very hands-on, which she’s put down to the fact that he does all the cooking while she feeds Emily. At that thought, her breasts tingle and harden. Keeping one eye on the door, she checks her breast pads are in place. Teaching elementary poem forms with rivulets of milk staining your blouse is not a good look. A flutter of butterflies. They will be here soon, expecting an expert. She is not an expert. They will be expecting someone mature. She looks like a girl, a haggard girl but still a girl. She feels like a girl. They’ll see straight off that she’s a fraud. Sheisa fraud … oh God, for a penny, for nothing at all, in fact, she would run out of this room and take the first bus—
The door opens and an elderly woman with spiky fuchsia hair enters. She is wearing a loose pale pink smock dress, black leggings and black Doc Marten boots tied with bright stripy ribbons, and she is smiling. Samantha loves her instantly.
‘Is this creative writing?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’ Samantha smiles back in what she hopes is a confident way. ‘Please take a seat.’ Unsure of what to say next, she sits at her desk and shuffles through her notes, pretends to read something, picks up her pen, puts it down again.
The woman sits. Out of the corner of her eye, Samantha watches her. Outside, the sky is a pinky yellow over the office buildings next door. On the opposite side of the classroom, internal windows give on to the corridor, where another classroom spews noisy students out of the door. Pink-hair woman pulls out a notepad and pencil case from a canvas bag decorated with a modern art design. Samantha sorts the handouts into piles, fighting off those annoying butterflies. She should chat to this woman, she knows, but she can’t think of anything to say.
A man of no more than twenty enters: black curly hair and dark shadows under his eyes. He nods at her, sits in the chair nearest the door. Two women who clearly know one another follow, chatting comfortably. Friends. Mums, she guesses, here to catch a class that will allow them to get back to the school gates in time. They both smile and say hi. Another woman strides in, her hair undercut on one side, several ear piercings and the hint of a tattoo on her neck; an old man – woolly hat, blinking behind thick spectacles; a middle-aged woman – thin, almost birdlike at the top, voluptuous at the bottom, as if her body belongs to two different people.
Samantha waits, keeping her face in a neutral but, she hopes, pleasant smile, a smile that sayswelcome, that saysI know what I’m doing, that also saysplease be kind. The door closes. Rustles and murmurs, takeaway cups planted on the corners of desks. Notebooks, laptops, pens, tissues, a half-eaten flapjack, a packet of liquorice allsorts – people are funny. She waits for the shuffling to subside.
‘Hello, everyone,’ she begins when silence comes, cursing the giveaway tremor in her voice, the heat now creeping up her neck. ‘I’d like to start by—’
The door opens. A man of about thirty-five pokes his head into the classroom. ‘Creative writing?’
‘Yes. Come in. We’re just starting.’
He nods. ‘Sorry I’m late. Roadworks on the A316 and I got caught in the traffic jam. It was a bad idea to drive. I’ll check before I leave next week and probably take public transport. I can get a bus and a train. I’m Sean Worth.’
‘Hi, Sean.’ Samantha seizes the moment to interrupt. ‘Take a seat. We were about to introduce ourselves, so you’ve got the ball rolling nicely there, thank you.’
The other students shunt their chairs as far as they can under the desks. Sean sidles around, apologising as he goes. His hair is greasy. His anorak is stained and zipped up to the top.
‘Hello, everyone,’ she says again and introduces herself before running through her background. She tells them that she writes poetry, that she’s hoping to publish a collection next year. This was Peter’s idea, another correction from last night. She’d argued, said it sounded pompous and that it was untrue.
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It is the truth, if you think about it.’
‘But it implies there’s something in the pipeline, like it’s only the timings that are yet to be finalised.’
He waved his hand, frowned. ‘That’s for them to interpret. All you’re saying is that you hope to be published next year, and you do, so that’s not a lie at all. It’s not about what you’ve done or what you do, it’s about what you can get away with. Everyone does it. If you want to be successful, you have to be realistic.’
And so she’s said it, feels horrible, but breezes onwards now to her recent graduation in English literature and her teaching qualification. She does not tell them that her partner pulled some strings to get her this maternity cover but instead suggests they go around the room, taking turns to introduce themselves. The young man with the black curly hair is on her left, by the door. She nods to him to go first.
He cocks his head to one side, which makes him look coy, though his eyes are bloodshot. He takes his pen and holds it horizontally between the tips of both forefingers.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘So, I’m Tommy. I’m a musician? Keyboards mainly. Recovering addict. Done a lot of rehab, but I’m getting back on track now.’ He pauses, glances up at her. ‘I signed up to get some tips on songwriting. I write songs.’
