Free Death of a Teacher by Lis Howell Page A

she resented being jumped on as soon as she went in the front door, but in another way it was flattering. As always, she called him from her last pit stop on the motorway, and when she arrived she put her key in the door as if it were home.
    ‘Hi, honey,’ he called out.
    Mark lived on the top floor of a beautiful Victorian house. His tiny flat was costing him an arm and a leg, but, as he told Alison, the high mortgage meant that when they were married he could transfer it to a house and they could get a really good start. And Mark liked style. It was one of the things Alison found attractive about him. The flat was an oasis. He had white wine chilling in the fridge, and there were flowers on the table. Alison started to cry. It wasn’t a dramatic bursting into tears, or a romantic weeping. She was snorting and snuffling, stuck in the doorway with her luggage and her coat over her arm, making a fool of herself. ‘Oh Mark, I’m sorry. It’s so good to be here after the school, and the kids. And the other teachers….’
    Alison shuffled across the room and collapsed on the sofa, feeling the mascara smearing down her cheeks. ‘Sweetheart, I can’t stand it any more. Couldn’t we get married this summer on the cheap? I could junk the job and come down to live here with you. We could manage.’
    Mark put a roll of kitchen towel into her lap. ‘Baby, pull yourself together. You know that wouldn’t work. This place is far too small for both of us and our stuff. If you jacked it in and came here you might not get another job for months. Then where would we be?’
    ‘But I hate it in Pelliter.’
    ‘Oh Ali, get over it. Have a good cry and then we’ll curl up in bed and talk about it.’
    But talking, Alison knew, was what they wouldn’t do.
     
    Brenda Hodgson was pottering at home. Saturday afternoons could be very  dull these days. She had washing to do. As usual she’d had coffee with Faye and Callie in the morning, and arrived back from Norbridge too late for lunch. The rich sticky cake Callie had pressed on her at the coffee shop was giving her wind. She sniggered at the sort of expressions Callie might use. Brenda had been brought up to be polite. Her parents, slightly older than average, would refer to ‘spending a penny’ or ‘paying a visit’ in an arch sort of way. No bodily functions were spoken of. When Brenda had started her periods she had thought she was going to die.
    ‘What on earth…?’ her mother had said in her usual cross voice. ‘Well, I suppose it had to happen sometime. I thought you’d know all about it. Didn’t anyone tell you?’ Somehow Brenda was to blame, as usual. No friends or teachers cared enough to keep her informed. Her mother had rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘And you’d better get used to it because it comes every month. And another thing … you don’t ever talk about this, especially not to men. It’s secret. Do you understand? A secret.’
    Brenda nodded. She understood about secrets. But she couldn’t possibly imagine having a secret from Peter. Her brother was the only person she could talk to. That night she had confided to him about what had happened, but he sprang away from her as if she were contaminated. The next day at school, desperate for reassurance, she told the girl she sat next to.
    ‘Oh, you’ve started! But you shouldn’t talk about it.’ Liz had looked at her with round eyes. She and Liz had spent the whole of break-time discussing it in the corner of the yard. And so a friendship had begun which had lasted over forty years.
    Forty years. One of the oddest things about getting old was that time suddenly seemed to have passed so quickly. Where had the years gone? The inevitable cycle of the year seemed to get faster and faster. First there was the start of the autumn term with the new children, all keen, clean and shiny, eager to please. Then came practices for the Christmas concert and nativity play. Then there was the dull routine of the