The Teacher's Secret (10 page)

Nathan homes in on Steve's ridiculous tie. ‘Like your tie.'

Steve holds it out in front of him and gives a chuckle. ‘Not bad, is it?'

Josie leans in to have a look. ‘Cool,' she says, ‘got to love a Bart tie.'

When Emily hears Josie's voice, she sprints into the room. Josie gives her a big smile. ‘Hello, chicken,' she says.

Emily's eyes sparkle. ‘I'm three,' she tells her.

Josie affects surprise. ‘Are you sure you're three? I thought you were two.'

Emily shakes her head. ‘No, I'm three. And then I'm four.'

Josie bends down to her. ‘We'll have fun tonight, won't we?'

Steve slaps Nathan on the back. ‘Not too much fun, though, mate. Not too much.' Nina can't believe it. But Steve laughs as Nathan colours.

Nina isn't sure if she wants to go out at all now. ‘Ring me if you need anything,' she tells Josie. ‘Anything at all.'

The girl nods. ‘It'll be sweet,' she says. ‘Don't worry.'

Nina's smile is small. ‘Okay.'

In the car, she is still troubled. ‘I don't like Josie turning up with some boyfriend we don't even know.'

Steve pushes air through his lips. ‘He seems all right. And it's not like it's just him—Josie's there, too.'

Nina shakes her head. ‘I don't like it, though. I don't think she should just turn up with some stranger.'

‘Doesn't look like he's a stranger to her, does it?' He reaches out to run a hand over her leg. ‘Just relax, it'll be fine.'

The top floor of the club has been cordoned off for them and two long tables have been set up to one side of the room. On each of the tables, there are place cards.

On the other side of the room, near the bar, drinks are being served. There must be forty or fifty people gathered there. Nina recognises none of them. Suddenly shy, she grips Steve's hand.

A florid man in an open-necked shirt walks over to them. ‘Mate,' he says to Steve, ‘welcome to your welcome party.' He must like how that sounds because he chuckles and says it again.

Steve chuckles with him and Nina tries to join in, but her laughter sounds forced. She waits for an introduction but none comes. Instead, the two men start talking club politics. Gazing past them, Nina looks over to the other guests. There are more women than men and, from what she can see, hers is the longest dress in the room. The other women wear short, shiny dresses and orange-brown spray tans.

Steve's friend taps her on the arm. ‘How about I get you and Steve a drink?'

As they follow him though the crowd and over to the bar, everyone they pass greets Steve with a shout or a tap on the arm. Nina is pleased to see this; pleased to be the wife of the guest of honour.

Steve, too, is in his element. She can tell by his walk—jaunty and confident—and by the way he wraps his arm around her when they get to the bar.

Steve's friend orders for them. The drinks are free so it's simply a gesture, but a nice one. There's too much cordial in her lemon, lime and bitters and she winces at the sweetness of it. Steve has a beer and after his first sip, she leans in to tell him he's got froth on his moustache. He scowls as he wipes it off and she wonders if she's spoken too loudly.

Before she can ask him, before she can shoot him anything more than a puzzled look, a woman sidles up to them and slips an arm around Steve's friend, who leans back to rub cheeks with her. She looks much younger than he is and her hair, a startling blonde, is piled on the top of her head in starched curls. Her dress is short and stretchy and lolly-pink. Her shoes, high and strappy, match her dress and her bare legs are darker than her face. Beside her, Nina feels like a Greek widow.

Still clutching Steve's friend, the woman smiles at Nina. ‘I'm Trudy.' Someone has turned the music up, and she has to yell to be heard. ‘Sav's wife.'

Nina smiles back but her mind is elsewhere, trying to work out if she can't just rush home and change into something else. As she mulls it over, Trudy says, ‘You must be really proud of Steve. I mean, with the new job and everything.'

Nina nods. She is proud, that's true, proud and happy for him.

Trudy is still talking—something about the dinner—but Nina's no longer listening; she's looking across at Trudy's husband and wondering why he's called Sav, and whether it's short for Salvatore. Not that he looks Italian, with his pink-red skin. But it's got her curious so she leans over to Trudy to ask her. ‘So Sav—where does his name come from?'

Trudy gives her a bemused look. ‘It's short for Gavin.'

When they sit down for dinner, it turns out the four of them have been seated together. There is wine on each of the tables and Gav stands up to serve it: red for Steve, white for Trudy. He holds the bottle of white over Nina's glass and when she shakes her head,
swaps bottles and starts to pour red wine into her glass instead. When she keeps shaking her head, he gives her a knowing look. ‘You preggers, are you?'

Somehow she manages a smile. ‘No, I'm not.'

Gav looks over at Steve. ‘Don't tell me your missus is a bloody teetotaller, mate!' he bellows.

Steve grimaces. ‘'Fraid she's not much of a drinker, mate.' He nudges her with his elbow. ‘One-pot screamer, aren't you, love?'

Nina's mouth tightens into an even smaller smile.

Trudy slaps Gav on the arm. ‘Leave her alone and just let her enjoy herself.'

Gav's voice rises in protest. ‘That's what I was doing: offering her a bit of social lubricant. Where's the harm in that, babe?'

Trudy looks at Nina and lifts her shoulders, half in apology, half in surrender. It's a kind gesture and Nina smiles to let her know it doesn't matter. Even though it does matter. And it matters because she's completely out of place here. Her hair, her dress, her shoes, her voice, even her drinking: it's all wrong. She checks her watch: 9.15 pm. With any luck, they'll be home by midnight.

It's closer to 1.30 am when Nina finally pulls up in the driveway. Steve has fallen asleep in the passenger seat and she leaves him there while she runs inside.

Josie is watching a movie but Nathan has crashed out beside her and it takes Josie some shaking to wake him. Finally he sits up and, his eyes glazed, mumbles goodnight as Josie leads him out the door. Following them out, Nina slips some money into Josie's hand. Without even looking at it, let alone counting it, Josie pushes the
notes into the pocket of her jeans before she directs Nathan towards her car.

When Nina returns to her own car, Steve hasn't moved. At first she shakes him softly, then harder and harder until finally he wakes up. ‘We're back,' he says to her, his words blurring. ‘We're back home. Home, home, home.' This makes her smile and when he sees that, he smiles too.

Carefully, then, she guides him into the house and across to the bedroom.

As soon as they're in bed, Steve's hands begin to wander over her body. She's not up for sex but she wants him to hold her and tell her she's beautiful even though she wore the wrong dress and said the wrong things. His hands are clumsy, his breath is sharp and his speech is slurred, but he does say she's beautiful and he does hold her. And she's happy to be told and happy to be held.

Joan

The ring of the alarm bell is shrill, so shrill it wakes her with a start. Reaching an arm out across to the table beside her bed, Joan taps the clock to stop it. It is a cool morning, oddly cool for Brindle in February. Her nightie, cotton and lemon-coloured, is too light for such a morning and, with a stifled yawn, she reaches for the dressing-gown at the end of the bed. It is her summer dressing-gown, sky blue chenille and short-sleeved.

The house is still but outside there are bird noises. Some of them come from Billy-boy, but most are from the Indian mynas who come too close to his cage and try to peck at him. Budgerigars have weak hearts, she's been told, but Billy-boy's a tough one. Not even the mynas faze him.

In the kitchen, the table is already set for her breakfast. Unnecessary, she knows, to set the table for herself each night, ready for next morning, but it's a habit she can't break. More than that, even, she finds it comforting to come into the kitchen every morning and see everything waiting for her: the small plate with its matching
cup and saucer, the butter knife, the stainless-steel teaspoon, the eggcup; the saucepan already on the stove, half filled with water, so that she need only light the gas and reach into the fridge for an egg. Today, she chooses one that is brown and speckled, testing it in the eggcup first to check it fits, before she puts it in the water. Some eggs are just a touch too big for this, her favourite eggcup.

Hers is a two-cup teapot, and she fills it right up, even though she'll drink only one cup of tea over breakfast. The rest she'll take into the backyard and throw over the parsley plant. It is a habit she has taken over from her mother. Certainly, the parsley seems to thrive on it.

The egg, when she takes it out, is just as she likes it: the white cooked but the yolk still runny. She butters her toast liberally and cuts it into fingers, which she is tempted to dip into the yolk. Instead, she nibbles at her toast, finger by finger, and sips her tea slowly.

Quiet. Too quiet.

She could turn the radio on or bring Billy-boy inside, but she doesn't. Instead, she treats the silence as a test, to see if she can do it; to see if she can manage to live in such a still house. Mostly she can. It is only sometimes she can't.

When she has finished her breakfast, she opens the sliding doors and steps out onto the porch. As usual, Billy-boy is in front of his mirror. When he sees her, he starts to chirp. There are ways of making budgerigars talk; one of them is to remove any mirrors from the cage. But Billy-boy loves the mirror—it makes him think he has company, and she doesn't want to deprive him of that.

After she has cleaned his cage, topped up his water and given him more birdseed, she takes herself off to the shower. Today, instead of using soap, she opens the body wash Judy sent her for
Christmas. When she pumps it into her hand, the smell of rosemary and jasmine fills the room and she regrets not having used it earlier.

She's still thinking about Judy when she steps out of the shower. It's been years since she's seen her. Years. Of course, there are phone calls every now and then, and presents at Christmas, but it's not the same as it used to be, back when they were both still working: heads down over their garments, adding beads and sequins and lace to silk and taffeta and chiffon. It didn't seem to matter how fiddly the task, still Judy could manage to work and talk, while Joan would just work and listen. In that way, they'd made a great team.

They were good years, the years she and Judy worked together. So good it hadn't occurred to her they might stop. Of course, the redundancy package had been generous and the send-off gracious, but, oh dear, how Joan wished they could have stayed on. Not for the money—she would have happily done without the money—but for the work. How she had loved it! Without it, she'd felt quite lost.