mat so I could see if it blinked with a message. It didn’t. But just after 10 p.m., I got an alarming email from my boss, Miss Montague, St Lancelot’s headmistress.
Dear Miss Bailey, started the email. There was a school rule that all staff call one another by their surnames, which most of us ignored so long as we weren’t within earshot of Miss Montague. Please could you come to my office at 7.30 a.m. tomorrow morning for a meeting.
I felt instantly guilty. One week into the school year and I’d already done something wrong. What could it be? Mothers were always emailing the school on Sunday evenings having spent all weekend brooding over something spectacularly minor – a lost sock, a quibble about the school’s internet policy, was the cottage pie served at lunch last Thursday made with antibiotic-free beef? There was no matter too trivial for a St Lancelot mother. I set my alarm for 6.15 a.m. and went to sleep with my phone on vibrate on my other pillow. But by the time I drifted off, Max still hadn’t messaged.
THE SITUATION ON MONDAY morning remained unchanged. The ticks were still grey, two little daggers beside that preposterous message. But I forced myself out of bed and tried to summon up some optimism in the shower. Dating had changed since I’d started going out with Jake, I knew. People didn’t reply immediately any more. Probably I’d get a message that day. And if not that day, because he might be busy doing whatever explorers did during office hours, then I’d hear from him that evening. I was sure of it. Nobody left a message unread for longer than that. It was rude. I elbowed my way on to the Tube at Brixton feeling hopeful about Max, but slightly less so about my meeting with Miss Montague.
I knocked on her door at precisely 7.29 a.m. She was a woman who appreciated punctuality and the school ran as if it were a military academy.
‘Come in,’ came the crisp, English voice.
She was sitting at her desk looking as she did every day – stern, in a blue skirt suit, collared shirt, a pearl in each ear sitting underneath a rigid hairstyle which I’d always figured was inspired by that unlikely style icon, Princess Anne.
‘Morning,’ I said, hovering just inside the door. Pasta, Miss Montague’s dachshund, lay dozing on his side in a patch of early sun beaming through the window.
‘Miss Bailey, good morning. Do have a seat.’
I sat. She looked over her glasses at me from behind her desk and leant forward, the chair creaking as she did. ‘It’s a sensitive situation, which is why I’m telling you now before I mention it to the other members of staff.’
I raised my eyebrows at her and spoke slowly. ‘O-O-O-K-K-K-K.’
‘It’s a late entry to the school year. Coming into your class. Roman Walker.’ She paused and looked at me expectantly.
‘O-O-O-K-K-K-K,’ I said again. It sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place him. St Lancelot’s had various celebrity sons – of royalty, of musicians, of artists, of tech billionaires, of politicians. Who’d called their son Roman?
‘As in, Luke Walker’s son, Roman.’
‘Oh. Right.’ The mists cleared and I realized who she was talking about. Luke Walker, the premiership footballer. His son. This was a huge deal. No wonder Miss Montague had called it sensitive. There had been a rumour that we’d get Prince George a few years ago, an exhausting period of time when Miss Montague was especially warlike and had made all members of staff practise their curtsy or bow ahead of the anticipated Royal visit. But then they’d picked Thomas’s in Clapham and we’d all calmed down again.
‘Probably a blessing,’ my favourite colleague Steph had said in the playground shortly afterwards. ‘Imagine what the mothers would wear if he was here, poor little bugger.’
‘Why’s Roman coming here now?’ I asked Miss Montague. Term had already started. It didn’t make sense.
Miss Montague opened her mouth but remained silent for a few moments as if working out how to explain. ‘Spot of trouble at Holland Gate. I gather there was a… dalliance between Mr Walker and a teacher. And apparently the governors there felt it best that Roman be moved.’
‘To here?’
‘Well, to somewhere different,’ said Miss Montague, smoothly. ‘It’s all extremely last-minute and I’ve spent the weekend arranging it. But he’ll be joining your class this morning, so could you make sure everyone welcomes him and be aware of the… sensitivity?’
‘Yes, course.’
‘No need to do anything differently. Do reading this morning and see how he gets on. If there are any problems, please inform me.’
‘Sure,’ I nodded. ‘And should I, er, meet the, er, Walkers at any point this week? Like the others…’ All class teachers had met their new parents just before the new school year had started, to talk them through the syllabus and what would be expected of their sons. I’d spent an evening in August shaking hands with my new parents and lecturing them about mobile phone policy.
This year, I had eight boys in my class, including the son of a Tory MP, the son of a Russian steel magnate (the father had the menacing air of a man who ate his victims for breakfast; the mother looked eleven years old); a Greek prince, and a sweetheart called Vikram whose family had just moved from Delhi to London. His mother was so concerned about Vikram settling in that she’d asked if they could send his nanny to sit at the back of the classroom, so I’d had to say gently she couldn’t.
Miss Montague shook her head, the helmet of hair unmoving. ‘The Walkers aren’t coming in for now. I’m going to liaise with them directly. It does of course mean there may be more media interest in us. But the usual rules apply – nobody is to talk to any press and if anyone approaches you please direct them to me.’ Her eyes burned into me like a female huntress on safari.
‘OK, no problem,’ I said.
‘Marvellous, I’ll see you for staff meeting in a second then,’ said Miss Montague.
I nodded and stood up, relieved I wasn’t in trouble.
Because I’d come in so early, the staffroom was empty when I arrived, so I dropped my bag on a chair and went straight for the coffee machine in the corner. I liked being in early. It gave me time to swallow at least two coffees before the kids started sliding up to the school gates on their scooters.
St Lancelot’s wasn’t huge compared to some of its rivals in Knightsbridge and Battersea, but it was generally considered the most exclusive boys’ school in London (as Miss Montague told us almost daily), with just over five hundred boys aged from four to thirteen. It occupied the site of a Gothic red-brick building between Chelsea and Pimlico which had once been a hospital but was converted into the school after the Second World War by a zealous army captain. Captain Bower, he was called. I had a sip of coffee and glanced at the portrait of him in army khakis hanging up in the staffroom. He had a moustache and was covered in medals. He had also studied Classics at Oxford and so the school motto – moniti meliora sequamur – was engraved in stone over the main entrance.
During my interview for the job five years earlier, Miss Montague, Captain Bower’s granddaughter, had begun by asking whether I knew what the motto meant. Hadn’t a clue.
She’d peered
