5 Shirley's on holiday with her parents in the retirement bungalow they built on a small patch of family land where they now live royally on British
pensions she feels another annus horribilis of a school year drain away as she sits on her favourite cane chair on the veranda she has the latest Dorothy Koomson novel to devour by lamplight meanwhile the moon shines over the Caribbean Sea everyone's asleep including Lennox on the large double bed with crisp white linen that her mother replaces twice a week it's good for her mother to have the family visit, it keeps her active and makes her feel wanted doing what she does best, looking after people, especially her only daughter Shirley lives for that moment every summer when the taxi arrives at the coast and they walk down the narrow lane to her parents' house, dragging their suitcases behind them there it is in all its loveliness, painted rose pink and surrounded by the blossoms Winsome tends so lovingly just as she will lovingly tend to Shirley she has six blissful weeks ahead of her before returning to the Hellhole High School for Losers, where she'll hand-pick more pupils to mentor as she's done every year since Carole left Carole who came from a single parent family (didn't they all?) she had such an exceptional grasp of maths in her first two years at the school they'd been hothousing her to sit her GCSE Maths two years early prematurely, it transpired she got derailed by three girls who were the bane of every teachers' existence LaTisha Jones, as bright as any child, leader of the pack and the queen of backchat, who answered every directive with an insolent, why should I? who always left class early because I've got my period/I feel sick/my grandmother's just died, Mrs King the same grandmother dying multiple times was something Shirley had put up with since she started teaching she resisted the urge to ask, didn't your grandmother die last term? now get on with writing that essay, you nasty little child next in line was Chloe Humphries
descended from a long line of career criminals and already taking up the family baton, according to her social worker the third member of the gang was Lauren McDonaldson who had an STD, according to a very good (confidential) authority (the school nurse), on account of her promiscuity with the (older) boys in the school, including one of the (younger) caretakers, if rumours (toilet walls) were to be believed anyway lo and behold a miracle did occur because one lunchtime, Carole, then fourteen, came looking for her (brave child as Shirley knew her nickname was School Dragon at best, Fuck Face, at worst) both had been scrawled on blackboards enough times awaiting her arrival apparently the child had been told by an idiot colleague in the staff room to find Mrs King in her car, where she ate lunch – undisturbed the passenger seat of her comfy Mitsubishi was reclined back as she worked her way through her ham, pickle and tomato sandwiches and listened to the soothing sounds of Smooth FM when the child rapped on her window Shirley wound it down while simultaneously feeling herself wind up yes, what is it? 'scuse me, I need to talk to you about what? I wanna do better, miss, I mean Mrs King, I wanna work harder and everything and go university and get a good job and stuff Shirley never found out what brought about this change of heart, it wasn't important, what mattered was that an erstwhile brilliant student was asking Fuck Face to improve her performance applause! lights! hallelujah! she thereafter made sure that the child was given everything she needed to do well in every subject she was taking including securing grants from charities to buy extra textbooks, notebooks, stationery, even a computer
on the condition she attended a tutorial with her every month for the remaining four years of her schooling in order to monitor her progress and ensure she stayed focused on her studies it worked and because of her the child went to one of the top universities in the world in the end, Carole was the talented, fallen child who reignited in Shirley the reason why she went into teaching in the first place the power of education to transform lives thereafter she took a few promising children under her wing every year, pupils of obvious intelligence who were unsupported by their families and might otherwise end up as prostitutes or crack addicts or something even when the results are variable, she does improve their chances, and nearly all of them go on to higher education of those that don't, for example one became a bricklayer, another a plumber, they probably earn more than the graduates, if the papers are to be believed the nicest returned to thank her, with presents her mentoring project makes teaching slightly more bearable, although not so much that she looks forward to the start of every weekday or feels satisfied at the end of it Carole, her first and greatest achievement, never reported back as instructed, not once, not so much as a phone call or a thank you postcard since the day she left school over a decade ago now it makes Shirley feel well, used.
Winsome