A Silver Lining (6 page)

‘Funnily enough I
had
noticed that.’

Daniel kissed her deeply. When they came up for air he looked at her, mock concern etched on his brow. ‘I’m worried you’ll catch your death in that coat.’

‘Do you want me to take it off?’ Rose asked softly.

‘That might be best. For your own health, of course,’ he said with a serious expression on his face.

‘Of course.’ Rose shrugged out of her coat, and Daniel lifted her dress over her head in one swift movement, letting it fall to the ground.

‘Excuse me, that dress was perfectly dry!’ Rose said in mock indignation. Then Daniel began to kiss her again, and she stopped protesting.

Later on, listening to Daniel’s rhythmic snores and unable to sleep, Rose walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. She needed to get back to sleep quickly; she was in work the following morning. Her eye caught the package of letters on the top of one of the boxes and she picked them up. She ran her fingers for a moment over the address scrawled in black ink. She brought them back into the bedroom with her and placed them in the bottom drawer of her locker, closing it with more force than was necessary. Today was a new beginning, after all. She didn’t need to be reminded of her past.

CHAPTER TWO

Rose felt her heart sink as she turned into Ravensfield housing estate the next morning. Ravensfield was what most people considered a ‘rough area’, comprising of hundreds of identical grey and brown council houses. The green areas that were meant to add a hint of natural beauty to the place sported black scars from bonfires and burnt out cars. There was litter everywhere, beer cans, syringes, rusting shopping trolleys, and an almost palpable air of depression. Nobody visited the estate unless they had to.

Which Rose did. She was a teacher in St. Jude’s, a secondary school for girls in the heart of the estate, with an atrocious academic reputation. Daniel couldn’t understand why she continued to work there, and was always on at her to change her career. With her college results she could work in a large company, like her sister Charlotte did, he urged. She’d make better money and have an easier life. Maybe he had a point, but Rose really loved her job. It was challenging, sure, but that was part of what she loved about it.

Rose manoeuvred carefully into her parking space. Across the car park she saw Frankie standing outside the front door, without a cigarette in her hand, which was unusual for her. Rose raised a hand in greeting and Frankie hurried over.

‘Well you certainly took your time,’ Frankie complained as she climbed into the passenger seat.

‘And good morning to you too,’ Rose said drily.

‘I need a cigarette.’ Frankie continued as if Rose hadn’t spoken. ‘Can I smoke in your car?’ She rummaged in her shoulder bag for her cigarette case, solid silver and engraved, a birthday present from her doting father.

‘I’ve no problem with you smoking, but is there any particular reason that it has to be in
my
car?’ asked Rose.

‘Roger has decided in his
infinite wisdom
that members of staff are no longer allowed to smoke outside the building,’ said Frankie sarcastically. ‘Apparently it sets a bad example to the students.’ She placed a cigarette in her mouth and lit it from a lighter that produced a flame so big Rose was worried it would singe her fringe. The flame caught and Frankie took a deep pull on her cigarette. ‘So until my car comes back from the garage I have to either smoke outside the school gates with the students, or smoke in other peoples cars. The only other person I know well enough to ask is Emily, and you know how worked up she gets about the smell of smoke.’

Rose did know. Emily Jenkins taught Irish and geography. By dint of being their side of fifty she occasionally sat with Frankie and Rose in the staff room, even though they didn’t really have all that much in common. She’d had a bad experience last year when a sixteen year old had sprayed a desk with deodorant and set fire to it. It hadn’t spread but there were still scorch marks on the ceiling and one wall of classroom 23.

Frankie was originally Francesca Devereux. Her mother was Irish, her father was French, and both of them were loaded. She’d grown up in London, and attended one of those elite girls’ schools, the kind that have adverts in the back of Tatler alongside glossy pictures of hundred year old buildings, lacrosse sticks, and students in ridiculous wide brimmed hats. Money wasn’t everything though, and her relationship with her mother was so bad that, when she’d finished school, she’d immediately left London for Dublin and university. Her grandmother, Nana Anna, had taken her in, and she still lived with her in her large red brick house in the affluent suburb of Ranelagh. Her cousins all bitched heavily that she was only doing it for the inheritance.

Frankie was one of those women that seemed to radiate cool. With her long slim limbs and clipped London accent, she seemed like she should be having her cigarette backstage before a runway show, instead of before a morning of teaching tearaways in a rundown west Dublin school. Her hair was a rich thick brown and was worn long with a heavy fringe. Her skin was a flawless cream and her eyes were the colour of chocolate.

Coupled with that, she was extremely fashion-conscious. Not only was she always up to date with recent trends, she wore them with a twist that made the look completely her own. In the early days of their friendship Rose had tried to raise her game and put more effort into her appearance, getting up earlier to put some manners on her flyaway blonde hair and buying a multitude of scarves and accessories that she couldn’t quite pull off. But she’d always come up second, and had to sacrifice an extra forty minutes in bed into the bargain. She’d given it up after a week. Some people just had the knack of looking consistently stylish. It was a gift.

Today Frankie was wearing a denim skirt with a pair of purple leggings tucked into worn black biker boots, a tight purple t-shirt with a baggy oversized black leather jacket on over it.

Frankie took a deep pull on her cigarette. ‘So? Have you settled in to a life of domestic bliss yet?’

‘I only moved in last night!’

Frankie turned around in her seat to face Rose. ‘It was all a bit quick though, wasn’t it? He asks you to move in with him and you do so a week later?’

‘Well, there was no sense in waiting, was there?’ said Rose reasonably. ‘Emmett had already moved out.’

‘So, that was the romantic New Year’s Eve proposition was it? Move in with me quick, I need someone to help pay the bills! And to think some people say that romance is dead,’ said Frankie, decidedly unimpressed.

‘Ah, shut up! You’d want to be nice to me’, Rose said as her and Frankie got out of her car. ‘Or you’ll lose your smoking haven. And have to smoke out there with the cool kids.’ Rose gestured towards the school gates with her head where a group of students were having a quick cigarette before classes started.

‘Oh, I was only joking. And you wouldn’t do that to me. I’m not nearly streetwise enough for them. They’d probably steal my cigarette case…and my cigarettes.’

‘Quite possibly,’ Rose agreed. ‘Come on, I need a caffeine kick before I tackle third year English.’

The St. Jude’s staff room, like the rest of the school, was dated and functional. It was painted in a sickly peach colour that had blistered and was starting to peel off the walls. The communal seating area was full of uncomfortable chairs, but despite this they were all occupied by the time the girls arrived. Every teacher had their hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee.

‘Why is everyone drinking the coffee?’ asked Frankie.

‘Because it’s so fecking cold,’ said Emily as she walked over to them. ‘The heating was turned off over the holidays.’

The air inside the building was almost colder than it was outside, and now that Rose thought about it, it was hard to discern what whether the cloud in front of Emily’s face was steam from her coffee or her breath freezing on the air.

Roger, the school principal, had given in to staff pressure at the end of the last school year and bought a coffee machine. Unfortunately, also due to staff pressure, it had broken down a mere three weeks after its arrival. It now sat gathering dust in the corner of the room, and members of staff had to rely on instant powder that Breda the tea lady stored in a large catering tin with the label ripped off. It was always horrible, and Frankie and Rose had whiled away many afternoons trying to work out what exactly Breda had added to it to give it that special aftertaste.

Roger Clarke, the school principal stood up and cleared his throat.
Oh God
, thought Rose,
not another start of start of term pep talk
.

Roger Clarke saw himself as a man of the people. Brimming with joie de vivre, he was always laughing and clapping his staff hard on the back in an effort to show camaraderie. He was nice enough, but his penchant for management speak, team-building and awful jokes made Rose tried to avoid him as much as possible. Mind you, she supposed, you’d probably need a strange sense of humour to be principal of this school.

‘Ladies, and gentlemen,’ he began grandly. ‘We find ourselves once again at the start of a new school term. I hope that you all had an excellent Christmas. As you are all aware, the Department of Education has cut our budgets yet again, meaning that in these recessionary times we will all have to find ways to provide the great education that has become the hallmark of St. Jude’s Community School, but on a tighter budget.’

‘Great education?’ Frankie whispered to Rose. ‘What is he on, crack?’

‘In order to achieve this, we need to be innovative! We. Need. To. Be. Creative!’ Roger emphasised each word by banging his hand on the tea trolley so hard that coffee slopped everywhere. ‘We need to be constructive!’

‘We need to stop reading management books,’ Emily murmured behind them.

‘What we have in our careers, ladies and gentleman, is power. The power to change lives. And as a great man once said, with great power comes great responsibility.’ Roger gave a proud grin around the room at the staff. ‘We must be
our own superheroes
! We must come to the rescue of the disadvantaged students that we teach. Yes, indeed. And though we may face setbacks, though we may have in our classes the occasional
joker
.’

‘Rose, slap me.’

‘I believe,
I know
, that we can achieve great things in this school. Are you all with me?’

Stony faced teachers stared back at him.

‘We can’t be perfect. And that’s not what I’m asking you to be. Even Superman is susceptible to kryptonite.’

‘Talk about squeezing an analogy until it screams,’ Frankie muttered.

‘And lest we think that superheroing is a man’s business, I’d like to point out that we have a few oul’ Wonder Women in our midst.’ Roger twinkled.

Rose looked at her watch. The bell was due to go any time now, and she willed the hands onwards.

‘So come on team!’

Roger jumped into the centre of the room planted his legs apart and raised one hand in a fist above his head, resting the other on his ample hip in an approximation of a superhero pose. His suit trousers were wrinkled despite the fact that it wasn’t even nine o’clock, his bald spot was showing and the only vaguely superhero-like thing about him was the sense that he was about to burst out of his clothes. Although that probably had more to do with eating too many mince pies at Christmas than any sense of superhero machismo.

The room was silent, as Roger grinned around the room, still holding his fist aloft. Then, mercifully, the bell rang and there was a stampede as everyone raced to get to get out of the staffroom

‘That was excruciating’, Frankie said as they eased their way out into the corridor, which was packed to bursting point with young teenagers.

‘You’ve got to admire his enthusiasm at the very least,’ Rose pointed out diplomatically as she weaved her way around the students in an effort to get to her first classroom. The school ostensibly had a ‘one way’ system to keep people moving in the narrow corridors, but no one played a blind bit of attention to it.

Frankie shot her a withering look. ‘He’s been on too many of those motivational team-building weekends. Do you remember that staff meeting we had last year when he got us all to sit cross legged on the floor and pass around a talking stick?’

‘He was just trying to show us that everybody’s points were valid,’ said Rose.

‘But they weren’t! Some people talked utter shite…’

‘I suppose’, Rose conceded. ‘But…’

‘Four hours of my life WASTED!’

‘Hah! Miss Devereux got stoned!’ a sing song voice piped up from the stream of green uniforms. A clamour of enthusiastic voices greeted this statement.

‘Deadly. Was it grass or resin, miss?’ another student chipped in.

‘And then,’ Frankie continued as if no one had spoken. ‘Sally Richards’ hip locked, and it took us half an hour to get her off the floor.’

‘Miss, are you saying Mrs. Richards was stoned too?’ said another voice.

‘What were yiz doin’ on the floor, Miss?’

‘Miss, are you and Mrs. Richards lezzers?’ This pronouncement lead to a series of catcalls from the surrounding students.

Rose rolled her eyes at Frankie ‘Well there you go, not even a minute and a half into the term and you’re already starting scandalous rumours about yourself’.

Frankie looked at her friend wryly and raised an arm above her head. ‘Go Team!’

*

The first day of term passed by in a blur as it always did. The students weren’t exactly thrilled to be back in school after the break, but they hadn’t been back long enough to start causing any real trouble-probably because they weren’t being asked to participate in anything. The day flew by in a cloud of paper timetables, telling each class group exactly what was expected from now until the summer which for the most part went in one ear and straight out the other. In the staff room at lunch time, yet more paper was passed around with the times of staff meetings and departmental meetings printed on them. Rose hated that part of her job. Luckily, all her meetings were scheduled for the next week, so she was spared that headache for a few days at least.