of you to join us, Mr Abbey,’ said Miss Montague.
‘Ah yes, um, sorry,’ he said. ‘Tube was terrible.’
‘But of course it was,’ she said, blinking at him with a deadpan expression. ‘And could I remind you all that it’s our Harvest Festival in few weeks so if you could talk to your forms about it that would be appreciated. An email will be going out to all parents this week.’ We all nodded dutifully while I caught Mike’s eye and smiled. He was always charged with assembly rehearsals for the Harvest Festival and, for several weeks last year, arrived at the pub after work humming songs with titles like ‘A Very Happy Vegetable’.
‘Finally, could I have a volunteer for someone to help Mrs O’Raraty with Harry Potter Club on Wednesday afternoon?’
Mike winked back at me and I stifled a laugh with my hand, turning it into a cough. He was always late and the Tube was always the excuse but the truth was that he was hung-over and slept through his snooze button. This meant he always looked crumpled – creased shirt, scuffed shoes, curls of hair springing out from his head at odd angles, as if he’d slept on it while wet. I winked back.
‘Miss Bailey, how kind of you to volunteer,’ said Miss Montague from the front. ‘Please could you liaise directly with Mrs O’Raraty as to what she needs you to do.’
Shit.
I nodded.
‘And that’s everything from me. So I suggest we all get on with our day. Unless there’s anything else?’ said Miss Montague, gazing out at her teachers like Napoleon about to send troops into battle.
Silence.
‘Very good,’ she said, and the room started moving again.
Mike hurried over to Steph and me. A pillow crease was still imprinted on his cheek.
‘Either of you got any Nurofen? My head feels like it’s about to fall off and I’ve got to give a Year 6 his French horn lesson,’ he said.
‘No, sorry,’ I said.
‘Go see Matron,’ said Steph. ‘She’ll have some.’
‘She told me off last week. Said it wasn’t her job to hand out painkillers like sweets. Mad old bag.’
‘Well you’ll have to have a coffee and get on with it then. Come on, let’s get going. The sooner we start the sooner it’s over,’ said Steph, getting to her feet.
Roman took the number of my class to nine. Small class sizes at St Lancelot’s was one of the reasons that parents paid £8,420 a term (extras and uniform not included) for their sons to come here. It meant that the pupils were supposedly lavished with attention by the teachers and our teaching assistants, although my teaching assistant this year was a dim 18-year-old called Fergus who got the job because Miss Montague is his aunt and he apparently needed to ‘get something on his CV’ during his gap year.
Only one week into the school year, I had mentally relegated Fergus to the same level of intelligence and ability as the 5-year-olds. He arrived late every morning, made more mess at the art table than any of the boys, constantly checked his phone in the classroom (phones were forbidden there, ‘only visible in the staffroom’ was the rule) and took extremely long loo breaks.
Still, the boys were mostly cherubic (it was like teaching a litter of puppies every day), and Fergus’s uselessness hadn’t mattered a great deal. Yet.
The four British boys sounded as if they could have stepped straight from the pages of an Oscar Wilde play – George, Arthur, Cosmo and Phineas (although I’d got off lightly because Steph had a Ptolemy in her class this year). Plus Dmitri the son of the Russians; Achilles, the Greek prince; Hunter, the son of two Americans who wanted him to go to Harvard, and Vikram, who hadn’t acclimatized to London yet and had arrived at school every morning, his teeth chattering, wearing three coats.
Because the classes were so tiny at St Lancelot’s, the parents (or nannies, or bodyguards) of the boys brought them to their classrooms every morning, instead of dropping them at the gate. Or to Nelson, as my classroom was called, since Captain Bower had named them all after British military heroes. Other class names included Wellington, Marlborough, Kitchener and Steph taught Allenby, Year 8.
A couple of years ago, one mother had said this was distasteful and launched an impassioned discussion about the classroom names on Mumsnet. But when this came to Miss Montague’s attention, she sent an email to all parents saying if they didn’t like the school traditions, they were welcome to take their sons elsewhere. Nobody did. Nobody ever gave up a place at St Lancelot’s because their boys were guaranteed to go on to Eton, Harrow, St Paul’s or Westminster. Really, wherever the parents wanted.
That morning, the boys started arriving as usual from around 8.30.
‘Hi, George, did you have a nice weekend? Pop your bag on your desk.’
‘Hunter, hello, I could hear you coming down the corridor. Did you have magic beans for breakfast?’
‘Vikram, quick, come inside and warm up.’ This went on for a few minutes as I waved to various nannies.
Then Roman appeared in the doorway, or at least who I took to be Roman because I didn’t recognize him. I squatted down and held my hand out. ‘Hello, you must be Roman.’ He frowned at my hand and didn’t take it.
‘I’m not allowed to talk to strangers,’ he said, kicking the heel of his shoe repeatedly against the carpet.
‘Roman!’ said a woman hurrying in behind him in suede ankle boots and sunglasses. ‘I’m so sorry, I think he’s nervous.’
‘Of course,’ I said, standing up. ‘You must be Mrs Walker.’
She nodded and we shook hands. ‘Miss Bailey?’
‘Exactly.’ She looked like many of the other St Lancelot mothers – expensive. She had a yellow diamond the size of a raspberry on her right hand and long, shiny hair which I suspected wasn’t all her own.
‘Great. Can we just have a word…’ She gestured to the corner of the classroom away from the door.
‘Sure, er, Fergus?’ He had just arrived, wafting cigarette smoke around the classroom. ‘Can you man the door?’
‘Yah, no problem,’ he replied.
In the corner, Mrs Walker talked in a hushed voice: ‘I just wanted to triple-check the privacy issue. I know Miss Montague said there’s a strict no mobile phone policy. It’s just that I don’t want any photos of Roman to leak and we can’t move him again.’
‘Not a problem,’ I said smoothly. ‘I’m sure Miss Montague has already told you but we have several high-profile pupils here and security is our first priority.’
‘Fabulous,’ she said. ‘OK, gotta run. Bye, sweetie. Be good.’ And without even kissing her son goodbye, she trotted out on her suede boots.
I turned back to Roman and smiled brightly. ‘Let’s get you to your desk.’
