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‘Thirty three days till Christmas. Only thirty three! Literally the only good thing about winter and I’ve already made my wishlist.’
‘I didn’t know we were still five years old, Laura. What are you writing to Santa for… Polly Pocket?’
‘You don’t get excited about Christmas? Are you that old already?’
‘Nat’s already got what she wanted,’ Sam leaned in, ‘to not have to wear the itchy school jumper anymore. Didn’t your mam moan about the costs like mine did?’
‘Nope,’ Natalia sighed, smoothing a hand down her new tieless uniform polo top and cardigan. ‘She hated them as much as I did.’
‘Stace not in today?’ Sam glanced over the form class.
‘Must be ill like everyone is in November,’ replied Laura.
‘What’s first lesson?’
‘French. Which Stacey hates. She’s probably legged it with Marcia!’
Natalia began to wonder whether she’d need another taxi home. She suspected she wouldn’t, but she would hold the excuse card of hunting Neill down to ascertain that fact, close to her chest.
She trawled the corridors at break. She offered to help Miss Doris carry a stack of books to the door of the staffroom. She hung there for a few moments, waiting to see who might come out. She walked slowly up to the floor of his office; tied her shoelaces down the corridor from his door. Every time a teacher wafted through the doors her heart skipped a beat, to look up and see nobody but the usual frumps of Thornwood.
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Resigned to head for RE as the bell went for the end of break, suddenly appearing through the double doors with Miss Barnes, was the boardroom boss himself.
Wearing a rather extravagant, purple chequered suit, he spotted her immediately. She avoided dropping her eyes, watching him lag a deliberate step behind Miss Barnes, and then draw toward her; her mouth opening involuntarily:
‘Neill, what’s hap—’
He leaned in to her ear and uttered:
‘Gone.’
Then with a waft of his warm, biscuity scent and a flash of jacket down the stairs, gone too was he.
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Back at the end of Year 9 when everyone had to choose their GCSE subjects, Natalia knew Art would be the first choice. She’d mulled over the second choice for a whole week, and on the night they had to finalise their forms, after her drunk mum had been ranting on about being ‘trapped in Leeds all me bloody life and I can’t see owt changing,’ she put a tick next to Geography so hard it went through the paper to the carpet.
She did not bank on having to memorise tectonic hazards, river management and types of rocks for the next two years. Every time she saw Alana go the other way for Business Studies, and come out beaming like an candidate off The Apprentice herself, she often wondered if she made the right choice. What her mum lacked in her life was business acumen, she felt now. To be gone from Leeds was an ambition that required reason, occupation. Today, even with Mrs Tracey, Geography was dull. It was decidedly, dishearteningly dull, and there was only one thing she was interested to know: how far had those two fuckers gone?
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*
She’d never had a doubt about picking Art. Even though her mum was the biggest philistine she knew, and she herself been imbued with a level of her cynicism that a career could ever be made from it. No, she needed the rough wooden tables etched with years of doodles, the high stools and and the messy gouache palettes for something else necessary. Some liberation to pull her through to the end of all of this. There was more travelling of the soul here than in learning about soil deposition.
And even more delightfully, Miss Patrick often wandered off, washing at the sink whilst the class could too wander, or stand, loiter; paint, chat… Alana wouldn’t get this in Business Studies. There was freedom here, whether you had artistic talent or not - and judging by Sam’s sketch of what was supposed to be a woman’s face next to her, that looked like Picasso and not in a good way - the chance to idle with your phone and not be spotted through Patrick’s jamjars was higher than the grades most pupils would get here.
So she relished in a little stare at their last text message exchange. Have a good weekend - she’d had that alright. Add that whispery ‘gone’ onto their messages since; so brief and tantalising the way he delivered it and promptly vanished like a smooth proud purple ghost. She wanted more of that ghost. She wanted to hear, or read, him say something, more, more…
All the way to the bus stop, she pondered if it was worth texting a thanks, or a question? Maybe it would it look too needy, too nosey? Give him the first sigh of regret of giving the pesky school loner his number? Surely one message wouldn’t hurt. It would give her something to go on all the long boring evening, after such a long boring day.
She thought hard, and back home, she began:
‘Mr Neill. Just want to say thanks for keeping me safe…’
Backtrack, delete. Stupidly geeky formal.
She tried: ‘Hey - thanks again.’ Too colloquial and self-centred.
Then: ‘What did you do?’ She hesitated, taunted by the blinking cursor.
Then, bam! His name was flashing! She almost dropped the phone thinking she’d activated an alarm of the thought police.
His name was flashing, he was calling. It was flashing in tandem with her heart rate as she double-swept a shaking finger over the cracks.
‘Heh - hello?’
‘Hello, Natalia?’ he blustered through. ‘It’s Neill, your Head.’
His voice ringing out in her ear, in her bedroom…
‘Oh, hi, Mr Neill,’ she said casually, as though she hadn’t already filed his name into her phonebook the first chance she could.
‘Hello,’ he said again.
‘Hello,’ she said, grinning.
There was a pause, as if they could feel each other’s smiles, as her eyes fell to the same spot on top of the wardrobe, where the box spines of Monopoly and Scrabble that she’d bought from a charity shop gathered dust for no-one to play with, and she’d gaze at them whilst playing with herself instead - and now Neill’s voice, her new mental playmate - was encroaching her ear for real, oh dear! Cue bristling crotch.
He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, been busy all day, but I just wanted to check, did you get home alright?’
‘Oh yeah, yeah, yeah… yes.’ Speak properly now.
‘Oh, good. I wanted to tell you that today the two girls have been suspended, but I, ah - needed to be sure they’d cleared off, and that you’re ok.’
‘Oh! Thanks for checking. I’m fine!’
‘Good, good. Sorry to call you like this.’
‘It’s... really fine honestly.’
‘Have a nice evening.’
‘You too. Bye.’
‘Bye.’
She fell back and panted at the ceiling like she’d just done a run around the block. Oh, the way he stepped in to curb what was, to most everyone else including Mrs Williams, petty drama, teenage angst, a thin skin; but somehow Neill got it, or judged it important enough to deal with! ‘Gone,’ he’d whispered; ‘suspended,’ he’d confirmed just now. For how long? Obviously not forever? With what reason? She should have asked him just then, but she’d been too busy smirking up at Scrabble recalling how she’d imagined last night him spelling out: ‘Rescue! Resurrect! Resuscitate!’ as she masturbates from melancholy to pretty Polly… ‘Good heavens girl! You’re so fucking good at this!’
She couldn’t put her finger on what he was doing, but she’d put her finger on what she could. Early bedtime for the paint-mixing palette to come back out, stirring and stroking till the raft of butterflies from the brief phone chat were released, up across town to him… up toward sleepy Scarcroft in the lovely lucky walls of his house somewhere, where there was evening and bedtime Neill, smoking evening Neill; Neill in casual clothes, Neill in pyjamas, oh my! Neill in the shower, in the bath, in bed. Neill watching TV. Neill brushing his lovely teeth… Neill’s bottom… Neill brushing his bottom… that doesn’t make sense, young lady… good gracious! Bottoms on the brain, his brain on my bottom… she fell asleep with mouth gaping, hand parked between her legs too clammy to withdraw, holding her other arm across herself to again emulate that shield that he carried for her, carried for herself.
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*
Setting off into school with an even heavier hanging guilt that she’d fantasised so much about a man she already had trouble looking in the eye of, her eyes fell deep into the words of Jane Eyre in English that morning. Jane, upon finding a new job as governess, was the happy loner, still ‘solitary and unsustained,’ but her ‘couch had no thorns in it that night, her solitary room no fears’!
Her mind turned to the trip to Haworth that was less than a week away. Suddenly the bus home became that coach. The coach that would have Neill upon it, thanks to her insistence! Drawn into a happy bit of small talk on the bus with the old lady she’d hidden behind the other day, a prism of dim November sun glinted off the window like Brontë’s gleam of sunshine. Tattling with a face alive in confidence, in a private fantasy that she was being watched by Neill a few seats away, she marvelled at how much she enjoyed talking to someone she’d usually never look twice at.
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*
‘Did you see Marcia coming in with her mam earlier?’
Sam and Laura could be most useful eavesdroppers, as Natalia now leaned in. ‘Maybe her mum’s coming in to complain about the uniform costs!’ she winked.
‘Doubt it,’ scoffed Laura. ‘I heard them mention committee. What does that mean?’
‘No idea,’ smiled Natalia, who’d thoroughly googled it. ‘What else did you see or hear?’
‘Two men came through Reception. Wearing visitor badges. Dressed posh like Mr Neill, one had that funny waist jacket on.’
‘Oh? Mr Neill’s twee mafia?’
‘Well I’m glad you’re happy today,’ mumbled Sam. ‘My throat’s killing but my mum’s working double time and won’t let me stay home unless I’m coughing my guts up whilst lucky Stace gets to have all week off, probs for a sniffle.’
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She could feel a countdown to something - a sense that even if she hadn't seen him all day - her chances weren’t finished till her bum met that orange striped bus seat home. Even then, who knows! The other night he called her and said hello, how are you, good, sorry, and bye!
So she wasn’t altogether surprised, in a somewhat surreal and heart-thumping way, when drifting out of the school driveway in a train of grey and black bodies, she felt in the corner of her eye Neill’s black Mercedes.
His wagon was approaching, like a dark horse purring through her guts. Expecting to see it roll off to the gate as usual, it lingered; the driver’s window hummed down, and there hung a blue suited arm with fag-propped fingers. Eyebrows all open and suggestive reeled her in, whilst his mouth said low but loud enough:
‘There you are. Come for a ride?’
She had stopped to stare, and now almost jolted toward him, before casting a dubious glance at the other pupils around. She’d heard a ‘bye Neill!’ cried from a scattered voice, but no-one seemed attentive to them. Into his car? For a ride? Was she still in her bedroom wank reverie? Even if this was a dream, she wasn’t going to mess it up with her trademark hesitation.
‘Ye-es? But how…?’
‘Go to the end of the street and turn right. Meet me behind the shop.’ Pursing his fag back into his mouth his gleaming alloys whooshed away.
She walked dazed, impatient but cautious, turning at the end of the street as instructed. There were his sherry-red taillights glowing through a genie cloud of exhaust fumes, through which she walked like a willing wisher, and after looking casually around her to check no-one was looking, yanked open the door and fell with a soft plop into the seat of its warm plush interior.
‘Hello Natalia.’
‘Hi,’ she barely heard her own voice, as she looked across at Neill, his hair swept back with a little oiliness now after the day, his blue eyes twinkling as though he was bursting to tell her something, speaking now with a tenderly excitable tone in his voice like a father taking his daughter for some birthday surprise:
‘Are you ready? Duck down till we’re past these houses!’
He pelted the car forward as she jerked violently backwards.
‘Whoops! Bit fast, but better to be doing the running over than being ran over, eh?’
‘Wait! Neill! Where are we going?’ Natalia was bewildered, delighted and alarmed all at once, trying to pull down her seatbelt at the same time.
‘I need to talk to you, but not here.’
‘This is so totally weird getting into your car like this.’ Like a beetle on its back for a moment, her eye caught on the bright LED screen where he turned up the volume of Soul Kitchen.
‘You like The Doors?’ he said louder.
‘Er, yeah—’
‘I WhatsApped you at lunch asking you up. Did you not get it?’
‘Oh—’
She fumbled for her phone to catch sight of an alert asking ‘Add Neill to contacts?’ How could she have missed technophobe Neill, WhatsApping her? So much for fearing looking like a texting pest!
‘No matter, because this will be much more fun!’ He swerved round a residential chicane as she fell to one side. ‘I won’t kidnap you for too long. We’re just having a meeting, on the move. I come bearing gifts!’
Kidnap? Oh, gusset be damned.
‘Gifts?’ She sat up again.
He rummaged a hand into his pocket and tossed a box.
‘That’s part one, spot what’s wrong with it.’
‘It’s a packet of cigarettes.’
‘And?’
‘And what.’
‘Well, I smoke Marlboros,’ he said as it if was obvious.
‘And these are… Silk Cut.’
‘So…’
‘So these are what, Marcia’s? You nicked them off Marcia?’
‘No, she gave them to me. Hmm - we need to go somewhere with a quiet spot to stop…’ He slowed the car as he examined the signs.
‘Follow the signs to Temple Newsam. There’ll be a quiet spot there.’
‘Ah, the place you endorsed. Very well!’
He swung right, racing through the traffic light as it hit red, motioning at the fags:
‘Have one. Grab my lighter.’
‘What? Are you serious?’
‘Yes I’m serious. Do you still get surprised by me? Come on,’ he pushed the packet toward her, turning down the music. ‘Stacey and Marcia are both suspended, for smoking. So let’s celebrate.’
‘I really can’t believe you!’
‘Look, it’s just a fag. A fag belonging to your bully fiends, that now spells their defeat. We’ll sit and smoke them. A nice conclusion, n’est ce pas? If we speak French does this count as an extra curricular activity?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘You do now, with me.’
Daylight was dimming as Jim Morrison crooned of street lights hollowly glowing and cars crawling past stuffed with eyes, and they pulled into the car park by Temple Newsam House.
‘Nice pad,’ Neill remarked as a floodlit, Tudor-Jacobean manor came into view with a long neat lawn-flanked driveway.
‘Lake and a farm down there too,’ she nodded.
The car park was deserted all for two other cars. He parked as far as he could away from them and fumbled at his lights.
‘Best turn these off. Don’t want those doggers joining our party.’
‘Who?’
‘You don’t know what doggers are?’
He chuckled at her silence.
‘I have to pinch myself that this is real,’ she sighed. ‘Is this real?’
He shot his hand on top of hers and squeezed it. ‘It’s real.’
An involuntary smile sprung as his warmth met her knuckles, which she pushed into a frown as she fingered the packet. ‘I… don’t know.’
‘Well, if you’re not going to light one up, will you share one with me?’
He slid one from the packet, threw it in his lips whilst clicking the lighter, she now a fascinated front seat viewer of what she thought was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. He inhaled sharply, rolled down his window, and then held the glowing stick toward her.
‘Come onnn. Have a faaag! Life’s too short!’
She didn’t care for smoking, but liked the idea of being involved in the rebellious act with him, of putting her fingers near his, and having something that touched his lips, touching hers. She took it, her fingers lingering against his for a microsecond, had a tepid suck and breathed out a faint trail.
‘Er yeah, very nice. Done,’ she croaked.
‘Well, it’s a start.’ He took it back with an expert flick.
‘So they’re suspended for what, a week?’
‘That’s part one, yes,’ Neill exhaled a small cloud over the steering wheel. ‘You want the next bit?’
Holding the fag in the vice of his mouth he rummaged in his pocket for a small clear bag in which were two white-coloured roll-ups.
‘The smoking gun!’
‘What are they?’ she stared.
‘Grounds for not just suspension. Grounds for expulsion,’ he raised an eyebrow. ‘You can indeed learn History here at Temple’s Newton or whatever it’s bloody called, because, today... drumroll! Marcia has been expelled from school for possession of a Class B drug. She’s gone for good.’
‘Oh, wow!’ she gasped. ‘Oh, my god!’
He winked as he dragged on the fag.
‘So, this is what, weed?’ she peered closer.
‘Bingo.’
‘I didn’t know weed was that bad.’
‘Oh it’s not,’ he inhaled sharply, ‘which is why we’re about to smoke it. Cigarettes to learn to forget. Rather apt words by Mr Morrison. Let’s have it again…’
As the blues notes of the Doors song built up again, Natalia half giddy and half groaning, watched as he extracted the joints from the clear bag, and brought one right toward her mouth.
She pushed it away. ‘Hang on, hang on, hang on!’
‘Whaaa-at?’
‘There’s a few things here. First, aren’t these important evidence that need to be saved?’
‘All done and dusted darling.’
‘Right, assuming that’s true, I’ve just got over my initiation with tobacco literally moments ago, and now you’re having me on the hard stuff?’
‘It’s not such a big deal.’
‘Big enough deal to have Marcia expelled?’
‘Yes, it’s considered a Class B drug. But weed’s a fun and highly insightful substance.’
‘What does it actually do to you?’
‘It makes you feel good. Much more directly than tobacco. Happy, giggly. Something you could do with, frankly.’
She scoffed. ‘Haven’t you already arranged Haworth for that?’
‘This takes you out of your thinking brain, and into your body.’
‘Is that what all the stoners say?’
‘You know, cannabis has been highly corrupted. Inside the human body, believe it or not, we have an entire cannabinoid system which cannabis goes into like a key into a lock. This plant is part of nature, designed to pair with us.’
‘So if Marcia was regularly dosed on this natural stuff how come she would go round with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp?’
‘Ha. Well, pardon my language for a young innocent lady as yourself, but frankly it’s because she’s a cunt, and cunts are cunts. When you smoke it, angels appear. When she smokes it, the devil gets a hard-on.’
Her stoney face lapsed into a smile.
‘Now let’s smoke them.’ He stubbed out the finished tobacco cigarette.
‘What if it’s laced with something else?’
‘Well, we’ll both find out then, won’t we?’ His hand came right to her face and placed it resolutely in her mouth.
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