Page 123 of Between Us

If pupils could smell fear, they could equally sense its complete and total absence. Confidence created an almost tangible forcefield; it was very strange. It had deserted Roisin; now she had it back. It obviously came from a mystical wellspring inside and was index linked to your happiness, given how it radiated from her.

Roisin could feel their teenaged hopes of further disturbances perishing and shrivelling, second by second. Miss was Miss again.

‘Is your husband’s sex show gonna be on again? Next year? Miss?’ Logan persisted, clearly feeling the loss of any spectacle more than everyone else.

Roisin moved a strand of hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, and let a beat of silence pass that increased the attention upon her. It was designed to deliberately up the ante, so they would better appreciate her composure in answering.

‘Television drama is fiction. And the only work of fiction I want to talk about is Charles Dickens’sGreat Expectations,’ she said, picking up a copy and grinning, to a ripple of groans.

She grabbed a marker and squeaky-penned on the white board.

THE TWO ENDINGS

‘SAD’ VS ‘HAPPY’

She turned back to the room. Roisin was her old self. Actually, no, that wasn’t true. She was herpresentself, this self. She liked this self.

‘Now, what we’re going to look at in today’s lesson are the competing endings of the book. Charles Dickens originally wrote different last chapters, where Pip is single and Estella remarries. The one we have in the final version was suggested after his friend, another writer called Wilkie Collins, objected to it being too bleak. He insisted he lighten it.’

‘Why didn’t he say, “It’s my book, Wilkie, you wasteman!”’ Amir said.

‘Yeah, if I’d written the whole-ass thing, slaving away for hours and hours, I’d be like, “Write your own, man,”’ Pauly agreed.

‘Good point. Literary debate continues to this day over whether Dickens should’ve yielded to the complaint, and whether it improves or damages the text.’ Roisin pointed at the board. ‘Do you think the story is better served by the ending you read over the summer on your print outs, where Pip is single and Estella remarries? Or the one in the book we studied, that hints that Pip and Estella will marry? Who fancies answering?’

‘Pip should be single at the end,’ said Logan Hughes. ‘She’s cucked him already, right? And you don’t want to be married at … what is he? Thirty? He should call himself Philip, too. Or Phil. Pip is not a grown-ass man’s name, you know.’

‘This is olden times though,’ Pauly said. ‘Thirties was well old. They died at like, forty-one or forty-two.’

‘Very specific, Pauly,’ Roisin said.

‘What do you think, Miss?’ Amir said. ‘Do you like happy endings?’

Pauly slid off his chair, honking.

‘No, I mean! For real! I want to know? Aren’t happy endings a bunch of lies, Miss? To make us feel better? Everyone dies in the end, so life doesn’t have a happy ending. It’s writers telling lies.’

‘What if happy endings can be happy beginnings?’

‘Like … you don’t know what happens next?’ Amir said.

‘Yes. If Pip and Estella marry, that’s a beginning. It’s where we leave them, but it’s not theirending, as such.’

‘You’re saying it’s a happystart,’ Amir said. ‘I get it.’

‘Yes, a happy start. Or, in one word: hope,’ Roisin said, smiling.

‘Who wants to read from the last chapter for us?’

‘I do, Miss!’ said Amir. ‘I’m good at it.’

This caused a light outbreak of guffawing and cussing from his peers, which he revelled in. She remembered the handshake through the car window. He was a sweet kid, Amir.

‘I agree. Go ahead.’

He cleared his throat and began speaking. Roisin surveyed rows of reasonably docile pupils with satisfaction.

As he said,‘I have been bent and broken but – I hope – into a better shape …’ out of the corner of her eye, Roisin noticed an envelope in her bag that she was sure hadn’t been there when she packed it last night. She slyly fished it out to look at the single word written on it.

Her name, in his handwriting.

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