‘No, no no.’ Dylan’s smile was starting to look rather forced.
‘I thought you two were friends?’
‘We are.’
‘Then why are you here?’
There was an awkward silence. Max Bingley was beginning to lose his patience.
‘Has she propositioned you, Dylan? Is that what you’re getting at? Because you’ll forgive me, but I’m afraid I find that rather hard to believe.’
‘I can’t think why.’ Dylan looked put out.
‘So she did proposition you?’
‘Not exactly.’
Dylan squirmed in his seat. The old fossil wasn’t making this as easy as he’d hoped. Dylan had always had Max Bingley pegged as an old-school sexist, a bit of a military martinet beneath the firm-but-fair exterior. He hadn’t expected Bingley to play this with such a relentlessly straight bat.
‘All right,’ he said eventually. ‘This weekend she did rather, you know, try it on. Nothing happened, but there was an awkward incident at my place, while I was helping her with some of the SATS paperwork.’
Max waited for him to elaborate.
‘I’d prefer not to go into details. I handled it, and I’m not making a formal complaint or anything. She’s a nice girl.’
‘But?’
‘But she’s young, Max, and flighty! Come on. You know what I’m getting at here. Her lifestyle … Girls her age, they like to party. They drink, they dabble in drugs, they take their eye off the ball. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed how exhausted Tatiana’s been looking in the staff room lately?’
Max had noticed. He’d put it down to her heavy workload, combined with the stress of contesting her late father’s will. The entire village was abuzz with gossip about the looming David and Goliath court case between Tatiana Flint-Hamilton and Brett Cranley.
‘Dylan, I must ask you outright. Do you have any concrete reason to believe that Miss Flint-Hamilton has been using drugs whilst working at this school?’
Dylan flushed. ‘I don’t have any proof, if that’s what you mean.’
Max shook his head. ‘Then if you’re not making a complaint, the matter is closed.’
Dylan stood up. Clearly coming to Bingley had been a mistake.
Panicked after Tati had rebuffed him last weekend, he’d taken the last three days off school with ‘flu’ while he tried to figure out what to do. There was bound to be tension between him and Tati at school, and other staff were bound to pick up on it. This was how rumours got started, and in a small village like this one, with a very pregnant, very paranoid wife at home, Dylan could not afford to come off looking like some sort of sexual predator. He had to take control of the situation, to hit back first. A few days at home, buttering up Maisie, followed by a man-to-man chat with Max Bingley had seemed like the best strategy. But from the moment he had sat down in Bingley’s office, the old man had made him look and feel like a fool.
‘I just hope you don’t look back at this conversation in a few months’ time, headmaster, and wish you’d taken me seriously,’ he said pompously. ‘I’m thinking of the good of the school.’
Like hell you are, thought Max. He didn’t know what had gone on, but he didn’t trust Pritchard Jones an inch.
‘She’s not even interested in teaching,’ Dylan scoffed. ‘She’s only doing this to pay for her legal fees, you know.’
‘I believe Tatiana is interested in teaching,’ Max said stiffly. ‘What’s more, I believe she has a natural gift for it. Like you. Just look at the impact she’s made on the remedial readers. Look at Logan Cranley. She deserves our encouragement, Dylan. So whatever issue you have with her, I suggest you sort it out between yourselves.’
Dylan left, and Max pushed their awkward encounter out of his mind. Today was the parent–teacher meeeting at St Hilda’s. He had better things to do than referee some squabble between his art teacher and Tatiana Flint-Hamilton.
‘Yeah, but I don’t geddit.’ A vastly overweight mother fixed the Year Two teacher, Sarah Yeardye, with a hostile glare. ‘If I tell Kai to go and buy a packet of crisps, he can go and buy a packet of crisps.’
Sitting on a wooden classroom chair that looked as if it might collapse at any moment, rolls of legging-encased fat spilling over the chair’s edge like excess pastry flopping over a pie dish, Kai Wilmott’s mother did not accept Miss Yeardye’s assessment of her son’s mathematics ability as being ‘well below average.’
‘With the greatest respect, Mrs Wilmott, I don’t quite see how being able to buy a packet of crisps is relevant.’
‘Course it’s relevant. Packet o’ crisps is sixty p or whatever, right?’
Miss Yeardye nodded wearily.
‘So my Kai knows he should give ’em a pound coin and get the change, like. That’s maths, innit?’
‘Well, yes, it is. But—’
‘There you go then. ’E’s fine.’
It took a lot to make Tatiana to feel sorry for Sarah Yeardye. The Year Two teacher had gone out of her way to dismiss Tati’s contributions at St Hilda’s and had rarely missed an opportunity to be bitchy and mean-spirited in the staff room. But Tati wouldn’t wish Karen Wilmott on anybody.
The entire parents’ meeting had been a real eye-opener. Some of these mothers were monsters! Half of them, like Mrs Wilmott, were insistent that their little darlings were Einstein and utterly blind to any/all evidence to the contrary; and the other half displayed a dispiriting lack of interest in the whole proceedings. Carefully prepared folders of work were skimmed through half-heartedly or not at all. Watches were glanced at repeatedly and questions asked again and again about how long ‘all this’ was going to take because they really needed to get back to work/gardening/watching TV, picking their toenails.
But the Year Two parents had been particularly dire. On reflection, that might have been why Mr Bingley had put Tati in here, alongside Sarah Yeardye. Perhaps he wanted her to get a taste of things at the sharp end. If so, the main lesson Tati had taken away was that, without a saintly disposition and superhuman patience, neither of which she possessed, there was every danger of these meetings descending into an out-and-out brawl.
This hadn’t been a good week for Tati. Her short-lived triumph over Brett Cranley at church had been blighted by the unpleasantness with Dylan. Returning to work anxious and depressed on Monday morning, she’d hoped to try and set things straight between them, but Dylan had chickened out and called in sick. He’d seemed fit as a fiddle the day before, climbing all over her like an ant on a melted ice lolly, but now apparently he was all but bedridden with flu.
Then this morning he’d bounced back into the staff room, ignoring Tatiana completely, and immediately closeted himself away in the head’s office in a manner that made Tati feel distinctly paranoid.
Was he saying something about her? Making up lies to get her into trouble with the head? Tati prayed not. She couldn’t afford to lose this job, and up until now Dylan had been her only ally.
‘Tatiana? Do you have a minute?’
Max Bingley stuck his head around the door of Year Two. Sarah Yeardye cast him a pleading look as Kai Wilmott’s mother leaned forwards, her white, fat forearms shaking like two cylindrical lumps of lard. But Max was focused wholly on Tati.
‘Of course.’
She was glad to get out of the stifling classroom, but braced herself for what the head might have to say. This was bound to be about Dylan. The thought of discussing what had happened last Sunday with Max Bingley made Tati’s stomach churn. It would be like discussing sexual positions with your dad. To her surprise, however, Max didn’t mention Dylan at all.
‘The Cranleys are here,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘They’ve specifically asked to talk to you about Logan’s reading.’
‘The Cranleys?’
‘Yes.’
Cranleys, plural. Did that mean Brett? But Brett never came to school. Never ever. It was one of the things that had made working at St Hilda’s bearable for Tati.
&nbs
p; ‘Are you quite sure it’s me they want to see?’
‘Tatiana, I am not yet quite senile,’ Max said drily. ‘Although I’m beginning to wonder if you might be.’ He did so hope that Pritchard Jones wasn’t right about Tati experimenting with drugs. She certainly seemed dazed and confused right now. ‘They’re waiting for you in the Year Four classroom.’
Angela turned and smiled nervously as Tatiana walked in. She was also worried by Brett’s sudden interest in Logan’s academic progress and prayed he hadn’t come here to cause a scene with Tati. But early signs were good. He barely looked up when Tati walked in, smiling and projecting a confidence she did not feel.
In wide-fitting grey trousers paired with flat shoes, and a simple white shirt with a sleeveless cashmere sweater pulled over the top, Tatiana looked professional and pulled-together, like any young teacher. But not even the dowdy clothes could fully disguise her knockout figure, or that perfectly structured face that seemed to grow more beautiful each time Angela saw it.
Tati pulled up a chair, keeping a few feet of distance between herself and the Cranleys. ‘You asked to see me?’
‘Yes.’
It was Brett who spoke, looking up suddenly, his eyes boring into Tati’s with that same half-lustful half-disdainful gaze that had so unnerved her when he’d burst into her bathroom at Greystones. She wondered whether she would ever be able to look at Brett Cranley again without feeling naked. ‘I understand you’ve been doing some work with my daughter.’
Tati noticed the way he said ‘my’ rather than ‘our’, and the way he had instantly taken over the conversation, to the exclusion of his wife. Was that what their marriage was like, she wondered? Brett, bullying his way through while Angela sat meek and cowed at his side? Clearly Brett Cranley was a man unused to having people stand up to him, especially women. Tatiana felt her confidence returning.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Logan’s made tremendous progress. She’s really very bright.’
Brett snorted. ‘Is that so? Funny how she’s always bottom of the class then, isn’t it?’
‘That’s not fair, darling,’ chided Angela. ‘Logan’s maths has always been good. It’s only in English where she’s struggled.’
‘And she still struggles,’ said Tati, deliberately addressing herself solely to Angela. ‘I’m not saying she doesn’t find reading hard, because she does. But she’s made immense progress. And her difficulties don’t reflect a lack of intellect, or effort.’
‘What are they caused by, then? Black magic?’ sneered Brett. ‘Because I can tell you, in the time it takes my daughter to read “Danger: Keep Out”, she’d already have been mauled to death by bears or fried to a crisp on a live railway track.’
‘Brett!’ Angela was shocked. She’d expected Brett to be rude to Tatiana, but not at Logan’s expense.
‘What?’ Brett shrugged, registering his wife’s horrified expression. ‘I adore Logan, you know I do, she’s the light of my life. But I’m not gonna sit here and be told that she’s some sort of genius when you know as well as I do it’s a crock.’
Tati felt the anger welling up in her chest. She knew what it was like to have a father who didn’t believe in you, who undermined all your achievements and triumphs and saw only what he wanted to see.
‘I’m not saying she’s a genius. But she is clever, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. As for her reading, I strongly suspect that Logan may be dyslexic.’
Brett rolled his eyes. ‘Dyslexic? Please. What a load of old horseshit.’
‘I think you should have her tested,’ Tati ploughed on.
‘Oh yeah? And what do you know? You’re not even a qualified teacher,’ said Brett.
‘No, I’m not. But I’m the one who’s been reading with her.’ Tati’s nostrils flared defiantly as she glared back at him. ‘Besides, her class teacher agrees with me.’
‘Do you really think she’s dyslexic?’ Angela asked meekly. Tati had quite forgotten she was even in the room.
‘I do,’ said Tati. ‘But it needn’t be any great handicap. Quite the opposite. So much is known about the condition these days.’
‘Condition?’ Brett snorted. ‘Give me a break. These are kids that can’t spell.’
Angela Cranley opened her mouth to say something but her husband cut her off.
‘Listen,’ he said rudely to Tati. ‘None of this matters. My daughter’s gorgeous. With her looks and her name, no one’s going to care if she can spell or not. She’s at school to make friends and have fun, that’s all.’
‘Why’s that? Because she’s a girl?’ Tati challenged him. She was half joking, but Brett responded quite seriously.
‘Exactly,’ he said, utterly unapologetic. ‘Now, maybe if she looked like the back of a bus, or if she showed any interest in books, things might be different.’
Tati didn’t think she’d ever heard such an outrageously, obnoxiously, outdated sexist comment in her life. Brett Cranley made Gabriel Baxter sound positively enlightened. He clearly had a profound problem with women. Tati glanced at his wife, who looked mortified, as well she might, but said nothing. Stand up for yourself! Tati wanted to shout at her. And if you can’t stand up for yourself, at least stand up for your daughter. But she restrained herself.
‘Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps Logan doesn’t show much interest in books because she’s dyslexic?’ she said to Brett. ‘Until now they’ve been a closed world to her. They might as well have been written in code.’
‘Change the record,’ Brett yawned.
Tati knew he was doing it to provoke her. The really infuriating thing was that it was working. She found herself wanting to lean over the desk and hit him. To punch and scratch and claw at his handsome, arrogant, smirking, sexist face and have him fight her back until all the frustration and rage drained out of her. She remembered the pressure of his body against hers in her bathroom at Greystones that day he’d walked in on her, the weight and strength of him, and felt an incongruous jolt of desire slicing its way through her anger. That only made her more furious.
‘Mrs Cranley?’ Max Bingley stuck his head round the door, breaking the almost unbearable tension. ‘So sorry to interrupt, but do you have a second?’
Angela couldn’t remember the last time she’d been more pleased to see a person. She loathed confrontation, especially when it involved Brett. She also strongly suspected that his acting out with Tatiana reflected an underlying sexual attraction, a thought too hideous in its implications to be dwelt upon, even for a moment.
‘Of course,’ she said gratefully. ‘Excuse me.’ Bolting out of the room like a fox out of a hole, she left Brett and Tatiana to it.
‘So.’ Tati looked at Brett.
‘So.’ Brett looked back.
His dark eyes appeared almost black when he was angry, Tati noticed. Although there was something other than anger flickering beneath the surface now, a sexual tension so thick she could almost touch it.
For Brett, simply being in a room alone with Tatiana was intoxicating. He hadn’t admitted, even to himself, how excited he’d been by the prospect of seeing her again today. Their argument earlier had brought out the best in her, the fire and antagonism in her eyes and body language belying her prim and proper teacher’s outfit. He wanted her, badly.
‘I’m just wondering if all this caveman, sexist nonsense is for my benefit,’ she said, retreating behind her professional façade. ‘Or if you genuinely don’t care about your daughter.’
‘I care plenty about my daughter,’ said Brett.
‘You just don’t think girls need to be educated? Is that it? We’re all second-class citizens?’ She laughed mockingly. ‘What happened, Brett? Didn’t your mother give you enough attention when you were little?’
Brett’s eyes flashed dangerously.
Oh good, thought Tati. I’ve hit a nerve.
‘Don’t speak about my mother.’
‘Why not?’ said Tati, delighted to have discovered a weak spot
in the mighty Cranley armour. ‘What happened? Let me guess. You caught her in bed with a lover?’
‘I said shut up.’
‘So that’s where this pathetic Madonna/whore crap comes from. Fascinating! Mummy turned out not to be the perfect angel after all, eh?’
Brett clenched his fist. The loathing in his eyes was so intense that for a moment Tati thought he was about to explode. Instead he said quietly, ‘She died.’
Tati detected the faintest tremor in his voice.
‘When I was a kid.’
The emotion was so raw and unexpected, Tati almost felt sorry for him. But then she remembered the way he’d bullied his wife and belittled his daughter just now, and pulled herself up short.
‘My mother died too, you know,’ she told him. A look of profound surprise registered on Brett’s face. ‘You lost your mother? When you were young?’
Tati nodded. ‘I was eight.’
‘I’m sorry.’ His concern sounded sincere, but you could never quite tell with Brett Cranley.
‘Do you remember her?’
‘Yes, of course, a bit – but the memories fade so quickly. You remember your mother?’
‘Every day.’
A momentary empathy flashed between them, but Tatiana quashed it ruthlessly. She couldn’t afford to let her emotional guard down. This is Brett Cranley, she reminded herself sternly. He’s your enemy.
‘Well, I’m sorry. But if your mum’s death is your excuse for being a total arsehole to women, it’s not good enough,’ she said robustly, jumping back on the offensive. ‘What kind of a man needs to put down his own daughter to boost his ego?’
‘My ego doesn’t need boosting, sweetheart,’ Brett drawled. ‘And when I want parenting advice from you, I’ll ask for it.’
They glared at one another, an almost unbearable electric silence crackling in the air between them for what felt like an eternity. Then Brett took a breath, took a step back.
‘Playing teacher doesn’t suit you, you know.’
The flash of vulnerability he’d revealed when discussing his mother was completely gone now. He eyed Tati’s clothes disparagingly. ‘You look ridiculous in that get-up.’