Bed of Roses. Daisy Waugh

about. The stems were too long for the mug, and they wouldn’t balance.

      ‘Hey, Tracey,’ said Fanny (ignoring Robert), ‘I spotted your naughty brother Dane in the post office yesterday. He didn’t look very ill to me. Any chance he might come back to school one of these—’ She looked round from behind her newspaper, but Tracey had left the room. ‘Tracey?’

      ‘Ouch!’ Robert’s mug of pink roses tumbled to the floor. He looked across at Fanny, pale eyes damp with yearning, a spot of red blood sprouting from his finger. ‘I think I’m going to need a plaster.’

      ‘Oh, belt up,’ Fanny snapped.

      ‘Have pity on him!’ giggled glass-eyed Mrs Haywood, as Fanny slapped down her paper and stood up to leave the room. ‘The man’s soft on you, he can’t help it. He can’t concentrate on a thing!’

      Through all this nonsense Fanny continues to work hard at her new job, and already the school is beginning to blossom. At least, there is a clear sense of energy to it now. The walls are covered in the children’s artwork and poetry, and there are nature displays on the tables. She has made a small garden at the side of the school, where the junior class has planted flower and vegetable seeds. Last week her car hit one of the Maxwell McDonald pheasants, so she brought the bird in and dissected it for everyone, which was illegal on Health and Safety grounds, but popular with the children. Next week she wants to take them all out collecting wool. Together (the plan is) they will learn how to wash it, spin it, dye it, and weave it into scarves.

      Fanny thinks of her school all day and most of the night. In the three weeks since term started she’s had dinner a couple of times with Grey and Messy McShane. She’s met Charlie, Jo, the twins and the General in the Fiddleford Arms for a weekend lunch. (They’d been unable to invite her to the Manor; one of their more troubled celebrity guests being so afraid of spies he’d demanded that even the post be left at the bottom of the drive.) Fanny’s spent a couple of evenings on her own in the pub, chatting with Tracey and anyone else around (although she tries to avoid drinking with Kitty). And she gossips with Mrs Hooper for at least twenty minutes every morning, when she buys her milk and newspaper. But that, excepting the weekend Louis came, makes up the sum total of Fanny’s Fiddleford social life to date. For someone so naturally gregarious, it’s not much. And yet Fanny hasn’t felt lonely for more than the odd few minutes in all that time. She’s been so wrapped up in her work, and so exhausted by the end of each working day, often she can barely find the energy to talk to Brute, let alone to a human being.

      Her evenings tend mostly to be dominated by the government forms: the progress reports, policy papers, target statements, assessment charts and time-allocation forecasts all growing steadily damper under her kitchen sink. It seems the more forms she fills in, the more they pile up, so that her desk at work and the kitchen cupboard are now stuffed and overflowing. And at night, even in her dreams, Fanny finds herself ticking boxes, evaluating performances, identifying ethnic origins, searching – endlessly – for that magical square which says ‘other’.

      Only two things worry her more than the paperwork: that Dane Guppy hasn’t appeared at school since Fanny and his enormous mother had their disagreement at the limbo over a fortnight ago; and that Scarlett Mozely, Kitty’s daughter, hasn’t produced a piece of work or said a single word to Fanny, or to anyone else, since term began.

      Scarlett sits at the back of the class with her crutches lying neatly beside her, as she sits everywhere in life, plain and silent and mostly ignored. She’s been sitting at that same desk, with that same sullen face, ever since Kitty moved to Fiddleford, and until now no one has ever made more than a token effort to disturb her.

      Mrs Haywood the glass-eyed secretary tells Fanny she has been unable to ‘locate’ any notes on Scarlett Mozely in either her office or Fanny’s, which is no surprise since the notes on at least a third of all of Fiddleford’s thirty-eight pupils have been missing for years. Robert White is equally unforthcoming when Fanny finally summons the strength to ask him for help.

      They are in the staff room at the time, and not alone. (Fanny takes care that they are never alone.) He’s chuckling self-consciously over something in the Guardian, and Fanny is in the far corner, as far away from him as possible, with her back to him, making coffee.

      ‘Robert,’ she barks. ‘Tell me what you know about Scarlett Mozely.’

      ‘Mmm,’ he says happily, pretending to think about it but really only trying to make the conversation last, ‘mmmm…No, I must say I don’t know much about Scarlett, I’m afraid, Fanny. She arrived straight into Mrs Thomas’s class.’

      ‘Yes, I’m aware of that.’

      ‘Mmm. So your best bet, Fanny, would probably be putting a call in to Mrs Thomas.’

      ‘Mrs Thomas doesn’t return my calls, as you know. And this is a small school. I presume you’ve had some dealings with her?’

      ‘By the way, Fanny, I’ve been meaning to ask you, have you ever been on the Eurostar?’

      ‘What?’

      He tells her about a trip to Paris he took ‘with a certain lady-friend. Call me an old devil, but what with recent events I’ve actually misplaced her name!’ He asks Fanny to forgive him for quoting the old maxim, ‘But Paris,’ he says, ‘really is the most romantic city in the world!’

      Linda Tardy, eating McVitie’s on the ink-stained sofa, shakes her head. ‘I think you two would make a super couple,’ she says, ‘both being so brainy and international and everything. Wouldn’t it be lovely, Mrs Haywood? Don’t you think?’

      ‘Linda,’ Fanny says briskly, ‘tell me. What do you know about Scarlett Mozely?’

      ‘Well…To my experience,’ Linda Tardy replies, after an incredibly long pause, during which she finishes her biscuit – and thinks, presumably, ‘she’s one of these busy ones who likes to buzz away at her own little projects. Doing her own thing. And who am I to say she shouldn’t? Poor little mite.’

      ‘But is she clever? Is she thick? Seriously, it seems ridiculous, but I’ve no idea if she can even read and write! You must have seen some of her work?’

      Linda Tardy’s lips disappear, leaving nothing showing but the outlying pink-smudged vertical creases, sprinkled with biscuit crumbs. ‘Have you seen her work?’ she asks sternly.

      ‘No, but—’

      ‘Well, then…And incidentally, Fanny, though I say it as probably shouldn’t, but I personally don’t appreciate descriptives such as “clever” or “thick” when it comes to our little kiddies. Not in this day and age.’

      Fanny sighs. She glances out of the staff-room window, to where Scarlett sits alone on a wall, scribbling away in that red book of hers, and decides the time has come for her to contact Scarlett’s mother. She takes her coffee and walks towards the door.

      ‘Ooh, Fanny,’ says Robert suddenly. ‘I was wondering. Do you have a minute? Could I have a little word?’

      A wave of ferocious irritation. She looks back at him. He’s folded the Guardian’s ‘G2’ and placed it neatly back inside the main paper, and he’s already half on his feet.

      ‘What do you want?’ she asks coldly.

      ‘I mean, could I have a little word in the office?’

      ‘NO.’ She notices Linda Tardy looking at her curiously. ‘I mean…’ She corrects herself. ‘Not really, no. Now isn’t convenient. Can it wait?’

      ‘Only I’ve been doing a little research.’

      ‘Good good.’ She looks at her watch.

      ‘Into teachers’ courses.’

      ‘Oh, yes?’

      ‘There’s a one-day Saturday course in Swindon next month. Wait a mo’. I’ve got the leaflet here…It’s for heads and deputies.