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‘Did you and Lily make up after what happened the other day?’ Sophie asked. It was a lame start, but she was determined to find out what was getting Cassie down. She just needed a way in, a way to get Cassie talking to her.
Cassie shook her head. ‘Not really.’ She looked at her hands resting in her lap. ‘I didn’t really bother trying, though,’ she added, picking at a fingernail.
‘Cassie, is everything OK?’ Sophie asked.
‘Fine.’
‘You know you can talk to me if there’s ever anything wrong.’
‘You’re as bad as my dad,’ Cassie said rudely. ‘Can’t everyone just leave me alone?’
Sophie could tell she was desperate to leave, fidgeting in her chair and finding her hands particularly interesting – anything not to make eye contact with Sophie. Sophie was undeterred.
‘Cassie, neither your father nor I are trying to pry or upset you. We just want to make sure you’re OK.’ She waited and gave Cassie some time to answer. It surprised her that, for once, she and Liam seemed to be on the same side.
‘OK. Can I go now? Dad will be waiting for me.’ She made to move.
Sophie sighed and sat back in her chair. It was hopeless. ‘Yes, of course. Off you go.’
Cassie picked up her bag and left the room like a grumpy teenager.
Sophie was surprised that Cassie hadn’t engaged with her. Having known Cassie for a while now, it seemed out of character. She was even more concerned than she had been before.
Through the window, she saw Cassie run out of the gates. Unusually, her father was there to collect her rather than her grandmother. Liam Hawthorn was all smiles and loveliness now that he wasn’t shouting at Sophie. He swept his daughter up in his arms and she sort of smiled. Sophie took consolation in that. At least it seemed like everything was OK at home.
Chapter Seven
After the fraught conversation she’d had with Kate and Tom earlier that day and her unsuccessful conversation with Cassie too, Sophie toyed with the idea of getting out of the school gates as early as possible. However, an unusual lapse in organisation because of the ongoing coordination of the Christmas concert meant that she still needed to plan her literacy lesson for Monday morning. She could have taken everything home with her, but experience told her that trying to plan at home would result in her desperately needing something from her classroom. Sophie reserved weekend work for less dangerous pursuits, like marking. With a rough plan for the lesson in her mind, she fiddled about with the PowerPoint.
She liked school when it was like this. Everyone had left; the corridors and classrooms were silent. At this time of year, it grew dark early on and the rural location of the school meant it was completely black outside; only the town way off in the distance and the stars in the sky gave off any kind of light. In her earlier years, Sophie would have got a little jumpy about what could be lurking through the window; but nowadays, she enjoyed her own company and was comforted by being alone. She liked that she couldn’t see the world outside her classroom.
Her hands on her hips, Sophie appraised the current display board for literacy and knew deep down that she would need to change it before they started Monday’s sequence of lessons on biographies. Tearing down the original backing paper with a satisfying rustle, she screwed it up as best she could, put it in the recycling bin and then climbed in after it to squash it down. And with it, some of the tightness in her chest from the day’s events dissolved. There was something about acting like a child sometimes that was comforting. Simple pleasures lifted her mood instantly.
She collected the giant roll of backing paper from the craft cupboard and laid it down on the table, rolling it out to roughly the length of the display board. Then, on her way to collecting the scissors, she put YouTube on the computer and searched for show tunes. She didn’t mind which ones came up – she loved them all. If they were sad she could wallow in the self-pity she was feeling following her conversation with Kate and Tom – and the argument with her mother. If they were all joyful and jazz hands, then she’d embrace the lift and hopefully feel a little bit better about everything. She did feel a little foolish for how she’d reacted on both occasions, after all.
Wrestling with the backing paper – holly-leaf green, of course – Sophie managed to smooth it out on the wall and staple it in place, which was always a genuine achievement, particularly if it was a one-man job. They didn’t teach you the logistics of creating displays during teacher training.
While she printed and laminated useful vocabulary, her mind wandered to the meeting with Liam on Wednesday and she replayed it in her head, searching for where it had unravelled. Had she done something wrong? She thought about the way the conversation had gone. Had she said something awful? Had she suggested that Cassie was a terrible child or implied Liam was to blame for her negative behaviour? She thought her concern had come from a place of nurture and care, but now she wasn’t so sure where it was all coming from. Surely she wasn’t imagining Cassie’s strange attitude? Time had a funny way of playing with your memories and turning them into something they weren’t. She threw the idea of it being her fault out of her head straight away. Liam needed to know how his daughter was acting at school, if not to alert him to the fact that something was wrong, then to reassure him it wasn’t just at home where she’d been playing up.
‘I’m the Greatest Star!’ came on over the speakers and as Sophie arranged her laminated resources on the wall, she began to sing along. She didn’t share it often, but this was her favourite song. She often wondered whether she’d been born a decade or two too late. Sometimes she found the music would just take over her and, in her mind, she’d be on stage, a hundred lights blinding her.
She sang through to the chorus and closed her eyes for a high note, realising that she was standing on a chair that wobbled slightly beneath her. Something about singing when nobody was listening felt so freeing. This was Sophie’s happy place. She stapled the display title along the top while she sang, before jumping off and throwing her arms up for the big finale.
Sophie let out a shriek and opened her eyes to see where the applause had come from. Kate filled the doorway.
‘That was pretty good,’ Kate said, taking a step or two inside the room.
Sophie couldn’t work out if this was another example of Kate’s sarcasm.
‘How long have you been …?’ Sophie asked anxiously. She could feel a flush of colour creeping across her cheeks.
‘Long enough,’ Kate said with a smile.
‘Oh.’ Sophie busied herself again by Blu-Tacking interactive resources to the display, low enough that the children could come over and use them in their work.
‘Why are you embarrassed?’ Kate asked.
‘Don’t you know me at all?’ She still didn’t turn around, suddenly finding display-making to be essential work.
