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‘It’s hot, damn hot,’ Reggie drawls, making his classmates giggle. ‘The work is tough but he owes his hoss a proper burial.’
‘Why?’ Samantha asks. ‘Why is it so important?’
‘The horse is the last living thing he knows,’ Jenny chips in. ‘His only remaining friend.’
‘Yes!’ Samantha is breathing fast, trying to keep up. ‘And the why of that is potentially our real story.’
They carry on. They seem fired up. All thoughts of the malicious poems drain from Samantha’s mind, and when her watch alarm beeps to signal half-time, she startles, is genuinely shocked to see that an hour has passed.
The students file out for their fifteen-minute break. Aisha hovers with Jenny at Samantha’s desk, asks if she would like anything from the canteen. God, these women are keen. They’re like a couple of Peter’s acolytes.
‘That’s kind,’ Samantha says politely. ‘I’m fine with my water, thanks.’
They seem to be waiting for her to say something else. Looking at them both, she cannot help but wonder again if one of them might be capable of writing something with malicious intent. She doesn’t think so, but again, who is she to say? Just because someone is pleasant-looking on the outside doesn’t mean they’re equally pleasant inside. It’s a perfectly bog-standard reflection, something everyone knows. Why then does the world respond otherwise? Why does the world place so much value on external beauty?
‘Did you want something else?’ she asks. ‘Can I help you with something?’
‘Actually, it was just … We’re going to grab a quick coffee after class,’ Aisha says. ‘Would you like to join us?’ Her manner is shy. She glances to Jenny, as if for reassurance.
Jenny’s grin is guileless. ‘Just a quickie,’ she adds. ‘If you can stand the thought, obviously.’
Samantha hesitates. She has left milk for Emily. And Peter tends to leave almost an hour after she gets in. Things are a little cool with Marcia, she doesn’t see the rest of her friends from uni and the mothers at the baby group are so much older, so much more at ease with motherhood and all that goes with it. It would be nice to talk to some intelligent women. After all, it’s possible their good looks match perfectly lovely personalities. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. And frankly, friend-wise, Samantha isn’t exactly fighting them off with a shitty stick, is she?
‘I can only stay for half an hour,’ she says. ‘But that would be lovely, thank you.’
At the end of the class, she tells them to leave their flash fiction pieces on her desk.
‘I’ll have a quick read through,’ she says as they begin to pack away their things, ‘and feed back to you next week.’
She tries to say goodbye as politely as she can, to wish them all a good week, while keeping her eyes trained like lasers on the papers as they land. One by one they place their sheets on the pile. But none of them leaves more than one, she is convinced. She puts the papers in the folder. She has not left the room. No one, no one could have tampered with her stuff.
Aisha and Jenny are waiting for her outside the classroom. There is a moment of shyness, of awkwardness, as if all three of them sense some kind of boundary about to be crossed. But it is only a moment before they wander together across the courtyard to the canteen, where, in the corner, some music students are setting up for a recital. No sooner there, however, when Samantha realises she needs to pee.
‘I’ll grab the coffees,’ Aisha says. ‘What would you like?’
‘A peppermint tea, please, if you don’t mind,’ Samantha replies.
It is only when she gets to the loo that she realises she has left her folder on the canteen table. Bugger. After she’s been so careful! Jenny was sitting at the table watching the bags while Aisha got the drinks. But it is too late for Samantha to dash back. Even if she pleads forgetting something, Jenny will have had time to add to the contents by now. No one would notice a slip of paper going into a folder. No one would even know it’s not Jenny’s folder. But then, she would have to risk Aisha seeing her. Aisha would know she was rummaging in Samantha’s folder and ask what she was doing.
Unless they’re in it together? God, this is horrible.
Samantha washes her hands, chest tightening. In the mirror, her face is drawn, strained. There are black shadows under her eyes; her cheekbones look more defined. She looks older than twenty-two. God, she looks almost thirty! Suspicion is exhausting, ageing. And here she is, about to have coffee with two women she doesn’t even trust.
‘We got you a muffin,’ Aisha announces when Samantha returns. ‘You look like you’ve lost weight since the start of term; we need to feed you up!’
‘Oh,’ Samantha says, wondering what on earth her weight has to do with Aisha while at the same time wondering if it’s true and whether what Aisha really means is what she herself has just noticed: exhaustion, strain.
‘Peter calls these cupcakes on steroids,’ she says, to keep things light. ‘He says they’re artificially inflated with all kinds of rubbish.’
Oh God, that was tactless. She tears at her fingernail with her teeth. What the hell has happened to her?
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean … Thanks, though, it looks amazing.’
‘It’s blueberry.’
‘Blueberry? Yum.’
She sits down, lays a proprietorial hand on the folder, tries to act normal. What is normal again? How does it go? She can’t eat that cake. It isn’t Peter’s objections, it’s Aisha and Jenny. They have been so friendly … too friendly? Obviously they haven’t poisoned the muffin. Ninety-nine per cent of her knows they haven’t, that it’s outrageous, the stuff of fiction. But the one per cent …
