Selfish People. Lucy English

can’t do this, I’m on a contract!’

      ‘Yes I can, I’m on the committee!’ They stared at each other. Leah was charged up and raging. ‘This is the way to the broom cupboard,’ she said, and Bailey followed her, slamming the office door.

      The sports hall was a newish building on the other side of the Project. Leah stormed past the café, Bailey still following. People in the café watched them with oh-yes expressions on their faces. ‘This,’ said Leah, pushing open another door, ‘is the broom cupboard.’ It was a small room filled with brushes and mops and various cleaning fluids. They went inside and the door shut behind them.

      ‘This,’ said Leah, ‘is a broom.’ And she handed one to Bailey. He looked at it and held it at arm’s length. He sniffed and patted his hair. He looked so vain and ridiculous she began to giggle.

      ‘What’s up with you?’ he snapped.

      ‘Bailey, it’s a broom,’ said Leah.

      ‘So fucking what? And that’s a lightbulb.’

      ‘Oh Bailey.’ She put her hand to her mouth and propped herself up against the wall. She felt quite hysterical. ‘And that’s the floor,’ she said.

      ‘You’re fucking mental, you are.’ He had the broom in one hand; the other was still patting his hair, his stupid red hair. There he was in his vile luminous green tracksuit with a pink stripe down one side and massive trainers with multicoloured laces.

      ‘Bailey, what do you look like?’

      ‘And what do you fucking look like … a liquorice allsort! You do, you bloody do, one of them liquorice allsorts.’ He began to sweep the floor.

      ‘Bailey, stop it!’

      ‘I thought you wanted me to do this.’

      ‘Out there, not in here.’ They were both laughing. He swept up clouds of dust which made them cough as well as laugh. Bailey opened the door. Go on, get out,’ he said and they stumbled into the foyer of the sports hall. ‘I’ve got a lesson,’ he said importantly.

      In the office Barbara was still doing the accounts. ‘That man!’ she said to Leah as she walked in and then, ‘Oh, heavens!’ because Leah’s face was grimy with dust and tear-marked from laughing.

      ‘What on earth happened?’

      ‘I’m not quite sure.’ Leah sat down. She felt shaky all over and completely crazy. Lesley came back from the bank. ‘Has he gone?’ she said, looking anxiously round the office.

      ‘Ask Leah,’ said Barbara.

      ‘What did he do?’ said Lesley, wide eyed because Leah looked deranged.

      ‘He thought it was funny … in the end.’ Leah was quite aware this wasn’t a satisfactory explanation. ‘I think I’d better wash my face.’

      In the loo she splashed herself with cold water. She was still shaky. He was angry, but I didn’t crumble. I changed it. But into what? I’m not sure.

      It was half-past three and the office was closing. Leah was thinking about children and what to have for tea. Barbara left and Lesley; Leah was going to lock up. Bailey came in with the sports hall keys.

      ‘Good lesson?’ asked Leah.

      ‘All right.’ He had showered and his hair was wet. He fiddled with the keys before putting them on the table. ‘What you doing tonight?’

      I was thinking about tea and children and Al coming back. ‘There’s a committee meeting.’ She put on her coat and picked up her bag.

      ‘What you doing after the meeting?’ He tapped the table and she looked at his finger, then up his arm and right into his greeny eyes.

      ‘Bailey, I can’t.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because … because last time I got into terrible trouble.’ She felt herself blush; she hated talking about Al and her.

      Bailey put his head to one side. ‘Why’s that?’

      ‘Because … he thinks I’m having an affair with you.’

      ‘Well, he’s a dickhead because you’re not.’

      Then the whole business seemed much clearer. ‘I’ll see,’ she said.

      ‘I’ll be in the Cambridge. See ya later.’ That was it, he was gone.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Al came back from college and slumped into a kitchen chair. The children were in the front room watching Blue Peter. Leah was heating up bean soup, which the children hated but if she gave it to them in front of the telly they might eat it.

      ‘Nice day?’ she said to Al.

      He did not look like a person who had had a nice day. ‘They’re bloody sending me to the Blessed Martyrs for teaching practice.’

      ‘What’s wrong with the Blessed Martyrs?’

      ‘It’s Catholic.’

      ‘Is that bad? Do you want some soup?’

      ‘I’m not going to go.’

      ‘Can you do that?’

      ‘I’m not going to that place, it’s so uptight. I can’t possibly work there creatively for six weeks … Catholic God and bullshit stuff … nuns – and I have to wear a tie!’ He ate his soup, spilling a large glob of it on to his jumper. He wiped it off with his hand, which he wiped on his knee. ‘I told my tutor, I said, I’m not going to that place, I’m not bloody going.’

      Leah had a vision of her husband as a child screaming, ‘I won’t go to school,’ and now he was a teacher and he still wouldn’t go. It made her smile.

      ‘Oh, you would think it was funny, wouldn’t you?’

      ‘It was something else.’ And she quickly took the children’s bowls to the front room. They were sitting in the dark watching the presenter making an Advent ring out of coat-hangers. They began to eat their soup mechanically.

      Al was helping himself to more so it couldn’t have been that bad. She took a small portion and sat down.

      ‘… Catholic repression turning out fucked-up individuals who are too repressed to think for themselves and too fucked up to feel anything …’ Leah’s family were Catholic. ‘Stupid ignorant nuns forcing children to believe in hell and fat complacent eunuch priests, and repressed Catholic Mafia families with their insidious network of do-goodism.’

      ‘I’ve got a meeting tonight,’ said Leah, ‘at half-past seven, so could you –’

      ‘Put the children to bed. Yes, dear wife. I like to spend time with my children.’

      ‘We’ll probably go for a drink afterwards, at the Swan, we usually do.’

      ‘I like to spend time with my wife, but unfortunately she doesn’t like to spend time with me.’

      ‘It isn’t that,’ she said as casually as she could. ‘It’s good to socialise with people you work with. Clive has invited us all for a drink.’

      ‘Good old Clive. Do you fancy him as well?’

      Leah sat through the meeting not taking much of it in. She doodled on her notepad. She drew a path going over a hill into a sunset, and a funny little house with a chimney and smoke coming out, but she scribbled that out and drew boxes like cages and more boxes and more boxes.

      ‘Item five, compost bins,’ said the chairperson. This was Phil. He had been chair for the last three years because nobody else