The Learning Curve (39 page)

‘Exactly!’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about any of that. You are on completely equal footing with Rob. And as such, you deserve that promotion,’ he said. ‘It’s that simple.’

She felt the heat from his body and fought not to lean into it. ‘Nothing’s that simple,’ she said quietly.

An hour later, Ally arrived at the fête. By the time she found Nicky, she’d already eaten half a candyfloss and heard the news.

She greeted her with an urgent, ‘I hope you’re applying.’

‘I am.’

‘That’s wonderful! Congratulations.’

She took her in a fierce bear-hug, getting candyfloss in her hair. They pulled away and grinned at each other.

‘If you get this job, you know what it means, don’t you?’ asked Ally, taking a mouthful of pink sugar.

‘What?’

‘It means I can get in late every morning. You have to get this job.’

Nicky laughed, but it came out hollow. Was there no one who would just be happy for her without thinking of the gain they could get out of it?

The fête was a huge success. Hundreds of people came and by mid-afternoon every child’s face looked like a cartoon jungle animal who’d eaten too many carrots. After packing up her stall, Nicky dropped the girls at Claire’s and drove home. She had a bath and went to bed, but although she was exhausted, it took her hours to get to sleep.

THE NEXT DAY
was Sunday, so it was only natural that Nicky woke feeling depressed. Lying in bed, staring at her thin, luminous curtains, she pushed her thoughts to the clean, empty teapot in her clean, empty kitchen and it did the trick. She felt the stirrings of just enough optimism to get out of bed. In the kitchen, she leant against the worktop acclimatising to being vertical, while staring at the boiling kettle. As her eyes drifted in and out of focus, she told herself that a watched kettle never boils. She frowned. So how did one overcome this? Was she meant to put it on to boil and then ignore it? Pretend she didn’t care, even though she’d been the one to turn it on? Or was she meant to go to extraordinary lengths to double-bluff herself in order to genuinely forget she’d done it? She just hated playing games, even with electric appliances.

Blimey though, it was taking for ever.

Eventually, mug of tea in hand, she crossed the living room to her balcony. She pulled open the sliding door and stepped outside. Cool, fresh air aerated her skin. She’d just made it in time to catch the morning’s last dew-filled moments. She sat down on her deckchair and crossed her pyjama-clad legs.

Oh, why were Sundays so suffused with sadness? Even the air felt different. Something was wrong with this world if you spent five days counting down to the weekend, and then half the weekend killing time till
Poirot
.

But apart from it being Sunday, why else was she feeling down? Oh yes! As of yesterday,

Mark Samuels was her staunch ally in her battle to be a childless career woman, thanks to his own hidden agenda of wanting to work for her rather than Rob. And what did she want? She mused on this for a while as she watched the powdery clouds skit by. She knew damn well what she wanted. She wanted the headship, she wanted to work with Mark, she wanted babies and she wanted very much to do base things with Mark.

But not necessarily in that order.

She got up and went inside. After a bath, she deafened the voices in her head by putting on some loud music and filling out the application form for Miss James’s job on her laptop while eating a slice of chocolate cake the size of a tent.

It worked! By the afternoon, she was high on caffeine, loud, sassy drum beats and sugar. A quick run, a late tea with Claire and the girls, and by bedtime she had worked herself up into a healthy state of not unhappiness.

On Monday morning, she reread her completed application form before leaving the flat. She found three spelling mistakes. She’d redo it tonight, without any loud music playing, and hand it in on Tuesday. She still had all week.

At school, she and Rob exchanged grins across the staffroom. He approached with two mugs of tea in his hands and, for a touch of nostalgia, Amanda by his side. They had clearly overcome their differences.

‘Handed it in yet?’ he asked.

‘Nope,’ replied Nicky. ‘You?’

‘Eight thirty this morning,’ he said. Amanda tutted and shared a look with Nicky.

That night, Nicky took out her laptop, deleted most of her application, and began again. This time with Classic FM on in the background.

First thing Tuesday morning, she reread it before sealing the envelope. She read it again. And again. Yes, there was definitely a weak sentence that made her sound ambivalent towards the job. She must have written it during a distracting advert break on the radio. She’d have to redo it tonight. And no music at all in the background this time.

Half an hour later, she happened to meet Mark in the school car park. She walked past his car just as he was locking it and they smiled at each other. He was wearing a dark pin-stripe suit, a crisp white shirt undone at the top and no tie, his smooth, soft Adam’s apple hinting of smooth, soft other things. They fell into step with each other and meandered up the curved path.

‘Handed in your application form yet?’ he greeted her.

She smiled up at him. ‘Don’t you mean, hello, how are you?’

‘Hello, how are you?’ He laughed. ‘Handed in your application yet?’

She smiled. ‘No, I’m going to do it tonight.’

He sucked in some breath. ‘Living dangerously, eh?’

‘Oh yes,’ she agreed. ‘Life on the edge, me.’

Later that evening, she took three hours to rewrite the
whole form, with no music in the background, focussing on making it much more forceful in tone. She decided to try and forget about it and then reread it the next day, so she would be more fresh.

Next morning in the staffroom, Rob was by her side first thing.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Handed it in yet?’

‘Not yet,’ she said, as lightly as she could. ‘No point rushing something this important.’

Amanda approached. ‘Apparently,’ she murmured, turning her back to the staffroom and talking quietly so they had to lean in to hear, ‘a surprise internal applicant has joined the race.’

‘You’re kidding!’ gasped Nicky, eyes wide.

Rob sucked in his breath. ‘You’d better hurry up,’ he told Nicky. ‘Don’t want to be an unimpressive third.’

‘Don’t intimidate the girl,’ scolded Amanda.

Nicky wasn’t intimidated; she was horrified. She scanned the staffroom to see if she could spot anyone watching her from behind an upside-down map. She felt knocked sideways. It had never occurred to her that anyone else would apply from inside the school. The implications of this were most unpleasant. It meant that someone in the room believed they had been overlooked for the post of Deputy and deserved it more than she did. Her first impulse was to seek them out and offer them her job, but on second thoughts she decided she could just go into hiding. She was really beginning to detest all this. She hated all the politics and the rivalry. She hated not knowing who her friends were and who was pretending to be her friend so they could get something out of her possible promotion. She just wanted to
teach. Maybe she should just throw in the towel, move to the country and get a kitten.

That night she reread her form and decided it still needed improvement. She did it again, no music on, with a dynamic, forceful and direct tone and a new paragraph which she especially liked.

First thing Thursday morning, she reread it and found a new spelling mistake in her new paragraph. She almost cried. If she’d found one, maybe there were others. She’d have to reread it again tonight. If she couldn’t even fill in the form, how on earth would she manage the job?

Maybe a ginger kitten. With white paws.

Then she thought of Mark, and of how stupid she’d look to him if she didn’t apply. Especially if her reason was because she couldn’t fill in the form. That evening, the last evening before the deadline, she reread her final version. She checked every spelling in the dictionary and had no music on in the background. Then, without another look at it, she sealed the envelope, closed her eyes, made a wish, and put it in her case. She actually made two wishes, because why waste an opportunity? So while her eyes were clammed shut and she asked her guardian angel to please please please make her Headmistress, she added a little postscript about Mark Samuels, which included specific requests about his good motives and his good thighs.

She opened her eyes and stood pondering in her living room. Was that the definition of a modern woman? Wishing for fulfilment in career, love and lust – in that order? Yes it was, she decided. She was the personification of today’s woman because she wanted all of them equally. She felt all fired up until she got outside her home and reconsidered that
she probably wouldn’t get any of them. Which, probably, she thought, as she climbed into her boudoir, was the definition of an unhappy modern woman.

First thing Friday morning, she went straight to Miss James’s office. She stood in the corridor outside it, staring at Janet’s in-tray. There were a few A4-sized envelopes lying in it. Should she have a quick look and see if any of them were the same shape as hers? Did she want to know if anyone else had joined the competition? Or would it –

‘Hi,’ said Mark.

She spun round. ‘Hi!’

He nodded at her envelope. ‘Is that it?’

She nodded back. Then she put it in Janet’s tray. Mark clapped, cheering quietly. She gave a little bow of her head and walked back to the staffroom, grinning like an idiot.

That morning in the meeting, after a Reception child had started sobbing hysterically at the puzzle and had to be taken back to her class by Janet (only marginally less horrifying, in Nicky’s opinion), Miss James had another little surprise for her trusty Deputies.

‘As you both know,’ she grinned merrily, ‘the summer trip is fast approaching. And of course, as my fiercely feuding Deputies, you won’t want to miss a trick.’

‘Of course,’ enthused Rob.

‘Absolutely!’ said Nicky.

‘And now that I know exactly where we all stand apropos my job,’ Miss James gave them both an adoring smile, ‘I will make sure that all the boring, silly interviews have taken place with the governors and with me, et cetera, et cetera, by the trip, so that I can spend that week with both of you – and
any other applicants – before the final decision is made. Obviously, the ultimate decision goes to the governors, but they will definitely be asking me my opinion.’ She slapped her papers. ‘That is by far the fairest way, don’t you both think?’

They nodded. After the meeting, even Rob seemed unable to find the right piece of the puzzle and only found a piece when Nicky did. They walked out of her office together, still in a daze.

‘You realise what this is, don’t you?’ he whispered in the corridor.

‘Yup.’

‘It’s a week-long fucking job interview.’

‘Yup.’

‘She’s going to make us do absolutely everything,’ he hissed. ‘Every single job. Bitch. And for some reason, she is absolutely determined to make us feuding, bitter rivals.’

‘Mm, yeah, I noticed that,’ said Nicky. ‘Why is that?’

Rob turned to her sharply before they went back into the staffroom and put his hand on the door handle, preventing her from entering.

‘Maybe she’s jealous,’ he said. ‘She knows we’ve got something special. Nicky, we can’t let her do this to us,’ he said.

Then, to her surprise, he grasped her by the elbow and steered her quickly towards the wall opposite, cornering her by a door. She shook his hand off and almost spat out her words.

‘Rob, what makes you think you can keep turning our friendship on and off just when it suits you?’

‘Eh?’

‘That despicable “shag ’em” comment to Mar— the bursar at the fête. What on earth gives you the right –’

Rob hung his head down, his voice so low she barely heard it. ‘I was jealous. I’m sorry. Unforgivable, I know.’

‘
What?
’ She was incredulous. ‘Jealous of what?’

‘Oh, come on, Nicky,’ Rob was suddenly breathing hard, his eyes pleading. ‘Aren’t you sick of all this pretending?’

It would have taken a greater woman than Nicky Hobbs not to experience meltdown at these words. She looked up at him. His eyes looked haunted. Suddenly everything turned into sharp focus for her. This was it. Make or break. Closure. Or . . . (What was the opposite of closure? Grand opening?) Her knees buckled. Rob edged in closer.

She pushed him away fast with her knee.

‘Rob,’ she hissed. ‘Not here. Not now.’

He moved back. ‘When are we going to stop kidding each other?’ he asked. ‘And ourselves?’

She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t think. She was having enough trouble breathing.

‘Seven years, Nix,’ he said pleadingly. ‘Seven years.’

She nodded.

‘I know I joke about us,’ he went on, ‘but, Nick . . . you’ve got to know . . . there’s not a day goes by when I don’t wonder what would have happened, if only . . .’

She closed her eyes and shook her head. She’d stopped thinking about it for a while now. (Which meant she was winning. Hoorah!)

‘I’ve changed,’ he confessed in a whisper. ‘I’ve matured. I want different things now. A home, a family, kids. Nicky, we’re finally on the same page.’

She opened her eyes. What was he saying?

‘Rob,’ she managed, ‘you can’t just turn something this big on and off like this – it’s all so sudden –’

‘Sudden!’ he laughed and then lowered his voice immediately. ‘I’ve known you since you were practically still a child! Fancied you for two years before I did anything about it.’

‘I thought it was one year –’

He let out a sad laugh. ‘I lied. I was playing it cool,’ he said. ‘That’s nearly a decade, Nicky. And I’ve never stopped fancying you. Every single day in that bloody staffroom –’

She thought of Amanda and cooled.

‘Your timing’s never been good,’ she said. ‘But this really is . . . you’re just annoyed with Miss James trying to pit us against each other –’

‘No!’ he held up his hands. ‘She’s made me see sense. Trying to turn our future into her last petty power game.’ They looked at each other, neither breathing, their faces inches apart. Nicky was so stunned – and constricted – that she didn’t notice Mark appear silently from his office, almost beside them, spot them, and disappear as quickly and silently as he’d appeared.