1405: Part 20

Ring, ring.

Kristina had been trying all evening to get through to Maxine, but had still had no luck. Her phone was on, because it was ringing — she just wasn’t answering for whatever reason.

The ringing cut out and went to Maxine’s voicemail. Kristina hadn’t left a message yet — she hated voicemail because she never quite knew what to say. But calling her obviously wasn’t helping — perhaps she should leave a message?

She hung up before the announcement finished. If she was going to leave a message for Maxine, she wanted to make sure she knew what she was going to say before she said it. Then she realised how ridiculous that sounded, and tapped on the screen to once again dial Maxine’s number, telling herself that she’d leave some sort of casual, breezy message even though she was feeling anything but casual and breezy right now.

Ring, ring.

Okay, she thought. Here we go.

Ring, ring.

I can do this.

Ring, ring.

I hope she gets this.

Ring, ri—

“Hello?”

To Kristina’s surprise, Maxine finally answered the phone. Her voice was soft and sounded extremely tired.

“Maxine?” Kristina said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“What… where the hell have you been?”

“I told you,” she said. “I went up to my mother’s for a bit. I needed to get away.” She yawned.

“I’ve been worried about you,” Kristina said. “You weren’t replying.”

“Yeah, sorry,” said Maxine. “Signal’s shit out here in the country.”

Kristina paused for a moment. She didn’t know if her friend was telling the truth or not, but they’d always trusted one another, and she didn’t want to start wondering if she was lying now.

“Oh,” she said eventually. “Okay. When are you coming back?”

“Tomorrow,” said Maxine. “Listen,” she hissed, her voice suddenly a whisper. “Has Mark given you any grief since the other night?”

“No,” said Kristina. “I haven’t heard a peep from him. Has he given you any trouble?”

There was a pause.

“A couple of abusive messages,” said Maxine. “I binned ’em. If I can just stay away from him, he’ll get over it. I’m going to talk to work about him when I go back. They need to know what kind of person he is.”

“Yeah,” said Kristina. “Yeah, they do.”

 

*  *  *  *

The next morning, the inspectors were present for the school’s staff briefing once again. Apparently they were setting aside some time to give feedback to those teachers they’d observed over the past few days. Kristina felt the familiar knot of nervousness in her stomach, and didn’t relish the prospect of hearing what the team thought of her lesson on Monday. But it couldn’t be helped; as much as she wanted to just run out and never come back right now, she knew that ultimately that wouldn’t solve anything — she’d just have to suck it up, deal with it and perhaps have a good cry later.

Yes, that sounded about right.

Jesus, she thought to herself. When did that become my life?

She didn’t listen to a word of the briefing, until some familiar names came up.

“It seems that there was something of an altercation between Edward Jennings, Sian Beaumont, Jasmine Naper and Nicola Janes in Year 11 yesterday,” said Mr Rhodes. “Edward has been placed in internal exclusion over in the Unit for the next few days to try and calm down. We’re trying to get to the bottom of what caused the incident, but in the meantime please keep an eye on all four students if you happen to see them around.”

Kristina, of course, knew Sian’s side of the story and, even though she knew there was probably at least one other side to it, she felt inclined to side with her friend. Sian had always been a trustworthy student in her experience, and the things she’d heard her peers say about her in the staffroom and at the pub after school certainly seemed to back that up. She found it hard to believe that Sian would have instigated any problems; her only experience of Jasmine and Nicola was a cover English lesson she’d taken a few weeks ago in which she’d found them to be chatty, but otherwise pleasant enough.

Lost in thought, she stretched and grunted noisily before realising she was surrounded by her peers. Thankfully, the briefing had finished, but she got one or two funny looks from her peers. She blushed and stood up, taking care not to meet anyone’s eyes, then walked out of the classroom quickly.

“Miss Charles,” came a familiar voice she couldn’t quite place, just as she was passing through the door. She turned around to see the middle-aged woman who had inspected her lesson with 7C on Monday, and she knew what was coming next. “I understand you don’t have a tutor group, so would you be free to talk about your lesson?”

Kristina momentarily contemplated giving an excuse about having something urgent to do with the music department’s stock cupboard, but since Martin was passing by just as this exchange was taking place she thought better of lying.

“Sure,” she said meekly. She cleared her throat. “Okay.”

“Lead the way, please,” said the inspector. Kristina felt like the woman had never expressed joy in her life, then immediately felt bad for thinking that.

She’s just doing her job, she thought. I’m sure she’s a nice person really.

Right now, though, she was the enemy, and Kristina could feel her defences going up. She didn’t want to talk to this woman, but she could see no way of avoiding the inevitable.

Feeling like a prisoner on Death Row, she led the way to her classroom.

*  *  *  *

As the woman left, Kristina looked after her in astonishment. One word had stuck out in her mind; the rest were all a blur.

“Good.”

The lesson she’d been observed on — the one where Edward had come in and interrupted, bellowing expletives and ready to break things, was “good”, apparently. Not “unsatisfactory” like last time, not even “satisfactory”; “good”. She knew, of course, that she could also have been “outstanding”, but she didn’t consider herself to be an outstanding teacher even on her very best, most confident days, which didn’t come around very often.

But “Good”… she didn’t know what to make of that. It was certainly the last thing she’d expected to hear, especially given what happened, but she wasn’t sure if she should be satisfied with it or concerned that it was so different to what had come before.

She started second-guessing herself. Was it only “Good” because it was 7C, by far her most pleasant, well-behaved class? Or had she actually done something that was particularly noteworthy?

Her mind started going in circles, but before she could get too engrossed in her own anxiety, the bell went and she knew it was time to start the day’s work.

*  *  *  *

The temporary buzz-cum-anxiety from her “Good” rating didn’t last long, because not only did she start the day with a particularly poorly-behaved Year 8 class, she was then called upon to cover a Year 9 science lesson.

She hated covering science lessons. She didn’t feel at all confident in the subject, and she hated working in the laboratories — there was too much dangerous equipment around, and she knew that the Year 9 class she was lumbered with would be the sort to play with the gas taps, have water fights with the sinks and generally cause trouble.

She was already dreading the lesson, but then things got worse: as she finally quietened the class down and led them into the room, she saw an inspector sitting in the corner.

It wasn’t the same inspector she’d had before; this time it was a wiry older man with grey hair and a toothbrush moustache. He looked just as joyless as his comrades, and he did not look impressed that it had taken Kristina nearly ten minutes of the lesson to get the class settled down and sat in their places.

Kristina took the register with a shaking voice. Several of the students asked if she was all right, but she ignored them.

A pair of boys sat at the back of the class started fiddling with the taps on the sink. She had no idea what their names were.

“You,” she said, clicking her fingers as she’d seen some of her peers do to great effect. “Stop that.”

“Fuck you,” said one of the boys and laughed. “You can’t tell us what to do. You’re, like, the worst teacher in this school.”

Kristina knew that the boy probably didn’t mean what he said — how could he know how well she taught, given that she had never seen this class before? — but it still stung. She felt her brain pulling in two separate directions, neither of them desirable. She needed to—

“Get out! NOW!” she screeched, pointing at the boy and then at the door. “And don’t come back!”

The boy gave her a sneer as he walked out of the door and stood in the corridor. The rest of the class was staring at her, and she felt more vulnerable than she had ever felt in her life. She wanted to run away, to hide, to cry.

Normally, she kept these feelings in check, but this time she couldn’t. Tears starting to fall from her eyes, she ran out of the room, past the cocky-looking boy, who was leaning nonchalantly against the wall outside the classroom, and through the corridors of the school back to her classroom. She shut herself in and locked the door, then looked around in a panic.

She felt unsafe. The rational part of her brain — which, at this moment, was being somewhat muffled by the adrenaline — told her that she was not only overreacting and being ridiculous, but that she had probably just done some serious damage to her career. But right now, she didn’t care; she just wanted to calm down, to get rid of these feelings of panic.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply; her breaths were ragged and uneven, and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She became aware that she was clenching her fists, and that within them her palms were sweaty. Her legs were shaking and she felt unsteady; she opened her eyes and leaned on one of the desks that adorned the perimeter of her classroom.

“Fuck,” she said to herself. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

She heard someone try to open her door, but of course she had locked it. She didn’t want to know who it was; it could be no-one good, but she was trapped here right now and the only way out was either through that door or out of the window. She didn’t fancy her chances with the latter option; not only were her sills cluttered with various music scores and other books, the window only opened onto the school’s sad-looking “garden”, which was supposed to be maintained by an extracurricular group, but which hadn’t been touched for several years by the look of things. There was no obvious way out of the garden, so the door it was.

Still breathing heavily, she unlocked the door with shaking hands, and saw it was Mr Rhodes — Tom.

As she opened the door and let him in, she stepped back from him every time he approached.

“Kristina,” he said. “I won’t insult you by asking if you’re all right. What can we do to help?”

“Let me out of here,” she said weakly. “I need to get out of here.”

“Okay,” he said gently. “We’ll arrange for someone else to cover your classes. Do you have any work we can give them?”

“No,” she said.

“That’s okay,” said Rhodes. “You get yourself home and try and calm down, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Inwardly, Kristina thought herself unlikely to be in tomorrow, but she decided to cross that bridge when she came to it. Without saying goodbye, she ducked past Rhodes and ran out of the classroom, out through the hallways and out through the front door of the school.

She wasn’t sure if she’d ever be back.