Page 7 of Statistically Speaking
It was not easy, studying for exams while I was pregnant. It was not easy enduring the whispers and the rumors and the mockery; the way my friends backed away from me as though my mistake might be contagious. The way their parents reacted; the stares as I walked to school in my elasticated skirt.
It was not easy in the aftermath of the birth, when I was unable and unwilling to open up to anybody about it, as I lay in my small single bed in the attic of Audrey’s home, a room I shared with two other children, crying myself to sleep every night and waking up every morning with stinging eyes and a low-hanging depression that was rivaled only by my determination that this would not be the end of my story.
It was not easy going to university and trying to fit in with the other students, fresh from their gap years and summer holidays and dropped off every term by loving parents in Volvos, left with hugs and cash and home-baked cakes in tins. Their lives had been lived in a reality that was a million miles away from mine, and navigating those distances was hard. I never accepted an invitation to stay with any of them during the holidays because I could never return the invitation. I couldn’t join in with their nights out at the pub or communal dinners in Italian restaurants or vacation trips to Ibiza because I had no spare cash.
I stayed in college accommodation all year round, haunting the empty corridors and filling my time with a job in a skirt factory, where my main responsibility was pulling stray strands of nylon off sewn-up fabric.
It wasn’t easy forming friendships that were nourishing enough to be real but shallow enough not to cause these worlds to collide. I’m sure I could have done it all better. I’m sure many of the people I met there would have been understanding—but I was too scared of being an object of pity, the tokenpoor thingamong a crowd of beloved sons and daughters. I kept my distance just enough to not stand out.
It wasn’t easy, but I did it. And every year, especially when I start somewhere new, I look at that photo and it fills meup—with hope, with validation, with the sure and certain knowledge that no matter how hard it might feel sometimes, teaching is an important job.
It reminds me that I have the opportunity to make an impact on young people’s lives. You never know who might need that extra help; who will carry the memory of this time on into their future with fondness and relief. Who might find our classroom a safe space in a dangerous universe; who might be inspired when they were ready to give up; who might need a distraction from painful truths.
Making a difference in someone’s life doesn’t have to be all hearts and roses and outpourings of love—I lost touch with Audrey once I moved out, apart from the odd Christmas card. It wasn’t exactly a deep, emotional relationship—but it mattered. It counted, and it helped, and it enabled me to get where I am today. Who knows which of the kids walking into this building need more than they are willing to ask for?
It is good to have it, this photo, this talisman, this reminder of why what I do matters so much. I am lucky. Some teachers, I have learned over the years, have been worn down. Eroded by the grind of ever-moving goalposts, under-resourcing, overwork, politics (both national and school level) and paperwork; it’s easy to lose sight of how important it is. Why they went into it in the first place; the way they felt when they were newly qualified and still idealistic.
But all of them—even the most battered, the most cynical, the most committed to hating it—will always have the occasional bright spark that makes them smile inside. The quiet kid who eventually opens up; the one who struggles who finally has a lightbulb moment; the difficult pupil who changes completely when you hit upon something that actually interests them.
It’s not exactly like living in one of those American high school movies, where the inspirational teacher saves a teenager from a life of gang-related crime because of their hidden love of algebra—but there are, undeniably, moments of absolute genius. Moments that bring you real, honest joy, a feeling of satisfaction so pure it is almost embarrassing.
I actually love my job, but I’m not immune to the stuff that drags either. Some of it is frustrating, a lot of it is tedious, and the hours are long. But I never, ever get fed up with the kids—and I never forget how important education is, even if they don’t agree with me.
So as I sit here in the staff room, with its familiar smells of toast and tea and its familiar sounds of chatter and scraping chairs, I fold my photo up once more and slip it, safe and secure, inside my purse again. It has given me the turbo boost I needed. I was in a strangely melancholy state of mind this morning, captured by the past, but today is all about new beginnings.
Some of us have been in to work for mornings or afternoons before today—those of us with limited social lives and no families of our own even more so—but this is the first proper day of class, when we are all together again. It has the strange feel of a boarding school somehow, perhaps because a lot of the teachers seem to be women in their middle years. In the forty-fifth grade at Malory Towers.
Hellos have been exchanged, how-are-yous have been asked, holiday tales swapped, suntans and new haircuts admired. There is an air of both desperation and muted excitement. Soon this will all feel normal again, but right now, it is a hubbub of coming together.
I am sitting alone in one corner, smiling but not joining in with the conversations. My default setting.
They are an active lot, these teachers. The long summer has been filled with rock climbing, camping, tours of the Louvre, island hopping in Greece, and long drives through Tuscany. They have managed their own children, looked after in-laws, stayed with relatives, planted herb gardens, been on open-top bus tours of Liverpool with visitors, adopted kittens, eaten pizza in pop-up restaurants at the waterfront, and, in two cases, been proposed to and gotten engaged.
One of the proposees in question, Miss Shannon—or Hannah to us grown-ups—is showing off her diamond ring to a keen circle of colleagues, who are all reacting in a suitably impressed oohing and aahing way. She looks really, really happy.
I have already congratulated her, and I’ve had a brief chat with everyone I needed to; I’m now hoping for a few minutes alone before I head into my classroom. I read through my notes in the hope that it will discourage anyone from joining me.
No such luck. Karim places two mugs of coffee on the table in front of me, presumably one for me and one for him, and throws himself down into the squishy chair at my side.
“Isn’t it weird,” he says, frowning slightly as he looks at Hannah and the small crowd around her, “how most of those women spend all their time moaning about being married and slagging off their husbands, but as soon as there’s a wedding on the horizon, they go all mushy-eyed and romantic about it?”
“Maybe it reminds them of the good old days. Or maybe they’re not actually as unhappy as they make out, they just like having a moan. It’s cathartic to have a moan.”
“You can’t use big words like that on me,” he says, flashing me a toothy grin. “I’m only a humble PE teacher.”
I raise my eyebrows at him, and he laughs. We both know that he understands the wordcathartic, and many others besides—he just likes to pretend to be dumber than he is, for some reason. I think it amuses him.
He has hooked his legs over the side of the chair, as though glorying in the fact that he gets to wear a tracksuit to work—it looks new, dark gray with a white stripe down the sides. His black hair has been trimmed on top, shaved at the sides, and he looks great. Fit, relaxed, comfortable just being himself. I hate that I notice so much about him. I hate that I can’t stop looking at him when he’s in the room, and often find myself gazing at him from behind book covers, pretending I’m not.
“So, you dodged me all summer,” he says, the very slightest twang of the Midlands where he grew up left in his voice.
“No I didn’t. I saw you at the Parkrun by the beach.”
“That was by accident, so it doesn’t count. What I mean is that you avoided going out for a drink with me. I realize that doesn’t make me special, because you avoided going out for a drink with anyone from here, but still... you broke my heart just a little bit.”
He holds up his fingers, gesturing exactly how much heartbreak had occurred. It doesn’t look like anything fatal.
I stare at him for a moment, realizing that even after all these years, my early and unintentional technique of ignoring boys is still working—I was pretty much the only girl at the fateful teenage house party where I managed to get pregnant who ignored the new boy. D, he was called—Daniel or David or Dumbledore, who knows? I never found out, and I never paid him any attention while the other girls were flirting and hair flicking. It wasn’t because I didn’t like him; it was because Iassumed he wouldn’t be interested in me. Apparently, blanking men seems to make you fascinating.
