Page 27

TEN

Suzie

‘Dans la photo, il y a un grand chat.’

‘That’s right, there is a big cat in the photo, or we can use the word, un lion. Because it’s a lion,’ I tell the student.

‘The French for lion is lion?’

‘Well, not quite, try a ‘lee’ sound at the front. Like the town?’

The student looks at me blankly.

‘Or we can stick with big cat, which is accurate.’

They nod and continue to look down at the picture.

This afternoon is the first of my Voice sessions, my newly named club where students can come and practise their language skills after school.

It’s a decent turnout but I think that might be because I’ve bought biscuits and made posters on Canva on which I deliberately avoided the word oral for obvious reasons.

The only thing missing is the other teacher who was supposed to be ‘collaborating’ on this project and who has been decidedly missing from this working relationship.

Do you know how he’s been answering my emails about this?

With a thumbs up, which is the same sort of apathy you expect from a teenage boy.

It tells me volumes about his character but then since last week, when I found out about his ‘family’, I’d already cast my assumptions.

And in reality, it sucked because in my head, Carlos was some perfect man, someone I had put on a pedestal, and now all the layers are being peeled away to reveal someone who is work-shy and lazy.

A smidge of internet snooping helped too because what did I find?

A selfie of him with a kid. Charlie looked younger and the boy was about ten but I guess that could have been feasible.

He would have been super young when he had him but, in reality, Charlie was a padre.

This meant that there was possibly a girlfriend or wife out there.

It explained a lot, too much, and lodged a huge seed of disappointment in my guts.

There are some dynamics there which complicate matters.

I don’t want to break up a family or be a secret holiday fling.

I don’t want to be with a cheat. I’ve seen enough of that this year.

‘Oh god, I’m so sorry. I’m so late, everyone.

I got held up in a pastoral meeting and…

I’m…oooh, biscuits…’ Charlie enters the room like a whirlwind, placing his coat over mine, which strangely annoys me, and chucking his rucksack to the floor.

He searches the room for me and does a weird salute action as his hand grabs two biscuits at a time.

Two. Greedy and late. ‘Where are my Spanish kids at?’

A table at the back of the room all put their hands up and he walks over to them, his hands going to the resources on the table.

Yes, I made those laminated vocabulary support prompts that they are using.

I made ones in Spanish too as I didn’t want kids to miss out. Charlie sees them and turns to me.

‘You bought Nice biscuits,’ he says.

Is that it? Seriously? Is that how you are entering into this conversation with me?

‘I did. They weren’t for you. The Hob NOBS were for you,’ I whisper so it’s out of earshot .

He breaks into a smile. I wasn’t being funny. I was trying to offend him. Instead, he puts a hand to his chest.

‘I’m sorry I was late and I haven’t really bought into this. I will be better, I promise. I will contribute. It’s just been a killer first week.’

I try not to react but smile and return to the kids I was working with.

We’re just very different teachers. Organisation and preparation is my bag, and I guess when you have a family then your time and priorities are shaped differently.

From what I’ve seen, Charlie is a run to the photocopier five minutes before the lesson kinda teacher, his worksheets all in Comic Sans, my personal teaching bugbear.

That said, the kids really like him, which is annoying.

He has a good teacher voice which I occasionally hear echoing through the walls and down the corridor, he calls the kids ‘amigos’, and I hear him playing his class random Spanish songs like ‘ Despacito ’ which isn’t on the curriculum but I will assume keeps the kids onside.

‘Miss, how do I say annoying?’ a student asks me.

Charlie overhears this and looks at me.

‘Oh, you can say agacant? Or my favourite is embêtant? Who are you talking about?’ I ask the student.

‘I’m preparing my questions about family. My brother. I want to say he cheats at games.’

I smile, my gaze returning to Charlie’s. ‘Then you can call him un tricheur or un fraudeur. Like the English word for fraud.’

Charlie laughs under his breath to hear that. ‘Sorry to interrupt, do you know what the Spanish word is for cheat? Una tramposa.’

I feel my jaw drop a little to hear that. What did he just call me? ‘Mr Shaw, I believe that’s a feminine version of the word, he was talking about his brother and we’re French here. You Spanish lot stay in your lane. ’

There’s a murmur of giggles as the kids pick up on the drama. Oh kids, if only you knew.

‘My bad,’ he says. ‘Right, so the word for lion in Spanish is león like the restaurant with the overpriced porridge or the film from the nineties that none of you should have watched.’

‘A French film…’ I interrupt.

‘Did someone hear something? Was it the French butting in again?’ Charlie jokes.

Giggles now turn into cries of disbelief that we seem to have started a little war of languages here and I bite my lip because despite all this disdain I have for him, this is what attracted me to him the most, that little bit of electric banter that flowed so well between us.

‘Miss, are you really going to let him talk about you like that?’ a girl says.

‘I tend to just ignore the Spanish. They’re all talk, no…’ I stop myself from completing that sentence.

‘What’s the French word for that, Miss?’ an older kid asks me.

‘Let’s say il péte plus haut que son cul . He’s a bit full of himself you know?’ I smile.

There’s laughter in the room as Charlie and I look at each other, I widen my eyes at him. He has not melted this ice yet. I’m still angry with him.

‘Well, this is lovely. So great to see…’ A voice suddenly sounds from the door.

It’s Lee, standing there, counting heads and looking at all this good work in action.

He stops at a desk and picks up one of my laminated sheets.

‘Mr Shaw, this is brilliant. I might steal this template for myself with all these Spanish sentence starters. Great work.’ I look at Charlie, waiting for him to say something.

He must say something. ‘Keep up the good work, everyone.’

He disappears and I don’t dare make any eye contact with Charlie in case my gaze kills him like icy lasers.

I am not in the habit of outing colleagues in front of students or our seniors but I expect a little bit of professional decency.

And yet again, another layer is peeled away.

I look at my watch to try and hide my irritation.

‘And everyone, we’re coming up to four o’clock so let’s start packing up.

This has been so great, thank you for coming.

’ I look at Charlie at this point, a passive-aggressive smile plastered across my face.

The students start to filter out of the room and I walk around to collect my resources and put them away in my folder. I had hoped Charlie would have left with the kids but he lingers. I zip my folder up a little aggressively hoping he’ll get the message.

‘I’m sorry…I should have been a bit quicker to tell Lee that you prepared those sheets. I will correct that. That was wrong of me,’ he says contritely. I look over to see the sincerity of a gaze I saw backlit by the Mallorcan sun. I need to snap out of this.

‘I didn’t do this for the gold stars, don’t worry yourself.’

He continues to stand there, helping me straighten chairs and pick up pen lids off the floor, looking like he’s actually doing some work. ‘You think I’m lazy – the person in the group who doesn’t do the work and takes all the credit?’

‘The one who wings his way through the day and ends up getting to go on trips to Seville.’

He furrows his brow at my remarks. ‘You don’t know me, that’s a little unfair. I am happy to contribute to this moving forward, give you your flowers for all of this.’

‘Like I say, I didn’t do this for the extra credit,’ I say. I remove his coat from mine and start to pack up my things, pretending to look at my phone.

‘Suzie…’ he murmurs. Is it terrible that I hate how he says my name? That his voice is like an echo within me, that I actually respond physically to it. ‘We’ve got to sort this out.’

I shrug. ‘That’s oversimplifying it a bit.

’ I stand still, rooted to the spot. I’d done a good job of avoiding him so far, of keeping some distance whilst I tried to work out what this is between us, but the truth is he’s not the person I thought he was, and that’s a little bit upsetting.

I don’t have enough energy or goodwill to deal with the aftermath of the failings of yet another man.

Only this morning, I got another email from Paul, still trying to invade my inbox with what I now call split spam.

It’s him trying to start a conversation about nothing, to reel me back and I don’t want anything to do with it.

Or Charlie. It feels far simpler to do life alone right now. ‘You called me una trampa.’

‘It was all bants, Miss.’

He’s trying to make me laugh. I don’t like that. He heads over to the end of my desk as I wrestle with putting my coat on.

‘You weren’t like this in Mallorca,’ he says, and I gasp, picking up a white board pen on the desk and throwing it at him in shock. Mallorca feels like a secret code word that shouldn’t be said out loud.

‘Oww?’ he says, laughing. ‘Are we not supposed to say that word?’

‘It’s just…’ I mumble, trying to find the words. ‘I just…I’d drawn a line under what happened in Mallorca,’ I whisper.

‘Because you just wanted a holiday fling?’ he asks.