Rachel waved a hand to swat away her apologies. ‘Don’t be sorry. Thank you. It does take the cake, actually. I’ll miss him terribly.’
‘Well, now, who have we here?’
Rachel’s boss, Trudy Applebee, the school principal, floated into the room, one of her trademark crocheted shawls slipping off her bony shoulders, strands of grey frizzy hair floating around her face, a smudge of red paint on her left cheekbone. She’d probably been on the floor painting with the kindergarten children. True to form, Trudy looked straight past Lucy and Tess O’Leary to the little boy, Liam. She had no interest in grown-ups, and this would one day be her downfall. Rachel had seen three school principals come and go since she’d been secretary, and in her experience it wasn’t possible to run a school while ignoring the grown-ups. It was a political role.
Also, Trudy didn’t seem to be quite Catholic enough for the job. Not that she went around breaking the commandments, but she had an unpious, sparkly-eyed expression on her face during mass. Before she died, Sister Ursula (whose funeral Rachel had just boycotted, because she’d never forgiven her for hitting Janie with a feather duster) had probably written to the Vatican to complain about her.
‘This is the boy I mentioned earlier,’ said Rachel. ‘Liam Curtis. He’s enrolling in Year 1.’
‘Of course, of course. Welcome to St Angela’s, Liam! I was just thinking as I walked up the stairs that today I was meeting someone whose name begins with the letter L, which happens to be one of my favourite letters. Tell me, Liam, out of these three things, which do you like best?’ She folded back her fingers with each item. ‘Dinosaurs? Aliens? Superheroes?’
Liam considered the question gravely.
‘He quite likes dino’’ began Lucy O’Leary. Tess put her hand on her mother’s arm.
‘Aliens,’ said Liam finally.
‘Aliens!’ Trudy nodded. ‘Well, I will be keeping that in mind, Liam Curtis, and this is your mum, and your grandmother, I’m guessing?’
‘Yes, indeed, I’m –’ began Lucy O’Leary.
‘Lovely to meet you both,’ Trudy smiled vaguely in their general direction. She turned back to Liam. ‘When are you starting with us, Liam? Tomorrow?’
‘No!’ Tess looked alarmed. ‘Not until after Easter.’
‘Oh, live a little, I say! Jump right in while the iron is hot!’ said Trudy. ‘Do you like Easter eggs, Liam?’
‘Yes,’ said Liam adamantly.
‘Because we’re planning a gigantic Easter egg hunt tomorrow.’
‘I’m supergood at Easter egg hunts,’ said Liam.
‘Are you? Excellent! Well then, I’d better make it a superchallenging hunt.’ Trudy glanced at Rachel. ‘Everything under control here, Rachel, with all the –’
She gestured sorrowfully at the paperwork, of which she knew nothing.
‘All under control,’ said Rachel. She was doing her best to help keep Trudy in a job because she didn’t see why the children of St Angela’s shouldn’t have a school principal from fairyland.
‘Lovely, lovely! I’ll leave you to it!’ said Trudy, and she wandered off into her office, pulling the door shut behind her, presumably so she could scatter fairy dust over her keyboard, as she certainly didn’t do too much else on her computer.
‘My goodness, she’s a different kettle of fish from Sister Veronica-Mary!’ said Lucy quietly.
Rachel snorted in appreciation. She remembered Sister Veronica-Mary, who had been principal from 1965 through to 1980, very well.
There was a knock, and Rachel looked up to see the tall imposing shadow of a man through the frosted glass panel of her office, before his head appeared enquiringly around the door.
Him. She flinched, as if at the sight of a furry black spider, not a perfectly plain-looking man. (Actually, Rachel had heard other women call him ‘gorgeous’ which she found preposterous.)
‘Excuse me, ah, Mrs Crowley.’
He could never get far enough away from his schoolboy self to call her Rachel like the rest of the staff. Their eyes met and as usual his slid away first to rest somewhere above her head.
Lies in his eyes, thought Rachel, as she did virtually every time she saw him, as if it were an incantation or prayer. Lies in his eyes.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Connor Whitby. ‘I just wondered if I could pick up those tennis camp forms.’
‘There’s something that Whitby boy isn’t telling us,’ Sergeant Rodney Bellach had said all those years ago when he still had a head full of startlingly curly black hair. ‘That kid has got lies in his eyes.’
Rodney Bellach was retired now. As bald as a bandicoot. He called every year on Janie’s birthday and he liked to tell Rachel about his latest ailments. Someone else who got old while Janie stayed seventeen.
Rachel handed over the tennis camp forms and Connor’s eyes fell on Tess.
‘Tess O’Leary!’ His face was transformed so that he looked for a moment like the boy in Janie’s photo album.
Tess looked up, her face wary. She didn’t seem to recognise Connor at all.
‘Connor!’ He tapped his broad chest. ‘Connor Whitby!’
‘Oh, Connor, of course. It’s so nice to . . .’ Tess half-rose and then found herself trapped by her mother’s wheelchair.
‘Don’t get up, don’t get up,’ said Connor. He went to kiss Tess on the cheek just as she was starting to sit down again, so that his lips met her earlobe.