3 EDITOR’SFOREWORD

4 JUDGES

5 LISTOFPRIZEWINNERS

WINNINGENTRIES

6 My Other Self, Philippa Schofield

8 Dr Luther's Assistant, Ian Dudley

10 Across the Lake, Gaines Post

12 Durban 1942, Robin Fabel

14 Lovely Sunday, Robert Turrall-Clarke

16 Knit your own Lifeboat, Penelope Randall

18 Wednesday's Child, Lucy Mouland

20 Dealbreaker, Marc Cinanni

Design: University of Oxford Design Studio, Public Affairs DirectorateFor further information visit www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk

Contents

Editor’s foreword

The following eight stories are wonderful examples of short form fiction, and all received the glowing commendation of the judges for the 2012 Oxford Today Creative Writing Competition.

Contained within the disciplining jacket of a thousand words, each story is richly vibrant, emotive and punchy. Dwelling on deep human preoccupations from memories of a childhood picnic to a mother's crisis, they generate a roller coaster of emotion that is darkly brilliant and perfectly English, soliciting a mood of introspection, diffidence and crisis. But a bit like walking into an ice bath and catching ones' breath, these stories make you feel very alive. There are intensely bright and happy notes along the way, not least in the two north American settings. But perhaps none are so evocative as the brilliant winning entry by Philippa Schofield, which is like a double espresso laced with something stronger. If you work in an office block or in front of a computer, it should carry a warning sticker. Brace yourself!

And it remains to us here at the editorial team at Oxford Today to thank everyone who entered the competition. There were 134 entries in total, which exceeded our expectations even accounting for the very high number of wordsmiths among our alumni.

Richard Lofthouse, Editor, Oxford Today

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Judges

CHAIR:DRCLAREMORGAN Director of the Master of Studies in Creative Writing at Oxford University. Her novel A Book for All and None was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in June, 2011. Other publications include What Poetry Brings to Business (University of Michigan Press) and a collection of stories, An Affair of the Heart. She reviews regularly for the Times Literary Supplement.

SUNETRAGUPTASunetra ia an acclaimed novelist and Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, Oxford University. Her publications include So Good in Black, Memories of Rain and The Glassblower's Breath.

ALANJUDDAlan is an acclaimed novelist and member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Oxford Today. His publications include A Breed of Heroes, Short of Glory and The Kaiser's Last Kiss.

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PrizewinnersFIRSTMy Other SelfPhilippa Schofield, Somerville, 1976, Modern Languages

SECOND Dr Luther's Assistant Ian Dudley, St Catherine’s, 1977, Biochemistry

THIRDAcross the LakeGaines Post, New College, 1961, Modern History

HIGHLYCOMMENDEDDurban 1942Robin Fabel, St John’s, 1955, Modern History

Lovely SundayRobert Turrall-Clarke, Lincoln, 1957, Jurisprudence

COMMENDEDFor styleKnit your own Lifeboat Penelope Randall, Hertford, 1979, Engineering Science

For structureWednesday's Child Lucy Mouland, Balliol, 1991, History

For humour and dialogueDealbreakerMarc Cinanni, Jesus College, 2009, MSt Creative Writing

5

My other self

It was the hat that shocked me first and foremost. I never wear hats – my head is ridiculously small, and all the normal sunhats that I’ve ever tried to buy engulf my face leaving only a snippet of nose and a mouth to be seen. Good sun protection, but not quite the Look. So

no, I definitely don’t do hats. And yet there I was at the other end of the tube carriage in the morning rush hour on the Northern Line, wearing the most outlandish hat ever seen.

It was stuffy and crowded in the train, all the usual delights of some-one’s Vindaloo the night before, stale beer, garlic and armpits rolled into one stagnant aroma that enveloped us as we all swayed our way to the City and another week of mindless work. The trick to survival here of course is never to engage your fellow man (or woman), to disappear into the free Metro newspaper, or when space doesn’t permit, to stare blankly ahead and think of nothing.

It took me a minute to acknowledge what I was looking at through the forest of arms hanging on to the overhead bars. She was slim, blonde and middle-aged, probably fifties based on the tone of her skin. She had found herself a ledge seat at the end of the carriage, and apart from the hat, she was just another commuter in a grey trouser suit on her way to the office to do her week’s work.

Only, the strange thing is, I recognised her immediately, down to the uncomfortable bunion misshaping her right shoe, the crooked top teeth, the slightly stooped back. I recognised her down the carriage, quite simply because she was me.

At Euston, when a lot of people get off and others get on, I pushed my way down the carriage to move nearer to myself – just to have a closer look I suppose, but also to investigate that hat. It was made of bright green felt, wide-brimmed, and it was decorated with all manner of shiny baubles – sparkly flowers, glistening fruit, a small blue bird, and as its centrepiece a frond of proudly-splayed iridescent feathers.

The other me seemed to think nothing at all of wearing this monstrous attention-attracting creation, but was just flicking through the Metro and keeping herself to herself. As luck would have it, my hat decided to disem-bark at Moorgate, which is my own stop, so off I got following me and my hat up the escalator and out onto the street.

What to do? Approach and ask myself why I am wearing the crazy hat, or just forget it, remember to cut back on the intake of magic mushrooms on Sunday evenings, and go to work? As luck would have it, the hat solved

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the dilemma for me, and my hat-wearing self turned round and addressed me brightly:

“Excuse me, I wonder if you could tell me how to get to Broadgate from here? I know it’s close by, but I don’t work in the City and I’m a bit lost”. Me sounded just like me, which was rather disconcerting to say the least.

“Of course” I said, mainly to the amazing hat, “It’s sort of on the way to my office, so I can take you there if you like”.

“Oh, thanks”, said the hat-wearing me. We walked together round Fins-bury Circus and then curiosity got the better of me.

“That’s a rather unusual hat you’re wearing – very, um, very beautiful, but quite unconventional”.

“Oh thank you!” my other self exclaimed, beaming with delight at me. “Thank you so much. I’m a milliner; I make hats for a living. Not usually quite so crazy as this one, although I’ve made some really interesting ones for Ascot in my career. I’m going to a convention of milliners in Spitalfields today and I just decided to throw caution to the wind and wear my favour-ite hat of all, and to hell with what all the stuffy commuters might think!”

After a moment, she added “Don’t I know you from somewhere? You seem awfully familiar?”

“No, I don’t think so, although I thought the same when I spotted you in the tube this morning. So you like making hats?” I asked as we neared our destination.

“Love it, absolutely love it. I’ve had the most amazing career, I’ve been able to be creative, earn enough money to keep the wolf from the door, never had to be tied down in front of a computer in an office. Honestly, I feel fulfilled – and I have two wonderful daughters to boot.”

I smiled. “So, we have one thing in common and all the rest to set us apart – I’ve never made a hat in my life, I’ve spent my whole career in an office goggling at a computer, but I also have two lovely daughters. Well, I hope your convention goes well, take care”.

“You too!” I saw my other self turn and wave as she headed towards Broadgate and I veered off to Liverpool Street. I heard the lorry blow its horn, I saw the cyclist toppled into the roadworks, and I saw the hat flung across the pavement and inadvertently stepped upon by a hurrying commuter. What to do? My other self had all but disappeared under the wheels of the cement mixer, there was pandemonium, and if I stopped to get involved, I would not just be late for work, but for the weekly manag-ers’ meeting.

So I turned my back on the morning rush hour accident, on my other self under the cement mixer, on the beautiful hat trodden underfoot, on the daughters robbed of their mother, and I went to work, and earned some more money.

When I was a little girl, all I did was draw and paint, and make things and sing. Then I grew up and went to work in an office. I never made a single hat.

7

Bettina told him he was not old, but she was wrong. Bismarck had fixed the retirement age at 70 to give men the opportunity to set their affairs in order, and spend time with their family, before finally losing interest

in the world at the average age of 72. Thomas was not 70, but he could see it clearly from the high ground of his recent retirement from the university.

He shifted in the uncomfortable plastic seat, and stared at the bouquet of flowers resting on top of the buff envelope in his lap as if wondering why he had bought them.

He should have resigned from the church years ago, but he was always too busy, his work interrupted by a series of marriages, baptisms, confirmations, and the relentless tidying away of the older generation. All of these events had taken place in church, and he had never demurred. It seemed an appropriate way to behave, even for an atheist.

It was easy to acquiesce: his wife did not need to cover her hair, and he was not required to cut off his foreskin. There was little they could not eat or drink. It was true that god had been very concerned about what went on in their bedroom at first, but lately he seemed to have lost interest. It was a rare day Thomas encountered a curb that reminded him that his life was constrained by a faith he did not believe. Nevertheless it seemed wrong to enter the closing phase of his life under false colours.

At first he found himself jotting down notes to remind him of the main branches of his reasoning. Soon, and without knowing quite how it had happened, he found himself writing a paper. The thesis, several sheets of hand written A4 neatly clipped together, was in the large envelope on his lap.

The young woman behind the desk motioned to the chair opposite her. There was nowhere for him to put the flowers except on the floor, and that seemed wrong, but not as wrong as sitting in front of her clutching the bouquet like a nervous suitor. He laid the bouquet on the edge of the desk, as far away from them both as possible.

“I want to resign from the church.” He sounded pompous, even to himself, but the woman merely nodded.He took a tax receipt from the brown envelope and handed it to her. On the

right hand side of the paper near the words “church tax deduction” were the letters RK and a small amount.

The woman smiled. “It’s OK I don’t need that. Do you have your identity card? Passport?”

His hand went back into the envelope. “It seems so foolish to pay when I am not really a member of the church,” he said. “And, of course, I don’t

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believe…” He wondered when he had started confiding in total strangers?The process took a few minutes only, during which time Thomas spoke

continuously and the woman gave no sign of having heard a word he said. At last she looked up.

“That will be 21 euros please.” “I have to pay?”The woman nodded. “I have to pay not to believe in god.”“The fee is to cover the administrative cost of amending the system,” the woman

said with a smile. She gave him a piece of paper which he put into the envelope, and gathered up his

things to leave.“Lovely flowers.”“They are for my daughter. It’s her birthday.”“That’s nice. How old is she?”He stared at the young woman. “I don’t know.”He placed the flowers carefully so that the huge, white bells formed a pleasing, but

not too symmetrical, arrangement which he knew his wife would like. It was soon done but it seemed too curt and heartless to walk away immediately. He wondered what else he should do.

“Hello professor.”The woman was in her eighties and in firm health. He recognised her from the

church – she was one of the devout who always volunteered to help any lost cause – but he could not remember her name. He had always unkindly suspected that she drew some validation from the fact that a professor of science shared at least the form of her faith, if not its substance.

She stood by his side, and they stared at the grave in front of them. Glancing sideways he watched the small expressions drift across her face like clouds. He had seen it before. She was torn between sympathy for him, and wanting to escape. Too late she had realised that it was impossible to tell lies, even kind lies, in such a place, and found that she had nothing to say.

“Did you hear about Father Michael?” she asked.“Father Michael?”“He had a massive coronary last Friday.”“I’m sorry.”“He’s on the mend. So they say. We hope he will be able to come home soon.”He let a beat of silence pass.“They can do miracles these days.”He had watched his own daughter die slowly, defeated by illness and deceived

by fate. “I don’t blame you for not believing,” she said. “It’s easier for you.”Thomas turned to face the grave again. After a few minutes he looked up and

saw the woman walk out of the churchyard. The flowers were starting to shine in the gathering night. A wind had picked up; it smelt of fresh cold from somewhere far away.

The church door was dark with age and the wood had been weathered until it was as hard as iron. Thomas reached into the envelope and removed his letter. The pin he had bought with him looked puny compared to the massive door; he felt it bend as it sank into the unyielding wood. He left the letter hanging whitely from a corner, swinging gently in the gathering wind.

9

Sam woke up staring at Poland. His mother had wallpapered his bedroom with National Geographic maps, and Europe was a spider-web of lines connecting dots whose names he had heard on the radio.

He turned over. The P-51 Mustang hung from the ceiling, tilted down for strafing. Tanks defended the American Flyer electric train on the floor. The train trip! Sam threw back the covers. It was his birthday, a Saturday, and his mother had promised him a train ride with his buddies to the country for a picnic.

But he dressed quietly, listening. “Son,” his father had said when school started in September, “I want you to be extra helpful around the house. Your mother isn’t well. The doctor says she might have to go to the hospital.”

“The one where I had my appendix out?” Sam had asked.“No, the one across the lake.”“Is it the war, Dad?”“Yes, I suppose it is.”Sam knew his father was hiding something the way he did when Sam asked

him to explain words like “atrocity” under scary pictures in Life magazine. Every kid in town knew the hospital across the lake was for crazy people who never came home. But that’s not Mom, Sam explained to himself. Sure, she sometimes sleeps through breakfast or stares at nothing I can see, but that’s not crazy, not like the movies. Besides, Dad was upset because a new German rocket began exploding on England and he said “those bastards, God damn those bastards.”

As Sam finished dressing, he heard kitchen noises that only his mother made. Thrilled, he clattered downstairs. She stood at the stove, slim in blue jeans, stirring oatmeal and humming Boccherini’s “Minuet.”

“Hi Mom! Aren’t you excited? The train and everything?”“Yes I am, hon. Happy Birthday. And what a wonderful Indian summer day.

Lovely.”When his mother said “lovely,” Sam pictured lilacs in the arboretum where

they used to walk on Sundays.“Be right back,” he said, “gonna go see Dad!”His father was in the study, cleaning his pipe at the` large metal desk that

looked like an aircraft carrier with a conning tower of books against the wall.“Hey Dad,” Sam cried, “Mom’s real happy today!”“She is, son. The train ride is her special present for you, and she wanted to

do it by herself. Now hurry up with breakfast and help her get ready.”Sam’s friends soon began to arrive, their knapsacks and canteens jouncing

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about. His mother had packed a picnic basket with sandwiches and a jam cake. “I’ll carry the basket all day,” Sam said firmly.

His father waved from the front porch as the boys fanned out across the lawn yelling like Marines they had seen in “Gung Ho!” at the Orpheum Theater. On the way to the bus stop, Sam’s mother shouted “bravo!” when they marched like soldiers through the confetti of leaves raked into the gutters. Sam didn’t look at the windows where small flags with gold stars meant someone crossed the ocean and wouldn’t come back.

At the Milwaukee Road station, the engineer took off his cap as he greeted Sam’s mother. “You are so kind to do this,” she said, raising her soft voice because of the engine. He invited the boys up into the cab, three at a time, boosting each of them to the first step.

Sam paused on the second step, for he had always wanted to hold onto handrails and lean away from a train. The firebox rumbled, the little pump on the side of the engine thunked up and down, and the steam hissed its way out of the boiler. For a moment it was Sam’s engine, his train. Something inside him shivered.

A brakeman walked them back to the caboose. Inside they found benches built into the walls, two wooden chairs, a potbellied stove, a small table, and kerosene lamps.

“Now boys,” the brakeman said, “take turns sitting up there inside the cupola, and be careful on that ladder.”

Soon they were moving slowly through rolling farmland west of town, past red barns and fields of green and gold. When Sam’s turn came in the cupola, he looked ahead at the whistle’s small fountain of steam when the engine approached grade crossings. He looked behind at the tracks moving back toward town, but he knew it was the train that moved forward wherever the tracks would take it.

It took them to a village tucked below a hill. Sam’s mother bought sodas in the general store, gave one to each boy, and pointed them up the hill. She chose a spot below the wooded crown, and the boys roamed the hillside until she called them to lunch.

Sam sat next to his mother. The sun warmed his back. Everything he saw sparkled and seemed close enough to touch—village, farms, distant hills. Everything belongs where you see it under the blue sky, Sam thought. Nothing is hiding. Everything fits together. He looked over to see his mother smiling.

“Lovely,” she said. She hugged him.She served the jam cake for dessert, and everyone sang “Happy Birthday”

while Sam blew out the seven candles. They rested after lunch. Sam’s mother stayed next to him as he and his friends lay on their backs in the warm grass.

After they boarded the caboose of the eastbound three o’clock freight, Sam climbed into the cupola as soon as he could. He wanted to be alone, to go over everything that had happened today.

More good things than any day I can remember, Sam thought. Leaning away from the handrails, train ride to a good place, birthday picnic with Mom and my buddies. Best of all was sitting on the hillside when everything sparkled and fit together and Mom said lovely. If Mom can hold onto today until the war is over, she won’t have to go across the lake. If I remember today, I can help her hold on.

11

“Get out of here, you sod,” the man said to Nigel, softly, but not playfully.“Killer vocab for his age,” Mrs Van Zyl had told his mother, but

Nigel did not know what ‘sod’ meant. He sensed menace behind the word, and expected his mother to defend him. Instead she giggled, and slapped the man’s hand. Both sat on her bed, she with her back to the man, he with his arms around her waist. “Oh, Jack!” was all she said.

Nigel stood tongue-tied. He felt his face turning red.His mother fumbled in the pocket of her dressing gown. “Here!” she said.

“Here’s a tickey, Nigel!” and she tossed him a coin.Nigel looked at the threepenny bit. “It’s not much,” he gulped. “Won’t even

buy a Superman comic.”“It’ll get you into the bioscope. Besides, it’s all I’ve got.”Nigel disliked the man, whose name, he now knew, was Jack. His skin was

like red sandpaper, and the hairy hands that now clasped his mother revolted him. He had seen Jack twice before in the hotel room where Nigel lived with his mother. Both times she had been with Jack, but not touching; just sitting on opposite beds, between them a small table on which sat two tumblers and a bottle of Kommando brandy. Missing, Nigel noted, had been a framed photograph normally on the table. It showed a moustached man in a bush hat, Nigel’s father, about whom nothing had been heard since Singapore had surrendered to the Japanese.

Nigel could not believe that his father would have let himself be captured. Sure that he was somewhere safe, he made up Dad stories. Dad was leading jungle Malays in raids on the Japanese occupiers of Singapore, or perhaps was sailing to South Africa in a stolen boat. But now, thwarted in his plan to organize his stamp collection in the hotel room, Nigel lingered in the corridor outside, pondering what to do. It was true that threepence could get him into the cinema, as his mother had suggested. It advertised a double feature, two love stories. His elder sister, now at a birthday party, for which Nigel was too young, would probably like them. Nigel preferred comedies or war films. He had particularly enjoyed one of the few made about the fighting up north. In it Humphrey Bogart had commanded a tank. He did not want celluloid love this afternoon.

A burly Zulu on his knees was waxing the floor near Nigel. The man said nothing, but Nigel was in his way. In any case the corridor air was stuffy, so Nigel moved downstairs to the hotel lounge. There he stood under its clicking ceiling fan. Sometimes the clicking seemed to sound words, even relay

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messages. “Semaphore,” “Tell me more,” and “Man the phone,” were some of them. “Daddy’s home,” was the best.

This afternoon the fan clicked away wordlessly. All the small hotels in the wartime port were packed, but in the middle of this hot afternoon the lounge was empty of people, and there was not even a newspaper comic strip to read. Nigel’s intention to stick into his album a gift of coronation stamps – King George and Queen Elizabeth on a red background – was impossible while Jack was with his mother in their room. He envied his sister Gillian, whom he imagined now scoffing ice cream and jelly.

Even as he pictured her, Gillian was all at once in the lounge in her party dress.

“What are you doing here, boetjie?”“Kicked out! That man – you know, the one with the bad skin – he’s in the

room with Mummy. He was rude. Scared me. Why aren’t you at the party?”“Cancelled. Millie’s sick.”“So what will you do?”“Don’t know. Tell you what, though, Nige. We could go swimming. Let’s go

to the beach!”“No, I can’t. I need my trunks. They’re in the room. Daren’t go back there.”“Swim in what you’ve got on. Khaki shorts, always in fashion!”“We have to tell Mummy.”“No – she’s busy, you gek. She’ll find us when she needs to; I’ll leave word at

reception on our way out. We need to go! Now, while the sun is high. We’ll hire surfoplanes. Then ice cream and cola – or something. What say?”

“Money! What about money? All I’ve got is a tickey.”“But I’ve got ten shillings!” Gillian wafted a note in the air. “Mum gave it me

to buy a birthday present.” Nigel lost his worried look and beamed. “Oh, listen to the fan, Gill! “It’s

saying ‘Off you go! Off you go!’”“I’m hearing ‘Give me oil! Give me oil!’”

13

“Sunday morning. The alarm at 8 o’clock. Usually I wake up before it goes off but I stayed up late to watch the football which was a mistake because Manchester United lost. I do not know why I support them.

I have never really been to Manchester, not that is to see it to any extent. I have always lived in the south. Well, not quite. In my early childhood my father took a position as a surveyor, and then the controller of a number of agricultural estates, one of them on the Scottish borders where we lived.

I remember only three moments, snapshots from the camera film that is my life, all of our lives. I am in the car looking up out of a window.

Then I am by a riverbank. There is a picnic spread out for us. It is my mother’s face which is recorded. Looking out beyond the immediate into the far distance, as if the past and the future were locked into a timeless now.

Then there is an argument. How is it that at the age of three I could remember such a thing? My parents were very upset. A letter had been received. My mother says: “We must go”. My father paces the farmhouse kitchen, the big man distressed in crisis. An opportunity he cannot responsibly turn down. Our wonderful secure little farmhouse hidden away among the hills of the Scottish borders will be no more. Later I remember a very different house in the south, my father in a dark suit coming home by train from London. I run the water to get a shave; it takes time to warm up and so do I.

What am I doing in this place? A two-bedroom flat (I call it an apartment) on my own. I have painted the room myself in a soft apricot come raw sienna colour which is warm and homely. When the children come they feel comfortable. I can see it in their faces. They will come today and I must get a proper shave because Sophie, who is seven, likes me to look smart in a blazer and tie and white shirt.

In the garden I can hear church bells. I can never be sure at what time they start and end but they are reassuring, part of my England which is in some way under siege. I have long since realised that I do not cope well with change.

As I drive the ten minutes or so to her house (our house actually) I can sense spring. I can see it in the park beside the road. High clouds have taken winter away. And when I open the window of the car on the driver’s side, I can smell spring and a sense of renewal. I will make amends. Fall in love with her all over again. They, the writers I mean, report of falling in love, and out of love but never falling in love again. Perhaps it is impossible. I even once thought of remarrying the same woman, retaking our vows and so forth. She dismissed it out of hand. I was downcast for a day or two. Women are strangely

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insensitive in some ways. It was just a thought, that’s all.I turn into her (our) avenue. It’s really quite posh now I look at it again.

And unlike my apartment, it is not lonely; I pass faces I recognise and they recognise me. They say, apparently, it was rather a shame. Such a nice young couple. And there were two children. He has a good job (profession they mean) quite successful they say, and she a teacher of history at a private school nearby.

How did we meet, one of them had asked me. There were four of us playing rugby together, before university this was. And four of them, student schoolteachers at a college near the Cathedral. We went there on winter afternoons, all four of them and four of us. I think we slept with each of them in turn. They always had the blinds drawn before we arrived. One of them was tall and thin, another older and much more experienced, and two were quiet and attractive and more dignified which was not difficult compared with the older one.

A year later I was walking down the High, not far from the Mitre pub. On the corner of Turl Street, a face came out of the crowd and said: “How are you?”. It was one of the two dignified ones with a gentle quiet demeanour and far away smile, like my mother’s smile. Was that significant? I said: “Let’s walk through to the Broad and find somewhere for coffee”. It was the longest cup of coffee in my whole life, and now I think of it, my longest single unbroken conversation with her.

I park in front of the drive. I never go down it. The children come running and I drop on my haunches and take one in each arm. If there is a God could he really have invented moments such as these? Someone has to take care of them when I am gone, when both of us are gone. Why did I bother to read philosophy? It all comes down to moments like these.

“Wave to mummy”. They turn and wave. She smiles faintly and waves back. I kiss my fingers and blow it her way. She smiles again and catches it out of the air. How many more ‘lovely Sundays’, as Sophie calls them, can I really endure? Communication. That’s the problem. We cannot communicate what we would like to say. Words are such an imprecise instrument. We live our lives at cross purposes. Occasionally there is a meeting of minds but only tangentially, as if she lived in another country, an empty chair, half-finished coffee, just missing each other by only a moment, now, always, all of our lives.

15

“They’re doing percentages.”Friday afternoon. 9K. Hard-boiled sergeant-major types have been

known to blanch. It’s my lucky day.“Miss!” There they are at the end of the corridor, a locked-out muddle (with real

mud) of limbs and hoodies. I smile. This disarms them for crucial milliseconds. “Good afternoon.” “Fkkk off, Miss.” Ronan is allowed to swear because he has Tourette’s. According to the Special Educational Needs Register, 9K boasts many labels. A

taxonomist’s bonanza. There are the Dys- things; Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculalia. Many have Behavioural and Emotional Difficulties. It’s rumoured there are at least two ASBOs, but this is dangerous knowledge and Senior Management keeps it locked away.

There are ordinary, uncategorised children too. Not everyone notices them. Endangered species are often hard to spot, even in captivity.

“Mr Hollingworth isn’t in today.” Mr Hollingworth has gone home with a migraine. Who can blame him?“Hey Miss.” Carly is tiny and blonde and wants to work with children. It’s likely

she’ll get pregnant first. Her friend Megan pushes past. She’s a big girl with an apricot face and chipped shoulders.

A Deputy Head (here at South Road we are blessed with five of them) has cajoled me into giving up my marking time for this. In return my name will be removed from the cover rota for the rest of the term. Like a juror being discharged after a murder trial. It doesn’t help to dwell on the similarities.

Boys are kicking bags along the corridor so they ricochet through the classroom door. (The content of these bags is a mystery. None of the kids has ever been known to bring, for example, a pen to school.) Kyle is the last to arrive. He’s grinning. I’d like to think he’s happy. There is a school of thought that says you can estimate the average IQ of a class if you divide by the number of Kyles. Someone could do a PhD thesis.

I hand a stack of plastic mini-whiteboards to Carly. She sashays around the room, chewing, chest thrust forwards. The boys follow her to their places, punch-drunk.

“Bin, please, Carly.” She spits out the gum and distributes the marker pens. Ronan twists one foot around Kyle’s knee so he falls and hits his head on a table. I tell Ronan to stand outside the door. He refuses. Kyle, pouring blood from his mouth, carries on grinning. I send Megan to the Office with a First Aid note.

We begin a round of Bingo while Kyle lies on a table at the back, bleeding into a paper towel. “Numbers one to twenty-five,” I say brightly. “A grid.” Most people claim their pens don’t work.

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“Sixteen divided by four,” I begin. Joyce Grenfell would be proud. Ronan is chanting the F word, but eventually he moves into the corridor. I close the door and repeat the question. No-one writes anything. I take Jack’s pen and draw lines on his board. He throws it on the floor.

“The square root of twenty-five.” Clinging to the shreds of my I-teach-maths fantasy. Blank looks. They’re sucking the ink off pen tips. Desk legs judder. I wait. Far away, the Deputy Head will have regrouped to the Executive Corridor and his Do Not Disturb sign, armed with policy documents and an Inspection schedule. Instruments of Office. Whereas I don’t even have the Geneva Convention. Hey ho.

“Five!” declares Megan from the doorway. Mrs Holland from Reprographics is behind her. Mrs H moves resentfully to the back of the room and eases Kyle onto his feet, giving me a look that suggests I must have encouraged this. Or maybe she thinks I left-hooked him myself.

Megan is fingering my jacket. Chunky-knit, against the Head’s refusal to sanction the heating until after half-term.

“That from H&M?” she asks. “The square root of one hundred.” Groans from the class. Megan crosses through 10. “One-quarter as a percentage.” This, of course, is reckless. Fractions are

perpetually new to them, no matter that they’ve been dragged through the topic annually for the best part of a decade, in homage to the National Curriculum. Next term there’ll be GCSE exams. (A grid of eight squares. Shade in the ones you need to represent 3/8. Terrifying but true.)

Megan wilts under Jack’s scrutiny, and crosses through 20. She’s stopped looking at my jacket.

“I knitted it,” I tell her quietly. Needles clacking every evening for weeks, after the marking was done. It became compulsive. Reassuring myself of something.

“My Gran’s teaching me,” Megan says unexpectedly. She whispers “You’re a real good knitter, Miss.” There’s a shy smile on her plastered face that does something to my breathing. No-one notices.

There are worksheets next. There are always worksheets. Rainforests die for this. The hands of the clock have stopped. My skin creeps, a sensation that might be associated with camping out on a live volcano. There’s something sulphurous in the air. Eau de teenage boy.

When the bell rings, there’s the usual stampede. I let it go. There are battles that should not be fought.

Megan and Carly leave last. They’ve already hitched their skirts six inches. “See you, Miss.”“‘Night, girls.” My knees fold at my desk and I spend five minutes doodling

a starry pattern on a whiteboard. Carly’s nursery. Megan’s Gran. Glimmers of something. Hope, perhaps.

I glance at the walls, my display boards. Crayoned tessellations, scatter graphs, co-ordinates that plot your initials. Tangent curves, reaching up from and heading out to infinity. On and on. Never quite getting there. Just occasionally the pupils come back to see us, when they’re grown up. They can turn into nice people.

Megan smiles again, in my head. Out in the corridor I lock the door and notice the trail of blood leading

towards the foyer. I hope it’s Kyle’s. Otherwise we could be in real trouble.

17

The scent of your aftershave lingers on the landing. When I see the row of shirts in the wardrobe, with Wednesday’s empty hanger, I wish I could smooth your collar and straighten your tie, let my fingers stroke your

cheek. If I’ve been up all night with Alice then sometimes I see your shadow in the corridor; by the time I’ve rubbed my eyes and turned to kiss you, you’ve gone and I whisper goodbyes to your draft.

Last night, Alice had been teething and there was nothing I could do to stop her crying. I had nursed her for hours, tiptoeing over the floorboards so that the creaking wouldn’t wake you. Her screams were etched into my brain. When she finally settled, a clammy dawn was breaking and even the birds were too exhausted to sing. I crawled back onto our bed and searched for the scent of you, twisting and turning like a fish out of water until I slept.

I woke when I heard a baby crying. I lay until the screams subsided into hiccups, watching the curtain twitch and letting the city’s morning breath waft over me. A fridge hummed, a car door slammed; the baby cried again, louder and louder. When I staggered through to Alice’s room, her cheeks were crimson and she was fighting her blanket. I unravelled her and together we got dressed, picking our clothes from the piles on the floor and the chairs.

There was nothing in the fridge for breakfast. Ten-thirty: It was then that I had the idea. We’d meet you for lunch. We could sit in the park. I could make sandwiches and we might even have some wine.

Alice cooed an accompaniment from the floor as I put together the picnic. Tucked away in a cupboard I found your favourite crisps and stuffed them in my bag with half a bottle of wine that was dewy from the fridge, a slab of chocolate and some grapes. I’d buy bread on the way. As we were about to leave I remembered Alice’s bottle.

In the pushchair, Alice dozed, her mouth slightly open and her cheeks flushed. With her dark lashes and curls she was a beautiful, miniature, you. But I had underestimated how long it would take us to get to the office. She wailed like a faulty alarm for the last part of our journey and I didn’t know how to stop her.

People stared as we passed. One or two even muttered, loud enough for me to hear, but I kept on pushing straight ahead. I did agree with one woman, though: it was a shame. It was a shame that Alice was still screaming when we arrived at your office because I had wanted her to look her best. I knew you would want to show her off to everyone, but not when she was like this.

I struggled up the shallow flight of steps from the plaza to the smoked glass frontage of the building. People were swarming out for lunch but I didn’t spot

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your face in the crowd. I thought I saw one of your colleagues, someone who’d been round to dinner before Alice was born, but when I raised my hand he met my gaze only fleetingly and then looked away.

In front of the reception desk we clattered to a halt. A woman looked up from her magazine. I smiled.

‘Hi Sharon, it’s me, Claire.’‘Sorry? Claire...?’. Her pen paused over her pad.‘Claire Jenkins.’‘Claire!’ She reached out and took my hand in both of hers. Her palms were

cool and soft. ‘Claire, my love, how are you? You look so... different. I didn’t recognise ... Are you doing OK?’

‘I’m fine. We’ve come to meet Daddy for lunch, haven’t we, Alice?’ I grinned. ‘He’s not gone out without us, has he?’

‘Claire, I...’ Alice began to scream again.‘Don’t worry, she does this all the time.’‘I... Look... Why don’t you take a seat over there, love - just for a moment?’She pointed to a group of leather seats arranged around a coffee table.

With her other hand she reached for the phone. Alice squirmed on my hip and lunged for the receiver. I snatched her hand away and smiled.

‘I’m sure he’ll only be a moment once you let him know we’re here.’The leather of the chair was sticky against my thighs. I rummaged in the

bag for a drink of water and found a half-empty bottle of wine. Slowly, I eased out the cork and raised it to my lips. I took a gulp and then another.

I let the empty bottle drop by the side of the pushchair and kicked off my shoes. I pressed my feet onto the marble floor and closed my eyes. We were on holiday. I was trailing my feet in a rock pool with the sea breeze whispering through my hair. My body had been turned creamy by the sun and voluptuous by the baby inside me. You were laughing and trailing languid fingers over my belly, waiting to feel a tiny kick.

‘Claire?’The leather cushion hissed and squeaked. The fine wool of your suit was

soft against my cheek and I inhaled coffee and those illicit cigarettes. You promised you’d give up, you promised.

‘Claire. It’s Bob, Bob Simmons.’An imposter in your suit was prising me away. The woman was holding

Alice and walking her up and down by the window. There was a bottle and she was being fed.

‘No, no, no.’‘Claire. We’re so sorry. So very sorry.’‘No!’ I lunged for the bottle and sent it skittling across the marble. It

shattered against a chair leg. Someone screamed. Stupid cow. It was only a bottle. You can scream when a policewoman comes to your door on a wet Wednesday night, but not when a bottle smashes. If I broke a bottle, I’d laugh.

I was still laughing when the ambulance came.

19

Matty’s hands are over the table. “They’re crooked,” she says. I look at them. Maybe they are. But mostly they are long, bony

and soft. Like the body of a ballerina. She looks at them again and folds them on her lap.

Matty and I are on a date. Matty, hottest girl in school, is like a rare bird that disappeared a million years ago that one day shows up in your yard. You don’t touch, you don’t feed, you just look, wonder, and resign yourself to feeling happy she’s there.

We’re at the National Arts Centre sipping coffees. I came to see a concert with my mother. But I ditched Mom in exchange for her car when I ran into Matty.

“Say something in Italian,” Matty says.I’ve only got one option. Something cousin Dino taught me.“Mi piace il colore dei tuoi occhi,” I say. “It means I like the colour of your

eyes.” Dino calls this a dealbreaker. But I’m not Dino. I don’t drive a Firebird and I

can’t dunk a basketball. “Say something else,” Matty says.I have nothing else. I could always recite my postal code in Italian but that

would not be right. I am, after all, an ethical dater. “I can’t,” I say.Matty looks around the room. A man in a cravat is staring at her. “Sposa bagnata sposa fortunata,” I belt out.Matty’s turns to me.“A rain-soaked bride is a lucky bride,” I say.Matty brings her cup to her lips. Her eyes are smiling. I feel like a castle. Her cell phone rings and it’s her mother. She’s waiting in the lobby. Matty

gets up and puts on her coat.“Need a ride?,” I say.“Let’s ask my mother.”I see her mother in the distance and she strikes me as the type of chick that

isn’t used to waiting. She’s wearing a black fur coat and a hat that also used to be an animal. I put out my hand and shake her glove. Cobalt shoots from her eyes.

My car is in a lot outside. I brush off the snow with my sleeve. Matty goes to sit in the back while her mother comes up front. It’s not the setup I expected.

The mother fastens her belt and puts her purse on her lap. Then she

Deal breaker

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stares straight ahead like she’s about to undergo an operation. There is zero conversation as I drive. Finally, the mother breaks the silence with a sneeze. I fiddle with the heat to seem useful. Then I crack the silence with some information.

“We’re having a family picnic on Sunday,” I say. “Vincent Massey Park. Four Barbecues, three accordions, sixty people.”

I see Matty smiling in the rearview mirror. “Sundays are for church,” says the mother.“Oh I’m baptized,” I say.I reach into my shirt to show her my gold crucifix. She sneezes again so I grab a pack of tissues from my breast pocket. The

mother sees it and leans the other way. I’ve just handed her a condom. “It’s my friend’s jacket!,” I say, dropping the condom like a hot penny. “I

don’t even own a trench coat!”“Turn!,” says the mother. I misjudge the distance of the curb and hit the sidewalk. Matty goes flying

and hits her head on the ceiling. The mother’s million dollar purse flips onto the floor. I play with the radio to soothe them with some classical. But like a unicorn, it is impossible to find while in the presence of others. Matty’s mother points to the house. It’s a colonial colossus. I give up on the radio.

“I went to a Greek restaurant like this once.”“Park in the street,” says the mother. Matty gets out but her mother stays put. Her door is jammed. I reach over

to jimmy the handle and accidentally brush her breasts. She yelps and clutches her chest. Matty bangs on the window.

The mother looks at me like I should be doing something. So I remove my belt, lean in, and kiss her on the lips.

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