Page 86 of Kiss Me at Christmas
Neither of them spoke for a moment as they looked at each other, the noisy café falling away. His faith in her was a gift, but it was too precious, breakable, easily crushed by her fear of failure. She was a fraud. She wasn’t the instigator he believed her to be; her motives were driven by guilt, just like his. As if on cue, her phone rang.
“I need to take this,” she said.
“You always need to take it.”
She ignored him and went outside, returning five minutes later to find him still sat there, stewing.
“It was a student’s parent. It was work,” she said, though no explanation was required.
“Your commitment to your work is admirable, but surely you can’t be expected to be on call twenty-four-seven.”
“My job can be intense; it doesn’t always keep regular hours.”
“To be honest, it isn’t only your job that’s the issue. You are always available to everyone, always, which in a weird way makes you wholly unavailable to any one person ever. I don’t think we’ve had a single conversation day or night that hasn’t been interrupted by your phone in some way; if it’s not a call, it’s a message or voice note. I realize that given my recent behavior, I’m in no position to make demands, but if we are going to venture forward with this thing between us, I’d like to occasionally come higher on your list of priorities than your phone.”
She sucked in a breath. He was right, of course. She’d once left a church in the middle of a wedding to take a work call.
“I have”—she fumbled for the right words—“phone issues.”
James sat back, hands in his lap, giving her space to continue. Needing something to do with her hands, she took another pastry from the plate and began to carefully unroll it. If she was going to tell him, there would be no better time.
“I didn’t always work in pastoral care. Until eight years ago I taught English literature.”
She swallowed and began to peel apart the flaky layers of the croissant.
“There was a girl in my class, Zoe. One of those exceptionally bright students who just hoovers up information, full of potential.” Her fingers were sticky, but shecontinued to dismantle the pastry. “She had a troubled home life. Neglect, substance abuse; none of it considered dangerous enough to remove the children, but her family was well known to social services. I knew how hard it was for her to keep up with her studies and not to get sucked into the life that seemed hell-bent on swallowing her up. I did my best to keep an eye on her, but I had sixty students in my cohort: fifty-nine other humans that also needed my attention.”
The croissant lay in shreds on the plate, and she stared at her deconstruction as she forced her words out of a throat that felt as though it wanted to clam shut.
“When she started missing lessons, I alerted the relevant people at the ends of the lists; I even called at her house, multiple times. But I was so busy, I had other students, assignments to mark, and Maisy was still little…”
She arranged the pastry into small, neat mounds on her plate.
“Then one night I had a missed call from her; I’d fallen asleep on the sofa while marking assignments. When I woke up and saw it, I called her back, but it rang out. The next day I discovered she’d been arrested for possession of an illegal weapon and Class A drugs with intent to sell. The phone call had come two hours before her arrest. She’d reached out to me, and I hadn’t been there. I went to see her at the police station. It was clear she’d been doing more than simply running the drugs. The way she looked at me…” Her mind threw up the image that would haunt her forever: black hollows under her eyes, lips cracked and bleeding, matted hair, and an accusing expression that asked,Where were you? Why didn’t you save me?
“What happened to her?” James asked gently.
“She was sent to a juvenile detention center and afterthat, I don’t know. I don’t think she wants to be found. I’m pretty sure she changed her name, certainly on social media. Her brothers and sisters were taken into care and her parents moved away. That was the end of the line.”
“None of that was your fault. You understand that, don’t you?”
“I let her down. She was vulnerable and I didn’t see her fall because I wastoo busy. You know people always talk about ‘breaking the cycle’ like it’s easy, like you just have to make the choice to live a different kind of life, but they don’t see the jaws of that life snapping at the heels of the person trying to escape it, waiting for one small slip that will give its teeth the purchase they need to drag them in.”
She picked up a napkin and began wiping her hands roughly, repeatedly, but they still felt sticky. James reached over and placed his hands over hers to still them.
“You did what you could.”
“It wasn’t enough. I wasn’t there.”
“Do you honestly think that if you’d taken that call, things would have been different? From what you’ve said, she was already on a rocky path.”
“I’ll never know, will I?”
“You can’t be forever on some sort of reparations mission. You gave up a career that you loved to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again; nobody can say that you haven’t done enough. I’d like to meet any person who had the audacity to suggest it.”
“How do you know I loved my old career?
“Any idiot can see it. I’ve seen how discussing Dickens with the famous five lights you up from the inside out. I’ve watched the text come alive for them when they see it through your eyes. Your job title may be different, but in your heart you’re still a teacher.”
