Works

By seven fifteen, Zelda had already been lied to twice.

The first lie came from the weather, which had offered a pale, forgiving dawn and then, without warning, swung rain across the school yard in silver lashes. The second came from the answering machine in the front office, whose blinking red light implied order, when in fact it was only storing complaints for later distribution.

She stood just inside the main entrance with her keys in one hand and a paper cup of bad coffee in the other, watching the rain turn the asphalt into a shining black plate. Beyond the wet quadrangle, Room 4’s portable listed to one side with the exhausted dignity of something that had been temporary for fifteen years. Water dripped from its gutter in a steady, bureaucratic rhythm.

Drip. Delay. Drip. Delay.

Schools liked to call themselves places of learning, but most days Croft Street Primary was really a damp storage facility for human need. Children needed things. Parents needed reassurance. Teachers needed toner. Principals needed someone else to blame. If you were competent, which Zelda unfortunately was, people kept bringing you their little domestic tragedies in plastic sleeves.

Her own body made itself known to her mostly through restraint. The drag of damp cloth against skin. The ache between her shoulders. The dull, maddening pressure of being held inside herself too tightly for too long. Stress did not extinguish the other current in her. It refined it. By morning she was often already overcontained, sharpened by discipline into something almost feverish, carrying deep in the body a pulse of wanting that had less to do with tenderness than with relief. Release. The fantasy of laying down all that rigid self-command for once and stepping briefly outside herself. She disliked the thought on principle. Which did nothing to stop it returning.

She set the coffee down on the counter, unlocked the office, turned off the alarm and was immediately greeted by the smell of stale paper, dust, and something sour in the fridge no one would ever claim responsibility for. Milk, perhaps. Or yoghurt. Or something older.

The fluorescent lights flickered on overhead, reluctant.

Zelda put her bag under the desk and checked the roster pinned beside the phone. Bev from administration was off sick. Again. Mr Canning had a planning day, which meant he would wander in around nine with the expression of a man burdened by thought, though usually he was burdened by golf. The principal, Martin, was due at eight but had a district meeting at nine-thirty, which meant any actual problem before then would be handed to Zelda in the tone of a gift.

She picked up the message pad.

Zelda stared at the last one for a moment. She had not known there had been an incident with hamsters. That was how a school worked. You arrived each day in the middle of a story already gone wrong.

She pressed play on the answering machine.

A clipped female voice filled the office at once. ‘Yes, hello, this is Annabel Gascoigne, Oliver Gascoigne’s mother, and I need someone to explain why my son has come home saying he was made to sit next to a child who bites. I think we can all agree there are standards.’

Zelda paused the message.

Standards. Of course.

She played the rest.

‘And I have to say I find the lack of communication extraordinary. Frankly, if this is the level of supervision being offered, then perhaps I need to raise the issue elsewhere.’

Of course she did.

Zelda wrote call Annabel G. on her pad, though what she really wanted to write was Oliver fine. Biter likely symbolic. She put the kettle on in the little staff kitchenette and opened the file cupboard for the incident forms. Somewhere outside a magpie made its rusty gate sound. The rain thickened.

By seven thirty-five, the plumber had arrived, a large pink man named Steve who wore shorts in all seasons and looked faintly offended by the existence of buildings.

He followed Zelda across the covered walkway to the portable, toolbox thumping against his leg.

‘Been leaking long?’ he asked.

‘Long enough. The kids named the bucket.’

He glanced sideways at her. ‘What’d they call it?’

‘The Wet Zone.’

He laughed in spite of himself, which Zelda counted as a small but meaningful victory for civilisation.

Inside the portable, the air was heavy with wet carpet, poster paint and the ghost of yesterday’s lunchboxes. A yellow bucket sat beneath a brown stain in the ceiling tile, already half full. Around it, Year 2 reading groups had been carefully arranged into dry islands, as if literacy might continue to flourish in a minor flood.

Steve looked up, squinted, then grunted. ‘Roof flashing.’

‘That sounds expensive.’

‘Everything’s expensive.’

He knelt by the wall and began unpacking tools. Zelda watched rain creep down the windowpane in wobbly lines. On the far oval, the school gardener was already out in a green raincoat, moving slowly along the fence with a wheelbarrow. From this distance he looked less like a person than an intention. Broad through the shoulders, bent easily into weather, he had the unshowy physical certainty of a man accustomed to effort, weight, resistance. The sort of man who knew where things were buried.

Zelda felt the recognition strike low and immediate, a private tightening she refused to examine too closely. It was not romance. Not even liking. Merely the disreputable awareness that some people carried steadiness in the body, and that hers noticed it faster than she liked. She looked away first, for no reason worth naming.

She had been alone for a long time now. Not lonely, she would have said, if anyone had asked. Alone. The distinction mattered to her, though she had stopped examining why.

Back in the office, the phone rang just as the kettle boiled. Zelda let it ring once, twice, then answered.

‘Croft Street Primary, Zelda speaking.’

A silence, then the sharpened inhale of a woman preparing herself for battle.

‘Yes. Hello. Annabel Gascoigne.’

‘Good morning, Mrs Gascoigne.’

‘I wouldn’t say it is, actually.’

‘No,’ Zelda said. ‘You probably wouldn’t.’

A pause. The woman on the other end had not expected resistance dressed up as politeness. Few of them ever did.

‘I’m calling about Oliver,’ Annabel said. ‘He has been very distressed.’

‘Yes. I received your message.’

‘Then perhaps you can explain why my son was seated next to a child with behavioural issues.’

Zelda pulled Oliver’s file toward her, though she already remembered the matter. Yesterday’s seating reshuffle. Minor biting incident in Prep. No broken skin. A teary apology. Oliver mostly fascinated by the drama.

‘It wasn’t punitive, Mrs Gascoigne. The class was reorganised during group work, and Oliver was not harmed.’

‘That isn’t really the point.’

‘It usually is, in primary schools.’

Another silence. A small, tense one. Zelda watched rainwater bead on the front window.

‘The point,’ Annabel said, voice tight as a violin string, ‘is that I send my child to school expecting a safe learning environment.’

‘Absolutely. And that is what we’re providing.’

‘Is it?’

Here they came to it. The parent question that was not a question. The invitation to kneel.

Zelda leaned back in her chair.

‘Mrs Gascoigne, children have feelings, impulses, and occasionally teeth. We manage those as they come up.’

Annabel made a shocked little sound, as if Zelda had removed a glove with her teeth.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Zelda softened her tone by exactly five percent.

‘I understand you’re concerned. Oliver is safe. His teacher and I are both monitoring the situation, and we’ll be speaking with the other child’s parents as part of our normal process.’

‘So there is another child involved.’

‘There’s a second child, yes. That’s how these things work.’

‘You know, I don’t appreciate being spoken to like this.’

‘Mrs Gascoigne, it’s ten to eight. I’m doing my best.’

It slipped out. Truer than she had intended.

Then, unexpectedly, a tiny snort came down the line. Annabel’s. Instantly suppressed, but real.

Zelda blinked.

Somewhere under the exchange she felt the small tug of recognising another woman who had also spent a lifetime absorbing things.

Annabel recovered first. ‘Well. I only want to ensure standards are maintained.’

‘Of course,’ Zelda said. ‘So do I.’

By the end of the call, Oliver would remain in class, the biter would not be exiled, and Annabel had somehow agreed to volunteer on the fete cake stall next month. Zelda hung up feeling mildly unclean but efficient.

That was another thing schools taught you. Not literacy, not numeracy, not resilience. Mostly they taught women how to absorb panic and give it back in smaller portions.