Tag: fiction

Why Nobody Listens to Teaching Assistants

Posted on by weeks4send

Scene One

(A Science lesson.  The TEACHING ASSISTANT is helping the STUDENT with his work.  Occasionally, the student stops to play with his pet octopus, who he keeps in his pencil case.  After a while, the SCIENCE TEACHER comes by.)

Science Teacher:  Derek, how many times must I tell you- put that octopus away!

Student:  Sorry, miss.

T.A.:  I’m sorry, I didn’t realise…

Science Teacher:  Look, I know you’re new here, but the school has a very strict anti-sea-creature policy.  If you see a student playing with a sea creature in a lesson, you absolutely must take it off them.  Tell the class teacher if necessary.

T.A.:  I understand.

 

Scene Two

(A Maths lesson later that same day.  The teaching assistant is now with a different STUDENT.  After making a couple of attempts at his work, the student gets his pet seahorse out of his pencil case.)

T.A.: (spotting this) Ernie, give me that.

(The student not only ignores this, but opens his friend’s bag, gets out a goblin shark, and starts playing with that as well, much to the amusement of his friends.)

T.A.: Ernie, seriously, hand those over.  You’re not allowed sea creatures in the lesson.

Student:  (shoving both the seahorse and the goblin shark in her face)  Wooo!

(His friends collapse with laughter.  The teaching assistant, quite annoyed by this, goes to to the front of the room and tries to get the MATHS TEACHER’s attention.)

T.A.:  Excuse me…

Maths Teacher:  (to the class)  Make sure to check your work after you’ve finished!  (to the T.A.)  Yeah?

T.A.:  Ernie won’t stop playing with sea creatures.  I’ve asked him to put them away, but…

Maths Teacher:  (to the student and his friends)  Oi, lads!  Is that a real goblin shark?

Student:  Yeah!

Maths Teacher:  Haven’t seen one of those in ages!  (to the T.A.)  Is he hurting anybody?

T.A.:  Well…  No, but…

Maths Teacher:  Then let him get it out of his system.  He’ll get back to work eventually.  (to another group of students)  Oi, you’d better be talking about the work over there, you lot!

(He goes over to talk to them.  The T.A. goes back to her table, where the student and his friends giggle and talk about her strange obsessive grudge against sea creatures.  Luckily, a few seconds later a giant squid gets loose and eats the lot of them.)

The End

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The Tale of the Bisected Snake

Posted on by weeks4send

(A story I wrote with my friend Pippa a few years back.)

Once upon a time, there was a snake in the middle of the desert.  Although he was a beautiful creature with bright green scales, he was sad.  You see, some time ago, an explorer walking through the desert had put a tentpole through the snake’s body, cutting the end of his tail in half.

This made the snake feel victimised, so he went to see his lawyer to see if he could claim compensation for the injury, as he felt he was not to blame. However, the lawyer said that he was silly, as he was bright green, and this was not a very good colour for a desert snake. As he was not even trying to blend in with the desert, he was to blame for the incident, for being a vain and ignorant snake.

Feeling that the lawyer was not being sensitive to his needs, the snake promptly ate him.  He then went on his way, looking for other methods of revenge.

Coming to a square in the centre of town, he saw a protest against the use of the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” on TV.  The protesters claimed that said word was too long and nobody knew what it meant, making millions of innocent people feel stupid.  The snake watched them wave their signs about, and felt a tear come to his bright yellow eye.

“These people are the victims of unfairness, much like myself,” he thought, “I shall join them in their quest for justice!”  And with that, he swung from a lamppost onto a nearby statue, and began to sing a selection from Les Miserables.

Unfortunately, this was the wrong choice, as the crowd was against anything related to the theatre, which meant he had to slither away as fast as he could and hide up a drainpipe until the mob (who had somehow found pitchforks and lit torches) had passed.

Even more unfortunately, the split in his tail meant that he could not hide himself fully in the pipe! The bisected part stuck out the end! Some eagle-eyed member of the mob spotted this, but could only persuade his group of five friends to come with him to investigate it, leaving the rest of the mob to pass by and  fall into the river which passed by the end of the road.

Not wanting to be caught by these six ruffians, the snake slithered out of the drainpipe and ate the ringleader.

“Gasp!” yelled his friends, “You ate our friend Cliff!”

“Yes, I did!” snapped the snake, “He was going to kill me just for singing showtunes!”

“But…  But…  We loved him!” wailed Cliff’s friends, their eyes brimming with salty tears.

“Listen!” said the snake, “You think you’ve got problems?  An explorer cut my tail in half, and then my lawyer…”  But the rest of the snake’s sentence was drowned out by the ruffians bawling over their dear departed friend Cliff.

“Shut up!” yelled the snake. And he regurgitated the clothes the gang leader was wearing into a heap in front of the rest of the group. As the five big, burly men stared, tears drying on the cheeks of their shocked faces, he knew it was time for a quick get-away.

With angry (but somewhat watery) shouts echoing along the alleyway behind him, the snake sped off, taking as many twists and turns as he could in an effort to lose his pursuers. As luck would have it, he turned around a corner and saw his salvation.

For there, in a yellow suit and hat, stood the very explorer who’d bisected his tail in the first place!  The explorer was cutting the ribbon at the opening of a new wing in the hospital, so he was completely distracted.  The snake grinned.  Vengeance would be his!

With a strangled cry, the snake launched himself off the ground and at the explorer, jaws wide open in preparation for the extremely satisfying meal he was about to have, when suddenly…

The explorer turned, alarmed by the commotion caused by the arrival of Cliff’s gang. Seeing his imminent demise in the shape of the bisected snake, hurtling towards him with reckless speed, the explorer drew a katana and the whole crowd went quiet.

The explorer and the snake froze, looking at each other, watching for the signs that indicate impending movement. Suddenly they were both distracted by an appearance from the lobby of the hospital.

“What is the meaning of this?” bellowed Pythia, the goddess of snakes, who had just materialised in the lobby.

The snake bowed (which was more difficult than you might expect, since he was floating in the air mid-jump).  “Your holiness, this man cut me in half with a tent peg!  Ever since then, I’ve had to go around with a bisected tail, which makes it hard for me to hide in drainpipes, among other things.”

“Is that so?” asked Pythia, turning an angry eye on the explorer.

“How was I to know that there was a snake underneath my tent peg?” the explorer exclaimed defensively.

“I’m bloody bright green, aren’t I?” the snake roared, turning an angry eye on the explorer. “I should be easy enough to see in a desert, shouldn’t I? I’m not exactly camouflaged!”

“But I’m colour-blind!” wailed the explorer.

“I think I can see a way through this predicament.” This was hesitantly said by the new leader of Cliff’s gang (who was named Philip), as he picked his way through the crowd to the steps in front of the lobby. He looked nervously at the still-floating snake as he did so, as if expecting him to swallow him whole for daring to speak.

Which he did.

“Oh, that’s just great!” said the explorer, “He was about to solve all our problems!”

“Well, I’m sorry!” said the snake, “I was just going by my instincts!  And as for you, you allegedly colour-blind twit, I think I’ll eat you for dessert!”

Meanwhile, Pythia had been thinking.  “You know, snakey, if the explorer couldn’t see you, then that renders your lawyer’s argument completely invalid.  It didn’t matter that you were bright green, and therefore you can’t be blamed.”

So the snake and the explorer joined forces to sue the lawyer’s surviving family for a million pounds, completely bankrupting their law firm and sending them into the poorhouse, and then moved to the Bahamas and lived happily ever after.

The End

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The Six Daughters of Celine Cooper (part one)

Posted on by weeks4send

(Being the backstory of an extremely dysfunctional family from a story I wrote.  In verse form!)


Emerald, the eldest, was raised mostly by her gran,

Vanessa and Samantha were just pleased with what they had,

Lucy was her mum’s best friend (at least, that was the plan…),

And Love and Angel went back up to Durham with their dad.

 

Emerald was born when Celine was still at school.

She was proud to be a mother, but she soon got bored.

Though she fussed over her daughter, named her for a precious jewel,

Celine soon met a new man, and she quickly cut the cord.

 

Vanessa and Samantha’s dad ran off when they were young.

(His brother later said he’d died, but that may not be true.)

Celine went to her granddad’s house, and that’s where they were flung.

He was old for raising children, but he did what he could do.

 

Lucy’s father was once Celine’s brother-in-law.

He walked out on Celine’s sister soon as Lucy came along.

He was later jailed for arson, shocking Celine to the core.

He thought she would stand by him, but he turned out to be wrong.

 

Emerald, known as Emmy, was now about sixteen.

She still lived at her gran’s house, and that had worked out fine.

It had been nearly a decade since she last spoke to Celine.

She had her friends, she got good grades, she had no time to pine.

 

Celine’s grandfather passed on when Sam was nearly six.

She’s remember him in future as a funny, gentle man.

She moved back in with her mother, who was running out of tricks

For getting rid of children such as Emmy, Sam and Van.

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West of the Fields

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(Possibly the first in a series of drabbles named after R.E.M. songs, if I ever manage to finish any of the others.)

The second Jess got a bit of peace and quiet, she’d shut her eyes and think about that house in Devon- the sun shining through the leaves of the willow tree in the garden, the wood panelling with the funny-looking markings, the big brass knocker on the door.  Whenever something had gone wrong in her life, she’d imagine going back to that house and staying there for a while, and letting its natural power mend her life.  So she went back there, back to Auntie Rose, the old lady who’d told them stories all those years ago, and poured her heart out.  It was only when she looked down at her hand and saw only part of the wood panelling that Jess realised she’d been tricked.

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Enemies List

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(WARNING- disturbing subject matter)

Well, let’s see…

There’s the father who, completely out of the blue three months before she was born, told her mother (and then just about everyone else in town) that he wanted a divorce and a DNA test.

There are the paternal grandparents who, when her mother agreed to the DNA test, helped him to weasel out of it and disappear.

There’s the maternal grandmother who, not reacting particularly well to the scandal, never referred to her by her name (preferring “the baby,” and later on, “that girl”).

There are the neighbours who would tell her older brother and sister how adorable they looked, and walk on without acknowledging her.

There’s the Year Two teacher who, finding her irritating without quite knowing why, frequently lost her temper with her and punished her for things that she might have otherwise let slide.

There are the boys in her class who, knowing a sucker when they saw one, would frequently suggest to her that they play some trick in order to get revenge on the teacher, and, having done it, would leave her to take the blame.

There’s the Year Three teacher who, on the first day back, stood her up in front of the rest of the class and told her that he’d heard about what she got up to, that children like her were a drain on the school, and that if she tried that stuff with him she’d soon be laughing out of the other side of her face.

There’s the librarian who, whenever she brought a book back, picked it up by the corner as though it was toxic and flicked through it, checking meticulously for stains.

There are the kids down the road, who took her with them that time they went into town, caused a riot in the shopping centre, and all got arrested.

There’s the mother of her best friend, who decided that she was a bad influence and banned her daughter from spending time with her (something that her daughter, to her credit, ignored).

There’s the girls who spent the first week of secondary school telling her that, with her shabby clothes and psycho reputation, she’d better not think that she could sit with them at lunch.

There’s the older sister who was told to look after her when their mother was working late, who would take her out into town and leave her to entertain herself while she talked to her friends in the pub, and who would usually forget about her and go somewhere else, leaving her to walk home alone.

There’s the man outside the pub while she was walking home one night, forty years old with muscles on his muscles, who told her she was a beautiful angel when he thought she was interested and a worthless bitch when he realised she wasn’t, and who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

There’s the moody nurse at the hospital that night, who told her that the hospital staff referred to cases like hers as “Failure to Pay.”

There are the girls who giggled behind her back the next day at school, who left spiteful notes in her locker and speculated on whether she’d caught any diseases that she didn’t have before.

There’s the man she met outside a different pub some weeks later, when, wanting to avoid the harsh words and the pain, she decided to smile, thank him for his compliments and do exactly what he wanted.

There’s the one after him, and the one after him.

There’s the woman who turned up outside the school gates one day, screaming her head off and accusing her of having it away with her husband.

There’s the son she wasn’t developed enough to carry to term, who died almost immediately after he was born.

There’s the grandfather who told everyone else in the family that if he ever saw her again, he’d whip the skin from her back.

There’s the headmaster who called her into his office the day she came back, to tell her that he wasn’t legally allowed to expel her for what she had done, but that if he found out she’d said a word about her “predicament” to the good girls, he could make her life very unpleasant indeed.

There’s the Maths teacher who told her he could improve her grade, for a price, and failed her when she said no.

There’s the new stepfather who, upon seeing that she’d been accepted into the Sixth Form, spent the next two years complaining about how she was a burden, and why didn’t she just go out and get a job, after all she’d put them through?

There’s the mother who, when the time came for university applications, told her that the joke was over, and now she needed to work for a living.

There’s the manager of the supermarket where she worked, who sacked her for being off sick two days in a row.

There’s the boyfriend who told her he knew how she could make a little extra money, and who threatened to knock her teeth out when she wasn’t sure.

There’s the friend of her father’s who bought what she had to sell, and then told everyone he knew, “Like mother, like daughter.”

There’s the undercover policeman who arrested her, and the judge who sentenced her to six months in prison.

There’s the prison guard who hit her round the face, breaking her nose and giving her a permanent scar.

There’s the older brother who wrote a letter disowning her, and the rest of the family, who more or less followed his lead.

There’s the cellmate who got her hooked on heroin.

There are the companies, every one of them, who turned her CV down after she was released.

There’s the manager of the cafe where I met her, who only agreed to take her on when she agreed to be completely off the books and paid less than minimum wage, which amounted to less than half of what he paid me and the others.

There are all the customers who forgot to tip us, or who ran away without paying the bill at all (for which the manager made us pay).

There’s the woman who screamed at her for spilling her tea, calling her an incompetent, shit-for-brains little slut (for which, I’m pleased to say, she stealthily added two pounds to the service charge on the woman’s bill, telling me later that she didn’t look as though she could read).

There’s the shop attendant who, just after I first asked her out, spent the entire time we were in the shop following her around, looking at her suspiciously, not even bothering to be subtle about it.

There’s the doctor at A&E the night she narrowly avoided going into a coma, who told her that people like her were a waste of his time, and that she should go and die in the gutter and free up more medical care for people who really needed it.

There are the boys who lived near her and hung around on the street, who would follow her around when she left her flat, calling her “Scarface” and making rude suggestions.

There’s the guy at the vocational course she was on, who’d heard a few rumours about her, and who, after she disagreed with him in class that time, proceeded to spread them to all his friends on the course (fortunately, what with his personality and all, he didn’t have many).

There’s one of my friends at university, who told everyone that I must have gone insane (“Or blind,” he’d add with a low chuckle), and then acted hurt when I stopped talking to him.

There’s another of my friends, who came round to borrow some books while she was going through withdrawal, and who, when I told him she had the flu, didn’t even pretend to believe me.

There’s the man who stopped me in the corner shop one day and told me her entire life story (some of which I already knew), beginning with, “I thought you should know what you’re marrying.”

There are her co-workers at her new job, who made her do their work for them half the time, and laughed at her behind her back.

There’s my aunt, who refused to come to the wedding.

There’s whoever it was that cut out our wedding picture from the local paper, stuck in on a piece of paper, wrote a list of accusations (including that she’d only married me for my money), scanned off a load of copies, and posted them to all our neighbours.

There’s the co-workers who spread it around that she’d only got her promotion because she was sleeping with the boss, and the boss who, wanting to be thought of as a ladykiller, deliberately avoided denying it.

There’s the woman (and she may have been one of the other people mentioned above) who came and hung around outside our building on the day we moved away, apparently just so she could wait until we were driving out of the car park, spit in our parking space and yell, “Good riddance!”

There’s the person who, after we’d been living on the other side of the country for seven months, sent her a bunch of flowers and a card reading, “I’m sorry,” but who forgot to sign their name.

And there’s me, for not being able to forget about this stuff and see her in the way she wants me to.

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Class of 2015 (4 of 4)

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Ursula- from the Latin, meaning “little bear.”

Ursula would probably be a panda, because she too is a docile creature who likes to eat her greens. She’s often tried to get a vegetarian society started at school, but one look at Fiona usually causes her to lose heart. At the weekend, Ursula volunteers at a stray dogs’ and cats’ home, and she’s often managed to rope Laura into going with her. Hopefully, this will give Laura the opportunity to be proud of something that happened in the last decade for once.

Veronica- from the Latin, meaning “True image,”

Unlike most of her classmates, Veronica more than lives up to her name- she’s a very talented photographer. More talented than the headteacher would have liked, in fact- it was Veronica who got those pictures of him and the Head of Geography. It probably says a lot about Veronica’s honesty that she didn’t try to blackmail the headteacher, instead choosing to send the photos to everyone else in the school the second she got them. We should all have such integrity.

Winona- from the Sioux, meaning “firstborn daughter.”

Quintana does not want to hear any of Winona’s whining.

Xanthe- from the Greek, meaning “fair haired.”

According to stereotypes, blonde women are all dimwitted bimbos. You might expect Xanthe to be offended by this belief, but in fact she encourages it in everyone she knows. It makes the look on their faces once they’ve realised that Xanthe has utterly outwitted them and stabbed them in the back so much more satisfying.

(Word of advice- never play cards with Xanthe. You will regret it. And possibly have to remortgage your house.)

Yolanda- from the Spanish, meaning “violet.”

Extracts of violets can be used to treat asthma and insomnia. This isn’t much use to Yolanda, though, because she’s never had either of those. In fact, she’s never been sick a day in her life. She sees any kind of ill health as a sign of weakness. She insists that you just have to exercise properly and have the right attitude. She says that you have only yourself to blame if your body lets you down. And if she says that to her more sickly classmates one more time, they’re going to work out how to infect her with the bubonic plague.

Zoë- from the Greek, meaning “life.”

And “life” is exactly what Zoë’s classmates say she should have got for what she did to that supply teacher. Zoë’s defence is that the woodwork room is full of dangerous equipment, and sending in somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing is asking for trouble. The rest of the class maintain that people with much longer hair than said teacher have spent time in the woodwork room without their ponytails being caught in the sander. Of course, none of those people happened to yell at Zoë for a full ten minutes because her skirt was an inch too short.

Illustration:  http://camelwithout.deviantart.com/art/Class-of-2015-558398077?ga_submit_new=10%253A1441467997

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Class of 2015 (3 of 4)

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Niamh- from the Irish, meaning “bright.”

This is a little unfortunate, because Niamh is the sort of girl who falls for chain letters and Nigerian scams. For the last two years, she’s been breathlessly telling her classmates that if you can’t cover your entire face with your hand, it means you have cancer. So far, none of them have let her in on the joke, but honestly, it probably wouldn’t matter even if they did. Niamh would probably just decide that the conspiracy for the promotion of small hands had got to them, too.

Orla- from the Gaelic, meaning “princess.”

And, indeed, Orla has a tendency to throw tantrums whenever things don’t go exactly her way. Like when Amy was elected Head Girl instead of her. Orla took that as a sign that each of the other hundred and ninety-nine girls in the Sixth Form had a personal grudge against her, as opposed to a sign that, well, there were a hundred and ninety-nine other girls in the Sixth Form. Anyway, Orla decided that they were all just jealous. It’s not clear what of.

Paula- from the Latin, meaning “small.”

Paula is six foot tall and beats up smaller kids. Some parents just like to tempt fate.

Quintana- from the Spanish, meaning “the fifth girl.”

This, as you might imagine, has caused no end of resentment in Quintana as she’s grown up. She spends a great deal of time looking for ways to punish her four older sisters for the crime of being born before her. Said sisters often find notes pinned to their classroom door telling everybody their bra size, which boys they fancy, and the details of that time they wet themselves at the garden centre when they were six. Quintana is truly merciless.

Unfortunately, Quintana has so far failed to take into account the fact that she also has two younger sisters with equally insulting names, and they are plotting. Ooh, are they plotting.

Rachel- from the Hebrew, meaning “ewe.”

Ewes have four stomachs, but Rachel must have about twenty to deal with some of the crap she eats. It’s not just a matter of going down to McDonald’s more than once a week- it’s a matter of eating pickled onions for breakfast and eight Mars bars for dinner. Her teachers try desperately to point her towards the Healthy Eating queue at lunch, but she usually only goes there for the slush machines. Her favourite flavour is blue.

Saoirse- from the Irish, meaning “freedom.”

Saoirse hasn’t told anyone this, but as soon as school finishes for the summer, she plans to disappear. She’ll hit the road and travel through Europe, with nothing but her backpack and her imagination. She’ll send her parents a postcard now and then, so they’ll know she’s alright, but other than that, she’ll be carving out a whole new life, entirely her own. She can’t wait.

Theresa- from the Greek, meaning “harvest.”

This is odd, because Theresa is actually banned from the Harvest Festival church service because of what happened when she was in Year Seven. In her defence, it probably wouldn’t have been such a complete disaster if Reverend Underwood hadn’t developed a habit of sneakily helping himself to the wine from the donations table (rationalising that the poor were better off keeping away from alcohol anyway). One sip of the bottle Theresa had taken from under her dad’s desk, and the congregation were treated to a sermon on that well-known book of the Bible, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

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Class of 2015 (2 of 4)

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Hayley- from the English, meaning “meadow.”

Bambi’s mother once said, “You must never rush out onto the meadow. There might be danger.” Unfortunately, she wasn’t around to say it to Hayley, who rushes out everywhere. If she was attacked by a Great White Shark, her first instinct would be to cuddle it. Since there aren’t any Great White Sharks around at the moment, she makes do with setting fire to bits of paper in Chemistry and running across busy roads to meet her friends. Hayley’s classmates appreciate her spontaneity, but they are also running a betting pool on what will cause her inevitable gruesome death.

Ivy- from the English, meaning “faithfulness.”

This makes Ivy’s habit of stealing her friends’ boyfriends even odder. She says she doesn’t mean to. There she’ll be, minding her own business, when her best mate will suddenly bring a handsome boy to her table, and, well, Ivy will just lose her heart. She will also conveniently forget about her own boyfriend, stolen from her last best friend only to be callously discarded. Some say that Ivy does this because of a subconscious desire to prove that she’s the smartest and most attractive one in the group, but Ivy maintains that she’s just a romantic. A romantic who has thoroughly traumatised half the boys in town.

Jacqueline- from the French, meaning “supplanter.”

Jacqueline has probably taught more History lessons this year than her actual History teacher. The teacher will barely get more than two sentences out before Jacqueline interrupts with a new and fascinating fact about the Tudor Era. Did you know that Elizabeth the First was famous for flashing her boobs at her entire court? Did you know that Henry the Seventh’s wife used to wear cheap knock-off jewellery because her husband was too cheap to buy her the real stuff? The class will be mesmerised, and the teacher will have lost them for the rest of the lesson. This wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that they’re meant to be studying the Second World War.

Kathleen- from the Greek, meaning “pure.”

So is the cocaine she sells outside the school gates. Enough said.

Laura- from the Spanish, meaning “crowned with laurels.”

In Ancient Rome, war heroes were crowned with laurel wreaths to symbolise their achievements. Laura has a sash covered in Brownie Badges instead. Her classmates have gently tried to tell her that this is not an appropriate thing for a seventeen-year-old girl to wear, but the heartbreakingly proud look on her face when she tells them the story of how she won her Friend To Animals badge is just too much to bear. We all need something to make us feel good about ourselves.

Madeline- from the Hebrew, meaning “woman from Magdala”

Magdala is a place mentioned in the Bible. Madeline herself was not mentioned in the Bible, but try telling her that. You’ll just get a long, condescending lecture about how you’re blinded by your sinful nature, and if only you’d give your heart to Jesus, you’d see that Madeline is right about everything and the greatest person who ever lived. Interestingly, Madeline has been kicked out of three local churches for getting on the vicars’ nerves, which is probably about as close as anyone gets to literally trying the patience of a saint.

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High End

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Nina had been right- there wasn’t anywhere to park. Luckily, Harry had thought ahead and hired a more down-at-heel car than usual, so he didn’t stick out like a sore thumb when he parked halfway down Maggie’s road. Nina, of course, had taken her prize pink Bentley Continental and ended up having to wedge it in between a couple of the neighbours’ shabby Ford Fiestas. That was Nina all over. She’d had some idea about intimidating Maggie with her status, but at the end of the day she’d been screaming the house down because one of the local kids had put a scratch in the paintwork. Harry knew better. Harry knew how to play it cool.

Anthony had come down here, and then Nina had come down here, and now, finally, here was Harry. Here to bring things to their natural conclusion.

The house, which looked as if it may have had as many as four or five rooms, was at the bottom of a sharp slope, a little, mossy garden path cutting through the dead grass. “Try wearing high heels on that slope, and you’d probably break your neck,” Nina had said, in one of her heated little huffs, “That tells you all you need to know about the little cow.” Judging by the photographs Harry had managed to dig up, Nina may have been right about that. Well, even a broken clock was right twice a day.

Harry rang the doorbell and waited. She didn’t have to wait long.

There was a shuffling sound on the other side of the door (no window, just wood and chipped paint), and then it opened. Harry had only seen Maggie Glass once before, at the funeral four years ago, but he’d had the photos and he’d known what to expect. Nina had got it into her head that Maggie was making a play for her husband, but one look at her should have told her that wasn’t true. When Harry looked at this woman’s crow’s feet, hooked nose and lank, greasy brown hair, he almost laughed.  How could Nina possibly have thought Anthony could be interested in that? Even if he hadn’t had Nina at home, he probably saw higher-quality women every time they went out clubbing.

“Hello?” said Maggie, her little mouse-eyes squinting ahead at Harry’s face. She wasn’t even wearing any makeup. Her skin was as pale and blotchy as the skin on a bowl of porridge.

Harry smiled politely. “Maggie Glass? I’m Harry Croft, Anthony’s father-in-law. I believe my daughter came to see you a few days ago?”

Given Nina’s account of the meeting (or whatever Harry had been able to glean of it from between the screams of rage), he’d expected anger, snide smugness, or maybe even a door slammed in his face. He certainly hadn’t expected a pleasant little smile. “Oh yeah, Nina! How is she?”

How on Earth did you reply to that? After Harry had regained his mental footing, he decided not to. “Listen, I just came to say that I’m sorry for her behaviour.” He smiled. “It’s a little hard to hold down a marriage in the circles she and Anthony move in, and she can be a bit insecure. But that’s no excuse to take it out on you.”

Maggie raised her eyebrows. “Oh, don’t worry- I’m not angry. Do you want to come in?” She stood to the side so that Harry could come through. After a moment’s thought, he did.

Harry had been right- the downstairs part of the house was basically just one big room. Cheap Ikea sofa in one corner, fridge and cooker behind a counter in the other, uneven paint and scuffed wooden floors throughout. It was the kind of room that made you either want to laugh or cry. Denny had left her everything. Alright, next to Nina and Anthony he’d practically been a beggar, but he’d had some money. At the very least, Maggie could afford to upgrade a little.

“It’s the complacency that bothers me,” Nina had said after her visit, “Cause I’ve always been driven to make the best of things. There’s nothing that disgusts me more than people who do nothing with their lives.” Harry thought that it wasn’t so much Maggie’s “complacency” that had bothered Nina as the fact that she hadn’t risen to her bait. Nina had been ready for a fight, and Maggie Glass hadn’t given her one. That must have driven her crazy.

Harry sat down on the sofa, and Maggie went over to the kitchen unit in the corner. “Tea or coffee?” she asked, getting a couple of mugs out of the cupboard.

“Coffee, please,” said Harry, “Black, no sugar.” While she had her back to him, Harry took a long look at her. She was wearing old jeans with a black jumper that looked as though it might previously have belonged to a 90-year-old shepherd with no teeth. Nina had worn old jeans all the time until Harry had set her straight. With legs like yours, you should show them off. The boys won’t be able to take their eyes off you. That couldn’t be said for Maggie, by the looks of it- her body could politely be described as “athletic.” There just wasn’t much there at all. Of course, there was surgery available for that. There was surgery available for everything, as Nina could have told her.

“Like I said, I don’t blame Nina for being concerned,” said Maggie, “Anthony has been round here a lot. But there’s really nothing for her to worry about- he mostly just comes round to talk about Denny.”

Harry didn’t think that was likely- men didn’t take flights from New York in the middle of the night just to talk about their ne’er-do-well brothers- but he also thought that Nina had been way off the mark. Like I don’t know what’s going on there! she’d said, She’s already managed to snag one of the Manning boys, and now she’s developed expensive tastes. Apparently, she’d looked at Maggie and seen some sort of doe-eyed temptress, instead of a greasy-haired farm hand with a pair of dirty wellies sitting by the front door.

Besides, nobody had ever developed expensive tastes by spending time with Denny Manning. He’d been too pure-minded for that.

“I like talking about Denny,” Maggie said from the kitchen, “Do you know what he did once? He found out there was going to be a demonstration in town, an animal rights thing, so he spent all night making jam sandwiches and handed them out to the protestors the next day. Mad as a cat, he was, but he always had a big heart.”

Harry agreed with the first part of that. They’d all been sorry when Denny had died- it broke your heart to see how had it had hit Anthony- but good God, that man had been a thorn in everyone’s side. He’d always made sly little remarks about money, as if Anthony’s music was somehow tainted by him going with a major label. As if Denny was cooler and more authentic because his name had never appeared in the Sun. It hadn’t occurred to Denny that maybe the tabloids and the major labels had never come calling because his music just wasn’t as good.

Maggie brought the tea and coffee over. “I asked him, ‘Why jam sandwiches?’ and he said he had to rule out tuna and cheese because, you know, animal rights crowd, probably a lot of them are going to be vegan. He thought about lettuce and cucumber, but that tends to fall out of the bread if you hold it the wrong way. And too many people are allergic to peanut butter. It had to be jam.”

Harry smiled and nodded. Maggie’s pointless stories about Denny had driven Nina round the bend. God, I always knew men liked crazy girls, but I always thought they liked them a lot prettier than her. Nina been wrong-footed- by all rights she should have come to this woman’s door and blasted her away with the sheer force of her personality. After all, Nina was a big deal. Her name was its own brand. She’d designed fashion and swimwear, brought out her own perfume, and even thrown around some ideas for children’s products. When she went out at night, she went out with businessmen, footballers, film stars… high-end people. And yet, somehow, none of that translated into getting whatever reaction she wanted out of a little country bumpkin living in a ruined cottage. It was bound to be frustrating.

Two words that weren’t in Nina’s vocabulary- subtlety and patience. Harry gave Maggie an encouraging smile. “Listen, Maggie, I have a confession to make. I didn’t just come here to apologise for Nina- I want to talk about Denny, too. You do realise you’re his sole heir?” That was why Anthony had been round Maggie’s so often. Denny’s assets should rightfully have gone to his family, but getting Maggie on their side would be the next best thing. Getting her to see their point of view.

“Yeah,” said Maggie, mug in her hands and eyes half-closed, “I didn’t even know he’d made a will until I got the phone call. He wasn’t even forty.” She sipped her tea. “Sometimes I think he had a premonition of what was going to happen… but more likely somebody at the record label must have told him to do it. There’s always a romantic explanation and a rational one. Now, my mother would have said…”

“What ideas have you got in mind for promoting his back catalogue?” asked Harry. He pointed at the dirty wellies. “Seems to me like you’re more concerned with working at the stables.”

“It was complete luck, how I fell into that,” said Maggie, barely missing a beat, “I always thought I’d end up working in an office, maybe getting a teaching qualification… I never saw myself working with animals. But there’s something satisfying about clearing out a stable. Solid, tangible stuff. You don’t get that in most jobs.” She took another sip. “The animals, too. It sounds strange, but they’re good company. There’s nothing like trying to work with a sheep in the next field trying to jump over the fence and see what you’re doing.”

Harry couldn’t believe this. He stared at her for a moment, then said sternly, “Maggie, I want you to focus for a second. Now, you said yourself that you just want to talk about Denny. You want his name to live on. Well, I’m offering you a chance to make sure of that.” He cleared his throat. “I want you to come up and stay at our place in the West End for a couple of weeks. We’ll take you out, show you the best places to be seen. You can borrow some of Nina’s old things at first, then we’ll see about getting you kitted out at one of the boutiques in town.” He made sure to say “old things” rather than “pre-surgery things,” in case she took offence. But like he’d told Nina- you could buy yourself a padded bra if that was all you wanted, but to do things properly, you had to book yourself in for the surgery. That was just the way it was done. No use complaining about it.

Maggie sipped her tea. “No thanks,” she said.

Harry blinked. “Excuse me?”

“No thanks,” she repeated, perfectly politely. She didn’t offer any further explanation.

Harry clamped down on the rage that was threatening to flare up. Shouting at her would do no good. “Maggie, I don’t think you understand what you’re being offered here.” He’d thought it would be easy. Just bring her out to the West End and let her get her name in the papers, and she’d get a taste for it. Before you knew it, she’d be another asset, along with the ghost of Denny Manning. But first he had to get her out there, and that was turning out to be like pulling teeth.

Maggie sipped her tea. It was as if he hadn’t said anything at all.

“I can introduce you to people who know what they’re doing. I can get your name into the papers.” He paused, then brought out his secret weapon. “Yours and Denny’s.”

Maggie looked around, stretching up her neck like a swan’s. “I like it here,” she said, in her quiet, croaky voice, “It’s just far enough from town to be completely quiet at night. Well, I say ‘completely’… Sometimes you hear animals rooting around in the garden.” She smiled. She still wasn’t looking at him. “Once I opened my curtains at night and saw a badger, staring right back at me. Completely froze up, like a little kid who’d been caught doing something naughty.”

“Maggie, I’m here as your friend.” He looked at her with big, sad eyes. “I thought you loved Denny.”

Finally, she looked him right in the eye. Inwardly, Harry allowed himself a little smile. He’d touched a nerve.

“He was here two nights before he died,” she said. No expression on her face, but the fingers were tightening around her mug. He had her. “He looked completely healthy. I racked my brains afterwards, trying to remember if he mentioned having a headache, but I don’t think he did.”

Harry nodded in sympathy. “You weren’t with him when he died, were you? I expect things like that hurt the most.” He cleared his throat, and added (before she had a chance to jump in), ” I can’t give Denny back to you. I can’t give back all those mornings when you’d wake up next to him. All I can do now is help you honour his memory. Will you let me do that, Maggie?”

For a few seconds, he just listened to her breathe. Then she spoke again. “I used to dream about a place like this, when I was a kid. Well, I used to dream about peace and quiet, I guess. I mean, there were five of us- three girls and two boys- and every inch of the house would be full of my brothers and sisters and their friends, with their music and computer games turned up full blast. I used to… There was a park just a couple of streets away from our house, and I used to sneak out and go and sit on a bench near the ornamental flowerbeds. There’d be no-one there except maybe a couple of old ladies passing through, and I’d just sit there for an hour, thinking.”

Harry’s temper finally got the better of him. “I know what you’re doing, you know.”

It was as if she hadn’t even heard him. “There was this one really frosty afternoon…”

“Stop it, alright?” Harry stood up, knocking his cup of coffee to the floor. He didn’t care. Let her clean it up. “I get it. You don’t trust me. Anyone who dares to be successful is pure evil, right? Better to just hide in the shadows and record albums that only five people will hear.”

She hadn’t moved. He’d smashed one of her mugs against her precious driftwood floor, and she acted like it was nothing. “That’s not why I don’t trust you.”

“So you can follow a conversation!”

Maggie frowned. “Anthony came here to talk about Denny, Mr Croft. No more, no less. And I think you should leave.”

“Of course!” Harry stormed off towards the door. “Why show you success when you’re perfectly satisfied with mediocrity? How rude of me!” He wrenched it open and went out onto the path. Nina had been right. It told you all you needed to know.

Her ugly face appeared at the door. “Tell Nina she can come back whenever she wants. I know she doesn’t want to talk about Denny, but I get the idea she might need a break.” And then, before he had a chance to ask her what that was supposed to mean, she closed the door. Closed it right in his face. Him.

Harry saw red.

He stood on the garden path and raged at her, banging on the door with both fists and cursing a blue streak. He could see the locals coming out of their houses to stare, but he didn’t care. They didn’t intimidate him, and neither did Maggie. Whatever hold Maggie Glass had over people, she’d met her match in Harry. Just as soon as she opened that door, he’d send her off with her tail between her legs.

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Class of 2015 (1 of 4)

Posted on by weeks4send

Amy- from the French, meaning “beloved”

More than anybody else in the class of 2015, Amy believes that names are very significant things. And can it be a coincidence that her own name means “beloved”? Of course not. The class just wouldn’t be the same without her. She’s always organising things, helping people with their problems, and working hard to get everyone to do their best. She always has something interesting to say and something important to give. In fact, Amy may very well be the most well-liked member of the class.

Amy’s classmates don’t quite agree with this version of events, but, as Amy says, no-one asked them.

Beatrice- from the Italian, meaning “traveller.”

If by “traveller,” you mean “gets lost a lot,” then this is pretty accurate. Beatrice not only has no sense of direction, but a ridiculously short attention span to boot. The last time her mother sent her down to the corner shop to buy milk, she was gone for five hours and eventually turned up on a farm two miles away, sitting on top of a hay-bale and looking dreamily up at the sky. Apparently, she’d vaguely remembered that she’d been told to do something related to cows, and after that, one thing led to another.

Chandra- from the Sanskrit, meaning “moon.”

This may or may not be the reason why Chandra, at the age of nine, managed to convince herself that she was secretly a werewolf. It all started the morning she found a reddish-brown stain on her pyjama top, and decided it must have been the blood of one of her victims. Her parents and brother told her that the stain looked a lot like chocolate, and that it hadn’t been a full moon last night anyway, but Chandra chose to ignore this. Some people say you can defeat a werewolf with silver bullets, or by shouting its human name three times, but Chandra was only cured of werewolfism when her mother threatened to stop letting her read Goosebumps books.

Deborah- from the Hebrew, meaning “bee.”

Some people say that, if you don’t tell immediately the bees in your hives about all the births, deaths and marriages that take place in your house, they will stop producing honey out of sheer spite. Deborah can relate to this. When her friend Theresa’s older brother got married, she spent a month demanding an invitation, followed by five months of demanding to know why she wasn’t invited, whether or not she and Theresa were still friends, and if Theresa actually had a whole other group of friends with whom she laughed at Deborah behind her back. Theresa’s protests (that the wedding was taking place in Thailand, and that Deborah had only ever met her brother twice) fell on deaf ears.

Emma- from the German, meaning “universal.”

Emma says that the universe is millions of years old, expanding in every direction, and no human being will ever see more than a tiny fraction of what it has to offer unless– and this is important- they take a whole lot of mind-expanding drugs. Not everybody in her class follows Emma’s logic, but she generally seems cheerful, at least when she’s not being attacked by invisible spiders.

Fiona- from the Scottish, meaning “white.”

In China and Korea, white is the colour that symbolises death. Fiona keeps up this tradition by killing as many insects as she possibly can. Whenever a moth, a spider, or a bumblebee comes into the room, Fiona lets out a scream of terror and punches it to smithereens, much to the horror of her more tender-hearted classmates. Fiona usually responds by asking if they want to get the plague, much to the horror of her History teacher.

Geraldine- from the English, meaning “rules by the spear.”

Actually, Geraldine rules by the Facebook group. She has at least five different accounts under separate names, and she uses them to ask… questions. Simple questions. Questions that require answers. Questions that shouldn’t threaten anybody with nothing to hide. And if some of those questions lead to half the school wishing for another girl’s death for her supposed misdeeds, detailed in the “Is our school harbouring a known terrorist?” group, it’s certainly not Geraldine’s intention.

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