Between the Prison and the Sewage Works by Maryline Suchley (snow like ashes txt) 📖

the name of the man who was found dead at a South East London school. The victim’s name is a Mr Frank Frawley from Corydon. He’s thought to have no connection to the school.’

‘So his name is Frank, Alan obviously knew the guy. I wander if he told the Police that?’

She had decided that she was going to get drunk tonight and take the next four days off school. She had had a gut full today; what with the awful lesson observation, the news that OFSTEAD were coming in, her ineffectual handling of the Mat situation, the prospect of putting up with Daniel’s side kick James next term, and the vile child Levi Lambert calling her a whore. This had all compounded to make her feel burnt out and it was only Monday. She did feel a little remorse given that she had only just come back from holidays; but at the end of the day she owed them nothing.

Later that evening, tanked up, Mara rang the school and waited for the answering machine to kick in.

‘Hi it’s Mara Thompson, I’m feeling very sick, feels like flu, I’m taking Tuesday and Wednesday of sick, umm, I’ll keep you updated to when I’ll be back. Bye’.

‘They can give some of my classes to that Manuelle guy,’ she laughed as she put the phone down. Mind you with his track record he won’t be there either!’

Feeling jovial at the prospect of not having to go in until next Monday she poured another large glass of wine.

The problem with being ‘sick’ was that, she couldn’t very well leave the house in case she was seen by someone. Although the likelihood of this was slim, Mara had decided that with her recent luck, being seen by someone was highly probable; choosing to spend the rest of the week lounging around the flat reading books and watching movies. She rang the school Wednesday evening to confirm that she wouldn’t be there on Thursday and Friday. While waiting to record her message the receiver on the other end picked up.

‘Hello, Alan Haigh speaking.’

Mara put the phone down. She really didn’t want to speak to Alan.

‘I’ll ring back later. What the hell is he doing there so late anyway?’

The phone rang.

God I hope it’s not Mat, he’s already left six messages enquiring after my health, could be mum though.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello, Mara is that you? Its Alan here, somehow we got cut off, but luckily we have a caller identification system here and your number has been programmed in. What do you want?’

‘Um, I phoning to say I’m still sick and won’t be in tomorrow or Friday.’

‘So you’re sick?’

‘Yep, I’ve got flu.’

‘What kind of flu?’

‘The kind that makes you feel sick!’

‘Do you know that we’re rather short staffed at the moment?’

‘Uh, but I’m sick, it can’t be helped.’

‘Okay. One more thing I’ve arranged a meeting for us after school next Tuesday.’

‘Okay. Bye.’

‘Oh shit. He knows I’m skiving and to make matters worse I’ve got a bloody meeting with him next week.’

Thursday, Friday and the weekend passed far too quickly for Mara’s liking. Soon it was Monday morning and Pastor Cosmos was screaming about the sanctity of marriage and the wrongs of living in sin.

Mara headed to school, knowing that Alan had not believed she was sick. She was becoming increasingly paranoid that he was going to try and trick her into confessing that she was lying, and then sack her. As much as she hated this job, finding another job was far too much hassle.

Mara purposefully looked for Daniel that morning knowing that he would be in early working on the computer. Sure enough he was sat behind a computer and greeted her.

‘Hello, are you feeling better?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine now thanks. So what’s been happening while I’ve been away?’

‘Mmm let me see, we seem to have been covering a lot of lessons for sick teachers.

Mara rolled her eyes.

I‘ve had take quite a few lessons for that RE teacher, what’s he called Mr Manuel or something. None of yours though; they got some Serbian woman in to do that, the only problem is that the kids couldn’t really understand her.’

‘As if that makes a difference, they can understand what I’m saying and I supposedly speak the same language!’

‘Oh that dead guy’s name was released.’

‘Yeah I heard that on the news.’

‘Boyo confessed to how he broke his arm.’

‘Yeah how?’

‘Got drunk, tried to scale a wall but fell back and snapped his arm in several places.’

‘Why was he trying to jump over a wall?’

‘Said he found himself in someone else’s back garden, heard a guy shouting at him and tried to do a runner thinking he was going to get beaten up,’ Daniel said cynically.

‘Come on Daniel you know more,’ Mara asked picking up on his disbelieving tone.

‘Well Piles said he was probably peeping on some woman.’

‘That’s probably more like it,’ Mara scathed. Anything else been happening?’

‘Not really we’ve just been doing OFSTEAD stuff.’

‘Oh Mat keeps asking me where you are! What’s going on there?’

‘Nothing,’ she answered quickly.

With that, Mara had had enough of Daniel and left to look in her pigeon hole. It was completely full. There were pieces of paper with instructions to fill in forms ASAP, reminders of things that had to be done, adverts from different educational companies, and a note from Alan with the time and date of their meeting on Tuesday and an empty crisp packet.

She threw a third of the paper straight into the bin and walked over to the notice boards.

Bloody hell, my first day back and I’m covering a lesson; is that RE teacher ever here?

Monday flew past. Mat had caught up with her and seemed genuinely concerned with Mara’s lengthy illness. This of course made her feel worse about pretending to be unwell, coupled with the fact that she felt like she was still stringing him along.

Tuesday afternoon soon came around and Mara made her way to Alan’s office. The secretary told her he was busy with someone else and to take a seat. Finally the door to his office opened, and for some reason Mara was surprised to see the human mouse come out.

‘Come in,’ Alan said.

Feeling nervous she walked into his office and took a seat. She had been here once before; her interview but the atmosphere now felt more like a gazelle walking into a Lion ambush.

‘As your mentor I need to touch base with you every term as well a carry out lesson observations. Now did you receive your last lesson observation?’

‘Yes and I must say I was a little shocked, I didn’t think I had done that badly?’

‘Well you did. So we need to start working on your obvious areas of weakness before you have another observation at the end of term.’

Mara knew that this was all crap, and he was picking on her because he though she knew something. However, she couldn’t very well say she hadn’t heard anything, because then it would be obvious that she had and that she was covering up. She was in a no win situation with no choice but to put up with his behaviour, given that she was a beginning teacher and he was the Head of the school. She resigned herself to keeping her mouth shut and playing along.

The week passed by with the usual disorder; the same victims and offenders, including another insult from Levi Lambert who told her she shouldn’t speak until she was spoken to. This was the last straw for Mara and she told Jim she refused to teach him. The staff meeting on Thursday was longer and more tedious than usual in preparation for the inspection. The third week of the term saw the return of Joyce, much to the relief of the secretary. Joyce had the use of a wheel chair until her hips had healed, this meant she couldn’t teach in class, nevertheless she could still carry out all her admin duties. A huge blow for the staff as she now had more time to hassle them about what colour paper to use for what data. Although her mobility was hindered, she still managed to scribble briefing notes with the aid of a crutch and a stool.

Roger suffered more misfortune. This time the kids had decided to repeatedly spray his classroom with fart spray. The smell was so horrific and lingered for so long that the whole lesson had to be moved to a different room. After the seventh attack, Jim had to sit in Roger’s lessons in order to spread the message that this kind of antisocial behaviour was taken very seriously. The plus side to this was that Roger was able to teach as the kids were not going to play up with Jim in the room. Eventually the spraying, lost its appeal when one student was caught with a can of fart spray, and made a scapegoat by being given a two day internal suspension, which involved the individual sitting outside Jim’s office stapling pieces of paper and copying out the school rules.

The days were becoming more wintery as Christmas drew near. Not much had happened in terms of the body mystery. Everyone was busy getting ready for the inspection after Christmas. The Staff meetings were becoming increasingly more laborious and there seemed to be an endless list of things to do.

Mara was consciously spending less and less time in the staffroom at lunchtime; primarily trying to avoid Mat. She had however forgotten her lunch today so made a rare visit to the school canteen.

Chips, chips, pizza, sausage rolls, pies and more chips; no wonder the kids have behavioural problems; they eat this crap they behave like crap. Mara thought as she read the board.

‘I’ll have chips thanks,’ Mara told Gerty the canteen woman, whose large frame suggested she regularly sampled the culinary delights of the menu.

Mara took her plate of chips to the staffroom; she wasn’t going to risk dining in the canteen, as it was more like an animal enclosure.

In the staffroom Tony was asleep across three chairs.

What’s with the RE department; one’s always asleep and the other one is never here! Mara thought as she turned to see Mat sitting in the corner eating his sandwiches and looking very solemn.

I’d better sit with him.

‘Hi Mat, how’s things?’

‘Oh, um not good at the moment.’

‘How come?’

‘Something bad happened yesterday. I’m surprised you haven’t heard.’

Mara shook her head as she chewed on a chip.

‘In history yesterday I thought it would be a good idea to show a video on what life was like for women in the fifties. The only problem was I didn’t bother to look at the video first.’

‘Well, I never bother to watch the videos. No time for that, in any case if it’s in the department then it should be fine.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. It was going okay for the first twenty minutes, then they started talking about being female and gay in the fifties, but it started to get more explicit, next, there were two women naked with a dildo.’

At this point Mara had stopped chewing and had covered her mouth from a combination of disbelief and not wanting to laugh.

‘Oh Mat, did you switch it off?’

‘I had to cause the kids looked really shocked. I tried to cover up by not saying anything and changing the subject. But the damage had already been done. It must have spread like wildfire because this morning all I’ve heard are kids asking me if I’m going to show a porno today.’

‘Does anyone in management know?’

‘Yeah I told Jim just in case parents started ring up.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He just said that it will probably die down in a few days and it was unlikely a kid would tell their parents that they watched a video at school with two lesbians and a dildo.’

‘He’s got a point,’ Mara said resuming her lunch.

Poor Mat. Mara thought.

The bell rang for the end of lunch and Mara’s heart sighed.

‘Back to the grindstone, I suppose.’ Mara said, leaving