Page 44 of The Rest is History

Elodie

I stand stiffly as my class files into the hall for assembly. Not sure it’s possible for a person to be more tense than I am right now. The kids sit in year group order, with Year Seven at the front, and the teachers sit along the sides of the hall, next to their classes.

Which means all the Year Ten teachers will sit together.

Which means I will have Charlie within a metre of me in a matter of moments.

Shit.

I avoided any sight of him all day yesterday, but I’m on constant high alert, and it’s exhausting. School has become a minefield. I take my seat, and Zara sits next to me. Her cheery demeanour is a comfort, even if it’s forced.

And then it’s happening—the moment I’ve been dreading. Charlie’s class is filing in, and he’s standing next to me, and then taking a seat on my other side, and fuuuck .

Oh my God. Oh my God.

This man, who consumed my dreams for weeks and has caused me an unfathomable amount of pain for the past couple of days, lowers himself down next to me, and I can smell him.

So help me God, his scent wafts over me and it steals the breath from my lungs, because his proximity makes the grief hit me like a sledgehammer.

I sit ramrod straight, hoping hard that what little of my granola pot I got down this morning doesn’t make a reappearance. And then, because I can sense Charlie’s eyes on me, I do what may just be the bravest thing I’ve ever done.

I turn my head and look at him.

Oh, crap. Shouldn’t have done that. For some reason, I’ve got it into my head that he’s been going about his business, cold and sociopathic as you like. That I’m already dead to him.

But this is worse. Because those gorgeous baby blues are twin pools of pain, and that pain radiates outwards, presumably recognising its reflection in my face.

He’s just staring, his eyes darting over my face.

‘Hi,’ I whisper.

I watch his lips move.

‘Hi.’

And there’s nothing more to say. No point in either of us asking how are you or any such nonsense. So I mentally suck up the view a little more before turning my face, if not my attention, to the stage where Phil is wrestling with the slides on the big screen.

Fifteen minutes of tortured bliss, or blissful torture, follow.

I’m not sure which, but it’s like being injected with crack while having your toenails ripped out.

Because my bare upper arm (really should have thought that through) brushes the linen of Charlie’s shirt throughout, and I enter some sort of limbo where I sit there and focus only on those few inches of our bodies.

On the connection. The heat. Dear Lord, the heat pumping from this guy’s skin.

I cling to the sensation like a drowning person clings to a piece of driftwood.

The Wednesday before half term, we sat exactly like this, except that we both had our hands resting on the chair seat, and Charlie brushed my pinky finger with his over and over again in the middle of a room of oblivious people.

Let’s just say I didn’t think my pinky was an erogenous zone before, but after the last assembly I stood corrected.

When Phil has wrapped up—I have no idea what he’s been saying for the past quarter of an hour—I stand to guide my class out, and Charlie whispers have a good day.

I respond with a faint snigger, because that’s got to be the most pointless nicety ever uttered in the history of mankind.

I’m chilling on the grass with Zara at lunch when my phone goes. When I say chilling, I mean exhaustively replaying every second of assembly in my head.

It’s my sister. She never calls me at school.

‘Is Olive okay?’ I gasp as I answer.

‘What? Oh, yeah, she’s fine. Liddie, you’ll never guess what the fuck has happened.’ She’s practically hyperventilating.

I sit up straight. ‘What?’

‘I just had a call from Woodland House.’ Her voice wavers. ‘Sorry, I’m really emotional. Lid, one Charles David Vaughan has paid Olive’s school fees for all of next year. Twenty-one fucking grand!’

I put my fist to my mouth, the tears coming in even before I’ve properly processed what my sister is saying.

Charlie’s paid Olive’s school fees? The whole shebang? Why the fuck would he do that? That’s not even a grand gesture—it’s madness.

‘Well, obviously we can’t accept it,’ I say, pulling myself back to reality.

‘No, obviously not,’ Grace says, her disappointment palpable down the phone line.

‘I mean, it’s crazy.’

‘Maybe he’s trying to make it up to you for hurting you?’

‘Money doesn’t make up for breaking someone’s heart,’ I tell her sternly.

‘No, of course not.’

‘But why would he do that? It’s not like Olive’s my kid.’

‘Did he know you were helping with the fees?’ she asks.

‘Yeah.’ The fog is clearing slowly, clarity dawning. ‘Yeah, he did. He knew that was why I took this job. And that was why he offered me the Anne Boleyn gig—he knew I needed money.’ At least, that was how he pitched it to me initially. I like to think he had other motives.

‘So maybe he doesn’t want you to worry. He knows you’re out of a job from next month, right?’

Right. Or maybe he’s just trying to buy his way out of his guilt. I sigh.

‘I’ll go talk to him.’

CHARLIE

She was wearing the dress this morning at assembly.

You know. The dress. The one I unbuttoned that first time I uncovered her body properly in the stationery cupboard. It’s long and denim and fitted, with generous, slippery buttons that help a man out when he’s trying to undress the beautiful wearer.

I have no idea whether she was wearing it to fuck with me.

No matter.

It worked.

Seeing her so close, having her right next to me for the duration of the assembly, touching me, was a diabolical head fuck of epic proportions.

It made me realise I’ve overestimated my own strength.

Not only will riding out the end of the school year in proximity with her be unbearable, but Phil’s suggestion that I take the deputy head role to open up my job for Elodie is swiftly becoming unthinkable.

Not because of the sacrifice I’d be making by giving up my beloved subject matter in favour of a managerial role. I’d do that in a heartbeat for El.

But because, right now, the only thing that’s keeping me going is the knowledge that we have a month left of term before she and I part ways. And while that will be a gut-wrenching split, it’s better than the alternative.

Years and years of seeing her.

Working with her.

Loving her from afar.

Having to bear witness to the thing I tell myself I want for Elodie. Her falling in love and building a family.

Yeah. Not an option.

I’ll need to start looking at other roles as a matter of urgency.

I’m almost finished tiredly dismissing my class when she appears in my doorway, an angel backlit against the bright corridor beyond.

I stiffen but jerk my head in a come in gesture.

She sidles in hesitantly and perches on the empty desk nearest the door while I match the straggler parents with their kids and bid them farewell.

I practically kick the last child out of the room and close the door before turning back towards her and approaching her carefully, like she’s an animal I’m afraid of scaring off.

If this had been last week, I would have shut the blind on the door and pushed her up against it and found her neck with my mouth about the same time that one hand curled her hair around its fist and the other found her ass.

But it’s not last week.

And I suspect I know what this is about.

Suddenly, twenty-one grand feels like a small price to pay for getting her alone and not having her look at me like I’m the most despicable creature she’s ever seen.

‘Hi.’ I take a step towards her, and she stands.

I’m sure it’s so she’s not at a height disadvantage, but it has the effect of closing the gap between us.

I stand there like an idiot and drink her in.

Her hair’s loose today. Dark and glossy and gorgeous, tumbling over her bare shoulders.

I could smell her shampoo when she sat next to me earlier.

Objectively speaking, she looks tired, but her beauty still takes my breath away. I itch to pick up a strand of hair and roll it between my fingers. Ache to slide a hand around the back of that neck. To drag my thumb over her full, pink bottom lip before leaning in and biting down on it.

The only thing I have going for me in this moment, so help me God, is the utter certainty that I’ve done the right thing by her. No matter what she thinks of me.

‘Charlie,’ she starts, and my name on her lips rolls through my body. ‘I—my sister called me. She told me you paid Olive’s school fees for a whole year.’ She rubs the spot between her eyebrows tiredly. ‘It’s too much—there’s no way we can accept.’

I exhale. ‘It’s not too much. It’s the very least I can do.’

‘When you say it like that, it sounds like a payoff. Like you’re trying to—I don’t know—make amends. And even though it’s staggeringly generous, and I’m really touched, I don’t want any guilt money from you. You don’t owe me anything.’

I can’t bear this. I really can’t. She sees it as a big deal, because the struggle to put Olive through this expensive school has dictated so much of Elodie and Grace’s choices over the past year, but it’s really not a big deal for me.

Not financially, in any case.

What is a big deal is being able to walk away from her knowing that I haven’t just broken her heart. That something good has come out of the trust she placed in me.

Now I just need to make her understand. I need to make her agree to accept my gift.

‘It’s not about owing you, El.’ I pause, rake my fingers through my hair as I find the right words.

‘I know how much you’ve given up to be able to help your family out.

You’ve been at Grace’s side, and you’re incredible with Olive, and you took a new job just to be able to help with the fees.

And now I’ve gone and made that miserable for you, too.

‘I just want you to have some options. Some freedom. Without wanting to sound like a complete twat, this isn’t a big deal for me financially.

What you’ve done with Olive is so admirable, but I don’t like seeing you constrained by having these fees hanging over you.

And I didn’t want you having to keep up the Hampton Court thing because you were worried about money.

This way, if you want to quit, you can walk away without worrying. ’

Her eyes widen. ‘Do you want me to quit?’

‘No.’ I clench my hands into fists at my sides. I want to reach out and touch her so fucking badly. ‘I don’t. But I’m sure it’s something you’ve considered. And I don’t want money worries to be part of the equation.’

She cocks her head, considering my argument. ‘I don’t know, Charlie.’

I sense a chink in her armour and push on.

‘Come on, El. Everything you do is for other people. You’re sleeping in your sister’s spare room, and teaching a period in history you hate, and now you have to deal with me letting you down, too.

I just... I can’t bear it if I’ve made your life worse.

Just take the money and let me do one thing to make your life easier, for God’s sake. ’

She swallows, and I can sense her yielding. ‘It’s not money I want from you,’ she says in a low voice, and Jesus Christ, it nearly kills me.

‘I know, sweetheart.’

We stare at each other, my heart so full of love and pain that it swells right up to my throat.

She folds her arms over her chest. ‘You don’t get to call me that anymore. You’re the one who wanted to end it.’

She’s so hurt.

So bewildered by my actions.

I pinch the bridge of my nose.

‘I promise you, I have never wanted anything less than to walk away from you. I told you that in the—in the stationery cupboard.’ My eyes travel down her body and back to her face.

Her eyes are wide, her lips parted, and I can tell she’s remembering, too.

‘Last time you wore that dress, in fact. I told you I have never, ever wanted to walk away from you, and it still stands. I’ve done this for your own?—’

‘My own good, yeah, yeah. I’m aware. I still don’t get it, but I know I don’t stand a chance against your fucked-up rationale.

’ She goes to leave, touching my arm lightly as she turns.

‘Thanks for the money, Charlie. It was an extremely generous thing to do. And as you say, it gives me a lot more options to get away from you right now. But I’ll pay you back, even if it takes me a few years. Because I don’t want your charity.’

And she’s gone, vanishing into the sunlit corridor like a ghost.