Perfect Strangers: an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists. Erin Knight
Cleo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You and Dad, you never agree on anything any more. You were arguing again. In the kitchen. The floors in this house are thin, remember. At least me being fat—’
‘Called fat,’ corrected Sam.
‘At least me being called fat stopped you two snapping at each other for an hour.’
Cleo blinked at Sam. It was only bickering, wasn’t it? There was never any malice. Not like that horrible fat comment. ‘Your dad and I . . . they’re only words, Evie.’
‘I know. But the sticks and stones thing’s a load of crap. Words can be like weapons, Mum. They do damage.’
Sarah tapped her mobile phone to her mouth. She eyed the clock again on the far wall of her classroom, flanked by a sea of the children’s impressionist self-portraits. Another ten minutes and the hordes would be back, newly grazed knees, jumpers needing to be retrieved from the playground, friendships broken and rebuilt.
Staff phones confined to staff rooms had been one of her own rule proposals and now she was flouting it. Because she needed to get in touch with Will and couldn’t bear being stuck in the staff room with Juliette while she made a personal call. She stole another look at Jon’s message.
Hey beautiful, thought we could take the boys out to dinner tonight? Tell them the good news in style!
Italian’s still Will’s favourite, right? Think we should cover all bases ;)
She lay her phone screen-down on the desk, hung back over her chair until she was almost horizontal and stared up at the ceiling mobiles, swinging herself in a semi-circle the way some of the boys did when she left the classroom. The lines of the ceiling tiles twisted dizzily as she turned. How were they going to make this go smoothly? If Will didn’t get upset about the house sale he was emotionally dead. Jon was good with the pep talks but he wasn’t that good.
She slapped her hands over her eyes in defeat, something cold and unpleasant touched her cheek. Fantastic. Bright blue poster paint, all along the cuff of her cream cashmere cardi. Hooray. Sarah had never been a cashmere kind of girl, but Jon’s style had just sort of permeated their home. They all seemed so much more polished nowadays: outfits matched, salon appointments were not only made but kept. Everything ticked along instead of stopping and starting in jerky, uncertain motions; they were all cogs in a well-maintained machine. All except for one, very subtle five-foot-eight squeak.
Will. How would he react? Flip out or keep it all in?
Sarah pulled a baby wipe from the top drawer of her desk and did what she could for the cardigan. Yes, she would text Will now, before his lunch hour was up. He could think about the house sale over the afternoon, hopefully mellow on it before they went to dinner, before Jon started popping corks.
Oh God. She couldn’t text him. Hi son, your family home’s just been sold out from under you . . . The driveway he’d learned to ride his bike on. The landing where they’d huddled, crying quietly together so as not to wake the baby, trying to make sense of Patrick’s actions. Sarah’s heart was thudding. It was going to take more than a bowlful of salmon tagliolini to help Will swallow this one.
‘Miss Harrison?’ Two little girls strode purposefully into Class 2, Molly with her painful-looking plaits, and Darcey, black ringlets tumbling over her grey pinafore. Wide, brown eyes on the verge of spilling over.
‘What is it, Darcey?’
Molly ushered Darcey to Sarah’s desk, presenting her the way the hopeful presented afflicted loved ones to the Pope. They looked like a GAP ad, one black child, one white, each lovelier than they could know.
‘Darcey’s got poo up her legs, Miss Harrison. The dinner ladies told me to bring her up.’
Sarah threw her blue baby wipe at the waste paper basket and cast a look over Darcey’s skinny legs. Darcey looked a treat, her little patent shoes shiny and smart. Sarah couldn’t see anything sinister at all. Darcey spun, revealing a mustardcoloured streak up the insides of both ankles. Crap.
‘Darcey, how’s this happened?’
It was too much. One sniff of interrogation tipped Darcey over the edge. Her little shoulders began bobbing up and down, her body wracked with growing sobs and the shame of pooey tights. Molly smiled knowingly. ‘It’s okay, Darcey.’
How the bloody hell had she got that on her tights? Was someone lobbing dog doo over the school fence again?
Sarah set her hands on Darcey’s shoulders. ‘Molly’s right, it really is okay, Darcey. Don’t worry, we’ll get you fixed up before any of the others return from lunch, okay? Look here, I keep a stash of baby wipes in my drawer for exactly these sorts of emergencies. You’re not the only one who gets into a pickle, you know, look at my cardigan!’ Sarah held up her ruined sleeve. ‘Come on, let’s see if I can get the worst of it, then we’ll come up with a plan for your tights and my cardi, alrighty?’
Darcey rubbed the tears from her cheeks and nodded. ‘Why have you got paint all over your clothes, Miss Harrison?’
Sarah swabbed clumsily at Darcey’s ankles. There was every chance she was making it worse. ‘I thought your portraits were all dry when I stapled them up during break. I should’ve done a better job of checking, shouldn’t I?’
Molly gasped. ‘Miss Harrison, you’ve smudged Tabitha’s impressionist self-portrait. Her school shirt is rubbed over her mouth. Look, Miss!’
Sarah glanced up from Darcey’s legs to the far wall, at Tabitha Brightman’s face now blurry and smurf-like. Shit. Tabitha’s mother was one of the PFA lot. And tomorrow was open-door Wednesday. There’d be calls of sabotage and job losses.
‘Right, Darcey. I’m not sure we’re going to get away with just wiping these tights off. I think we’re going to have to whip them off instead. Molly? Could you go to the office and ask Mrs Broome to arrange for someone to take afternoon register please when the bell goes. I’m just going to help Darcey find some socks from the emergency box.’ Molly nodded obediently and disappeared. Sarah led Darcey stiff-legged to the children’s toilets.
Mr Church, the caretaker, was jostling a mop and bucket into the infant girls’ loos when Sarah rounded Library Corner. ‘You’ll have to give me a minute, Mrs Harrison, someone’s stuck paper towels in the plugholes again, we’ve a minor flood. I could open that one up for you?’ Mr Church nodded to the disabled/visitors toilet.
‘Thank you, Mr Church. Come on, Darcey, we can pop in here, just this once.’
Mr Church unlocked the room for them then returned to his flood. Sarah stood aside ushering Darcey in, pulling the door to between them. How was this going to work then? A six-year-old pulling those tights off without further disaster? Tights were a bugger at the best of times; it was one of the biggest perks of being a mother to boys, no tights.
Sarah called around the door. ‘Darcey? Can you manage? Or would you like some help?’
It wouldn’t be ideal, just the two of them in a single toilet. This was the way you had to think as a teacher now, Jon was constantly reminding her of this fact. Don’t leave yourself open to accusation. Ever. Jon wasn’t a mother, though.
‘Darcey? How about you pull your tights down at the top, then I’ll pull them over the yucky bit? So it doesn’t go anywhere else?’
‘Yes please, Miss Harrison,’ Darcey whispered. Sarah nudged around the toilet door. Darcey’s mum would rather Sarah helped, wouldn’t she? Heidi Thurston had seemed lovely when they’d met at parents evening in February. She’d come straight from court and listened so attentively to Sarah’s feedback on Darcey’s progress that Sarah had felt like a flaky witness, her testimony about to be picked