Although Wilson always looked the same, right down to the old-fashioned camera slung around his neck, Hope was surprised that the way she felt about seeing him standing there was new and different. There was a nervy excitement bubbling up inside her, which was a welcome change from just feeling sick with stress and despair.
‘Dylan couldn’t make it. He had to go and see a man about a dog,’ Wilson said vaguely.
‘Nobody ever has to go and see a man about a dog.’
‘Well, he had to see a man about a pushchair, Moses basket and sterilising unit that he’d just won on eBay,’ Wilson explained. ‘’Fraid you’re stuck with me.’
‘Really?’ She needed to stop sounding so squeaky. ‘Are you sure that’s OK? Because in the end I could only scrounge thirty quid out of the PTA. Well, thirty quid and a box of luxury Christmas crackers.’
Wilson smiled. It was a tricky, shifty smile. ‘I suppose it will have to do.’
‘You going to introduce me, Hope, or do you only do that for people who aren’t on your list?’ Elaine asked. Hope had completely forgotten that she was sitting there. She’d also forgotten that she’d left Blue Class to Andy’s tender mercies, and he was probably boring them to tears with tales of deprived children in the Third World whose Christmas would be spent walking 20 miles to draw water from a rusty well. After the introductions were made, and Hope couldn’t leave Wilson cooling his heels in the hall any longer, she took him along to get reacquainted with Blue Class.
It was bedlam in the classroom. The children were meant to be having yet another run-through of their Lady Gaga homage but were mostly running around and screaming, until Hope walked in and purposely dropped the big World Atlas on the floor.
Then there was a ten-minute bollocking, five minutes spent reminding them that when they came back at half five they all had to be wearing black tights – yes, even the boys – then fifteen minutes of story-time. Wilson sat on the floor with them as Hope read How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It was either the floor or a tiny chair meant for a tiny person.
‘You’re very scary when you’re in teacher mode,’ Wilson remarked, when the last child had left for the day and Hope was walking around the room to check that the chairs were all firmly on the desks and that Herbert had enough water to last the night.
‘I’m not that scary,’ Hope said in a hurt voice, because it would be nice to find someone who didn’t think she was a belligerent bitch with a hair-trigger temper. ‘Usually ten minutes after I tell them off, Blue Class go back to raising merry hell again.’
Wilson walked over to the corner where the worst of the water damage was evident. Apparently, though Hope doubted it very much, it would all be fixed by the new term. He picked up a copy of The Cat in the Hat and started flicking through it. ‘So, how have you been? You look well. Very well.’
Hope didn’t look well, she looked like a girl who’d been dumped by the love of her life. Her complexion was muddy, her eyes were dull, and she was wearing a pair of sagging tweed trousers, a black polo neck with a stretched-out collar and scuffed Uggs. She’d also spent most of the day trying to tear her hair out of its thick plait and now had a halo of frizzy red curls, and not a scrap of make-up on. She felt frumpy and lumpy, even though she’d lost over a stone since she’d last seen Wilson and was a couple of pounds lighter than the usual 9 stone, 9 pounds where her weight usually stuck when she dieted and refused to budge any further.
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled and gestured jerkily at him. ‘So do you.’ He looked the same as he ever did, but that wasn’t necessarily to say that he looked bad. ‘Shall we go back to the hall and I can talk you through the horror that awaits you?’
Wilson didn’t say anything. He put down the book and walked towards Hope, not stopping even when he was a foot away and she felt as if she should take a step back, if only for appearances’ sake, but she stayed where she was until he was standing so close that she could feel the wonderful comforting warmth of him. Though Hope knew she was far too battle-worn for Wilson’s brand of comfort to have much effect. Yes, she could remember what it felt like to be held by him, have his mouth on hers, but all she could really think about these days was that she’d never feel Jack’s arms around her or Jack’s lips on hers ever again.
‘So, is there anything you want to tell me?’ Wilson asked, right on cue.
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ Hope said, screwing up her face in mock confusion, even though she knew exactly what he meant. But just as she hadn’t told Elaine or Marta yet, she certainly wasn’t going to tell Wilson. Not just because she knew she wouldn’t be able to get more than five words into her sorry tale without turning into a weeping mess, but because she couldn’t cope with him saying, ‘I told you so,’ or calling her a ‘bloody fool’ in that fondly exasperated way that he did – or worse, trying to kiss the hurt away. Right now, his kisses and his kindness would kill her. ‘You mean about the Winter Pageant?’
‘Hope?’ Wilson’s voice was a throaty murmur that made Hope take a teeny, tiny tiptoe of a step forwards, even though she’d sworn to herself that she wouldn’t, until it would have been impossible to slide a sheet of tissue paper (left over from making fake snow) between them.
She dropped her eyes to the polished tips of his brogues. ‘What?’
‘Don’t fuck with me.’ It was a warning, but it sounded like a promise, even when Wilson took a step back. ‘So, where’s this set-list you were talking about?’
THE NEXT THREE hours were both the longest and shortest of Hope’s life. She’d left a taciturn Wilson to set up the lights, but before she could fret about their tense encounter, volunteers started arriving.
Hope became the annoying person rushing around with a clipboard and issuing orders. She even heard herself say to two dads who were mithering about the dicky PA system, ‘Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions!’ A little power was a very scary thing, but Hope felt as if she was in her element for the first time in ages. Maybe a little too much in her element, because an hour before curtain-up, when she’d changed out of her saggy work clothes into heels and her vintage bottle-green velvet wiggle dress that she’d only ever been able to get into on two previous occasions, she was grabbed by Polly, Sorcha’s mum, who owned her own beauty salon and was in charge of hair and make-up.
‘You’re doing everyone’s heads in,’ she told Hope, as she forced her to sit down at one of the makeshift make-up stations in the junior-school cloakroom. She also forced her to accept a glass of mulled wine. ‘Now sit down, stop getting in the way, and let me take the shine off your face.’
Hope had only planned to sit there for five minutes, but half an hour later, she had an even skintone plus winged liquid eyeliner (which she’d never been able to master on her own), her hair was in an elegant updo, and she was calm enough to marshal both her thoughts and her volunteers.
Wilson was busy doing things with lights and cameras and didn’t even look up when Hope asked if he had everything he needed, and maybe he’d like a mince pie. The dads were all assembled around the sound desk with screwdrivers held aloft and didn’t want any advice, but at least Blue Class were pleased to see her when Hope assembled them in a junior classroom. She looked like ‘a princess, Miss’ or ‘Cheryl Cole, Miss, when she was a ginger, Miss’, and they all wanted to know if her heels hurt, which they did, even though Hope had only been wearing them for forty minutes. And then it was ten minutes before show-time, and she had many things to cross off her checklist, and there were many people who were standing about doing nothing who needed to be given precise instructions.
The Winter Pageant started eleven minutes late, which was the least late it had ever started. Hope thrust a microphone at Mr Gonzales, then shoved him up the three steps on to the stage so he could introduce the Pageant. He made a very poor job of it as far as Hope was concerned, and next time, not that there was going to be a next time, she’d definitely write him a script and insist that he stuck to it.
Hope stay
ed rooted to her post at the side of the stage, pulling and pushing people on and off it, prompting, miming and glaring at children waiting to go on who refused to wait quietly.
There were many, many things that went wrong. The Red Class’s interpretative dance to ‘Jingle Bells’ was a disaster. They forgot most of the words, so made up for it in the chorus with a lot of enthusiastic shouting, and a good three-quarters of them still couldn’t tell their left from their right. There was also a problem with the living-flame hats for Yellow Class’s human menorah, and Shona from Year Six, wearing a metric tonne of glittery body powder, was hopelessly miscast as the Virgin Mary.
It didn’t seem to matter, though, to an indulgent, doting audience who laughed and clapped and whooped, and when the entire school wriggled on to the stage to sing ‘God Only Knows’ as the closing number, there were muffled sobs from all corners of the hall. Hope cried all over Marta, who kept telling her to pull herself together, and it wasn’t just because if she did ever get married, she planned to walk down the aisle to ‘God Only Knows’, it was from relief and exhaustion and because on so many levels she was scared and unhappy, just like Angela had said.
Hope was trying to repair the damage done to her eyeliner and wasn’t listening to Mr Gonzales thank the PTA and announce the raffle winners, so she gave an alarmed shriek when Javan suddenly took her sweaty hand and yanked her up on stage.
It was one thing to be backstage bossing people about, quite another to suddenly be on stage and blinking uncertainly at a sea of faces.
‘And can we have a big round of applause for our very own Simon Cowell, Ms Delafield, who’s been responsible for our wonderful Winter Pageant,’ Mr Gonzales said, which was a back-handed compliment if ever Hope had heard one. ‘I’m sure the PTA will rest easy tonight knowing that she won’t be phoning them up to demand they sell more raffle tickets.’
That wasn’t a back-handed compliment, it was an outright slating. Hope came forward, and to her horror, she could feel more tears welling up and she was going to cry on stage in front of the whole school. She looked down to make sure that she was actually wearing clothes, because she was sure she’d had this nightmare several times.
Mr Gonzales handed her the microphone and she stumbled her way through a long list of thank yous, from the dinner ladies who’d finished the lunch service and then started making mince pies, to Saeed, the caretaker, and his trusty glue gun, to the PTA and Rabbi Rosenberg. The only two people she didn’t thank were her mother for giving birth to her, and Sarah, who had been telling people backstage that she’d been heavily involved in the Pageant until medical problems had forced her to step down unwillingly. Since when did a skimpy list full of question marks rather than hard information, on two pieces of double-spaced A4, count as ‘heavily involved’? Since never.
Hope finished with a heartfelt plea for any unwanted books to replace Blue Class’s water-logged collection, then handed back the microphone to Mr Gonzales, who gingerly put an arm around her shoulders in a way that couldn’t be deemed as sexual harassment and said, ‘But joking aside, there wouldn’t have been a Winter Pageant without Ms Delafield, who’s worked tirelessly on it for weeks. Now, can we have Blue Class up on stage?’
Blue Class bounded on stage like thirty very excitable puppies, with much shoving and pushing, and Hope would have stopped them in their tracks with a significant look and a muttered aside about stickers, but Caitlin and Maryam were presenting her with a huge bouquet of roses and lilies, followed by Timothy with a small Selfridges bag, and bringing up the rear was Luca with a big box of chocolates that looked as if several small hands had been trying to rip off the shrink wrap. Then every member of the class came forward to give Hope an enthusiastic hug – even Stuart, though Hope tensed every bone in her body and prayed that he didn’t try and wipe his nose on her dress.
As Hope helped them off stage, Sorcha burst into tears because, ‘Now nothing nice is going to happen for ages and it’s still eight sleeps until Christmas.’ Then the girly girls decided to cry too, and there were long moments until mothers were fetched and coats and shoes were found and finally all the pupils were off the premises, all the mince pies had been eaten, and Saeed was pointedly jangling his big bunch of keys because he wanted to lock up.
Jack was nowhere to be seen, and Hope wondered if he’d gone to the Midnight Bell with Simon as soon as the last shepherd had trooped off the stage, though she hoped he hadn’t and had been there to see that some people adored her, even if they were aged seven and under. She retrieved her iPhone from her desk and saw, with dismay, that she had ten missed calls, five texts and three voice messages from Jack. She knew exactly what they’d say.
He was drunk. He was drunker. He was drunkest. ‘Oh, Hopey, Hopey, Hopey, don’t be mad at me,’ he slurred on the final voicemail. ‘I’m at Shoreditch House, I’ve been drinking for hours, and now the fashion and beauty girls have turned up and it’s cold and you wouldn’t be so mean as to make me leave and come to your carol concert, would you? It’s only a carol concert, and I’ll buy you an extra special present to make up for it.’
Hope was all set to call him back and shout, ‘Only a carol concert? Only a bloody carol concert? You have got to be fucking kidding me! How could you let me down? Again?’ Then she’d segue seamlessly into a huge list of his faults and be angry and confrontational and probably bring up the fact that he’d screwed Susie – and repeat to fade.
In the end Hope settled for stubbing her fingers on her touch screen as she sent him a text message: It wasn’t a carol concert. It was a WINTER PAGEANT, which you’d have known if you’d bothered to turn up. Lots of love, Hope
She looked around the empty classroom and wondered how, after tomorrow, she’d get through three weeks without the distraction of work. Normally she loved Christmas, well, she didn’t love going home, but she liked the food and presents part of it, and she loved coming back to London and visiting friends and raging so hard on New Year’s Eve that it took her forty-eight hours to recover. This year Hope had a horrible feeling that on New Year’s Eve the only raging she’d be doing was at the horrible mess she’d made of painting the kitchen skirting boards.
She heard a noise behind her and, startled, she turned round to see Wilson standing in the classroom doorway. ‘Oh! Your money,’ Hope said, inwardly cringing as she unlocked her desk drawer again to pull out an envelope containing six dog-eared five-pound notes and the box of crackers. ‘I’m sorry it’s not very much.’
Wilson stepped forward to take the envelope. He looked just as embarrassed, and suddenly thrust it back at Hope. ‘Look, why don’t you keep it? Put it towards some new books or hamster food or something.’
Hope couldn’t even protest, because handing over thirty quid in used notes was far more insulting than keeping it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘And thank you. Did everything go all right? I’m sorry that you got lumbered with it in the end, but thank you, I do really …’
‘Are you going to say anything other than “sorry” and “thank you”?’ Wilson asked with a small smile as Hope tucked the envelope away again.
‘Sorry.’ It popped out before Hope could pop it back in. ‘You off, then?’
‘Yeah, going to grab something to eat …’ Wilson didn’t finish the sentence but Hope was sure that he was looking at her meaningfully. Or maybe she just wanted him to be looking at her meaningfully.
‘So am I,’ Hope said slowly, as an idea began to form. ‘I’m meeting Elaine and Marta, she teaches Reception, at a pub round the corner for our unofficial Christmas dinner. They do really good savoury pies.’
‘Sounds nice.’ It was the dictionary definition of non-committal.
Hope gathered up her handbag and coat, looked longingly at her Uggs but decided she could do another two hours in her heels if she got a cab home, then ushered Wilson out of the classroom. ‘It’s partners too,’ she remarked casually. ‘Except Jack is otherwise engaged.’
‘Oh! Like that, is it?’ r />
‘It’s not like anything,’ Hope muttered. ‘He’s pickling his liver somewhere in Shoreditch. And well, I already paid for the meal in advance, and if you have to eat anyway …’ Now it was Hope’s turn to trail off, though she was sure that her look wasn’t that meaningful. More like desperate because she’d missed hanging out with him, and having to sit around a table with Elaine and Marta and their life partners like a gigantic gooseberry was a punishment she didn’t deserve. ‘You’d like Elaine’s husband, Simon. He used to be in a band and he has his own recording studio in their back garden.’
Hope didn’t know if that was what sealed the deal but Wilson nodded. ‘OK,’ he said.
She waited for him to elaborate a little further but he just adjusted his camera bag and waited for her to start walking.
THE ONLY THING more blissful than the sudden warmth and smell of home-cooking when Wilson pulled open the heavy wooden door of the Midnight Bell, was the bowl-sized glass of red wine waiting for Hope at the table where Elaine, Marta, Simon and Marta’s boyfriend, Iban, were sitting.
She quickly introduced Wilson as she squeezed past Marta so she could sit down and pick up her glass. ‘Cheers,’ she said, then downed the contents in three swift swallows. ‘Christ, I needed that.’
Wilson sat down next to Hope, opposite Simon, which was good, rather than opposite Elaine, which would have been really bad, because once she had a few drinks all discretion and reason disappeared. He immediately offered to get a round in.
‘No! No! It’s all paid for. We did a deal with Al, the landlord. Twenty-five quid a head for all the food and drink we can manage,’ Hope clarified, as she poured herself another glass of wine.
‘The rate you’re drinking, he’ll be bankrupt by the end of the night,’ Wilson said.