Kerry Barrett - The Secret Letter

After suffering in too many staffrooms where the only refreshments on offer were clumpy catering tins of instant, I was pleasantly surprised to hear there was a coffee machine. I smiled.

‘Just milk, please. I’ll just have a look at my own office if that’s okay?’

‘Hold on,’ she said. She opened the top drawer of one of the desks and pulled out a key.

‘This is yours.’

I wondered if there was any point in keeping a key just centimetres away from the door it unlocked but I didn’t say anything. Instead I simply unlocked the door.

‘I’ll fire up the Nespresso,’ Paula said. ‘Well, it’s not a real Nespresso, because they’re so expensive. It’s just the Marks and Sparks version, but I find it’s just as good …’

She trailed off, much to my relief.

‘Just come in when you’re ready.’

I nodded and, taking a deep breath, I went into my new office.

It was pretty bare. There was a big desk by the window, a round table, and two empty bookcases. On one wall there was an old-fashioned black and white photograph of a young woman wearing what I thought was Edwardian dress, and a fierce expression.

‘You’re going to have to go,’ I told her out loud. ‘I can’t have you looking down on me so disapprovingly.’

My voice bounced around the empty room.

Suddenly overwhelmed by everything, I sat down at my new desk and put my face in my hands. This was my last chance to save my career and start again but it just seemed like a huge task. Was this going to be a massive mistake?

I sat like that for a few minutes, wallowing in my misery over my new life. None of this was my fault, I thought. I was just another one of Grant’s victims, like the parents he fooled, and the kids he let down, and whose SATs results he faked, and the PTA whose funds he siphoned off. Though that bit had never been proved, and like I said, he’d never actually admitted the rest – just insisted it was all a misunderstanding. I took a deep breath and rubbed my eyes, trying to pull myself together. I couldn’t fall apart now, not with Paula Paxton in the next room.

‘Excuse me, Ms Armstrong,’ a voice said, making me realise that Paula Paxton wasn’t in the next room; she was in my room, clutching two mugs of coffee.

I forced my head upright and tried to smile. But my neck felt weak and my smile weaker.

‘Oh dear,’ Paula Paxton said. ‘Oh dear.’

She put both mugs on the desk and in two strides was next to me. Tentatively, she touched my arm.

‘Feeling a bit overwhelmed?’ she said.

Her kind voice almost made me fall apart. With super-human strength I managed to nod, without looking at her.

‘I know what happened,’ she said. ‘In your last job, I mean. You don’t have to explain.’

Of course she knew. She’d been in my interviews; she must have read my application. Knowing she knew made me feel oddly relieved and embarrassed at the same time. I couldn’t bear her feeling sorry for me. It was the sympathy and the sad faces and the tilty heads asking ‘how ARE you?’ that had made life in London so completely awful.

Paula rubbed my arm gently and then went round the other side of the desk and sat down opposite me. She pushed one of the mugs towards me and picked up the other one.

‘I think I should tell you just how thrilled we are to have you here,’ she said in a conversational tone. ‘I’ve read all the things you’ve written in Teacher magazine. And I was actually at your training day in Brighton.’

This time I did manage to meet her eyes.

‘Really?’

Grant had been the face of our schools. We worked together but he was the driving force. He was the one doing the Tedx talks, and writing for the broadsheet education supplements about his views on education policy, and his approach to helping young children learn. He was outspoken, handsome and funny, and he really knew his stuff, so he was very media friendly. He’d even been on Question Time once. In fact, I thought it was his profile that had led him to make the bad decisions he’d made. Education is a long game and seeing children through their years at school can sometimes feel like an age. Grant couldn’t wait for results, and so he had to fiddle them, because he couldn’t be seen to be failing. Apart from in our marriage, of course. He didn’t care about that going wrong.

But I’d been passionate about what we were doing, too. I’d written a few articles for a teaching mag; I’d done a couple of seminars at training days. And it seemed Paula Paxton knew all about them.

Now she smiled at me. ‘Ms Armstrong …’

‘Lizzie,’ I said. ‘Please call me Lizzie.’

‘Lizzie, Elm Heath Primary needs a boost.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ve worked here for twenty years,’ Paula went on. ‘My daughter came here. It’s such a lovely school. We were just so thrilled when you took the position.’

I smiled at her across the top of my coffee mug. It was nice to hear after so much bad stuff.

‘You’re so inspirational,’ Paula was saying. ‘You have such wonderful ideas about putting the children first in everything.’

I felt a very small flush of pride. ‘Really?’ I said. That had always been my focus.

Paula smiled at me again. ‘I read some of your husband’s articles too.’

‘Ex-husband.’

She bit her lip. ‘He’s more about winning.’

I’d taken a mouthful of the rather good coffee while she was talking and now I swallowed it all, making me cough.

Still spluttering, I laughed for the first time in what seemed like weeks. It sounded slightly strange. ‘That’s Grant in a nutshell.’

Paula grinned at me, then taking advantage of the friendlier atmosphere between us, she leaned forward. ‘Was it awful? Your break-up?’