Page 12 of A Midlife Marriage

52 + 8

23

3

- 5% (estimate)

50% average < 5

=

When she had finished,she stood back, the pen pressed against her lip, the familiar acrid smell of marker ink, filling her nose. She didn’t have the answer to this problem. How could she, when she wasn’t able to write the last part.How many years left?That’s what she was reaching for. A definitive answer, that would enable her to calculate how and where she should spend the rest of her life. It would be easy then. Ten or more, and the joke corner would be back up. Five or less, then of course it was time to go and sit in the sun. The sound of laughter filtered through the open window. It was young and easy, and it scattered her thoughts, like wind scatters leaves. She turned to look. Three girls, hair swinging, walked across the school forecourt. They had clustered together like cells on a slide, their shoulders tipped forward in laughter, conjoined by the sheer enjoyment of the moment. She recognised the girls as students she had taught the previous year. Still children then, they were teenagers now, would-be adults stepping into the first summer they would remember for the rest of their lives, the one that might include a first kiss. Who wouldn’t be laughing?

Turning back to the rows of empty chairs, her throat went hard. How had she got through the day? Right up until the last bell of her last lesson, she had kept her composure. Even as they’d had barrelled past …Bye Miss Burrell! We’ll miss you, Miss Burrell! … Enjoy your retirement, Miss Burrell!Even when little Paul Emberson, for whom she’d always had a soft spot on account of his body’s evident refusal to embrace puberty, had stood in the doorway and called out in his fluting, unbroken voice,See you in September, Miss Burrell,she had only nodded and whispered a hoarse,No you won’t.

Her fingers were slack as she looked at the clock. The class had ended quarter of an hour ago, after which she’d spent at least ten minutes folded over her desk in a weeping, sodden heap. Thank goodness no-one had come in. Nick, her headteacher, she guessed was giving her space before the ‘small reception’ he’d organised in the staffroom.

Thinking this, Kay turned to her handbag, took out her phone, opened the camera and flipped the lens so she could see her own face. What a mess. What a bloated, splotched mess she was. If it had been left to her, she would have just exited stage right. No fanfare, no fuss. But Nick had insisted, and she knew he was right. There would be people waiting in that staffroom now who had shown her nothing but kindness and support throughout what had been a tough year. Some she would always stay in touch with. It was right to take the time to say goodbye. She put her hand on her chest and took a deep and difficult breath. The teaching of her last lesson, the good wishes, the waving goodbyes had taken the wind out of her. Doing it all over again with grown-ups suddenly felt too much.

She was still thinking this when a small tentative rap tripped through the empty room. Startled, Kay turned. ‘Come in,’ she called and watched as the door inched open.

‘Miss Burrell?’

As she blinked the boy in the doorway blinked back: Zachary Woods.

‘Come in, Zach,’ she said quietly, watching as he stepped in, his body tense with nerves. He had grown, but then again, she was thinking, she hadn’t seen him much recently. It had been two years since his mother had filed an official complaint against Kay, accusing her of unconscious bias towards him. A swiftly taken decision on the part of Mrs Woods, which had led to a permanent stain on Kay’s otherwise unblemished career, a mandatory unconscious-bias training session (in her free time), and worst of all, Zach separated from his friends and moved to a different maths class. Where, she had heard, he had struggled. But she’d been sick, had had a lot of time away and, in the meantime - her hand went to her mouth – the boy that he was, had grown into this nearly-man, someone she might pass on the street in another few years and never even know. This young soul, who at one time had kept her awake at night, as she’d tried to understand if she really was guilty of what she had been accused. ‘Come in,’ she said again, because he was still standing in the doorway. And then she was asking herself, how often had this already happened? How many of her former pupils had she unknowingly brushed shoulders with? Men and women, who were once boys and girls in over-sized blazers, with over-sized teeth. She bit down on her lip. How fleeting life was. How brutally fleeting.

‘I wanted to give you this,’ Zach said, holding up a package. And even from where he stood, because he had only managed two steps, Kay could see the care that had been taken with the wrapping, the neat bow on top. ‘Someone said you were moving to Cyprus.’

As she took the present, she smiled. ‘I’m certainly thinking about it.’ And for a moment they both stood looking at the package in her hands.

‘I thought it might be useful,’ Zach murmured.

‘Shall I open it?’

He nodded.

She slid her thumb underneath the join and pulled the paper apart, her hand settling on the smooth gloss of a book. ‘Undiscovered Cyprus,’ she read as she held it up. ‘What a thoughtful present. Zach, thank you.’

‘I just wanted …’ His voice trailed off, his chin dropping as he knitted his hands together. He was, Kay saw, already inching back, a battlefield of emotion raging across his face. ‘You were the best teacher I ever had Miss Burrell,’ he said his voice thick with tears, ‘And I hope you have a nice retirement.’ And he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him.

Tears in her own eyes, Kay stood watching the door. For all his height, Zach was still a boy, and she didn’t, not for a moment, underestimate the courage that it had taken him to come. Nor the thoughtfulness of the gift, which she was sure his mother would have been unaware of.Undiscovered Cyprus.She flicked the book open to a page with a photograph of turquoise water and creamy white cliffs. A place of perpetual summer, where someone in a leopard-print bikini might start their day with a swim and a fresh orange juice, and as she thought this, peals of laughter rang through the window again. The girls on the forecourt had lingered.Go.Kay looked up. She wanted to lean out of the window and shout at them.Go! Run to your summer, it won’t ever come again!She closed the book and turning back to the whiteboard, stood looking at the numbers of her life.

52 years and 8 months old.

23 months since diagnosis

3 months since the last scan

NSD (NO SIGN OF DISEASE) Five percent reduction (overall) in size and number of tumours.

50 percent average chance of living longer than five years.

It didn’t matter how many times she wrote it out, it didn’t matter what order the equation, she would never have the answer. No-one did and no-one ever would and the only thing to do in life was to show the kind of courage Zach had. She picked up the eraser. When it was all over, when the good wishes and the speeches were finished, she would go home to her quiet house and try on that bikini. She went to wipe the board clean and as she did, the door swung open again, whoever it was this time not bothering to knock. Kay turned. ‘Craig?’

‘Sorry I’m late, Ms Burrell.’ Grinning, Craig slipped into the room and sat down at a desk near the front. He was a former pupil from years back whom she’d met again when he came to work as a carer for her mother. Thank goodness, he’d stayed on to help with her father. He was, by far, the best carer they had had: hopeless with numbers, brilliant with compassion.

‘What are you doing here?’

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