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Pushing the lounge door cautiously in case her mum had company, there she was alone, clicking open a drink.
‘No gentleman visitor today?’
‘Nah, he’s busy.’
‘Any good?’
She sipped. ‘Tastes like Carlsberg as always.’
‘The gentleman.’
‘Gi’or. He’s a bloke. And just like a bloke, he’s not running into my lap every day. Real blokes need freedom, they’re like wolves.’
‘Right. What’s for dinner?’
‘Go have a look, might be some ham for a sandwich. Else boil yourself up some macaroni.’
Natalia gazed at the empty fridge shelves, then yanked open the veg drawer. Mrs Luxton. Mr Cohen. Miss O’Callaghan. They’d been at the school for decades. Were they really going to be dispatched like these shrivelled carrots and parsnips into the swing-bin? An onion, only slightly dimpled; that’s Mrs Clayton. Might be good enough to keep once you look under the skin.
After a plate of plain pasta she fell asleep dreaming of a fire raging through the school, then being blown out like a birthday candle by the tight wrinkly pout of Luxton herself.
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Every Friday morning the school gathered for Assembly, and the school waited with baited breath for the new Head they’d been hearing stories about for the past few days.
‘He lets you call him Neill,’ Bernard whispered to Luke. ‘God he’s so different from Neary!’
‘Mrs Williams sent me up to him for detention! But he chucked me a Mars bar and told me to clear off!’
There was a chorus of sniggers before the teachers hushed and shushed and Neill entered the front of the hall in an air of grandeur, in a deep resplendent blue suit, his blonde hair swept in a fresh washed texture, filling the hall with the smoothness and charisma of a seasoned politician (‘but a nice one, a really nice one,’ Natalia thought) as he offered sincere thanks to everyone for making him feel so welcome in his first week.
‘Where I come from,’ he declared, ‘we pronounce an A where you pronounce a U. Where you say ooh, I say ahh!’
The hall tittered.
‘So, if I tell you the door’s shut, I do not mean that it’s fouled itself.’
More tickled murmurs, as he continued:
‘But rest assured if I say I want to sack you, I’m talking of a no-job… not what the boys think,’ as the school erupted into laughter with some turning faces of disbelief, as he finished: ‘I’m sure we’ll adjust to the dialect differences, along with new positive differences I plan to bring to Thornwood!’
Plenty eyebrows raised at his banter, Natalia couldn’t help raising hers to the teachers standing at the sides. Some smiled whilst others like Mr Cohen frowned at the floor. Had they already had words? Was Cohen on his way out?
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*
Over the next week it became clear Neill was eliciting a Mexican wave of fervour across the school. Natalia would spy him from afar, dazzling corridor traffic to clear a path for him like Moses parting the Red Sea. Everyone was remarking on the exuberant new Head, which Natalia would listen in to like gossip about a TV celebrity.
‘Aye oooop,’ Sam laughed at form to Laura, ‘that’s how the new Head Mr Neill says it! I saw him high-fiving all the boys coming in from the pitch yesterday. They were all going crazy like a pack of dogs.’
‘Were it true that Luke got a chocolate instead of detention?’ Laura stared.
‘Chocolate? He gave my brother Johnny a cigarette!’
‘Johnny’s gotta be lying about that. Mr Neill would be sacked!’
‘I hope he in’t!’
Two Year 10 boys were wheezing with laughter one morning break. ‘Neill caught us smoking up by the fence and we shat our pants. But he came up and asked for a light!’
Two girls joined in. ‘Mrs Williams confiscated my lipgloss at break! But Neill came up, started doing the waltz with her, tossed my gloss back to me and gave her a hug and a peck on the forehead!’
‘Is he mad?!’
‘Well it’s a Fenty, it cost me seventeen quid!’
‘I don’t think Neill cares about that you div.’
‘Mrs Williams just looked stunned! Don’t think she’s been kissed for a century!’
‘What like Sleeping Beauty?’
‘More like Creeping Snooty.’
‘Bleating Fat Booty!’
They tailed off into squeals of laughter.
Even the staff couldn’t resist discussing his unconventional ways. ‘I don’t think that’s going to bother Neill!’ laughed Mrs Coleman when Miss Doris furrowed her brow over a deadline missed for a local Children in Need bake-sale fundraiser. Another time, Natalia saw Neill in animated conversation with at least five female teachers around him, comically lauding up Mrs Clayton as she posed her frumpy legs Vogue-style, he exhorting:
‘What do you mean you can’t do Hollywood! You’re built like a hourglass!’ as they shrieked in laughter.
The home bell would go and Natalia’s gaze would linger on Neill’s Merc as it disappeared up the school driveway, her feet tracing the path his tyres had rolled. She couldn’t help but wonder about that enthralling man inside the black pinprick that now accelerated to the dual carriageway, likely racing back to his wife and family who were so blessed to have his exuberant character for their own. A performer of sorts, brimming with gaiety, larger than life! Meanwhile she would bus back home to her beer-swilling mum and spend another weekend watching the October nights draw in.
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*
‘Natalia, can I have a word please?’
‘Yes, Mrs Coleman…’
As the pupils filed out from English, Coleman smiled sweetly and patted Natalia on the shoulder.
‘Another A on your Anthology work. Well done.’
’Thanks miss.’
‘You’ve always been a top student, and we don’t want that to change.’
‘No miss.’
‘You were on a report card recently,’ Coleman chewed her lip, ‘have you… sorted whatever was bothering you at school?’
‘Ye-es… I think so.’
‘Because I do believe Neill is discontinuing report cards. When one was seen burnt in the waste, we thought it was the pupils, but—’
‘Burnt! Really!’
‘Either way it turns out Neary’s idea of a deterrent is fired.’ She patted Natalia’s arm again. ‘I just want you to know if anyone is bothering you at school, you don’t need to truant. You can come talk to me, or your form teacher.’
‘Thanks miss.’
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She mused on that as she walked on for break. Coleman had always been sweet but never offered an ear or even touched her like that. A nice side effect of Neill’s strategy then.
She could hear the shrieking laughs of the fashionista posse from the other Year 11 form class. Muffled by the doors, and interspersed by deeper grunts, all was confirmed as she approached and glimpsed though the doors: there he was with them.
Bet he’s in his element, as she slunk back and watched him through the door glass, presiding over them in a dark grey suit, full of ebullient ‘ahs!’ bouncing off Alana’s smiling blue eyes, Gemma’s perfect teeth and Aisha’s salon-coiffed Afro. Stroking them with his gaze, hypnotising the circle with his patter, till he turned away with a softly frowning, back-to-business expression, coming toward the doors, right toward Natalia...
It was too late to turn and walk the other way, his eyes had fixed on her through the glass.
The door was swung open, and held open. Her face went down and her heart rate up.
‘Thanks,’ as she stepped into the gap - and as she brushed against his jacket, a tiny waft of minty breath came right upon the coldsore by her lip.
‘What’s this, winter winds? Or has someone been blowing?’
Her fingers flew to her chin, mortified. ‘Yeah, just from the cold. It’s going.’
‘Ohh! Just like old Cohen!’
‘Well if you want a poem, I loathed ever having to know him.’
‘Ha!’ - as he walked on.
Showman smiles for the posh girls, and that embarrassing comment for her? What a bizarre character Neill was on the education scene. Was this school so lowly, so desperate for a gentrifying, Queen’s English big fish like him that it was turning a blind eye to his ashtray-scented office, his tactility with staff members, and his sexual innuendos in front of students?
But there was no doubt that Thornwood’s credibility was on the rise. Unfamiliar faces were seen coming and going from the school, who Natalia gleaned must be prospective staff for interviews, as an energetic young woman in a pinstripe suit descended the stairs the next day smelling of peach and vanilla. What subject would she be teaching? And later came a looming, silver-haired gentleman in black, carrying a satchel, giving a deep ‘good afternoon’ and Dickensian cock of his head as Natalia gawped at his sheer height.
The creeping promise of metamorphosis even lowered Natalia’s dread for PE on Thursday morning. Whilst the boys went out for football on the field with Mr Winterbrook, the girls went to the gym for netball, where normally she’d dread being knocked from pillar to post by the wiry bodies of the other girls, especially bulldog Lisa McGann who’d call out ‘sorry, little ‘un!’ as though Natalia were a toddler. But today, that pigtail-haired toddler was happily grinning into space.
Luxton blew the whistle, and Natalia jumped.
‘Earth to Natalia! Not woken up yet?’
Blowing the whistle for her own time up, Natalia continued grinning, and as the game went on, she thought back to Neill agreeing that ‘Luxton’s past it! I observed it myself.’ The girls seemed quiet. Even Luxton was quiet for the rest of the lesson, was she tenser than usual?
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*
Changed from PE, Natalia headed up to fritter break in the warm IT suite.
‘Hi, Clarkey— I mean, Mr Clarke. Can I use a computer? It’s just really cold outside.’
‘With your hair like that it would be!’ Mr Clarke laughed in his deep goofy way. ‘You must be getting a chill down your neck!’
‘Er, yeah. Wait, that reminds me, I’ve left my scarf down in PE. Can I leave my bag here sir?’
‘Sure, sure, I’ll be here.’
‘I’ll be quick…’
She burst open the doors to the staircase, when her stomach lurched upon the sight of a descending bustle of teachers, led by Neill jogging down - as elegantly as a stocky man in a cream-coloured suit could jog - and she stared for a moment.
She slowed to let the other teachers filter around her and stream down the stairs in their chit-chat. Suddenly, she daren’t turn round to catch the sight of Neill, whom she expected to pass next. But he was nowhere to be seen amongst them. His off-tune whistling was right behind her, before it ceased completely, and then all could be heard was his breath and the swish of his suit.
She slowed for a second, expecting him to manoeuvre and overtake hers, but still he stayed behind her, like a wasp trained on a jar of syrup. She hastened her pace, still not daring to look round, for fear now of losing her footing or having him collide into her like a freight train, until, in a moment so subtle yet unmistakeable, she felt her left pigtail lightly flick up, and land down again.
Her face was flushing as they reached the bottom. Now he finally overtook her, advancing to the door they were both headed for - as he promptly pulled it wide, and motioned for her to go first.
Her eyes were glued to the floor, and gave only an appreciative tilt of her head she walked through. But going on through the next doors, he was back behind her again.
This time she felt her right pigtail flicked up in the air.
She flashed round and half-trembled: ‘What?’
‘Are you going to PE?’ he spoke back in a husky crackle.
‘No - er, just to get my scarf, er I forgot—’
He produced an envelope from his pocket. ‘Do me the honours, executioness, and hand this to Mrs Luxton. Saves me from having to see the troglodyte ever again.’
‘Er, oh?’ as her hand came out.
‘You’re right,’ his eyes flickered to her pigtails, ‘you need something to keep your neck warm.’ Then he drew his hand across his throat as she stared. ‘Meanwhile think of poor Luxton’s tomorrow. Friday 13th, unlucky for some!’
Neill turned and walked away as Natalia blinked down at the envelope.
Heart racing, she stepped forward to Luxton in the gym.
‘Mr Neill asked me to hand you this, miss, I don’t know what it is…’
Luxton frowned and took it.
For the rest of the day Natalia felt the flinch on the roots of her hair like a tiny ghost whilst Luxton got it in the neck for real. Staring at Coronation Street or rather straight through it, she didn't realise she had that toddler grin still on her face till her mum piped up.
‘God yeah, now that is a laugh. What the frickin’ hell’s going on with Gail Platt’s hair?’
‘What the flicking hell.’
It was all so naughty, so unbelievable, like someone surreptitiously slipping you a sweet in church, daring to offer you a sugar rush when you are praying to be fed a piece of tasteless wafer.
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