Page 5 of Kiss Me at Christmas
Harriet turned to see Ali, one of her colleagues on the pastoral care team, violently gesticulating to her from the doorway of an empty classroom. She hurried over to him.
“Cornell is on the warpath. Billy didn’t show up for his revision session yesterday and he hasn’t registered today,” he whispered loudly.
Crap!This was all she needed. Sebastian Cornell was the head of the English department and the pastoral careteam. He made sure to milk both of his titles to their fullest, while shirking his responsibilities for both by being an Olympic-standard delegator. He was a permanently outraged human as old-school as his beige toupee. He complained bitterly about the “malcontent youth of today” and seemed to feel as though students were sent here to try him. Billy, one of her charges, had a way of getting right up his snobby nose.
“Are you sure he hasn’t just signed in late?”
“Like you?” Ali winked at her, and she poked her tongue out.
“I had a rough morning.”
He smirked. “Looks more like a rough night.”
“Oh god, is it that obvious?”
“Only to me.”
At thirty-five, Ali was almost diabolically youthful-looking, with jet-black hair swept back off his face and large brown eyes sporting obscenely long lashes. He was many a student’s secret crush and some of the parents’ too. Harriet suspected he had borrowed Dorian Gray’s portrait for his attic.
An electronic bell bleeped out the start of first period, and the corridor filled up with students. Ali pulled Harriet into the classroom and closed the door.
“Drinking on a school night’s not usually your style. Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Maisy’s not coming home for Christmas.”
Ali’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, babe! That is shit. No wonder you got rat-arsed.”
Harriet decided to change the subject before Ali delved further. “I can’t believe Billy. Cornell’s been looking for a reason to exclude him, and he’s giving him the excuse he needs.”
“It’s not just Billy. I’ve found three more missing fromthe list so far.” The “list” accounted for the students on the pastoral team’s radar. “Carly, Ricco, and Isabel. I haven’t checked the rest of the registers yet, but it’s a bit of a coincidence that four of the famous five are all absent at the same time, wouldn’t you say?”
Foss Independent was a private school catering to both boarders and day students from all over the world. It had been established by the “old guard” in the early 1900s, back when Little Beck Foss was still a thriving town making hay while the favor of the wealthy shone upon it. The town was still as pretty as ever, but behind the ancient stone buildings much of the prosperity had dwindled and many of the shops on the high street lay empty.
Each year as part of their “leveling-up” scheme, the school took in a certain percentage of students from the town. Harriet was not a particularly cynical woman, but she knew well enough that the scheme was as much about ingratiating Foss Independent with wealthy philanthropic sponsors as it was benevolence. The famous five—so named because they were almost always together—were “level-up” kids living in Little Beck Foss, and they were often at odds with their peers at the school.
Though many of the students came from privilege, it offered them little immunity against the pitfalls of adolescence. The “list” therefore tended to be a long one. Most were teenagers struggling with the transition from child to adult, which could manifest itself in anything from mild depression to eating disorders and self-harm, and everything in between. It was the pastoral team’s job to keep these young people safe and help them evolve into well-adjusted adults. It wasn’t easy.
Unsurprisingly, a chunk of the list contained the namesof level-up kids, many of whom dealt with added complications such as poverty or unstable home lives. Billy, for instance, carried a lot of weight on his young shoulders and sometimes it spilled over into bad decision-making.
“You think we’re looking at a mass truancy?” Harriet asked, ruffling her drying hair.
“Could be. If I’ve clocked it, it’s only a matter of time before the attendance team join the dots.”
Harriet bit her lip. “Billy’s already skating on thin ice. He can’t afford another discipline point. Can you try and keep this on the down low for me, just for a little while?”
“I know that look. What are you going to do?”
“A spot of teen wrangling. If I can find them.”
“Are you going to lasso them back to the school grounds?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
Ali looked at her, and she watched the cogs of his mind whirling.
“Okay, I reckon I can hold the truancy hounds off for two hours. Isabel could do without another demerit against her as well. Where are you going to start looking?”
She shrugged. “Coffee shops along the high street maybe? The park? Any ideas?” She didn’t relish the thought of going back out in the cold, but needs must.
