The Teacher's Secret (34 page)

This, too, is news to Rebecca. ‘Was it very bad, then, what he did?'

The woman shakes her head. ‘What he said, not what he did.'

‘And what did he say?'

‘Look, the language is bad.' This, it seems, is meant as a warning.

Rebecca smiles. ‘I've probably heard it before.'

The woman pauses. ‘So you want to hear it then, what he said?'

Bemused, Rebecca nods. ‘Yes,' she says, ‘I do.'

The words come out in a rush. ‘Fucking fuck fuck,' the woman says.

Rebecca thinks she must have misheard her. ‘I'm sorry?'

The woman grimaces. ‘Yep, a fucking fuck fuck. That's what he called him.'

Rebecca is still confused. ‘I'm sorry, what is a fuck-fuck?'

The woman shrugs. ‘Fucked if I know.' She gives a bit of a snort. ‘Sorry about that. Makes me sound as bad as my no-good son, doesn't it?'

Rebecca tries not to smile.

‘Listen to me rabbiting on like a lunatic,' says the woman. ‘What I meant to do was give you this.' From her handbag, she pulls out a
blank, sealed envelope. ‘I don't know your name so I couldn't write it on the envelope. But it's for you. I mean, it's supposed to be for you.'

Intrigued, Rebecca slides a finger under the back flap until it gives. Inside is a card. When Rebecca pulls it out, she can't hold back a small cry of recognition.

It is the rock pool card, the very same one. Slowly she opens it, then reads it.

Mel
, Rebecca thinks,
Mel.
And sure enough, when Rebecca turns the card over, there it is, written in the same looping, swirling sort of handwriting:
Made by Mel.

Rebecca smiles as she looks over at the woman. So this is Mel.

‘It's a beautiful card,' she tells her. ‘Thank you.'

The woman—Mel—brushes the compliment away. ‘Look, my son can be a bit of a ratbag but deep down, he's not a bad kid.' She touches Rebecca's arm with her hand. ‘Listen, I know you're new and everything, so why don't you take my number? That way you can call if you need anything.'

When Rebecca nods, suddenly shy, Mel takes out a mobile phone. ‘What's your name?'

‘Rebecca,' she says softly.

Mel keeps her eyes on the phone screen. ‘And your number?'

Her number? She doesn't know it. She doesn't even know her phone number. Taking out her own phone, she scrolls down until
she finds it. She hesitates as she reads out the still unfamiliar numbers. Once she is done, the woman rings her. ‘There you go,' she says. ‘Now you know how to find me.'

Terry

There are a couple of lawyers in Raleigh, but he's not keen on Raleigh people knowing his business. Especially not this, and especially not with Michelle being at the surgery and all. Confidentiality and the rest of it, he knows that's what they'll say to reassure him, but in his experience, confidentiality or no confidentiality, people still talk. And he doesn't want people talking. That's why he's taken the bus into the city to see someone he hopes doesn't know anyone in Brindle or Raleigh—or Jinda, for that matter.

The building itself has an enormous foyer, with a ceiling so high it could house an aeroplane. Why do that? he wonders. Why make a foyer as big as that?

In front of him is a directory listing every business in the building. Among them are a number of law firms. He counts seven, eight, nine: so many of them in just one building.

Clare became a lawyer, that's what he's been told. Little Clare, a lawyer. It had surprised him to hear it. Never in a thousand years would he have pictured her in a law firm. It would have made her
mother happy, though, that's for sure. Mrs Sorenson would have been purple with pride about it.

Mrs Sorenson.

God.

He doesn't need to be thinking about Mrs Sorenson.

He needs to be thinking about the task at hand. And to do that, he needs to focus. He needs to find where the hell he's supposed to be in this skyscraper.

Again his eyes scan the directory: level fifteen, that's where he needs to be, for his appointment with Simon Fernandez.

Simon Fernandez, it turns out, is a knowledgeable lawyer with a good understanding of this particular area of the law. There is a lot he can explain to Terry, and he does it well; he is sharp, he is clear and he is pleasant.

But in the end, it's all very simple. There's nothing to be done. There is no one who can reconsider Terry's case; there is no appeal he can lodge. He's a prohibited person and prohibited people can't work with children. Not ever. In short, it's all over, red rover.

He ventures just one question. ‘But it was so long ago,' he says. ‘Can't they take that into account?'

Simon Fernandez shakes his head. ‘Not when it involved a child.' Terry's face burns. No more, he thinks. He can't stand it any longer. He needs to get out of here—now. But there's still one more thing he needs to know. It's not an easy thing to ask. And the words themselves are hard to form. ‘The school,' he says. ‘Can I pop into the school—just from time to time—to check how the kids are going?'

The man's eyes flicker. ‘I wouldn't advise it,' he says. ‘I really wouldn't.'

Terry swallows. ‘Just wondering,' he murmurs.

He's back home again by lunchtime.

He has to call Michelle. He'd promised he would.

Bouncer follows him into the lounge room and sits by his feet while Terry tries to work out what the hell he's going to do with himself now. Now that everything's become such a mess.

He misses the kids. God, he misses them. When he can, when it doesn't make him too sad to think about it, he tries to picture them in the classroom, all sitting at their desks, everything the same as it was. Just without him.

The phone is sitting on the coffee table, right there in front of him. He just has to lean forward, pick it up and dial the number. But it's harder than you'd think just to pick up the phone and dial a number. It even makes his hands shake. And yet he does it. He dials the number, she answers and he tells her. ‘No good, love,' is all he says. ‘No good.' And it kills him to hear the intake of her breath, because what could she possibly say? She's there on reception so she can't move a muscle without the whole world knowing about it. He feels so ashamed, so very ashamed of what he's put her through. The looks, the whispers, the gossip. Because privacy laws or no privacy laws, you can't stop people asking questions about a retirement that's come out of the blue, can you?

When he hears the first knock on the door, he ignores it. A door-to-door salesman, no doubt, and he can't face the inane conversation.
The second knock he ignores, too, then waits for the third one, which, from past experience, he knows will be the last. But this time the bugger doesn't stop. This time he just keeps on rapping at the door until, with an annoyed grunt, Terry gets out of his chair. ‘All right, all right!' he yells. ‘I'm coming.'

Scowling, he opens the door to find Sid standing there. Too surprised to say anything, Terry just stares at him.

Sid gives him a crooked smile. ‘Hello, Terry,' he says. ‘Couldn't get you on the blower so I thought I'd better come and see what's what.'

Seeing him there—so matter-of-fact, so unchanged—makes Terry want to cry. Instead he grunts. ‘S'pose I'd better let you in then.'

So he leads him down the hallway and into the lounge room. There Terry follows Sid's gaze out over the water and across to the port. ‘Last couple of months, there's nothing goes on out there I don't know about. Anything happens, I've seen it.' He tries for a chuckle, to show he's made a joke, but he doesn't get a laugh out of Sid.

‘Not the same,' he says, ‘at the school. Without you being there.'

Terry chews on the inside of this lip until he can trust himself to speak. ‘Every morning, soon as I open my eyes, I'm ready to get up and head off to school. Every bloody morning. Every morning, I forget for a minute or so. You'd think it would click after a bit. No such luck.'

His eyes still on the waterline, he keeps talking, soft talking, like he's talking to himself. ‘Days get a bit long, though, just watching what's going on over at the port. Drives Michelle mad, having me moping around the house. She's even started leaving me lists of things to do—a whole lot of fix-it jobs.'

He turns to Sid, arms crossed hard in front of him. ‘You know me,' he says. ‘Doing them's not the problem. There's still enough of the old chippy in me to turn my hand to whatever needs doing. It's just the starting, Sid.' He coughs, then, to try to cover the faltering of his voice. ‘I don't know what's wrong with me. I stare at the bloody list and it doesn't matter what I do, I just can't get going with it. It's like it's in Chinese or something. And I think, Christ, I must be losing my mind.' His eyelids are heavy over his eyes, so heavy his eyes seem closed.

Sid's voice, never rushed, has a flicker of urgency to it. ‘You need to get out, Terry,' he says. ‘You need to get out of the house. Have a hit with me. That's what you need. Bit of a hit of an afternoon after I knock off.'

Terry shakes his head. He's almost whispering now. ‘But I can't even do that. I haven't even got it in me to get on the line and give you a ring. Sounds like a joke, doesn't it? But Christ, Sid, it's all I can do just to haul myself out of bed in the morning. Michelle's at me to get a job. But what can I do, Sid? If I can't teach anymore, what can I do? And who the hell wants a fifty-seven-year-old carpenter who hasn't been on a building site in twenty years?'

He doesn't tell him about the one job he did go for. It wasn't anything great. Just a day or two a week at one of the nursing homes over in Henley, doing all the bits and pieces—any repair work that needed doing, a bit of gardening, a bit of general maintenance. Nothing demanding, just something to get him out of the house. Michelle's words, not his; left to himself, he'd have just stayed put.

So he made the call, then found himself sitting in the manager's office wondering what the hell he was doing there. He sat quietly as John or Dave or Kevin or whatever his name was yabbered on
about the rubbish and the garden and the rest of it. The bloke was sounding keen and Terry was answering his questions—when he'd be available, what he'd done before—when, out of the blue, came this one:
Just out of interest, Terry, why did you stop teaching?

It was a simple enough question, and there was a simple enough answer to it.
I retired.
That's all he needed to say. Nothing more than that.

Instead, he'd yanked his head up in surprise and started to gabble. ‘There was a problem,' he heard himself bluster. ‘I had a problem at the school. So I left. That's why I left.'