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‘I love my mum too but, you’ve got to admit, she’s an old bag compared to yours,’ Angie jokes. ‘She’s snooty and narrow minded. The only thing she enjoys more than knitting is scowling and judging people. Your mum feels more like a cool older sister.’
‘Never tell my mum that,’ I say with a playful seriousness but, also, I really hope she never tells her that.
‘I commented it on one of her Instagram photos last week,’ Angie admits through a giggle. ‘She was over the moon.’
‘I bet she was,’ I laugh. ‘When we were emptying her house, she was chatting with one of the removal men, and she told him she was my wingwoman – or that I was going to be hers. Either way, imagine going out on the pull with your mum, and it’s not just that she’s my mum, it’s also the fact that we really could pass for sisters. It’s great that she looks younger than her age, and that she’s so happy, but inviting that comparison somehow ages me up.’
‘Oi, you are gorgeous,’ Angie insists. ‘You look like Florence Pugh’s only slightly older sister. People would kill for that long blonde hair. And your face always looks so fresh. Me and my black hair dye are losing the battle against my greys, and I’ve got a face like I’ve always just been given bad news.’
I snort.
‘You have, maybe, three grey hairs, because you can’t be arsed dying them, and you can’t even see them – and even if you could, grey hair is cool,’ I remind her. ‘And your permanent expression is a sort of cool but warm kind of thing.’
‘Cool but warm?’ she repeats back to me with a teasing smile. ‘And you’re an English teacher, yeah?’
‘I mean you look cool, like you don’t need to give a damn, but you also still look so warm and friendly and approachable – I’m trying to pay you a compliment,’ I remind her. I place my hands over my cheeks. ‘I have chubby cheeks and overprocessed hair.’
‘My goodness, it’s no wonder our young ladies have self-esteem issues, if you two are shaping their minds,’ Fee, one of the more senior teachers, interrupts us, having blatantly been eavesdropping on our conversation.
‘Erm, my girls have more confidence than me,’ I point out. ‘One of them reminded me that her car – which she can’t even legally drive yet – was worth more than mine. Another gave me her mum’s surgeon’s Instagram username. It still keeps me up at night, wondering which part she thinks I need fixing.’
‘Your bum,’ Angie teases, causing Fee to cringe at her use of the word bum.
Fee, hilariously, is head of pastoral care. If you asked her what this involved, she would probably brag ‘a few extra thousand a year’. You’ve got to feel sorry for them, with Fee in charge of their wellbeing, because I feel like kids today have so much more to contend with than I did when I was at school. I don’t want to sound like I’m a thousand years old, but we didn’t have social media, which must have made all the difference. I would say we didn’t have influencers, but we did, in a sense. I remember watchingThe Simple Lifeand being obsessed with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. I loved everything about them, from their style to their dogs to their confidence. Looking back, it’s easy to see that they probably weren’t the best role models – at least not with the way that they portrayed themselves in the show. Of course, all this manifested as was me cutting the top section of my jeans to be lower and begging my mum to let me have a chihuahua. Nothing like cosmetic surgery and sports cars.
The toughest thing about Fee being head of pastoral care is that she isn’t only out of touch with youth, she’s out of touch with the times too. Issues like sexuality and gender are pretty black and white to her, which means the rest of us have to work overtime to support the kids. It’s pretty much known, throughout the school, that you don’t talk to Fee about things like that.
‘Clocked off for Christmas already?’ Fee asks. Pretty ironic, given how I was just thinking about how little she does for her wage.
‘Not quite yet,’ I reply through a forced smile.
‘We’re going to our Patricia’s for the Christmas period,’ she tells us. ‘She’s just had another baby, you know.’
Oh, we all know. It’s almost all she talks about.
‘Nice,’ I say, simply.
‘She’s a year or so younger than you two, you know,’ she points out. ‘You know’ ought to be her catchphrase.
‘Good for her,’ Angie replies.
‘You two ought to start thinking about having kids,’ she tells us.
‘Together?’ I blurt, purposefully misunderstanding her point.
‘Oh, my God, we’d make such cute mums together,’ Angie sings. ‘Imagine how cute our baby would be?’
‘Cute and a genius,’ I point out. ‘With my words and your numbers.’
‘Erm, that’s not what I mean,’ Fee interrupts, clearly not amused.
‘We’ve already got fifty kids between us,’ I remind her.
‘So long as you’re happy,’ she says with a shrug. ‘If you’re happy with your lot.’
‘Oh, look at the time,’ I say, probably looking at my watch a little slower than my words come out. ‘We need to go get set up. Our classes are doing a TikTok thing together.’
I say this knowing full well that as little as saying the word ‘TikTok’ gives Fee a headache.
