LITMIR.BIZ

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before the presence and attention of colleagues and pupils demanded a more professional bearing.

      The youngest members of staff, their friendship had started on his first day at the school. The austerity of the majority of his new colleagues and the body odour of his overweight head of department meant he had bolted from the staffroom into the playgrounds and corridors to get his bearings. Debbie had found him wandering through the main building, wondering at the names on the doors of the classrooms.

      ‘It’s pronounced “On-ke-teel”,’ she’d said, sidling up to him. ‘As in François Anquetil, who left here aged eighteen, and died on his nineteenth birthday at Passchendaele. All these old rooms are named after prominent former teachers and pupils.’

      ‘That would be the room to teach war poetry in, then. I’m Colin Bygate, the new English teacher.’

      ‘I’m Debbie Hamon, history. If only we had the choice of classrooms! We’re stuck in rooms with romantic names like A1 and A2. Do you want the tour of our rather uninspiring arts block?’

      ‘Mr Le Brocq already took me round, but not much went in.’

      ‘He does have that effect. Come on, I can tell you who to avoid sitting next to in the staffroom too.’

      She had been his guide round the school, and latterly his guide round the Island. He had been surprised and confused at his first wedding anniversary dinner when Emma had told him she didn’t want them to turn into one of those insufferable couples who did everything together, and that it would be healthy occasionally to do different things at weekends. This had left him at several loose ends. Emma took herself off to try out a variety of short-lived hobbies, such as yoga (‘boring’), embroidery (‘full of old farts’), and ballroom dancing (‘too many creepy men’). She’d laughed when Colin had suggested he could come to the dance lessons to offer a better class of partner.

      ‘I love you, darling, but you’re not a dancer.’

      ‘But I’d learn. That’s the point.’

      ‘No. I already have a base level and you’d take ages to get up to that. Besides, the point is we’re supposed to have our own things.’

      Her ‘own things’ had ended up as shopping and lunching, usually with Sally. His ‘thing’ had started as exploring places with intriguing names. One day while he was ambling down to Wolf’s Caves he’d bumped into Debbie giving a talk about the eighteenth-century smugglers who’d used them. He’d tagged along, and after that had gone along to her monthly Sunday history walks. Gradually they began meeting before and hanging out after. He realised after a while that he’d only ever told Emma that he was going to history talks, omitting to mention Debbie’s presence. He told himself this was an innocent oversight, in no way to be taken as an admission of anything untoward, and told her casually that Debbie, whom he worked with, was one of the key organisers. Emma remembered her from the year below her at school.

      ‘Oh, my God, Velma?’

      ‘Debbie.’

      ‘Short, with glasses?’

      ‘Shortish.’

      ‘I’m not saying she’s a dwarf, Colin, I’m saying she’s a short girl with glasses. That’s why we used to call her Velma, from Scooby-Doo.’

      ‘I think the kids do too, although it won’t last long. She wears contacts now.’

      ‘So she’s still banging on about local history?’

      ‘That’s a bit harsh. I find it quite interesting. It’s very layered, the Island – Neolithic sites, fortifications from the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, German bunkers from the Second World War.’

      ‘Stop! You’re sending me into a coma.’

      ‘You don’t mind us being friends, though?’

      ‘God, no, she could do with a few.’

      His friendship with Debbie had continued to bloom, until he’d been plunged into a tailspin of guilt and panic when Emma had spotted her at a school social function at the end of the last summer term.

      ‘Velma’s sexed herself up a bit. Trying to look more like Daphne.’

      ‘You think so?’

      ‘You said she’d ditched the glasses, but that’s a whole new look. She used to be quite the frump.’

      Maybe because it had been gradual and he hadn’t noticed, maybe because he hadn’t wanted to notice or maybe because he’d secretly enjoyed noticing too much, Colin had chosen to let Debbie’s transformation pass him by. The glasses had indeed gone, the mop of hair had been styled and highlighted, the blouses were now fitted, and the skirts had gone from calf-length to above the knee. And it hadn’t just been visual. There had been other signs: the unspoken understanding that they would always sit together in the staffroom, the way she caught his eye in meetings, the handmade invitations to her history talks, but these were signs he chose to enjoy in the moment, ignoring their implications.

      ‘Who’s she seeing now?’

      ‘No one, as far as I know.’

      ‘Well, she must be after someone. Maybe you. Don’t blush, darling – I was only joking. Although it’s weird that she’s avoided you tonight. Maybe it’s because I’m here.’

      ‘Don’t be silly. You’re reading too much into it.’

      ‘And you’re being too defensive. Relax! I’d be surprised if she didn’t like you, but I trust you. You’re too good to stray. And if you did leave me I hope it would be for someone hotter. She can’t quite carry off that look …’

      Luckily the deputy head had come over at that point to ask Colin’s opinion on Jack Higgins, the Island’s most famous resident author, and neither he nor Emma had raised the subject again. He had initially dismissed Emma’s suspicions, not allowing anything to threaten the fairy-tale narrative he had constructed between him and his wife. Wife. Divorce was unthinkable to a man whose mother had stayed faithful to the ghost of his father. But why was he thinking of reasons not to divorce? And why, as they walked side by side into the main quadrangle of the school towards the staffroom, was he having to fight an urge to put an arm around Debbie, draw her closer and pour out his heart?

      Thankfully, she was chatting away, leaving few gaps, about that night’s stay at St Aubin’s Fort with her first-year history class.

      ‘The only thing I’m not looking forward to is sleeping in the same building as Mike Touzel. He keeps making cracks about our “dirty weekend”. I mean, please, the idea of him makes me gag.’

      Fair enough, thought Colin. Mike Touzel had an unfathomable belief in his own attractiveness to women. He had once told Colin that he wore a fake wedding ring at weekends to repel some of the she-beasts who inevitably lumbered over to him during a night at Bonaparte’s, one of the Island’s top nightspots. Colin had been there once, for about five minutes.

      ‘That said, he probably is the most eligible man in your department,’ offered Colin, the other members being Reg Le Marais, a bumbling old fellow in his sixties, with more hair in his ears than on his head, and Frank Ecobichon, who was so right-wing Colin wondered whether he might secretly long for the good old days of the German Occupation.

      At that moment Touzel sauntered past, his gait suggesting he had ‘Stayin’ Alive’ on a loop in his head. ‘Morning, Colin,’ he said, turning to walk backwards as he passed. ‘Saw your good lady wife last night. Damn, you’ve done well, man!’

      With what might have been a wink at Debbie, he whipped round and continued on his way. It already rankled with Colin that the man was getting to spend the night with Debbie, and he smarted that Touzel knew more of Emma’s movements the previous evening than he did. Everything felt wrong. This morning the world had woken up back to front.

      ‘God, tonight’s going to be awful,’ said Debbie, with a roll of her eyes. ‘How are you

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