‘Stop being so flipping flippant, Chez. You know you broke my heart.’
‘Oh Gareth,’ I said in a hand-wringing tone. There didn’t seem much else to say. I was not about to apologise, or soften, or give him a fight, which were the three options he was hoping for me to choose between. ‘Have you met the new head yet?’
‘What do you think? I’ve only just got here.’
Thank God, thank God, we made it to the doors, and I staggered into the entrance hall, almost sobbing with relief to see Louisa with some of the other girls, comparing suntans and timetables.
I left Gareth to it and was welcomed back into the fold.
‘Hey, Chez, go up to the staff room and get your timetable,’ advised Lou. ‘We’re just waiting for the Big Intro to Mr Superhead. He’s going to be speaking in the hall in about ten minutes.’
‘Right.’ I peered at her timetable. ‘Ouch! 11VY and 9KS. Double whammy! Commiserations.’
‘Tell me about it,’ she mourned, but I was springing away upstairs to the place of orange and brown refuge known as the staff room.
My timetable was the same as ever. I’m the only music teacher in the school, so I get all of them, in small doses, then two small GCSE groups for eight hours of the week. In an area like this, few children are interested in learning about notation or the great composers, but the modules on Popular and World music are slowly drawing a few more to the studio each year.
I raced back down, just in time to see the curtain pulled back from the hall doors and the assembled staff invited in. We sat on the moulded plastic chairs, staring at the lectern on the stage, breathing in beeswax, waiting expectantly for this miracle worker to do his stuff. And he was going to have to be a miracle worker, frankly. Most of the staff had job applications pending elsewhere, and finding replacements for them would be the proverbial hunt for hen’s teeth.
We clapped, not quite knowing why, when he appeared before us.
He didn’t look anything like Jesus, but the air of authority was there, as well as the expensive suit and well-cut hair.
‘Not bad,’ whispered Lou. ‘Better than Gilmour.’
‘Anything would be better than Gilmour.’
‘True.’
The Superhead – Patrick Marks, as he liked to call himself – spoke a few words of conventional introduction before launching into his spiel.
‘Here at St Sebastian’s, we all face a substantial challenge. We’ve seen the statistics, and we know the score. Unless we can turn this school around in two years, we close down and the government re-opens it as an Academy with a new staff. Two years. That’s all we’ve got. We need to sail this ship together, one crew, one purpose.’
God, nautical imagery again. Everyone who comes to this city thinks they have to do that. All the same, his voice was exceptionally … something. Lulling? Reassuring? Arousing!
He had the world’s sexiest voice.
How very distracting.
Now I wanted to scrutinise him more closely. I leant forward in my chair, noting the aquiline features, the long, lean nose, his height and elegant bearing. Nice hands. No wedding ring.
He was quite a speaker, using his extraordinary voice to full effect, lowering it to utter words of cunning flattery, raising it to ring out the rhetoric. It was like music, using cadence and rhythm to create an irresistible flow.
It was too tempting to imagine it murmuring wicked words in my ear. I sunk into reverie, missing the entire section on targets, picturing myself bent over at his mercy while he paced the room whacking a riding crop against his thigh and lecturing me on my misdeeds and their penalties.
Oh, he had finished. Applause, a standing ovation, filled the hall, and I hauled myself to my feet with the rest.
‘That voice,’ I whispered to Lou.
‘I know! Don’t you want to have sex with it? His wife’s a lucky woman.’
His wife. He was one of those guys who didn’t wear a ring. Old school. Did that mean he was more or less likely to spank his partner?
The conundrum defeated me. I warned myself against developing a crush on this man, telling myself that he would be too busy to have much to do with a lowly music serf such as myself.
We trickled off for tea and biscuits, girding our loins for a long session of putting our classrooms to rights for the new term.
‘If you are under 18 or offended by alternative sexualities, please leave now.’