1
‘Miss, Miss, MISS. Miss? Dirty weekend with your boyfriend? Miss!’
Amir gestured at the trolley case standing sentry behind Roisin’s desk, which she was poorly concealing by draping with a cagoule. He was in the naughty-yet-good-natured category among her students, and she responded accordingly.
‘Very clean actually, Amir. A spa weekend with some of my girlfriends.’
If there was one thing that both her childhood and her career had taught Roisin Walters, it was that lying to kids might not be noble, but generally got the job done.
‘A SPA. Like, a sauna?’ He chewed his pen and made a cheeky face.
‘Back to the text, please. I’m going to collect your papers in …’ She glanced up at the wall clock, her ever reliable teaching assistant. ‘… five minutes’ time!’
‘Miss,’ Amir persisted, then seeing her under-her-brow look of scepticism: ‘No no no – it’s about the book!’
Roisin rolled her eyes. ‘Go on.’
‘Right, everyone thinks Great Expectations is good, like. A posh book. Which is why we’re studying it in an English Lit lesson.’
‘Yes?’ Roisin knew a time-waste trolling when one began, and so did Amir’s peers, waiting with delighted anticipation for the payoff.
MPs who ran the parliamentary session down with pointless, aimless debate were filibustering; online arguments that involved repeated requests for evidence, made with faux-sincerity and excessive civility, was an exhaustion tactic called sealioning.
Roisin felt neither filibusterers nor sealioners could hold a candle to a class of restless Year 10s in a so-called doss subject on a sunny Friday afternoon, right at the end of term.
Last week, one of Amir’s accomplices, Pauly, had arrived at Roisin’s lesson with a breed of tiny, furious-looking dog she was told was called a ‘Brussels Griffon’ in an old-fashioned white-wheeled pram. Pauly was allegedly ‘childminding’ this creature ‘for his nan’. The canine, known as Sprout and resembling an abandoned Jim Henson project, had caused a disruption akin to the President landing in Air Force One.
‘And this Dickens book is well old. 160 years old,’ Amir continued, in his quest for enlightenment.
‘Correct.’
‘So, in another 160 years – that’ll be … the 3080s,’ he said, pretending to count off his fingers. Comic pause. ‘Will everyone in here reading Fifty Shades of Grey, yeah? It will be a well old proper book.’
The class responded with the required laughter, Amir grinning proudly. Roisin waited it out.
‘I doubt it, but that’s still a question worth asking, thank you, Amir.’
She judged that with what was left of this lesson, subverting Amir was more fruitful than trying to get everyone back to pondering the motives of Abel Magwitch.
‘It’s because the worth of literature is not only determined by the passage of time,’ Roisin said.
‘My mum and my auntie really like it though,’ Amir said, to more cackling. ‘My auntie reads it on her Kindle … in the bath. If you catch my drift.’
This information provoked hyena whooping.
‘And they can enjoy it,’ Roisin said, her tone making it clear she was ignoring the innuendo. ‘Not all books have to be studied for education.’
‘Why is Great Expectations better than Fifty Shades, though? Is it because it’s by a dead man, Miss? Isn’t that sexism? And … alive-ism?’ Amir chewed his pen again.
Despite herself, Roisin smiled. He was putting sincere effort into this derailing.
‘It’s because Great Expectations is about class, social mobility and the way we use that social status to judge human worth, and Fifty Shades is about a billionaire having sex with a college student.’
Getting the teacher to say the word ‘sex’ was of course a huge victory in itself, and her Year 10s’ last period before the weekend now took on a festival atmosphere.
‘Exactly, Miss, so a college student boning, like, Elon Musk, is socially climbing then,’ Amir said, pausing for a high five with Pauly, the pensioners’ choice of dog-sitter.
‘It sounds like you’ve thought about this, have real insights on this subject,’ Roisin said, folding her arms, leaning against her desk. ‘Perhaps you should give a presentation on the meanings and themes of Great Expectations and their mirroring in Fifty Shades?’
‘Totally up for that, Miss. I’ll need a telly bringing in, though, because I will have to show clips from the films to explain what I mean properly.’
‘Sadly, those films are an eighteen certificate, Amir, so not only is it not allowed, but I’m also sure you’ve not seen them.’
‘I totally didn’t see them because my auntie doesn’t have them all on Blu-ray, Miss.’
‘Well done, Auntie.’
The bell rang – a piercing shriek – and the usual scramble to the door ensued while Roisin called, ‘Papers on my desk before you go, please!’
‘Is your husband’s new show on this weekend, Miss?’ Amir said, loitering, as he hooked his rucksack over his shoulders.
Roisin was momentarily startled.
‘Sorry, boyfriend,’ Amir said, mistaking the reason she looked taken aback.
Roisin had thought Joe’s next project had flown under the radar of the population of Heathwood School. She’d been careful to barely mention it to colleagues, too: forgetting the name of it when they asked. Promising and then failing, on purpose, to tell them when it aired.
But if Amir knew, then everyone knew, or they soon would do.
‘Uhm, yes, on late, though. After the watershed for you.’ She tried to recover a smile. (Was the watershed even a thing any more?)
‘I’ll ask my auntie what it’s like then,’ he said, with a wink and a cackle, as he swaggered out.
Alone in the classroom, Roisin tied up the unruly stack of pages of lined A4 with hot hands and swallowed, hard.