Bed of Roses
Daisy Waugh

Stretchy Matilda/Miss Marple/Mata Hari/Lady Marchmain/Fatso-Crasher/ Retina Sputnik/Beauty/Mega-Dud/Genius/

…Panda Sarah de Sales La Terrière,

This one’s for you. With all my love.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Maps

PART ONE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

PART TWO

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

PART THREE

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

PART FOUR

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

Also by Daisy Waugh

Copyright

About The Publisher

Maps

PART ONE

1

So. That’s where the story begins. With Fanny Flynn and her ghosts, and Brute the dog, and an ancient Morris Minor half-filled with all their belongings, pulling up outside number 2 Old Alms Cottages, in the village of Fiddleford, near the market town of Lamsbury, deep in the heart of England’s south-west.

Fanny’s new home is in the centre of the village, beside the post office/shop and opposite Fiddleford’s fourteenth-century church. It is a few minutes’ walk from the pub and the primary school where she will be teaching, and within shouting distance of the excellent Gatehouse Restaurant. From the Alms Cottage front door, if she cranes her neck, Fanny can see not only the restaurant but, right beside it, the notorious, grand old iron gates of the Fiddleford Manor Retreat, behind which so many disgraced public figures have withdrawn to lick wounds and rebuild images.

It is April, bright and warm; the first morning in many for the sun to shine and the year’s first believable indication that winter is moving on. Fanny and Brute scramble down from the van. They stretch, dog and mistress, as engagingly compact, vital and untidy as each other. Fanny breathes in the spring-like air, glances across at the press people lolling beneath the famous gates, and waves. They gaze morosely back, having long ago made it a sort of Cool Club rule to be disdainful with the villagers.

‘Bit rude, eh Brute?’ she says vaguely. ‘Go and bite.’

Brute, moronic but good-natured, sits on Fanny’s feet in gay confusion, and dribbles.

Number 2 Old Alms Cottages is a minuscule affair. It’s in the middle of a row of three two-hundred-year-old red stone terraced cottages, all of them empty. It has a single room and a bathroom upstairs, a single room with a kitchen downstairs and ceilings so low that the landlord has waited two years to find a tenant small enough to fit in. Fanny, at five foot three inches, fits the house as well as any modern human could hope to.

She stands in front of it now, jingling her new keys, pausing for a brief, thoughtful moment before launching on to this next new chapter of her many-chaptered life. She notices the faint, sour smell of old urine (old paparazzi hacks’ urine, as it happens; with the pub being a few minutes’ walk away, and the cottages empty, they often pee against her garden fence). She notices the paint-chipped, dirty-brown front door; the missing roof tiles; the sprawling ivy all but obscuring the single window upstairs – and feels a familiar rush of excitement.

New house. New job. New challenges. Another beginning. There is nothing quite like a new beginning, Fanny thinks – and she should know. This time, she tells herself (she mutters to Brute, still sitting on her feet), this time she is going to stick around to make it work. She is going to make roots. This small house and this fine spring day are to mark the beginning of Fanny Flynn’s new life. Her real life.

She laughs out loud. As if. And immediately resents herself for it. ‘Not bloody funny,’ she says aloud, shunting Brute off her feet as if it were all his fault. ‘Thirty-four years old next month. Thirty-four. Thirty-bloody-four. At this rate I’m going to wind up old and alone, and I’ll be dead and rotting for a fortnight before anyone even notices the stink. Got to stop farting around.’

Truth is, Fanny is growing jaded. After eleven years of wandering from place to place, picking up jobs and boyfriends on passionate whims and then passionately dropping them again, she is in danger of running out of mojo, or worse still, of becoming a caricature of her ebullient, spontaneous younger self. She longs to find a job or a man – or an unquenchable passion for woodcarving (but preferably a man). She longs to find something which might give her a little meaning, or at the very least might persuade her to stay still.

Last November she was once again focusing her search for meaning on the very large Jobs section of the Times Educational Supplement, when her eye fell upon the advertisement for Fiddleford Church of England Primary School. It had, she thought, an engagingly desperate ring to it:

TO START AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Successful applicants should ideally have some previous experience as a Head or Deputy (although this is not essential)…

Perfect, she thought. Why not? A tiny village school, a challenge, a small and friendly community, a place where old-fashioned rural values might mean something, to someone – or something. Anything. Besides which Fanny had lived in many places before, but she had never lived in a village. And she had never been a head teacher. Perhaps, she explained to herself last November, perhaps those are the anchors which have been missing from my life…

Fiddleford Church of England Primary School opened its gates in 1854 with over a hundred pupils and has been shrinking steadily ever since. Now it has only thirty-eight pupils, and thanks to a damning report from OFSTED has been put into ‘Special Measures’; promised a dollop of extra money by the LEA (Local Education Authority) and been given two years in which to improve itself, or else.

Mrs Thomas, the outgoing head, never had any intention of rising to such a challenge. Having called in sick with sneezes almost every day for the best part of three years, she immediately applied for early retirement on the grounds of stress-related ill health. By the time Fanny’s application arrived she was killing time, waiting for a replacement so she could sidle away from the problem for ever.

But running a Special Measures school, in a small village deep in the middle of nowhere, is not an occupation very high on many people’s Must-Do lists. By the time Fanny’s application arrived, Mrs Thomas was growing impatient; there had only been one other applicant for the job. And that was the school’s deputy head, the pathologically idle Robert White.

When Robert threw his hat into the ring, the remaining six governors called an urgent, secret meeting, during which they unanimously agreed to pretend the application had never been received, which was clearly impossible, since he had hand delivered it to them himself. They had hoped he might take enough umbrage to resign. He did not. Not quite. Lazy sod. He knew which side his bread was buttered, how hard it would be for them to get rid of him, and how hard it would be, as the long-standing deputy head of a newly ‘failing’ school, for him to get a job in the same salary band elsewhere.

Besides which, he’d taken a great shine to the school’s very young new dinner lady/caretaker, Tracey Guppy, the thought of whose white-fleshed, wide-eyed innocence kept him awake for at least three delirious minutes every night.

The situation of head had remained vacant for yet another month. The school had staggered along. Governors began to wonder whether Robert White might have to be appointed after all. And then along came the letter from Fanny.

Fanny is, in fact, a very good teacher; intelligent and kind and instinctive – and reasonably industrious, if never yet quite truly dedicated. Children love her. And so do her numerous referees. She got the job.

When the summer term starts tomorrow morning, thirty-three-year-old Fanny Flynn will be the youngest and possibly the least experienced headmistress in the history of the south-west. There are plenty at the Lamsford Education Authority who sincerely hope she may also be its least successful. At which point, of course, and with minimum loss of face, they could save a lot of money and close the wretched school down for good.

2

The telephone is already ringing when Fanny pushes open the Alms Cottage front door, so she is less demoralised than she might have been by the pervasive stench which hits her, of damp and human piss. The landlord said he would clean the place up before she arrived, but the peeling seventies wallpaper still lies in mouldy heaps on the carpet, and she has to climb over two years’ worth of junk mail and two dead mice to get into the sitting room. He obviously hasn’t been near the place.

In any case Fanny’s dealt with enough landlords over the years to be surprised by none of them any more, and Mr Ian Guppy’s creepy, half-simple manner when he showed her round in March led her to expect the worst. She has arrived in Fiddleford equipped with dustbin bags, disinfectant etc., and even some large pots of white paint. She enjoys the process of transforming a house into a home. It lends her New Beginnings a little added emphasis, which – after so many – is never unwelcome.

She clambers over the rubble and the mouse corpses and dives for the telephone – a telephone, she can’t help noticing, which is so old it might have been fashionable again, except that, like the ceiling, curtains, windows and walls, it’s stained the patchy yellow-brown of ancient nicotine.

‘Hello?’ She holds the receiver a few centimetres from her ear, for obvious reasons, but is nonetheless half-deafened by the explosion of childish screams which comes blasting out. ‘Hello?’ Fanny shouts above them. ‘Hello?’

An efficient feminine voice glides smoothly over the surrounding racket: ‘Oh, lovely. You’re there. I’m so pleased. I’m your neighbour, Jo Maxwell McDonald. Welcome to Fiddleford!’

Fanny recognises the name. General Maxwell McDonald, Jo Maxwell McDonald’s ancient father-in-law, is on Fiddleford Primary School’s board of governors for reasons neither he nor the school can quite remember. He participated most fulsomely during her interview, grilling her about the high turnover of jobs on her CV and then refusing, unlike all the others, to overlook her irrelevant replies. Fanny has developed a particular way of speaking during her job interviews, a sort of jargon-filled auto-lingo which kicks in as soon as the questions begin. She doesn’t understand why it works, but it does. One way or another – partly, of course, because of the shortage of teachers everywhere, partly because Fanny tends to be attracted to unpopular jobs – she has never yet failed in an interview.

‘I feel,’ she said to the General, ‘that multifaceted qualifications are essential for any modern head teacher in this day and age and I’m proud to have experience in a diverse cross section of educational establishments, enabling me to bring to Fiddleford a knowledge and understanding of children from a variety of backgrounds—’

‘Hmm? Yes yes, I dare say. But didn’t it occur to you you might learn something from occasionally staying in the same place?’

‘I needed to balance objectives,’ Fanny said solemnly. ‘The objectives of the students, first and foremost, and secondly the objectives of my own career development—’

‘What? You’re the restless type, are you?’

Fanny hesitated. She said, ‘Erm, no.’

‘You’ve not spent a year in the same place since you qualified!’

Fanny said, ‘Yes. Well. As I was explaining—’

‘Do you envisage spending longer than a year at Fiddleford?’

‘Certainly I do. I envisage spending many years here, helping to establish and nurture a learning culture and environment which—’

‘Mind you, that’s probably just as well, of course,’ he interrupted, ignoring her reply. ‘Because the government says it’s given us this time to improve. Ha. When we all know perfectly well –’ he glanced around at his fellow board members, who were all suddenly staring very hard at their notes, ‘what they’re actually giving us is this time not to improve. Isn’t that right? So they can feel quite justified in closing the ruddy place down. Thereby saving themselves a great deal of money. And frankly, Miss Flynn, with our track record I can’t say I blame them…Had you thought of that possibility, Miss Flynn?’

Fanny blinked. Of course she had.

‘Which gets you off pretty much scot-free, if I’m not mistaken. To continue your –’ he glanced down at her CV once again, ‘really – admirably adventurous life, as per before. With a short but impressive stint as a head teacher under your belt thrown in. Isn’t that right, Miss Flynn?’

And all she could do was blink, and blink again. ‘That’s not true,’ she said eventually, but she was blushing because of course, in a way, when he put it like that…

In the end Mrs Thomas (for fear of losing their one and only candidate) intervened to shut him up. Fanny, full of relief, and also guilt, threw the General a shamefaced sideways glance and caught him scowling at the outgoing headmistress with such intent ferocity that for most of the rest of the interview she’d had to struggle very hard not to laugh.

So Fanny remembers the General with a mixture of awe, annoyance and some affectionate respect. More to the point she knows all about the beautiful, businesslike daughter-in-law Jo Maxwell McDonald, and her ravishingly attractive husband Charlie, because she has read about them in magazines. Since opening their famous Retreat a few years ago Charlie and Jo have both become minor celebrities themselves.

Anyway, Fanny isn’t used to speaking to people she’s read about in newspapers. She’s a little disconcerted. ‘Hello, new neighbour,’ she says goofily. ‘How lovely. Thank you.’

‘That is Fanny Flynn, isn’t it?’ Jo says briskly. ‘Our new head teacher? Is that Fanny Flynn?’

‘Yes. Sorry. Being silly. Yes, this is Fanny.’

‘Only I thought it might all be terribly chaotic, since you’ve just arrived, and I wondered if you might like a bit of lunch…Plus I’ve got a small proposition to put to you. Hope you don’t mind.’

‘Ooh. Very intriguing!’ Immediately Fanny pictures herself tipping up at the famous Manor, still in her worn-out combats and dirty trainers, her shaggy mop of curly hair unwashed for over a week. She imagines sitting down to eat at an enormous mahogany dining table; Fanny Flynn (and Brute of course), Jo and Charlie Maxwell McDonald – and whichever glamorous, wicked celebrities they have staying up there today.

But then she looks around her at the peeling wallpaper. She notices the skirting board at her feet is sprouting mushrooms. ‘I’d love to, and I’d love to hear your proposition, whatever it may be, but really I can’t, not today,’ she says sadly. ‘There’s so much to do in here, and term starts tomorrow. I really ought to—’

‘Plus actually, while you’re on the line, I should remind you about the limbo evening on Friday night. You’ve heard about it, haven’t you?’

‘The limbo evening? No. I must admit—’

‘That’s what was worrying me, you see. I put a thing through your door but perhaps you haven’t had time—It’s in the village hall. Mrs Hooper – you’ll meet her, she lives at the post office – she’s brought in a man all the way from Exeter to teach us, and I’m terrified no one’s going to turn up.’

‘Oh, I’ll come,’ Fanny says cheerfully. ‘Why not? What time does it start?’

‘Six thirty. Very early. Everything starts terribly early in Fiddleford, God knows why.’

‘Keeps us out of the pub, I suppose.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Nothing.’

‘In any case, it should be a good opportunity for you to—’ But her children’s playful yells have by now reached a pitch which even their highly focused mother can no longer ignore. ‘Oh God, hang on a moment—’

Fanny peers at her crop of mushrooms and listens idly while Jo, with stirring management skills, brokers a moment’s silence from her two-and-a-half-year-old twins.

‘Sorry, Fanny.’ She comes back to the telephone. ‘Where was I?’

‘A good opportunity, I think.’

‘Exactly. It’s such a good opportunity for you to meet people. Tickets are only £3 and you have to bring your own drink, but don’t worry about that because we’ll be bringing plenty. And £1 goes towards repairing the disabled ramp in the churchyard. So it’s all in a good cause. What are you up to right now? Shall I come and fetch you in the car? You won’t want to run the gauntlet of that horrible wolf-pack at the gate, and lunch is more or less on the table. Why don’t I come down and pick you up?’

‘No, really, Jo. I can’t—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s no trouble at all. I’ll be down in three minutes. And it’s vegetarian, by the way. It’s always vegetarian with the children. Obviously. So no need to worry about that!’

3

There are no wicked celebrities in Fiddleford Manor’s worn and welcoming old kitchen that day; only the two rumbustious children and the elegantly jean-clad Jo, looking just as she does in the magazines, Fanny thinks. Possibly slightly better. She is long, lean and fit, clear eyed and clear skinned, and her sunkissed, clean brown hair is cut into a perfectly understated short, shaggy bob. She makes Fanny feel short, and as though she ought to have taken that bath this morning.

‘No one else? Only us?’ Fanny asks, peering hopefully round the corner of the door. But Jo explains (and she is infuriatingly discreet about who’s staying) that Retreat guests usually pay extra to eat in a private dining room at Grey McShane’s Gatehouse Restaurant at the bottom of the drive. ‘Thank goodness!’ she laughs. ‘In the early days we never had any privacy at all!’

So while Fanny sits at the large oak table pushing saltfree kidney-bean salad from one side of her plate to the other and feeling dirty, there are only the twins to distract Jo from providing an uninterrupted run-down of who’s who in the village.

‘So,’ asks Jo with a malicious glint in her eye, ‘what do you make of your new landlord, Mr Guppy?’

Fanny’s met Ian Guppy only once, back in March, when he showed her round the cottage. He is tiny – hardly taller than she is, with greased-back jet black hair and a gypsyweathered face. She pictures him, leaning his filthy trousers against the dilapidated Alms Cottage kitchen sink and leering at her. She agreed to pay rent well over the odds solely so she wouldn’t have to continue talking to him. ‘Horrible,’ she says bluntly. ‘What a creep.’

Jo nods. ‘And you should meet the wife. They bought those Old Alms Cottages off my father-in-law in the early seventies, and I don’t think they’ve done a thing to them since. But one of these days,’ she smiles, ‘if I have anything to do with it, we’re going to get them back.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘We need them, for the business. We need the office space.’

She and Jo are more or less the same age and yet Fanny – with her lack of twins, lack of thriving business, lack of representation in the tabloids, lack of outstandingly beautiful Queen Anne manor house, lack of direction, or of any serious acquisitive urges, lack of husband, lack of inches in the leg – feels a whole evolutionary species behind her. By the time the sugar-free herbal teas arrive Fanny’s spirit is buckling. Jo still hasn’t mentioned her proposition, and Fanny can’t help wondering what she could possibly do for Jo Maxwell McDonald that Jo Maxwell McDonald couldn’t do better for herself.

‘…I don’t know how she finds the time to organise it, what with the coffee ads, and all the boozing,’ Jo burbles on, ‘but the Fiddleford Dramatic Society is surprisingly good, thanks to her. They did The Importance of Being Earnest last summer. It was actually very funny. We had the soap star Julia Biggleton staying with us at the Retreat at the time. Remember her? We had her playing Lady Bracknell down in the village hall! You should have seen the press! She’s the one—’

‘Do you know, Jo,’ Fanny bursts out, suddenly desperate to keep her own end up, ‘that tomorrow, when I start work, I’m going to be the youngest primary school head teacher in the whole of the south-west of England.’

‘Hmm?’

And then Fanny blushes, and laughs. ‘Crikey. Did I really say that?’

‘Well, actually,’ says Jo, not missing a beat, ‘I’m glad you mention it, because it’s just the sort of thing I wanted to talk to you about. Basically, Fanny—Have you got a minute?’ She doesn’t wait to be assured. She tells Fanny about her background in PR. ‘Before I married Charlie,’ she says, ‘and became this dreadful sort of country bumpkin—’

‘You!’ interrupts Fanny with a burst of laughter. ‘A country bumpkin?’

Jo shrugs. She knows she isn’t really. ‘I used to work in a big PR company in London. Used to represent nightclubs, restaurants, personalities. All very glamorous, I suppose. In retrospect…Anyway, it’s pretty much how I – we – Charlie and I came to be doing this. I mean, it’s one of the reasons why we thought of turning this place into a celebrity retreat.’

‘I know,’ Fanny smiles. ‘I’ve read all about it. Like most people in Britain.’

‘Right.’ Jo nods. Smiles. ‘But now the Retreat more or less runs itself and I want to broaden the business out a bit. Take on new clients.’ She pauses for a small breath, leans a little closer. ‘And what I want to do now, Fanny, is to use my public-relations skills, absolutely free of charge, to help you and your school!’

‘Oh. That’s very kind,’ Fanny says vaguely. The idea doesn’t excite her much.

‘Not kind. Absolutely mutually beneficial. If I can show potential clients what I can do with a relatively high-profile, local issue like this one, well—’

‘It’s just that public relations isn’t an especially high priority – for me, anyway. I think what we need—’

‘Everything needs public relations, Fanny. Especially a school that’s just been named-and-shamed! Unless you can persuade people that the school’s turning itself around you’re going to get every bright parent pulling their children out, and you’ll be left with nothing but the dregs. I mean, you know. Not the dregs, but the—’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘Right. And you’ll be sunk. Finished. Not only that, the General’s convinced that what they really want is to close the place down. But it’s the heart of the village, Fanny. And, speaking selfishly for a minute, I’d like the twins to go there one day. I certainly don’t want it closing.’

‘Of course you don’t.’

‘See? And I mean here you are, this young whizz-kid head teacher—’

Fanny laughs out loud. ‘Hardly!’

‘—Has anyone told the press? Of course they haven’t. And yet it’s the sort of thing local media goes mad for.’

‘Oh!’ Fanny says quickly. ‘Oh, no. No, thanks.’

But Jo is already up and rifling through the dresser for a pen. ‘Plus with you being pretty and so on. They’re going to adore you.’

‘No. No, I really don’t—’

‘Trust me, Fanny. I know what I’m talking about. That’s if—’ She stops suddenly and turns back to Fanny. ‘I take it you are serious about saving our school?’

‘What? Of course I am.’

‘I mean, you do realise, don’t you, how much people around here really care about that school surviving?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Well, then!’

‘It’s just—’

‘What?’

‘It’s just—’ She offers an unconvincing laugh. ‘You know, great if you want to put out a few nice stories about the school. That would be great. Just keep me out of it. I don’t like personal—There are people I don’t want—’ Fanny stops again. But she really doesn’t want to be drawn into details. ‘Basically, I don’t want my face in the paper.’

‘Why? What are you hiding from?’

‘No one. Nothing. I didn’t say that.’

Jo laughs. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’

‘Plus I’ve got a lot of unpaid parking tickets…’ Fanny lapses into gloomy silence. She turns away from Jo’s neat, determined face, to the open kitchen window. The birds are singing out there and a delicious, soft breeze is blowing through the giant cedar tree. She gazes out at the park and, beyond it, to the afternoon sun on the river and the distant tower of Fiddleford’s church, and her old terrors seem briefly very distant, even a little ridiculous.

The desire to be outside, on the other hand, alone, striding through that fresh, bright grass, is altogether more immediate; in fact, it’s suddenly quite overwhelming. She stands up. ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘I should be getting off. I’ve got a lot to do. Come on, Brute!…And thanks so much for a lovely lunch…It was really…absolutely…’ But she can’t quite bring herself to finish off with the customary ‘delicious’: ‘Very nice to meet you and the twins.’ Fanny is already reaching for the door.

‘I’ll make a couple of calls then,’ Jo says, standing up. ‘Get them writing something positive about our school for a change.’

‘But please – try and keep me out of it.’

‘I’ll try, but I can’t promise.’ Jo giggles suddenly. ‘You obviously hadn’t been warned.’

‘What about?’

‘Most people refuse to eat lunch here any more.’

‘They do? Why?’

‘Because of the food, of course. Too healthy for them! By the way,’ Jo shouts after her. ‘Hope you haven’t too many skeletons in the cupboard. Along with all the parking tickets! They’ll be coming after you now you’re going to be famous.’

‘Not funny,’ mutters Fanny. ‘Not funny at all.’

But Jo is spooning soya into her twins’ neatly opened mouths. She doesn’t hear.

Fanny calls Louis, her oldest and closest friend, as soon as she gets in from the Manor. She leaves a message on his machine, sounding more cheerful than she feels, emphasising the quaintly rustic attractions of her new village, and inviting – or possibly imploring – him to come down for the weekend.

After that she feeds Brute and sets to work. She works for several hours without stopping, with the same ferocious energy with which she does everything: teaches, flirts, drinks, and even once fell in love. She pulls down the nicotinestained net curtains, washes the windows, rips away what is left of the wallpaper, scrapes off the mushrooms and throws the junk mail out. She scrubs the skirting boards with disinfectant, and the 1950s oven, the 1950s kitchen sink, the 1950s basin and bath upstairs, so that they dazzle with shiny-white retro-chic. She pulls up the dank, sickcoloured carpets and discovers there are oak floorboards underneath.

By eight o’clock she has unloaded everything from the Morris Minor except what’s on the roof: her solitary piece of furniture, a vile, thirty-year-old reproduction dressing table left to her (along with the car itself) by her late grandmother and which she longs, one day, to be heartless enough to throw out. She is standing in her front garden beside the mountain of discarded carpet, gazing at the van and puzzling over how to get that final piece inside when she spots two magnificent-looking men strolling down the village street towards her. She recognises them both at once.

Charlie Maxwell McDonald – owner of the Fiddleford Manor Retreat, son to the truculent General, father to the rumbustious twins and husband to Perfect Jo, tall, dark and absurdly handsome – is, Fanny realises with a thrill of excitement, like his wife, every bit as good-looking as his photographs. He has his hands in the pockets of his old black jeans and the buttons of his pale cotton shirt half-undone…And he is muttering to a man even taller than he is, and even darker, with hooded eyes and wild hair and a great black coat which swings open behind him: a man whose press photographs do him no justice at all. Grey McShane, the notorious tramp-turned-poet-turned-pin-up-proprietor of Fiddleford’s Gatehouse Restaurant, is possibly the best-looking man Fanny Flynn has ever laid eyes on. She feels, suddenly, as though she’s walked on to the set of a soft-porn movie. Any second now, God bless them both, the men are going to start stripping their clothes off.

‘Hi there,’ Charlie says, drawing to a halt in front of her.

She stares at him. Tries to stop the soundtrack in her head and manages, somehow, not to smirk.

‘You must be Fanny Flynn,’ he says. ‘I’m Charlie Maxwell McDonald. From the Retreat. And this is Grey…’ He looks at her curiously. ‘My wife thought you might need some help unloading things. Are you all right?’

Fanny laughs. And hates herself for it.

‘What’s funny?’ asks Grey.

Fanny says, ‘Nothing. It was just, you know, coming towards me there.’ She grins at them. ‘Had to pinch myself. Thought I was dreaming!’ Clearly they don’t understand. ‘I mean I thought I was in a magazine…Or something. I mean – not a magazine, but a – you’re quite a striking couple…I mean, not couple. But together…’

The job barely takes a minute, and afterwards both turn down her offer of a drink. When they leave her alone in her newly scrubbed cottage she feels unreasonably let down. Lonely. Did she flirt too much? Probably. She usually does. She can’t help imagining them now: Charlie and exquisite Jo, having a drink together in their exquisite house, putting their exquisitely rumbustious twins to bed; and then Grey, rampaging around the kitchen of his celebrated restaurant, lovingly preparing an exquisitely delicious dinner for his no doubt exquisite wife.

It is only half past eight. She hasn’t eaten (there is nothing to eat) and Louis still hasn’t rung, but she has had enough of today. She picks up a worn-out file with the exhausting words ‘NEW JOBS: APPLICATIONS/ ACCEPTED ETC.’ scrawled across the front, pours herself a dusty tumbler of red wine and takes them up with her to bed. She will have a bath in the morning.

4

Fanny Flynn met her husband while they were waiting to be served at the bar of a pub just outside Buxton and they fell in love at once. There and then. Six weeks later they had treated themselves to a spontaneous Wedding Day package in Reno, Nevada.

But the marriage turned sour within moments of their leaving the Wedding Chapel. It ended abruptly, three bitter months after it never should have begun.

They were fighting as normal when he suddenly broke the single civilising rule left between them. He lashed out. He kicked her in the stomach – and fled, tears in his eyes, jointly owned credit card in his hands. ‘I’ll come back for you,’ he said wildly. ‘I will. When it’s safe for us. OK? And I’ll always be with you, baby, in my heart. Because I love you. I always will.’

‘You’re a nutter,’ she said in amazement, seeing it all – there and then – in a flash of horrible clarity. He wasn’t poetic, he was insane. And she passed out.

It was Louis who found her – unconscious, blood from her damaged womb congealing on the kitchen floor, and the husband who loved her nowhere to be seen. Louis laid her down in the back of his van. She slid from side to side between dust sheets, tyre jacks, paint pots and coils of rope. (He was working as a freelance decorator at the time.) He crashed every light between her house and the hospital, but he probably saved her life.

That was in 1994, eleven years ago now, and he hasn’t come back for her. She’s moved many times. (Too many; since the marriage she has found it very difficult to stay still.) She moved from Buxton to London, four or five times in London, then from London to a refugee camp in northern Kenya, where she worked for a year, and from there to Lichfield, from Lichfield to Mexico City, where she taught businessmen to speak English; from Mexico City to Weston-Super-Mare, and now to Fiddleford. She tries to forget him. Yet, still, wherever she is, whenever it’s dark and she’s alone, the questions flit through her mind: Has he followed? Is he out there? Is he looking in?

She never mentions him to anyone, except to Louis, but she believes that he sometimes tries to communicate. And it frightens her. There was an anonymous valentine card in Lichfield: a picture of roses speckled with yellow-brown drops of dried blood, and tucked inside it a message linking American Imperialism with Cryogenics, with Fanny’s ‘Frozen Passion, unstarched by eternality’. She threw the card in the bin.

Then in London she thought she saw him leaning against a postbox outside her flat. She closed the windows, locked them, and called Louis, who rushed over on his new motorbike. By the time Louis arrived the man was gone. He asked her if she had been certain. She wasn’t, of course. But the following week Fanny moved yet again.

And finally, in Weston-Super-Mare, there was the puppy – sitting in a cardboard box and dumped inexplicably on her doorstep. She had picked it up, thought she smelt him and gagged. But she was lonely. She kept the puppy – it was a cross between a golden Labrador and something mysterious. It was small and wiry, and it was very charming. She called him Brute. Now of course, except for Louis, Brute is probably her best friend in the world.

5

She wakes up having dreamt of him again, as she often does at the start of her New Beginnings. She dreams of him turning up at every new front door, with a stupid grin, as if she’d be pleased to see him, and a pathetic little offering – a box of cheap chocolates, a jigsaw puzzle – as if that would make up for it all. Usually, in her dreams, she doesn’t let him into the house. But last night, for some reason, she did. He was coming through her door, stepping over her mushrooms, just as the alarm clock went off. So she wakes up in a nervous sweat. When she opens her eyes and looks around her new, small room, she remembers the day which lies ahead, and feels a lurch of a very different kind of terror. She springs out of bed.

For her first day at Fiddleford Primary Fanny puts on the clothes she always wears on the first few days of a new job; a newly washed knee-length denim skirt (her only skirt in the world) which, for the moment, fits like rubber, and a dark blue polo-neck jersey. The effect is unfussy, like everything about her; simple and attractive, quite sexy, and scruffy. Fanny always looks scruffy. She can’t help it.

Feeling faintly sick with nerves she forces down half a cup of black coffee (still no milk in the house), picks up her bag of heavy files, takes a deep breath and steps out from her little cottage, which smells of yesterday’s disinfectant, and out into the sweet, fresh morning air of the village street.

The school is a small, russet stone Victorian building, pretty and symmetrical, with a broken bell tower in the middle, and just two large, arched windows at the front. Three gates open on to the front yard. The one on the right is marked BOYS, the one on the left, GIRLS. The middle one, non-specific, is the only one unlocked. Everyone uses it.

It’s as pretty a little school, Fanny thinks as she draws up in front of it, as any little school could ever hope to be. She feels a swell of warm pride. It looks more like a school in a story book. Nothing too alarming could possibly happen inside such a place.

Children scurry around her, nudging each other and giggling. Fanny ignores them – for the moment. She looks at her feet. Doesn’t want to speak to any parents just yet. Nor to anyone. She takes one more long, slow breath, mutters something to Brute about his wishing her luck, and pushes on, through the yard, up the path, into the central hall and right, to the door of the staff room. Pauses for a second. Opens it.

‘Morning all!’ she says, sounding unnaturally breezy.

The youngest head teacher in the south-west does not have a large staff to manage. There is Robert White, who wears a patchy beard and socks beneath open-toed sandals. He is the notoriously idle deputy head, still too idle to resign after being overlooked for promotion, but not, Fanny will soon discover, too idle to feel bitter and obstructive as a result of it. Robert teaches the younger class – when he turns up. There are the only two classes in the school.

There is also a part-time teacher’s assistant, Mrs Tardy; an elderly secretary, Mrs Haywood, who entertains the children occasionally (or so legend has it) by popping her glass eye in and out; and a dinner lady playground attendant who doubles up as caretaker.

The playground attendant/caretaker was a pupil here herself not so long ago, and she still has a brother and several cousins at the school. She is Tracey Guppy, the nine-teen-year-old daughter of Fanny’s landlord, Ian, the same girl who used to keep Robert White awake at night (his attention has shifted now to a girl in the Lamsbury Safeways). Tracey Guppy doesn’t speak to Ian or to her mother, who threw her out of the house when she was fifteen. She’s been living ever since with her Uncle Russell, wheelchair bound as a result of emphysema. They live together in a council-owned bungalow directly opposite the school.

‘Morning all!’ Fanny says breezily.

But only half the staff is yet present: only Linda Tardy, the part-time teacher’s assistant, and Robert White the lazybones deputy head.

At the sight of the dog, Robert’s shoulders jolt in surprise, making the Lemsip he has been blowing to cool spill on to his sock-covered toe. ‘Ow!’ he says irritably, and then, apparently too preoccupied with the accident to look or stand up, adds a grudging and slightly pert ‘Good morning, Miss Flynn’ in the direction of the carpet.

He places the mug of Lemsip on the floor, lifts the damaged sandal on to his knee and carefully undoes the buckle.

‘No one else here yet?’ Fanny asks brightly, looking from Robert White to Linda Tardy and back again. Linda, who is trying to swallow a mouthful of the same fish-paste sandwich she has vowed not to touch before lunch, holds a hand in front of her jaw and shakes her head.

‘It’s usually a bit slow on the first day,’ mumbles Robert, removing the sandal and unrolling the sock. ‘And I’m afraid to say I’m only really popping in myself. I’m a bit under the weather.’ He examines his toe, which looks bony and a little damp, but otherwise undamaged, and stands, at last, to arrange the sock on a nearby heater. ‘I thought I should put a nose in, so to speak.’ He smiles at her, keeping his pink lips closed. He is skinny, in his mid-forties, with eyes of the palest blue, and thin sandy-coloured hair cut into a well-kept bob. He is surprisingly tall when he stands up, Fanny notices; over six foot, or he would be if he pulled his shoulders back. ‘I’ll nip back to bed later,’ he continues, ‘but I wanted to say welcome…So –’ with a burst of energy he flaps open one of the long thin arms and winks at her, ‘welcome!’ he says.

‘Thank you.’ It is unfortunate for Robert, especially since this is their first meeting (Robert having been off sick on the two previous occasions she visited the school and off sulking when the other governors were interviewing her for the job), but there’s almost nothing Fanny finds more irritating than a man with a well-kept bob, open-toed sandals and a cold. ‘Who’s going to take your class then?’

Robert looks taken aback. ‘Linda,’ he says, as if it’s obvious.

‘You mean Mrs Tardy?’

‘Linda always does it. They’re ever so used to her. The kiddies like you, don’t they, Linda?’

‘They like it with me because we always do the fun stuff,’ Linda Tardy chuckles, ‘and then when Robert’s back he has to do all the catching up for us, don’t you, Robbie?’

‘I do my best.’

‘Though generally,’ she adds, ‘there’s more to catch up on than he can manage. Isn’t that right, Robert? With you being poorly so much…But they’re lovely little children, and that’s what counts. Isn’t that right, Robert? They’re super kids.’

‘But Mrs Tardy,’ says Fanny, ‘if you don’t mind me being frank—’

‘Oh, say what you like, dear. Don’t worry about me!’

‘But you’re not a teacher.’

‘Oh, I know that, dear. It says it loud and clear in my pay packet every month!’ She rocks with laughter.

‘Well…’ Fanny hesitates. It’s a bit early to be throwing her weight around but she feels she can’t let it pass. She turns to Robert White. ‘I think,’ she says politely, ‘with the children being so behind, and with Mrs Tardy tending, as she says, to stick with the fun stuff – it might be a good idea to get a supply teacher in, don’t you?’

‘It isn’t ordinarily a deputy’s duty,’ he says, ‘to administrate that sort of thing.’

‘Isn’t it? Wasn’t it? Well, it is now!’ Fanny forces a laugh. She’s not used to this; ordering grown men about. It’s awkward. ‘Anyway, Robert, Mr White, to be frank – you don’t exactly look like you’re dying…Couldn’t you stick around, now you’ve made it this far? As it’s my first day. Would you mind?’

‘I had no idea,’ he says pertly, ‘that our esteemed employers now insisted we should be dying before we’re allowed time off sick.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘And the last thing I want is to feel responsible for the kiddies catching my germs.’

‘Children,’ Fanny says, ‘are pretty resilient.’

‘In my experience, parents tend to be not unduly impressed by the sort of staff who insist on spreading their germs around. And if the parents complain—’

‘Yes, but they won’t,’ she says.

There are blotches of pink at his cheek-bones. ‘But they might,’ he says.

‘Well,’ there are blotches at hers, too, ‘then I’m willing to risk that.’

A long silence. It’s a battle of wills. She may be young and small and new and female and disconcertingly attractive, but it begins fuzzily to occur to Robert that she might not be the pushover Mrs Thomas had been. They stare at each other, until finally, with a huffy, superior shrug, Robert nods.

‘Thank you,’ Fanny grins at him. ‘You’re very kind. Thank you very much.’ Without another word he picks up his briefcase, bulging with exercise books he has failed to mark over the Easter holidays, and leaves the room.

With a great sigh of relief Fanny throws herself into the beaten-up, brown-covered armchair beside Mrs Tardy’s. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘That wasn’t at all how I’d intended to begin.’

‘The thing is, what I’ve learnt in my experience, Miss Flynn, we all have to begin somehow,’ replies Linda Tardy nonsensically, but kindly, patting Fanny on the knee. ‘But you mustn’t mind Robert. He has his ways. And the main thing is, we’ve got some really super kids here at Fiddleford.’ She nods to herself. Safe on safe ground. ‘That’s the main thing. Super kids. That’s right, isn’t it, dear? Now then,’ slowly she heaves herself up from her seat, ‘we’ve got a few minutes. How about I make you a nice cup of coffee?’

‘I’d love some coffee,’ Miss Flynn says. ‘And please, Mrs Tardy, call me Fanny.’

Linda Tardy hesitates. ‘It’s a strange name though, isn’t it, Miss Flynn?’ She gives one of her bosomy chuckles. ‘Not one you’d wish on a girl these days. Not really. You never thought of changing it, I suppose?’

6

The school hall is light and airy, with worn wooden floors, high ceilings and enormous windows set high in whitepainted brick walls. Like the two classrooms on either side of it, it is clean and handsome but strangely bare; there are hardly any children’s paintings anywhere, or charts, or wall displays. Robert’s classroom has nothing at all except a laminated sign which reads:

Fanny sits, for the moment, swinging her feet over the edge of the school hall’s tiny stage and feeling a mite peculiar. The children, all thirty-seven of them, all cross-legged on the linoleum before her, gaze up, placidly expectant, each one entrusting their fate to her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if she had a clue what she was really meant to be doing with it.

This is her first assembly and, although there will be complaints about it later, she has decided on the spur of that moment to tell the students of the shadow which hangs over their school’s future. It seems only fair, she thinks, that they should know as much as she does. ‘So you see,’ she says emphatically, ‘I don’t think we’ve got all that much time. And unless we can totally and completely –’ in her zeal her shoulders, her entire body, give an unconscious leap of enthusiasm, and the children chortle, they like her; children always do, ‘transform this place, work some kind of miracle and somehow improve every single thing about it, well then—’

The door is kicked open by a gangly boy in loose-fitting Nike nylon. He stands facing her, arms crossed and legs apart. He can’t be more than eleven or he wouldn’t still be at the school, but he’s tall for his age.

‘O’right, miss?’ he says. His voice is breaking.

‘Thank you. I’m OK,’ she says brightly. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

‘Eh?’

‘“Eh?”…I said why don’t you—’

‘Yeah, I know. But what if I don’t want to?’

Fanny looks at him briefly and shrugs. She turns back to the other children, leaving him standing there, bewildered, brimming with thwarted urges. ‘So the thing is,’ she continues, ‘unless we all decide to make a massive effort—’

‘And my mum says it’s disgusting as well, because I know what your name is, and it’s disgusting. Your name’s Fanny.’

Fanny smiles. ‘And what’s your name?’ she asks. There is something vaguely familiar about him.

‘Never mind what my name is. I tell you it ain’t John Thomas! At least I ain’t called penis!’

A wave of uncertain laughter.

‘That’s very fanny,’ she nods. More laughter. ‘You are a fanny boy. Well done.’ She’s made a similar joke at every school she’s ever worked at. ‘We were talking about how a lot of influential people think this school is utterly useless and that unless we can prove them wrong, it may one day have to be closed down,’ Fanny continues. ‘Aren’t you interested in that? Wouldn’t you like to see the school close down for ever?’

‘Of course I would.’

‘Well, if you sit down and shut up you might get a few hints on how to bring it about.’

Fanny doesn’t show her astonishment when he sits. She’s good at that. Instead she leans forward. ‘Basically,’ she says conspiratorially, and without missing a beat, ‘for those of us who want it not to close, this is the plan…’

They wait.

‘John Thomas, you should pay attention of course, because you’ll be wanting to do the opposite…’

That first morning goes well, she thinks. In spite of the local radio reporter who pitched up at break demanding to speak to her, claiming Jo Maxwell McDonald had assured him it would be OK. (Fanny finally agreed. She dispatched him with a harmless little interview, and managed, or so she believed, to make herself sound relatively professional. Incredibly professional actually, since every time the reporter had referred to Fiddleford’s ‘head teacher’, she’d had to pause for a millisecond to work out who the hell he was talking about.) In any case the interview went out live, so she didn’t have to suffer the discomfort of listening to it.

Her children, all seventeen who made up her class (and what a luxury that was!) seem bright, and for the most part, gratifyingly energised by the prospect of joining forces to save the school. They have peppered their morning’s lessons with suggestions on ways to keep the place open.

Having kicked off with some sensible maths problems, and gazed, while they counted quietly on fingers and thumbs, around her barren white classroom, Fanny had suddenly burst out, ‘Oh, it’s horrible in here!’

There was a moment of astonished silence. They stared at her, and at her dog, vacantly wagging its tail against the leg of her desk. And laughed.

‘Isn’t it, though? Don’t you think? It’s like an operating theatre. We’ll all drop dead from boredom if we sit in here a moment longer. What shall we do to brighten the place up?’

There followed a passionate class discussion, after which she set them to making a frieze of Fiddleford, an enormous one, with each pupil painting a part of the village they liked best.

It had been lovely. A lovely morning. Now her first lunch-hour is drawing to an end and she’s gazing out of the window of her tiny, upstairs office feeling unusually pleased with herself. She can see her pupils racing around in the sunny playing fields, and beyond the children the village of Fiddleford nestling around its church – and beyond the village, the river and the cedar tree rising majestically from the Manor Retreat park. It’s beautiful; the way the English country is meant to look.

She finds herself daring to wonder if this new job might indeed turn out to be the new beginning she has been hoping for. A possibility, she realises with a start, which had never seriously occurred to her until now. But she likes this little school, the pretty village, the good-looking neighbours, her tiny ivy-covered cottage…It is a peculiarly happy moment, immediately interrupted by a feeble tap on her office door.

‘Come in, come in!’ she cries bravely, since she’s already caught a whiff of Lemsip and knows perfectly well who to expect. ‘Hello, Mr White – Robert!’ she smiles. There are little red marks around the edges of his nostrils. He looks pale and stubborn and intolerably self-pitying. ‘Feeling any better? You look much better!’

Robert feels robbed of many things as he turns the corner into her office: robbed of this room and that desk, robbed of her salary, robbed of her job, and above all, above everything else, robbed of his right to spend the morning in bed. So he says nothing. He wraps his two hands around the hot mug of Lemsip, hunches his shoulders and regretfully shakes his head.

‘Sit yourself down!’ says Fanny, jumping up and pulling out a second chair.

With the two of them and Brute in the room, it’s a struggle to make enough space. Robert stands by, shivering and watching, while Fanny heaves a battered filing cabinet to one side. ‘I’m glad you came, actually,’ she pants, ‘I wanted to talk about the walls. Why are they so bare? Why is there nothing on your classroom walls?’

He’s not interested in walls. ‘The fact is, Miss Flynn—’

‘For heaven’s sake, call me Fanny.’

The chair prepared, Robert carefully lowers himself on to it. ‘The fact is, Fanny…’

Fanny has turned her own chair away from her desk so she can face him. It leaves them without any space at all. They both shuffle their bodies backwards, but the chairs, her desk, the filing cabinets are jammed together. There is absolutely no room for manoeuvre.

‘Oops,’ says Fanny, laughing, ‘sorry. Bit of a squash! Perhaps we’d be better off standing?’

‘Standing? Where?’ asks Robert facetiously. He has her knees trapped between his long bony legs and it’s nice. It’s nice. Besides which he has a cold. He’s not feeling very well. So he stays put. ‘Fanny, as you know, the last thing I want is for you to get an impression that I’m letting you down,’ he says, ‘but I have to tell you I’m feeling pretty dreadful. I’m almost certain I’ve got a temperature. I really ought to be in bed.’

Without thinking, as if he were one of her pupils, Fanny leans over and puts a hand to his forehead. ‘You don’t feel like you have a temperature,’ she says. ‘Perhaps you’re just hot. Why don’t you take one of your jerseys off?’

She glances at his face, flashes him a brief, busy smile. And for one ghastly second their eyes lock. Fanny looks away. But it’s too late.

There it is in the room between them: a tiny spark, the smallest flicker – it’s not attraction (certainly not on Fanny’s part), only a faint, disturbing recognition of their different genders. Fanny drops her hand at once. She stands up and tries, as elegantly as possible, and with minimal contact, to create some kind of gulf between them.

She has to clamber over his bony thighs.

‘Bother,’ she says irritably, nearly treading on Brute with her free foot and then having to grasp hold of Robert’s shoulder to recover balance. ‘It really is bloody cramped in here. I’m going to open the window.’

Robert watches her confusion with sly enjoyment and doesn’t bother to help. ‘I’m ever so sorry, Fanny,’ he says. ‘But you know what it’s like with these colds…’ He smiles at her, keeping the pink lips closed.

‘I do,’ snaps Fanny, free at last, grasping the window latch in relief. She opens the window, turns back to him with a forced smile of sympathy. ‘Bloody awful. You poor thing. But couldn’t you just hang on until school finishes? And then after school you can go straight to bed and you’ll probably feel so much better in the morning…’

Outside, Tracey Guppy, the nineteen-year-old caretaker/dinner lady, rings her bell. Lunch-break is over.

Robert looks quietly at his hands.

‘Please, Robert,’ Fanny says, ‘I know it’s awkward, me storming in here, taking a job which you probably feel – probably rightly feel…’

Robert purses his mouth.

‘But I need your help…to get this school back on its feet.’

Robert’s chapped white hands clench tight around the Lemsip.

‘Not that you haven’t already done so much for the school, I’m sure. But we need to work together…’

A silence between them. Robert sits, thinking, his long thin legs neatly folded in the space where Fanny had once been. She stands by the window waiting for his decision, wondering if she should stop begging and begin to flatter, or stop flattering, if that’s what she’s doing, and start to bully. She has no idea. She’s never been a boss before. Not to an adult. Not to a chippy, insecure male. And looking at Robert, she has her first blinding flash of just how complicated it’s going to be.

The telephone rings. Fanny hesitates. She has no choice but to stretch across him to pick it up.

‘There’s a gentleman here says he’s an old friend. Says he just heard you on the wireless,’ Mrs Haywood the glass-eyed secretary growls into her ear. ‘Of course, they’ll all be coming out of the woodwork now.’

‘Oh!’ A flicker of fear.

‘He wants to talk to you about it—’

‘No! I mean, no. Sorry. I’m a bit busy at the moment, Mrs Haywood. Could you—’ But Mrs Haywood has already put him through. ‘Hello?’

She hears the laugh. She recognises the laugh. ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he says. ‘Remember me?’

She throws down the receiver as if it’s burnt her. Stares at the telephone. All the colour has drained from her face.

‘Hey,’ says Robert, jolted briefly to concern. ‘What’s up? Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine.’ She’s still staring.

‘Who was that?’ Robert asks.

‘No one. Nothing. I’m fine.’ She tries to collect herself. But then it starts ringing again and she leaps immediately away.

‘Hey,’ he says, almost kindly. He puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK. What’s up?’ He nods at the telephone. ‘Do you want me to answer it?’

‘No. Don’t. I mean, yes, do. Answer it! Answer it!’

He leans across her for the receiver: ‘He-llo?’ he says. ‘Thank you, Mrs Haywood. Fiddleford Primary? Can I help you?’ And listens a minute. Fanny scrutinises his face. And then, ‘Oh, yes.’ Smile. ‘That would have been myself…I requested a supply teacher for this afternoon…’ Another pause. A show of heroic stoicism. He looks across at Fanny and shakes his head. ‘Mmm, actually no,’ he says at last. ‘On second thoughts, not to worry. No. But thanks for getting back. I’m going to battle on today, after all.’ He winks at Fanny. ‘If I can…Yes…Looks like there’s a young lady here in need of a little help! First-day jitters…Yes…Nothing serious!’ He laughs. ‘I’ll give you a call tomorrow, yes? Depending on how I feel…Thanks ever so much, Sally. It is Sally, isn’t it? Super. Bye-bye.’

He hangs up and slowly, meticulously, with a secret smile hovering over those lips, he uncoils his long bony body until he is on his feet again. He looks down at Fanny, who is too ashamed to ask him any details about the call. ‘As it’s your first day, Fanny, I’m going to make an exception, and sweat it out until home time. OK? But you should know this is not a precedent. Working in this kind of hyper-stressful environment, we teachers have a responsibility to look after ourselves.’ He pauses in front of her as he passes to the door. ‘And that includes you, young lady.’ She can feel his hot Lemsip breath on her cheek. ‘You and I won’t be doing the kiddies any favours if we go forgetting that…So relax, OK?’ He motions at the telephone. ‘It’s not going to bite!’

‘Of course not,’ she says. ‘Thank you, Robert.’

‘My pleasure,’ he says, and winks.

7

While Robert relaxes at home, nursing his long thin body back to full strength, Fanny works harder than she ever has before. She teaches morning and afternoon and spends the evenings at home, alone at her kitchen table, wading dutifully through school paperwork. It occurs to her at the end of her third solid six-hour stint that she’s made no noticeable dent in the stack of papers still waiting to be dealt with: she could spend the rest of her life filling in forms and then what? Some poor sod would only have to process them. She picks them up and stuffs them tidily into a damp cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. To be looked at another day. In the future.

And even then Fanny can’t quite bring herself to stop worrying. Instead of calling friends, or sitting in the pub getting drunk with the locals, as she had previously imagined she would spend evenings in her new bucolic life, she puts brushes, paint pots and a long folding ladder into the back of the Morris Minor mini van, drives through the village to the school, and she stays up most of the night painting the central assembly room bright yellow.

Friday arrives – the day, as everyone in Fiddleford would tell you, of the great limbo cotillion. Fanny and her seventeen pupils, as a result of a deal cracked earlier in the week, spend the day dedicated to their village mural, which, by mid-afternoon, takes up an entire wall-and-a-half of her classroom. It’s a multi-spangled, multi-styled, glorious, uneven affair, and it transforms the room, just as Fanny had hoped it would.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Fanny announces, standing back to admire. ‘But CARTOGRAPHERS might find the total DISREGARD for any kind of CONSISTENT SCALE, quite INFURIATING…if not altogether INTOLERABLE.’ Her pupils write the words on the board and compete with each other to see who can use which one most effectively in conversation.

And so on. Fanny’s a good teacher. The children aren’t accustomed to being taught by someone with so much energy, so little regard for dreary adult protocols, and with a dog called Brute. They think she’s wonderful.

By the time they leave her alone, at the end of Friday, she is truly exhausted. Exhausted and, with the building quiet at last, even a little flat. She’s thought of nothing but the school since she walked into the building that first morning of term. And now it’s the weekend. Now what?

Somewhere on her desk, under the piles of paperwork, lies Mrs Haywood’s extended list of telephone callers, among them, calling for a second time, an ex-boyfriend from teacher training who was driving through the area and heard the radio interview; also Jo, who heard the radio interview; her mother, calling from her retirement flat in southern Spain, who hadn’t, and a triumphant message from her previous landlord, announcing he had discovered a coffee stain in the bedroom and would therefore be withholding her £950 deposit. But still no message from bloody Louis.

So. Unless she can make a friend at the village hall tonight, or she gets lucky with another call-up to eat sodium-free pulses at the Manor, she faces spending the rest of the weekend alone. Which is OK. Of course…

Slowly, more slowly than she needs to, Fanny first closes her office, and then locks up the school. (Tracey Guppy the caretaker won’t do it, having recently declared the building spooked her. She won’t go near it when it’s empty.) She heads out, turns down the lane towards the village and begins the short trudge home.

But the gloom soon leaves her. It would be very hard, after all, not to be soothed by such a commute. The air smells so sweet, and the sun is warm on her back. Before long she is plucking idly at the long grass by the side of the road, and her mind has buried itself in her work. She has plans – for the school, for her tiny cottage, for making new friends in the village. Hundreds of plans. She thinks about Robert White, who’s a lecher, she decides, on top of everything else, on top of being an overall creep. She makes a mental note to find out the union rules on lechers and skivers, wonders how she might ever be able to get rid of him. Reminds herself to buy paint for her front door. Red, perhaps. Or dark pink. And to dig out her copy of Tom’s Midnight Garden to read to the older children. She is far from unhappy.

8

Fanny’s put on make-up for the Fiddleford limbo: sweeping black lines around her large grey eyes, and a lot of lip gloss. She’s wearing a pair of very fitted low-slung jeans, a transparent grey silk shirt with the top four buttons undone and a fancy black bra on show underneath.

She’s pulled her curly, paint-speckled hair into a pony-tail to camouflage the fact that she still can’t be bothered to wash it, and on her feet she’s wearing trainers – suede and still quite clean. All in all the look she has gone for is not, perhaps, ideal for a village headmistress on the evening she first properly meets her students’ parents. But Fanny’s not yet used to being a village headmistress, so she doesn’t think of that.

She decides it would be a friendly gesture to take a bottle of vodka with her because in her experience a lot of people, herself included, prefer drinking spirits to wine. So, with a pack and a half of Marlboro Lights, and a bottle of vodka only short of a few shots, she heads out.

The village hall is a few minutes’ walk away, beside the council-owned bungalow (where Tracey Guppy lives with her uncle), and just opposite the school. It’s a dreary little building; a 1940s pebble-dashed hut, usually musty and empty, with a noticeboard outside advertising Wednesday Morning Bridge Club, Tuesday and Thursday Toddler Group, and not much else.

But that Friday evening it is throbbing. Fanny can hear the calypso beat, jaunty and foreign and completely incongruous, as soon as she steps out of her front door. In fact, though Fanny couldn’t have known it, Fiddleford village hall hasn’t seen so much action since the previous summer, when half the nation’s hacks squeezed in to witness the famous soap star Julia Biggleton (staying at the Manor Retreat after being outed as a transsexual) attempt to resuscitate her career by playing Lady Bracknell in Fiddleford Dramatic Society’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

This evening there is no Julia Biggleton expected. And yet by the time Fanny arrives, half an hour late, there must be sixty people standing awkwardly around that pebble-dashed hut, wishing they were somewhere else. It is an unlikely crowd for a limbo dance. At least half the people present are over seventy and by the look of them, too creaky even to stand for more than a few minutes without having to call for an ambulance. But a social occasion in a small village, even if it must include bending backwards under poles, is something the majority would be unwilling to miss. Needs must, as Jo would say. In the country. Needs must.

Fanny, of course, knows hardly anyone. She pauses at the door, vodka in hand, and casts a hopeful eye over the crowd. She sees old General Maxwell McDonald in blazer and tie, deep in conversation with the glass-eyed school secretary, Mrs Haywood. And his good-looking son Charlie at the far end of the room, smoking a cigarette with the limbo teacher from Exeter, who is wearing leggings. And there is Jo, of course, working another corner, in low-slung jeans and trainers, like Fanny, but with no make-up on, shiny clean hair, and an opaque, exquisitely cut white shirt with not a hint of any underwear showing.

She spots Ian Guppy, her wily landlord, cowering in a space near the door immediately behind her. Clasping a can of cider in one hand and the burning butt of a cigarette in the other, and wearing a patterned brown jersey which seems to be choking him, he’s staring into the middle of the room desperate – or so it appears – to avoid eye contact with anyone.

Standing guard beside him and all around him is the reason why: a vast mountain of flesh which Fanny correctly assumes to be his wife. She is alarmingly large. Actually, she is obese. Next to her, Ian Guppy appears like a frightened pixie, half the man – an eighth the man – he was the only other time Fanny saw him, and with no trace of the horrible leer which had previously been stuck to his face.

On this occasion Mrs Guppy happens to be wearing a blue nylon leisure suit with a pair of new lilac slippers. But the main point about Mrs Guppy is her size. She is very large. And, in spite of her efforts with the talcum powder, which she has sprinkled liberally over her thick wiry hair and her great body, she smells strongly of frying and sweat.

She and Ian have eight children, so Mrs Haywood the glass-eyed secretary has informed Fanny. Three of them are currently in jail. One, now twenty-five, has been missing since he was fifteen. Two are in foster homes. Tracey Guppy the school caretaker, nineteen, is honest and drug free but not on speaking terms with either parent. Their youngest is Dane Guppy, eleven. He is the student who interrupted Fanny’s first assembly. (She’s taken to calling him John Thomas whenever he’s difficult, and each time he bellows with laughter. It lights up his waxy, suspicious face.)

At first glance Mr and Mrs Guppy look almost comical, Fanny thinks, huddled together, like Fatipuff and Thinnifer, in the corner of the room. And yet there is something menacing about them too. Perhaps she imagines it – after all that Mrs Haywood said. But Fanny gets the impression that everybody in the hall is a little wary of them. They stand very much alone; the husband cringing under her giant wing, the wife with beady eyes flickering suspiciously through the crowd. Mrs Guppy exudes a quiet proprietorial violence which, since the publican’s wife was found with blood gushing down her legs and both arms broken, has kept libidinous females and her libidinous husband well apart. Or so Mrs Haywood said. Ian Guppy may leer, but after the incident with the publican’s wife he never strayed again. Apparently.

Fanny knows she ought to go up and say hello. But they look very uninviting. She scans the room for a more appealing alternative and unconsciously, out of nerves, twists the lid off her vodka bottle and takes a swig.

Tracey Guppy is glancing her way; hovering a good distance from her parents and managing to look pretty and optimistic in spite of the gene pool; in spite of a wretched perm and a chilly, tatty lime green mini-dress. Fanny starts walking towards her just as a young man – tall, with curly russet hair – attracts Tracey’s attention. The two of them fall immediately into animated conversation and Fanny hesitates, slightly embarrassed. She fiddles again with the cap on her vodka bottle.

‘Hey! Teacher!’ Fanny turns. Behind her Mrs Guppy, with an imperious nod of that vast head, is beckoning her over.

Shit, Fanny thinks. Never should have hesitated.

‘Hello,’ Fanny says pleasantly, walking towards them. ‘And hello to you, too, Mr Guppy. This is quite a party.’

Mr Guppy mumbles something unintelligible, keeps his eyes to the floor.

‘Go and get Teacher a cup,’ snaps his wife. ‘You seen her! She’s been drinking out the bottle.’

He begins to move away.

‘Go on,’ she nudges him forward. ‘Don’t stand there with your eyes gogglin’ out like you never seen underwear before. Hurry up!’ Before Fanny has a chance to speak, Mrs Guppy motions her décolletage. ‘I didn’t know you head teachers was paid so short.’

‘What’s that?’ smiles Fanny.

‘I should cover y’self up before the men go shoving their cash down there.’

Fanny glances at her shirt. ‘Well!’ she says in astonishment. ‘Ha ha…goodness! And there was me thinking I was looking quite nice this evening!’ Mrs Guppy doesn’t smile. Fanny tries again. ‘Mind you – if there are any people shoving money around tonight, Mrs Guppy, I’d much prefer they shoved it down my shirt than anywhere else! You are Mrs Guppy, aren’t you? I’m Fanny Flynn.’ She holds out her hand. ‘I teach your son.’ Mrs Guppy doesn’t take the hand. It hangs in mid-air. ‘He’s…’ Fanny can’t quite think what to add. ‘Well – he has a wonderful sense of humour, doesn’t he?’

Mrs Guppy is not impressed. She stares coldly at Fanny. ‘It’s not Stinglefellows in ’ere, Miss Flynn.’

‘Yes. Yes, I noticed.’

‘Go home and put something decent on. You look worse than a prostitute.’

Fanny’s not easily bullied; not any more. Not ever again. She flushes, first in shock, and then anger, but she does not go home and put something decent on. She fixes her eyes on Mrs Guppy and slowly, deliberately, she undoes three more buttons, until her shirt is hanging open all the way to the navel.

‘And now, Mrs Guppy, what do I look like?’ she says. ‘What do I look like now?’ She turns away, without waiting for a reply.

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