His eyes are more furious even than James’s, and it occurs to me that getting me kicked out was probably a joint effort.
The expression on Cyril’s face leaves me in no doubt that he has all the power here. He can do what he likes to me, even though I’m older than he is. He’s won, and he knows it. There’s triumph in his eyes and arrogance in his stance.
I bark out a resigned laugh.
“Beats me why you’re laughing,” he goes on. “It’s over. We know what you are. Don’t you get it?”
I clench my fist around the key ring so hard that the little metal teeth cut into my skin. Does this rich brat really think I don’t get it? Does he think I’m not perfectly well aware that nobody gives a shit when and where Lydia and I first met? That nobody will believe us if we insist that we had already fallen in love before I started at Maxton Hall? And that we broke up the moment I found out that I’d be her teacher? Of course I knew it. From now on and for all time, I’m going to be the creep who got involved with a student on his very first teaching job.
The thought makes me sick.
I walk into the office without deigning to look at the two of them again. I pull the bunch of keys from my jacket pocket and slam them onto the desk, then turn on my heel. As I walk past the lads again, I glimpse Cyril pushing a phone into James’s hand out of the corner of my eye. “Thanks for that, mate,” he says. I turn away and hurry toward the door as fast as I can. I dimly register that James is raising his voice.
Every step hurts; every breath feels like a monumental effort. There’s a roaring in my ears that drowns out pretty much everything else. The students’ laughter, their echoing footsteps, the creaking of the double doors as I walk out of Maxton Hall and into the unknown.
Ruby
I feel numb.
The bus driver shouts out that it’s the end of the line, but I can’t make sense of her words. Eventually, I grasp that I’ve got to get off if I don’t want to ride all the way back to Pemwick. I’vebeen so sunk in thought that I have no memory of the last forty-five minutes.
When I step out into the air, my limbs feel heavy yet tingly, all at once. I grip my backpack with both hands as if the straps could hold me up. But it doesn’t help to shake off the feeling that I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind from which there’s no escape. Like I no longer know up from down.
This can’t have just happened. I can’t have been kicked out of school. Mum can’t really have thought I’d get involved with a teacher. My dreams of Oxford can’t have just gone up in smoke.
I must be losing my mind. My breath is coming even faster, and my fingers are cramped. I feel the sweat running down my spine, but there are goose bumps all over my body. I’m dizzy. I shut my eyes and try to get my breath back under control a bit.
When I reopen them, I no longer feel like I could throw up at any moment. For the first time since I got off the bus, I take in my surroundings. I’ve come three stops too far and I’m at the far end of Gormsey. Normally, I’d be kicking myself. But right now, I’m almost relieved, because Ican’tgo home yet. Not after Mum looked at me like that.
There’s only one person I want to speak to at this moment. One person I trust completely and who knows without a doubt that I’d never do a thing like that.
Ember.
I start walking toward her school. They must be nearly finished, because a few primary school kids are coming this way. There are a bunch of boys trying to push one another off the narrow pavement and into the hedge. At the sight of me, they pause for a moment, and walk on with their heads down like they’re scared I might tell them off.
The closer I get to Gormsey High, the weirder I feel. It’s only two and a half years since I was at this school too. I don’t miss it, but being here again is a blast from the past. Except that back then, nobody turned to stare at me for wearing a private school uniform.
I walk up the steps to the main doors. The dingy walls presumably used to be white and the paint on the windowsills is flaking. You can’t help noticing the absence of funds flowing into this place.
I squeeze past the stream of people coming toward me and try to spot anyone I know in the sea of faces. Before long, I see a girl with two neat plaits as she walks out of the school side by side with a boy.
“Maisie!” I call to her.
Maisie stops and looks around. When she sees me, her eyebrows shoot up. She nudges her boyfriend to wait, then threads her way through the crowd toward me.
“Ruby!” she says. “Hi, what’s up?”
“Do you know where Ember is?” I ask. My voice sounds perfectly normal, and I wonder how that’s even possible when everything inside me is broken.
“I thought Ember was ill,” Maisie says with a frown. “She wasn’t in school today.”
“What?”
That’s impossible. Ember and I left at the same time this morning. If she didn’t go to school, then where the hell is she?
“She messaged me that she was in bed with a sore throat.” Maisie shrugs and glances over her shoulder to her boyfriend. “So she must be at home, right? Sorry, I have to go. Do you mind…?”
I nod hastily. “Yeah, sure.”
