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‘Actually Suzanne,’ Samantha says, her pace slowing. ‘I’ve just realised I’ve given the nursery the wrong classroom number. They won’t know where to find me if Emily needs me.’
‘Yes they will!’ Suzanne’s face is pure triumph. ‘I saw the sign before and I told Gail.’
‘Oh. Oh, OK. That’s … that’s brilliant, thanks.’
Suzanne beams back at her before disappearing into the Ladies, leaving Samantha to face Aisha and Jenny alone.
‘We were just talking about you,’ Aisha says. ‘Do you have time for a quick coffee after class?’
Samantha nods, eventually produces a strained, ‘Er, sure.’ She’s gone all weird, she knows she has, but she can’t help it. She fumbles with the key, which rattles in the eroded fitting of the lock. With a stiff clunk, the door opens suddenly and violently. Samantha almost falls into the classroom.
‘Steady as she goes,’ Jenny says with a laugh. ‘You almost went flying then!’
Without making eye contact, Samantha heads for the computer. Shit, she didn’t do the photocopying.
‘I won’t be a tick.’ She dashes out with the day’s lesson notes, almost bumping into Suzanne. In the corridor, she stops, curses again. She’s left her bag in the classroom, but to go back now will look like she doesn’t trust those women. Shedoesn’ttrust them – well, two of them. But no, she has the folder. The bogus work has always been placed in the folder.
A shadow is moving towards her. Sean.
‘I’ve told all the others like you said, Miss. They’re on their way. I told Tommy, Reggie, Daphne—’
‘Sean, you’ve saved the day,’ she says. ‘Excuse me, I just have to dash and get these copied.’ She holds up the folder and smiles.
‘I’m a bit earlier today,’ he says. ‘Tried the bike again because the roadworks have moved north of Kew now so it’s not as bad.’
‘Right you are, Sean.’ Samantha’s forehead prickles.
Behind Sean, Lana appears and says a gruff hello. Seeing her chance, Samantha makes a run for it.
By the time she returns, the class is full. Her bag is on the desk and appears to be as she left it. No one will have dared touch it in full view of the others. Focus. Lead the discussion. She pulls a tissue from her bag and wipes her forehead, takes a gulp of her water.
‘OK,’ she begins. ‘Today we’re going to look at dialogue …’
She takes them through a couple of scenarios, gets them to split into pairs and write an argument over a parking space in a supermarket car park. After fifteen minutes, she asks Reggie and Daphne to read theirs.
‘“Excuse me,”’ Daphne reads aloud from her notes. ‘“I think I may have been here before you.”’
‘“Were you?”’ Reggie peers at the same sheet. ‘“I’m afraid I didn’t notice.”’
When they have finished what must be the most polite argument ever recorded, Samantha encourages the class to help her analyse what they have written.
‘Good dialogue needs subtext,’ she tells them, scribbling a few lines from Reggie and Daphne’s script on the whiteboard. ‘Can anyone tell me what subtext is?’
Aisha raises her hand. Samantha scans the room, tries to make eye contact with someone, anyone else. No one will look at her directly.
‘Aisha?’
Aisha gives one of her sickly smiles. ‘It’s what lies beneath what we say.’
‘Can you expand?’
‘It’s what you really mean but you don’t say it in words. So, like, “I think I may have been here before you” means something stronger.’ Aisha’s face is so earnest. She simply doesn’t look like someone who could spend even one second being mean-spirited. But then, appearances …
Daphne giggles. ‘It’s really saying “Iwashere before you”, isn’t it?’
‘Good,’ says Samantha. She does adore Daphne. ‘You could argue that the subtext is even stronger, couldn’t you? What would be stronger still?’
Again, Aisha raises a hand. Samantha checks the rest of them, but no one else appears willing to answer.
