The Line

The Line - Part Five

5

Of course, it’s just a mistake. We’ll be laughing about it tonight. We’ll be sitting at our usual table and I'll say I honestly thought I’d been cut. Seriously.

And Cordi will burst out laughing and say oh my God, you total barry.

And Guinni will say, we didn’t know where you went. You just vanished.

And I’ll say I feel like such an idiot. There was me thinking I’d be going through the Line, and all the time it was just -

That pep talk in the foreground of my mind. Desperately optimistic. Promising me everything’s going to be fine in a breathless trembly little voice that doesn’t sound quite plausible.

And in the background, underneath it, an unbearable sense of tension. Like a piece of elastic drawing out and out and out, gradually getting ready to snap.

I enter the main building and hurry through a maze of empty corridors, approaching the Head’s office. I wish I could get there faster. I tell myself that all I need to do is go in and see her and explain, and it will all turn out to be a mistake – a clerical error, the wrong name on the letter, some harmless and easily-rectified administrative oversight. And all my tension and terror will vanish then and there.

The classroom doors I walk past have glass panes set into them, so I can see other grades beginning their morning’s lessons. I can hear them too, faint noises drifting out at me. A class laughing uproariously behind one door. A teacher droning on about attendance records behind another. The most ordinary things in the world, but suddenly, everything I hear seems to stab me in the heart. Every single one of those girls behind those doors doesn’t have anything on their mind but homework and gossip and boys and all the usual blah blah blah. For them, this is just another ordinary day.

For me, this is a nightmare.

I turn a corner. The Head’s door comes into sight halfway down the corridor. Every single step I take towards it seems to drag out forever.

Finally, I stop in front of it. I feel as if my stomach's slowly filling up with cold, swirling water as I stare at its neat little sign.

HEADMISTRESS: MISS HELENA TRENTON.

As if in a dream, I reach out and knock on the door.

The voice from within speaks immediately, sounding brisk and impatient.

‘Come in.’

I open the door and step through. As I do that, my heartbeat goes from a quick jog to a flat-out sprint. The Head’s sitting behind her desk. As she sees me, her face doesn’t betray any hint of emotion – no surprise, no concern, nothing. I can’t tell what she’s thinking at all.

I’ve never much liked the Head. I can’t quite pinpoint why. She’s about forty-five, with dyed strawberry blonde hair she wears back in a chignon. She wears smart fitted dresses from Sadie M – the same label a lot of our mothers dress in - that fit her a bit too tightly round the middle, so she always looks two or three months pregnant from the side. On the surface, she’s perfectly jolly and matey and modern, with her arch little references in assembly to boyfriends, and her jokey little remarks to visiting parents about the weather and the traffic and the best Resorts for summer. A bit too flirty with some of the dads, but always - just - the right side of appropriate. But behind it all, I’ve always sensed something impatient, brittle, chilly and watchful. She’s got clear pale aqua-coloured eyes that are technically her best feature, but which I don’t like a bit. They’ve always made me think of cold water.

This morning, I think they look colder than ever.

I force myself to speak confidently and briskly. As if I know perfectly well that this is just a silly mistake that will soon be sorted out by reasonable people.