Free Wicked! by Jilly Cooper Page B

twenty-four-hour nursing at home. I don’t know if he’ll be able to afford to stay.
    ‘He had a terrific war. He’s very well read and knows a huge amount about natural history, particularly wild flowers.’
    ‘Like you do,’ said Janna, looking at the autumn squills and meadow cranesbill in a vase on top of the bookshelf and the wild-flower books in the shelves. Glancing up at a watercolour of meadowsweet and willowherb, she added, ‘I recognize that artist.’
    ‘Hanna Belvedon, married to my nephew Jupiter.’ Then at Janna’s raised eyebrows, ‘Our local MP.’
    ‘Your nephew? But he’s another sneering—’
    ‘Right-wing bastard. Here I entirely agree with you,’ smiled Lily and then confided that it was Jupiter who had chucked her out of her lovely house in Limesbridge when Raymond, his father and Lily’s brother, had died last year. ‘He needed the rent money to boost his political campaign.’
    ‘I told you he was a bastard,’ said Janna indignantly.
    ‘I shouldn’t have sneaked,’ sighed Lily, ‘but I do think you should have lunch with Hengist. He’s got an awfully nice wife and a daughter about your age. You must meet some young people. We’re rather a geriatric bunch in Wilmington.’
    ‘I love Wilmington,’ protested Janna. ‘It’s the sweetest village in the world.’
    ‘What fun you’ve come to live here. Are you desperately tired or shall we have some scrambled eggs?’
    Dew soaked Janna’s legs. The planets Saturn and, appropriately, Jupiter were rising, glowing green and contained by mist like lights from the angels’ electric toothbrushes, as she tottered home after midnight.
    What a darling Lily was. After the death of her sweet mother, Janna had plunged into work, and never properly mourned her loss. How wonderful if Lily could become a friend.
    Tripping over a boot rack, Janna fell on top of a large bunch of pink and orange lilies wilting in the porch.
    ‘Good luck,’ said the card, ‘missing you terribly, all love, Stew’.

8
    Janna was woken by raging hangover and torrential rain and things went from bad to worse. She found Wally sweeping up more glass from two broken windows. Two door handles had been broken off in the lavatories. The walls in reception had been attacked with a hammer and rain poured in through the roof into the main hall and several classrooms.
    Adele, who taught geography and had two children and no husband, rang in sick, so there was no one to take her classes. Another teacher, who hadn’t turned up yesterday, wrote saying she’d taken a job in Canada. Ten of the children, believed to be truanting, had evidently gone elsewhere. This hardly put Janna in carnival mood to welcome the new intake of Year Seven: eleven-year-olds fresh from their primary schools.
    Leaving Mags Gablecross, who had a free period, to show them round and explain their timetables, Janna took refuge in an empty classroom to fine-tune what she was going to say to their parents. The cleaners had piled the chairs on the tables to show they had swept the floor. Next moment, a tall, handsome hellraiser from Year Nine, known to be a staunch BNP supporter, staggered in with glazed eyes.
    ‘Good morning, Johnnie Fowler,’ called out Janna, proud she’d remembered his name.
    Johnnie immediately grabbed a chair and hurled it at her. Just missing her head, it crashed into the whiteboard.
    Radio mike forgotten, Janna fled into the corridor, slap into Phil Pierce. She collapsed against his dark blue shirt.
    ‘Help,’ she yelped.
    For a moment his arms closed around her and she snuggled into him, heart hammering, breath coming in great gasps, then they both pulled away.
    ‘Johnnie Fowler hurled a chair at me.’
    Phil went straight into the classroom, slowly calming Johnnie and sending him back to his own classroom.
    ‘He was coming down from crack.’
    ‘He ought to be excluded or at least suspended,’ raged Janna.
    ‘If he goes home, it won’t do any good. He’ll be out on