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I tug it out and stare at the skirt I rehemmed just last night to her horror. If only I hadn’t done it. If only I’d listened. Was this why she hadn’t come home tonight?
It can’t be. It’s six centimetres of sheer gauze and a metre of thread. I toss it back and drag the chair to the desk and somehow knock over her bin. Paper and hairbrush fuzz and crisp packets fall out. I scoop it all back in, set it straight, and then I see the necklace.
It’s a gold chain, the pendant a red stone circled with a plain gold band. It’s Ava’s, another of her birthday presents from Tristan. She must’ve lent it to Jenna. But why was it in the bin?
27
AFTER
The van jolts. I’m thrown against my van-mate, a sweaty blobfish with well-meaning eyes looking anywhere but at me in this windowless box. She apologises. I hold my breath and shuffle back. My wrists and ankles are cuffed, and not in a good way, yet I can’t help but smile.
I’m being moved again. Somehow, the Governor Number One got wind of how no fewer than three of his staff had left for their (entry-level) dream jobs since I arrived.
I was taken to a private room and I thought I was about to have all my privileges revoked: lie-ins, extra time outdoors, my watercolours, my drama class, my souped-up cheese toasties.
Instead, he confessed: he’d been writing a play.
I strongly considered asking if he thought I’d ever met anyone who wasn’t writing a play. But instead I gasped, clasped my hands to my cheeks and said, ‘Oh, how wonderful!’ Yes, with an exclamation mark.
His eyes rounded slightly, and I knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do for me.
In the prison service, the dimmer you are, the higher you rise, but I committed to reading the full opus.
It was as mad as a basket of soup. It engendered a yearning to scoop out my brain with a spoon.
Anyhow, I made a few tweaks and now I’m on my way to the UK’s most progressive prison, where the word is ‘rehabilitation’ and men and women mingle. Governor Number One is joining a creative writing MA, God help us. When will the teachers realise his submission was co-authored?
Some teachers find new classes difficult. They prepare and prepare, not knowing what to expect of the students, careful to avoid making instant judgements about the kids in front of them.
But my experience is that you should embrace your gut. The first three words you hear out of a person’s mouth are a precise gauge of their intelligence. I’m still waiting for someone – anyone –to prove me wrong.
In the past few years, my preparation technique has been to do the bare minimum. Walk in, watch, listen. By the end of the hour, I can line the whole class up in grade order.
But that’s soooo unfair! They’re just children! Everyone deserves an equal chance!
Get real. Grow up. Nothing and no one is equal – not by the time they’re at secondary school, and by God I wasn’t about to teach a load of bright-eyed, snot-faced babies.
But then I got the job at Port Emblyn School, and the moment Neil said, ‘You’re hired,’ with a grin on his sweaty face, looking up at me in complete adoration, I changed my technique entirely.
Student records. That’s what I needed. If they wanted me to start the following week, I needed immediate access.
Neil was a modern head; he’d uploaded everything to an app. So, as I sat on the balcony at Barnacle Bob’s, a blanket across my lap, a fierce patio heater singeing my hat, eating lemon sole and chips in the winter sunshine, and watching the entrance of the rather bougie Riot Gallery for the comings and goings of the Right Venerable Frances Beaufort-Bradley, I was able to learn a good deal about the offspring of my old friends.
Frances. Her brother Tristan. His cold bitch wife Mina. And Lydia making up the last of the perfect little group.
And my goodness if I couldn’t feel already the beginnings of a soft spot – a raw, tender, vulnerable spot – for a quiet little goth nerd called Jenna.
28
AFTER
The blobfish risks a smile as we wait in a tiny room. I smile back and she makes a very rude gesture, circling her thumb and fingers, jerking her hand back and forth in unison with her tongue as it bulges in her cheek. I can’t help but shift my eyebrows up and down suggestively. It would appear we have a shared interest. One we can hopefully recommence in our new mixed-sex abode.
We’re called through and they ask us questions to which it would be frankly concerning if they didn’t already know the answers. Full name. Birth date. Preferred pronoun. Star sign.
But where was I?
Oh yes, the beginning of the end.
