‘OK then.’ Claire hesitated, feeling that she’d missed some opportunity, and disappointed the child. Failed her. Lorna had already turned her pale, tear-stained face to the wall.
Inevitably Lorna’s mum was late to pick her up, and Lorna was the last child left in the cloakroom. The first time Claire had seen her, the time she’d seen her slap Lorna, she’d thought, That woman looks like a scared rabbit, and she was always Rabbit Girl in her mind now, with her too-short upper lip that didn’t quite cover her gums, and the tiny, almost imperceptible quiver that ran through her like a small electrical charge whenever she was in the presence of authority. She kept her distance from Lorna, who sat pale and still on the bench by the coat rack, clutching her school bag.
‘She looks all right,’ muttered Rabbit Girl.
Lorna looked at her mother, then suddenly pitched forward and let out a weak stream of grey vomit onto the floor.
‘Not to worry Lorna, not to worry. Is there any more in there? Do you need to go to the loo? No? OK, let’s wipe that face.’ Claire took her time fussing over her, prolonging the clean-up operation. Somehow she didn’t want the girl to go home. Things can’t be good there. They mustn’t be. She tried to make eye contact, but Lorna slid away from her attention, got to her feet and moved wordlessly towards the door, her mum trailing her.
‘Feel better soon, Lorna!’ Claire called, but the door closed before she finished the sentence.
6
Over the weeks and months that followed, Claire worried at the memory like a terrier. Odd, because it wasn’t so different from a thousand other incidents she’d witnessed: a child is sick; a child doesn’t fit in; they become attached to you with sudden, touching vehemence – how many times had she accidentally been called mum? And some of the parents were simply bad parents: uninterested, dull, closed. After all, she had spent years trying to accept that these parents will inevitably choke their child’s proud little flame of curiosity, empathy and pride. Lorna would be no different. Why then did Claire think she was? She had no answer for that.
And so she kept a discreet eye on the girl, as the months stretched into a year. She saw Lorna grow thinner, but not too much thinner; lonelier, but not completely ostracised. Lorna seemed to fall into that oh-so-familiar gap between normality and cause-for-concern, and Claire knew she couldn’t talk to Norma about her again, let alone James, without seeming, well, strange.
And so a whole year swung by. It was nearly Christmas before she encountered Lorna again.
* * *
Eight o’clock on a Monday morning, and Claire sat in the staffroom, feeling old and dim next to her hard, bright, recently graduated colleagues. They were all high flyers with their spreadsheets and strenuous sports. Why were they at this school anyway? Earning their inner-city stripes? Cynical, Claire. These girls didn’t hug or smile, and the DFE vernacular fell easily from their neat lips. They were efficiency itself, the new guard, ploughing over the fallen soldiers: old Mrs Hurst with her severe short back and sides and orthopaedic shoes, Miss Pickin with her liver spots and crucifix, and, she supposed, Claire herself. What did the younger teachers think of her? Bony Miss Penny with her greying bob and sensible shoes.
The recently refurbished staffroom was very white, and ringed with cupboards at head height full of inhalers, epi pens, policies and guidelines. The new windows, with toughened glass and PVC frames, pushed open at the bottom about four inches, and Claire missed the old sash windows that you could pull right up and get a proper breeze in, maybe call out to a group of boys on the brink of fighting, or wave to a lonely girl in the playground.
Now the staffroom seemed so cut off from the rest of the school, and so quiet. There was no conversation – maybe tiny, polite confrontations about board markers, a brief communion over a smartphone screen, but that was all. Most of the teachers didn’t even eat there any more, preferring to squat, troll-like and alone, at the tiny tables in their respective classrooms. Once she’d seen Miss Brett eating her lunch in the back seat of her car.
Every month they had a morning meeting in addition to the weekly staff meetings after school on Wednesdays, because, James said, they needed to work together for the good of the school, consolidate the team. Become more of a unit. He tried to jazz it up with coffee and spongy little croissants from the corner shop. Each teacher was expected to briefly present on something. ‘Sharing best practice. Sharing our professional development’ was written on the white board.