Page 45 of Rewrite the Stars
Is it Matthew? Has something happened to him in Galway? Or Emily? I hope it’s not Mam or Dad – or what if something happened to Jack? I feel like a beautiful bird, gliding along a beautiful lake but beneath it I’m paddling for all I’m worth and no one can see it. It’s like a fear in the pit of my stomach, like I’m waiting for all I have to go belly up just like my life did on the day of Matthew’s accident. It’s like I’m preparing myself for the next trauma, whatever that may be.
I know my life is perfect to the outside world, yet my mood is slipping and I don’t know why.
It’s probably the hangover kicking in again, I repeat in my head like a mantra. Things will be easier in the morning.
Chapter Fourteen
June 2018
‘Mrs Malone? A chat please in my office?’
My class of twenty-five eight-year-olds are engrossed in ‘library time’ and I’m using the silence to catch up on marking some homework when the school principal, Miss Jean Brady, interrupts with a sentence that rises in pitch with every word, and a smile that tells me she’s about to lynch me for something I’ve done wrong again in her prissy, stuck-up prison – I mean, ‘school for rich kids’.
I nod to Paula, my classroom assistant, who has gone fifty shades of white at the very sight of our very own version of Maleficent and mouths to me ‘Good luck.’
Two more weeks to go until summer, I repeat inwardly as I follow the click of her heels down the corridor, and then make the swift turn left into her office. It’s more like something you’d see in an inner-city law firm than a south Dublin primary school with its highly polished floor, stripy rugs and splashes of greenery.
A framed photograph of a smiling boy and girl sit on her desk, which shows that maybe somewhere in her hollow make-up is a heart, but I don’t believe a witch like Brady could produce such innocence and beauty. In fact, I’d put money on it that the photo was cut from one of those cute French kiddies’ fashion catalogue and is all for show.
She sits down and exhales so exaggeratedly that I already want to attack her in a very violent manner. It’s so not my nature, but Miss Jean Brady brings out the dark side of me every time she invites me for ‘a chat’.
I wait, preparing my armour for another dig. What will it be this time? Could it be another reminder not to take a cup of tea or even a glass of water into the classroom for health and safety reasons? Or maybe she still has a problem with the way I sometimes don’t fully pronounce my ‘ings’? (Yes, seriously.) Or could it be that I’ve gone and deeply offended one of the eight-year-olds in my class by mispronouncing the surname Althorp again, saying it as it’s written and not ‘Awltrup’ as it should be? That was a biggie.
I wait, wincing inside but trying my best to be brave and thick-skinned.
‘James Leicester,’ she announces, as if I should salute or bow to attention at the sheer mention of a sprog of one of the wealthiest families in school.
‘Yes?’ I say. My face is a blank canvas of expectation. ‘He’s in my class? Lovely boy.’
I use the termlovelyvery loosely.
‘I had a call from his governess this morning and to be honest I’ve been trying to get a chance all morning to interrupt your class, but I’m at my wits’ end at this stage as to what to do or say to you this time,’ she says to me.
This time? Jesus, this must be bad. I try and think of what the hell I could have donethis time. Did I swear in front of the little shit? Call him a brat to his face when I was thinking it? No, I definitely didn’t. I wait …
‘You do know that our children have after-school activities to further enhance the strong focus on core subjects we teach here during the day?’ she continues. She stares at me for a response.
Ah, Jesus, I know what she’s on about now. I feel my hands start to tremble, not with fear as they usually do when I’m sitting in this leather chair of doom, but with absolute frustration and bad temper at what’s coming.
I nod slowly. I’ve an urge to roll my eyes and sigh but I remain poker-faced as I’ve trained myself to do by now. This must be the fifth occasion I’ve been called into her office, but this is the most pathetic and insulting reason so far.
‘You brought aguitarinto school yesterday?’ she says, raising one perfectly arched eyebrow above her black-rimmed glasses. ‘Is that correct? A guitar?’
I open and close my hands, feeling the fizz of adrenaline pump to my fingertips, and then I breathe through my nose, trying my best to control the string of expletives that are lining up on my tongue.
‘Do you have an answer to my question?’ she asks, drumming her shiny French manicured nails on the pretentious leather mouse mat in front of her. Everything in this hell hole palace is branded with the precious school logo, which is gold, of course, and says something in Latin that nobody even knows how to translate.
‘Yes, I did bring my guitar into school, Mrs Brady.’
‘Miss!’ she corrects me.
Whoops.
‘Yes, I did,’ I repeat, feeling my voice shake. I think of Jack’s words to me when we last discussed my job here.Don’t take any more shit, Charlotte. Not one more ounce of her nonsense. If that witch insults you again, stand up to her and tell her to shove her job where the sun doesn’t shine. You’re far too talented and smart to be treated like that. Don’t take it ever again, not for one more single day.
‘Why?’ she asks me, lifting a pen now to make some notes on her branded, lined block of paper. I have an overwhelming urge to tip the desk and its entire contents over and storm away, but I’d probably end up in jail for assault if I did, so I contain myself.
I breathe in and out, counting quickly the days I have to endure to get to the end of term when we’ll break up for summer and I’ll hold onto a full two months of pay from the pockets of the rich who send their silver-spoon-born offspring here. Ten more teaching days, that’s all I’d have to last if I can just hold back and not react to this nonsense.
