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It might be too late for that, Sajeed. He hangs his arm out, urging me to take the food so he can run away. I stand there and stare at it for a while. There was someone else in this house, someone who wasn’t me? A woman?

‘When was this, Sajeed?’ I ask him. My face is frozen. A breath is stuck in my body, struggling to escape. I cling on to the door to steady myself, the heat from outside hitting me like waves.

‘Last week maybe?’ he says. ‘Seriously, I think it was a different house. All these houses look the same. Maybe it was your neighbour?’ He points to the house that shares our pathway.

My neighbour to the left is an eighty-four-year-old lady called Marjorie. She has no teeth and a flip phone so I know there’s no way she’s getting Uber Eats.

He looks to his left and right. Sweat runs down his temples. ‘Yep. Definitely a different house. Maybe even a different street. I deliver a lot of food in this neighbourhood.’

But unfortunately, his sad eyes tell me different.

‘Was it Thursday, Sajeed?’ I ask, trying to control the shock from bursting out of me. I was on a teaching course in London. Overnight.

He doesn’t know how to reply. ‘Miss…I…’ He hangs his arm out again. Please, just take the food.

‘Babe, problem?’ Paul says, popping his head out of the kitchen doorway. Sajeed doesn’t hang around. He puts the food just inside the door and takes a light jog down the pathway.

Paul peers around to look at him running off then looks back down at his phone. I bend down and pick up the food and turn to look at him. I think he’s on TikTok. Really? I take a long hard breath.

‘He just got confused. He remembered delivering here last Thursday,’ I say, trying to wrestle with my emotions and gain the upper hand in this situation. ‘Another woman was here.’

Paul stops and looks up at me. It’s a silent, panicked look. A face once full of colour, drained. His shoulders fall, a hand goes to the air as if he’s about to try and explain.

You absolute dick.

‘Heads up,’ I say, casually, but I put all my emotion, all my rage into my arms and throw the takeaway at him with all the force and energy I can muster. Pad Thai, papaya salad and little crispy prawns rain through the air. I can’t.

It really is too fucking hot for this shit.

Charlie

‘What on earth is that on your face?’ Patricia, our head of religious education asks me, as we walk towards the school hall for the staff meeting.

A hand automatically goes to my face as she smiles broadly.

Patricia is the sort of teacher you feel is in the bones of this place, a woman of indeterminate age, a woman of legend (she threw a Bible at someone’s head once), and for some reason she’s always had a soft spot for me, telling me I remind her of a young Alain Delon (yes, I had to Google him).

It’s been six months of growing out my facial hair and the teens of this West London school (like Patricia) have been quite unforgiving.

I’ve been called everything from Mr Twit to Gandalf.

The problem is I do feel pride in the fact I grew this myself, even though I am aware I am starting to look like a common variety cult leader.

‘Not a fan then?’ I ask her.

‘I can’t see your lovely face, Carlos.’ She’s also the only person in school who calls me Carlos because I teach Spanish and she thinks it’s funny.

It would be, except I don’t look like a Carlos.

To me a Carlos is someone with swag and casual hotness like Pedro Pascal.

The only thing Pedro Pascal and I have in common is brown hair, conversational Spanish and a penchant for spontaneous dancing.

She fans herself down with her hands, her silver bobbed hair clinging to her face. I slow my pace down to walk alongside her, to try and appear gentlemanly, but really because when I’m kind she’ll sometimes give me a mint humbug from her handbag. I love a mint humbug.

‘It’s fucking hot, isn’t it?’ she says, puffing out her cheeks. I take it she’s not talking about my facial hair anymore. ‘And it’s only May. If it continues this way, I’ll die in my little portacabin classroom.’

She’s not wrong. I mean, I hope she’s wrong about the dying part as she’s the sort of teacher I think and hope would live forever, but the mercury hit thirty-three degrees today and after lunch, the classrooms had become a mix of water guns, body odour and moaning ruddy-faced children.

‘I have started keeping ice pops in the staffroom freezer, you know?’ I tell her. ‘Help yourself.’

‘Flavour?’

‘I have a range, Patricia.’

‘Well, I look forward to having a suck on one of them,’ she jokes, and I try to restrain my face from reacting. The banter is always crude and mildly terrifying with her. The sort that would see HR make us have a sit-down meeting. ‘Are they big?’

‘They’re manageable,’ I reply, and decide to match her game. ‘You know, Patricia, I can’t take it when you tease me and say we can’t be together.’

‘You’re so right. I’d ruin you,’ she says, cackling.

I nod, grinning. And, on cue, a boiled sweet comes out of her handbag, almost like a thank you for humouring her.

‘You still with the painted lady from English?’ she asks me curiously.

I look around nervously in case Krystal is in the vicinity. I know she won’t take kindly to the comparison. She often refers to Patricia as a relic, so at least the animosity is mutual.

‘They’re tattoos. You make her sound like a circus sideshow,’ I tell Patricia.

Patricia makes a face. ‘She’s all pierced and wears those big jumpers with the holes. It’s like the moths have been at her.’ Patricia wears a boucle suit to work every day with the same butterfly brooch, a low navy heel and a handbag. She looks like a First Lady in waiting.

‘You disapprove?’ I ask her, curiously.

‘I’m just jealous, obviously. Plus she’s the one dragging us along to this meeting in a heatwave. How long is it supposed to last?’ she asks as we arrive at the school hall.

‘Hopefully, not long…’ I say, picking up some biscuits on a silver foil tray at the front of the room. They really know how to treat us in this place. I hand a Rich Tea to Patricia, not before feeling a hand on my arm. I turn to see Krystal standing there.

‘Where have you been?’ she asks, looking furious. ‘I needed you here.’

‘I was escorting Patricia,’ I tell her. ‘She was being very complimentary about my beard. ’

Krystal runs her fingers through it and I submit to this obligingly. ‘Isn’t it giving millennial Jesus vibes, Patricia?’

Patricia grimaces at the reference. ‘I was thinking more Tom Hanks in Castaway . Was it your idea then?’ she asks.

‘Well, I think he looks rugged and distinguished,’ Krystal says proudly.

‘It looks like a big seventies muff…’ Patricia whispers out of the side of her mouth. Far from being offended I laugh and then choke a little on my biscuit. Krystal doesn’t get the joke and we stand there stewing in this strange awkward face-off.

‘Oh look, it’s Bev. I need to have a word,’ Patricia says to break the silence, putting an arm to mine and giving me a cheeky wink before taking her leave.

‘Relic…’ Krystal says as she’s out of earshot.

‘You could be a little kinder.’

‘What does she know about grooming?’ she scoffs. ‘Her vag is probably covered in cobwebs.’

I baulk a little at the mean girl energy.

Patricia is a teaching lifer. She’s everything Krystal never wants to be.

Teaching to Krystal is just a wage, a way to bide her time until she can quit, write earnest literature and win the Booker Prize.

She is adamant that her nightmare is to be in the same school for all that time, stagnating in the same place.

I stand somewhere between the two. I can never project myself that far into the future but I’d argue you can never stagnate in teaching because the kids change, they make every day different, they deserve our loyalty and good influence.

‘I think the beard is hot,’ she reiterates.

‘Well, then that’s the only opinion that matters,’ I say to reassure her.

‘Exactly,’ she confirms.

I smile. Krystal leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder, waiting as other teachers fill the hall.

It’s one of those multipurpose spaces that can magically turn from an exam room into a gymnasium, or a stage for amateur productions of musicals where Mr Foster annually gets out his trombone.

It’s lined with world flags, motivational posters and heavy curtains that vaguely smell like Lynx Africa and cheesy feet.

‘I’m so bloody nervous,’ Krystal says, looking at me to give her some confidence. ‘The computer hates me. No one wants to be here.’

She’s right – it’s Friday and all of us are desperate for a pub garden, but we’ve been called in here to take in Krystal’s ski trip presentation, designed to try and persuade more members of staff to give up their holidays and get out on the slopes.

Maybe looking at pictures of the snow will also provide some relief in this mini heatwave.

‘It will be grand. You’ll see…And I am sure the computer loves you.

’ I try to appease her by offering her one of my biscuits but she looks down at it, disapprovingly.

She’s a healthy sort. She’ll read ingredients out to me while I’m downing a whole packet of Bourbons and tell me what the emulsifiers are doing to my gut health.

It’s always mildly naggy but I plough on.

Nothing can put me off an economy biscuit.

‘Oh my, have you seen Stan? That shirt is giving.’