The Learning Curve (48 page)

‘Hi.’ He grinned down at her.

She held her pen to paper. ‘Name?’ she asked, with an attempt at a professional smile that was more like an arch grin.

He laughed. ‘Samuels, Miss.’

She pretended to look for his name. ‘You’re late, Samuels.’

‘How’s it going?’ he asked quietly.

She put the pen to her lips as if thinking. ‘Oh, you know,’ she sighed with a little shrug, ‘purgatory.’

He smiled and she watched his lips part as he prepared to speak. Then she watched him jump almost two feet in the air as Rob bellowed from the coach, ‘Get a move on, Samuels! We’re all waiting for you!’

Ally and Pete jumped out of the coach and grinned goodbye to them both. Nicky followed Mark on to the coach and everyone cheered. When Rob cried out, ‘Oscar! Have a word with your dad!’ there was a cacophony of laughter.

Miss James had moved Nicky’s bag from the left seat to the right seat across the aisle and placed herself in the optimum front-window seat that Nicky had chosen. Nicky eased herself into the aisle seat behind the driver. Miss James glanced a smile at her across the aisle before looking back
out of the window and Nicky reminded herself that technically there were ten more days before Miss James retired.

Rob stopped chatting to the driver and stood, feet wide apart, at the front of the coach facing everyone. He welcomed them all and began a roll-call. Nicky watched him perform some jokes and funny voices, wondering if he’d offered to do this for Miss James or had been asked to by her. She stole a glance at Miss James, who was watching Rob, an enigmatic smile on her lips. Nicky tried to look at him from outside herself, as if she was Miss James. Tall, slim, olive-skinned, dark-haired, handsome (if you like your men with big features) and unarguably good with kids. A future headmaster? A future father? A future sperm donor, maybe?

When he finished, he looked down at her as if she was the only person in the coach. She blinked the look away. He squeezed in front of her, sitting down by her side in the window seat, as the coach set off. She looked out across him to the car park below. Martha’s boyfriend stood motionless. Ned’s neat little wife had got out of her car and was watching, her arms crossed against her tiny frame. Ally and Pete were playing tag. Lilith got smaller and smaller, her smile fading with each wave.

After they’d finished tag, Ally and Pete watched the coach disappear and then wandered slowly across the playground.

‘What shall we do now?’ asked Pete.

‘Brunch?’ said Ally.

‘Thought you’d never ask.’

They played tag again to his car.

In the coach, the children began a rowdy rendition of ‘A Hundred Green Bottles’ and Miss James suddenly sat up and moved across to the seat next to her, so as to be nearer
to Nicky and Rob. Nicky thought she might be about to ask one of them to complain about the noise, but instead she smiled across the aisle at them.

‘I forgot to tell you both,’ she started and then stopped dramatically. Rob leant towards her, across Nicky, his hand on the furry headrest behind her head. He was so close she could smell the cool freshness of his underarm deodorant and the citrus tang of his aftershave. She turned her head to Miss James.

‘The governors were very impressed with both of you,’ mouthed Miss James. ‘And they’ve asked me to give my verdict after I return from this trip.’

She looked from one to the other. Nicky could feel Rob nod furiously next to her face. If he’d been any closer she’d have got stubble rash. She blinked in amazement at Miss James. Had the woman finally lost the plot? This was totally inappropriate, let alone tantamount to suggesting they just shoot it out in a duel when they got to Bournemouth. Why was Miss James so intent on them being rivals? However, she was delighted she was still in with a chance.

‘And, of course,’ she smiled at them both in turn, ‘you both know how I feel about you.’

‘What about Ned?’ whispered Rob, his hand, hidden from Miss James, touching Nicky’s shoulder, as if they were conspirators, not rivals.

Miss James shook her head sadly, closing her eyes. Then she opened them, started nodding and said that he may well become one of the next Deputies. Or even
the
Deputy. She’d be telling him on the journey. Best for him to know as soon as possible. This was left hanging in the air. Rob’s hand didn’t move from Nicky’s shoulder.

‘What about external applicants?’ he asked.

‘All highly impressive,’ admitted Miss James. She let that linger, before concluding, ‘But not quite impressive enough.’

The coach took a sharp right corner and Rob leant in towards Nicky. She was forced to gently move him away and was rewarded with a sly glance. Miss James sat back into her seat and immediately fell fast asleep. Her head lolled against the window until it finally lodged there. After a good ten minutes, Rob moved back into the furthest corner of his seat, squashed up against the window and then motioned for Nicky to join him there. She sidled nearer.

‘Howdee, sexy thing,’ he whispered. ‘Future Yummy Mummy. Foxy ladee –’

She raised an eyebrow.

‘Well,’ he sighed. ‘It’s better than playing the game she wants us to play.’

He had a point. It was beginning to feel like they were pawns in some sad little chess game going on in Miss James’s brain. Nicky glanced back at Miss James to see if she was listening. She was snoring gently. She turned back to Rob and almost knocked noses with him. He had moved his head towards her. He whispered into her ear, close enough for her to feel his breath down her neck.

‘She wants us to compete with each other,’ he informed her.

Nicky edged her head back and whispered just as deliberately back in his ear, ‘We
are
competing with each other.’

He shrugged. ‘Not if we decide to be on the same side,’ he whispered even closer, his mouth now touching her hair.

She shivered. Then nodded fractionally.

‘You and me. Finally,’ he whispered, leaning towards her as he spoke. ‘Instead of you against me.’

Nicky moved her head away slightly.

‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ he whispered.

Her eyes swivelled to him.

‘I’ve been applying for other jobs at the same time.’

She nodded once.

‘No bites . . . as yet.’

Another nod.

There was a long pause while Miss James snorted and resettled. Nicky started forming a polite but firm sentence in her head about having decided, after lengthy consideration, etc., etc., etc., that she’d rather have babies with someone she loved and who loved her. All in all, probably best for the baby, blah, blah, blah.

‘You know what I think?’ asked Rob before she’d got further than the third blah.

‘Um,’ she said slowly, ‘Man U will win?’

‘No. I’m going to be really honest,’ he prefaced. ‘You may not like it.’

She turned to face him. ‘I’ve got BO?’ she whispered.

He ignored her. ‘Believe it or not,’ he whispered slowly and clearly, ‘this is all . . . much harder . . . for
me
. . . than
you
,’ he said.

She blinked. ‘What is?’ she asked. ‘Sitting in a coach?’

‘I’ve never really admitted this before,’ he said, looking down, ‘but you’re not the only one with a clock ticking, you know.’

She frowned, envisaging him as Captain Hook in
Peter Pan
, with a haunting tick-tock echoing inside his abdomen.

‘What are you talking about, Rob?’ she asked squarely.

He now moved his head back towards the window and spoke so quietly she had to inch her neck forward like a tortoise not to miss anything.

‘If I don’t get a headship before I’m thirty-five,’ he whispered ever so slowly, ‘I’ll never get one. I’ll have left it too late. Like you and babies. Except, of course, you could adopt.’

She balked. ‘Women have babies in their mid-forties,’ she told him, forgetting to whisper. ‘Men become headmasters into their bloody sixties.’

‘SSSSSSHHHHHH!’ Rob shrank in his seat. Nicky shrank with him. ‘Keep your voice down,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t want to wake her.’

Nicky repeated herself in a whisper.

‘What?’ he replied. ‘And have a five-year-old when you’re fifty? No thanks.’

Nicky looked ahead. ‘Rob. It’s awfully sweet of you to worry about me and my non-existent babies, but you really don’t have to. You just worry about your –’

He gripped her hand in his and spoke with a new urgency. ‘Nicky, don’t you get it? I care about you. I don’t want you crying every time you get a promotion.’

‘I cried once.’

‘But facts are facts,’ he admitted. ‘Unfair, anachronistic and sexist though it may be, if you become Head, you won’t be able to have children for years and –’

‘
WHY?
’ she exclaimed.

‘SSSSHHHH!’ He laughed and she found herself giggling with him. They shrank in their seats. Then she repeated her question in a whisper and he looked at her as if she’d just asked him what two plus two equalled.

‘Because you’ll be in an incredibly pressurised new job,’ he explained. ‘Try telling the governors you want six months’ maternity leave after they’ve just given you the headship.’ He laughed. ‘You’d get two weeks off if you were lucky.’

Nicky was silent.

‘On the other hand,’ he continued, ‘because we live in an unfair world, if I got the job, it wouldn’t make any difference at all. Except it would speed things up for you – for us.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Let’s just say, for argument’s sake,’ he began, curling his body in towards her, ‘that you and I
were
an item – as if we’d taken things one step further on Bonfire Night, or never even broken up – and say we were planning to start a family now, we could start immediately. We could start right now!’ He laughed again and whispered in her ear, ‘We could go up to the back of the coach now. That would put a stop to those fucking green bottles!’ They were both smiling now. ‘You’d get your maternity leave and could even go part-time if you wanted – or not, if you didn’t want – and I could bring home enough bacon for all of us.’

She stayed silent.

‘On the other hand,’ he continued, moving away slightly, suddenly thoughtful, ‘if
you
got the job, and
I
didn’t . . . I’d be struggling on a deputy’s salary and you’d be lucky to get a fortnight off. And you would end up missing the best years of his life.’

Nicky looked at Rob. ‘His?’ she smiled. ‘Has he got a name, too?’

Rob smiled back. ‘Hypothetically speaking.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘It’s hypothetical. So it’s not really an issue, is it?’

He looked at her. ‘You keep forgetting us, Nicky.’ He opened his eyes wide to give her a deeply serious look. ‘It could be, Nick,’ he whispered. ‘It could
already
be, if we’d taken things further on Bonfire Night. It’s all much easier than you think. You’re the one making it complicated.’

She did wish he’d stop bringing up the night in the kitchen. It confused her. Maybe, just maybe, Rob was right. Maybe they had always been meant to be together. And Mark was the distraction, keeping her from getting on with her life. She hadn’t even kissed Mark; for all she knew he could be a lousy kisser. (Perhaps she should do it just for research.) At least she knew that Rob was a good kisser. And more. Well, when he was in the mood to take his time. Otherwise it was just your everyday TV sex – or what Nicky now called man-sex – lots of mild violence, which men thought was passion, very little build-up. But basically they’d been happy together. OK, in the seven years since then, she’d changed in many ways, but then, Rob probably had too. She hoped. In fact, now she came to think about it, he’d always been a bit selfish sexually. She hadn’t realised it until she’d gone on to have other relationships after him. She wondered if he had changed in that way. Not only that but after those first few heady months theirs had been a very volatile relationship. Again, at the time she’d thought that was what made it so passionate. Now, her idea of the perfect relationship was almost the opposite of that. But then they’d both grown up, hadn’t they? If they started again it would be different, wouldn’t it? She replayed the kitchen kiss and found it slightly disconcerting that her main memory of it was that she’d been thinking of Mark all the way through it. But wasn’t that, she asked
herself, normal? Wasn’t that real life? Didn’t lots of happily married people do that? Was she waiting for something that didn’t exist? Was Claire right? Was it all about settling for something? Maybe that was why the phrase was ‘settling down’; because you did it when you’d settled for someone. Otherwise the phrase would be something like ‘soaring up’, wouldn’t it?

Two motorway junctions went past.

‘Just think about it,’ Rob said and then got up, giving her a soft touch on her shoulder as he did so, and walked down the coach.

Nicky looked out of the window and watched the blur of people in their cars and wondered how they’d all achieved their own little comfort zone of a family. Thousands of them out there, whizzing past in tidy foursomes. How come so many ordinary people managed to do something so monumental? Had all of them found their one true love and then had the children of their dreams? Or had they all settled with what they could get? Or had they just not thought about it and let it happen? Had any of them, she wondered, gone back to their first love?

‘Excuse me, Miss Hobbs, is this seat taken?’ came a deep voice behind her.

She turned and looked up to see Mark standing next to her seat. The sun was smudged behind his head, creating a halo effect. She tried to ignore this, and nodded. He stepped over her to sit in Rob’s seat.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’ve come for some adult conversation.’

‘What a good idea.’ She smiled. ‘Let’s find an adult.’

He laughed. Then he sat back and turned to look at her. She gave him an easy, non-committal smile. He gave her a
delicious one back. He leant his head back. She leant hers back too. They smiled. Then they smiled a bit more. They kept on smiling. And then, when they’d finished smiling, they started again. Then Mark gave a little laugh. She gave one back.

Behind them, the eightieth bottle accidentally fell, led by a raucous Rob. They smiled.