Making A Difference

I’d had to deal with a lot lately. The last thing I needed was to be mocked by my pupils . . .

GORDON PATTERSON

waves his bus pass under the driver’s nose and swaggers up the aisle.

His tie is loosened, and his backpack slung casually over one shoulder.

Hayley Plunkett scampers after him like an adoring puppy.

I pretend to be searching for something in my handbag as they pass,

Maybe catching a busy bus at the end of the school day wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.

Not on my first trip out since the funeral.

My attempt to hide proves futile. Gordon and Hayley slide into the seat behind me.

“Good afternoon, Miss Prescott,” Gordon says in a high-pitched voice. Hayley giggles.

My face grows hot as I stare straight ahead.

Gordon taps my shoulder as Hayley continues to snigger. I don’t turn around.

I hear a can of fizzy drink being shaken and opened close to my ear, and droplets of something shower my neck.

My hands grip the straps of my handbag tightly as I fight back tears.

There is an unmistakable click as one or other of them takes a photograph of the back of my head.

“That’s one for social media.”

Gordon laughs. The man sitting next to me gives me a sympathetic smile.

“Take no notice, love,” he says.

I try to smile, acknowledging his kindness.

The back of my head is not, I know, a pretty sight. My hair is flat and lifeless, badly in need of a good cut and a fresh colour.

But I can’t face the hairdresser just yet, and have been doing my best with Mum’s ancient heated rollers.

“Did she ever teach you?” Gordon asks Hayley.

“Yeah, year one. She was always going on at me for tipping back on my chair.”

Hayley attempts an impersonation.

“Chairs have four legs,” she cries. “Not two. If you only need two legs, you might as well stand up.”

Gordon grips the back of my seat as he leans forward.

“Not in school today, miss?” he asks.

“I heard she got sacked,” Hayley says.

Gordon snorts.

“My mum reckons she went funny in the head,” he replies.

I can’t see it, but somehow I just know he is making a circular motion with his finger at the side of his head.

The bus pulls up at my stop and my whole body trembles as I get to my feet, feeling the eyes of every other passenger on me.

I feel a surge of anger. I deserve better than this.

Far too loudly, I address the teenagers.

“Gordon! Hayley! How lovely to see you both!

“And please reassure your mother, Gordon, that my mental faculties remain intact.”

Not really caring who is watching or listening now, I make my shambling exit. I think someone applauds.

The satisfied glow lasts until I have closed the front door of the house. Then gloom overtakes me again.

I slump into the shabby armchair that was always Dad’s favourite spot, looking around the room that has hardly changed since the Eighties.

As I rest my head on the back of the chair, I feel a sharp stabbing in my scalp. I retrieve a rogue roller from my hair and bury my head in my hands, mortified.

A few minutes later, I get up and wander into the garden.

“Oh, little lass, you look like you’ve lost a pound and found a penny.”

Ronnie is weeding next door, and when he sees me he struggles upright, wincing at the pain in his knees.

I have known Ronnie all my life. Growing up, his daughter Lizzie was my closest friend. He makes his way over to the fence.

“What’s up, Katie?” he asks. He’s the only person who still calls me Katie.

I remember the way he and his late wife, Alice, silently enfolded me in their arms when they came round the day Dad died.

They needed no words to show how much they cared.

I can tell by the look on Ronnie’s weather-beaten face that he still does.

I say what Mum would have said.

“Fancy a cuppa?” “Thought you’d never ask,” he replies, brushing soil from his hands.

Ronnie has always been partial to a slice

of my banana and walnut loaf, which, to be honest, is the only cake I have ever had much success with.

He thoughtfully picks up the last crumbs on a dampened finger as I finish recounting the bus incident.

“Here’s me thinking I’d made a difference in those children’s lives, and it turns out I’m just a laughing stock.

“That photo of the back of my head will be all over Facebook by now.”

Ronnie nods, doing his best to take me seriously despite the rising hysteria in my voice.

“Facebook’s a bit old hat now, for the young ones.

“They’re more into Instagram and Snapchat and the like. But I know what you mean. I expect you’ve gone viral by now.”

Ronnie knows all the lingo.

When Lizzie’s husband was offered his dream job in Canada, she bought her Dad a laptop so that he could keep in touch.

He took himself off to the library to do a course and he’s never looked back.

His chin wobbles as he tries not to laugh.

“It’s not funny!” I protest – knowing that it kind of is.

In normal circumstances, I would have laughed this off as just one more catastrophe in my disasterprone life.

That’s what’s gone wrong with me.

“I seem to be having a bit of a sense of humour failure,” I say.

Ronnie reaches across the table to squeeze my hand. All traces of amusement have vanished.

“Katie, that’s hardly surprising. You’ve been through so much lately. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

He kisses the top of my head as he leaves.

I sit for a long time at the kitchen table, reflecting on his words.

My world has been up-ended so many times in the last couple of years.

At times it felt as though I was living in a snow globe, just waiting for a hand to give everything a shake and bring on another storm.

First there was Mum’s dementia diagnosis, which Dad stoically took in his stride.

“We’ll manage, lass. We promised for better or for worse, and we meant it.”

Manage they did, until out of the blue the snow globe was shaken again, and a massive stroke took Dad from us.

When I asked for time off to care for Mum, my head teacher protested.

“Surely there are neighbours who can help out?” she asked.

But I was brought up to put family first, and I told her so.

She rolled her eyes. My letter of resignation was on her desk the following day.

I rented out my house on the other side of town and moved in to take care of Mum.

“She’d be better off in a home,” some of my friends told me, but I knew she was happier and more settled in familiar surroundings.

We muddled along for another eighteen months, until the globe shaker put in another appearance.

Mum died just six weeks after the terminal diagnosis.

Ronnie’s right: I have been through a lot.

That evening he sends me a text, which is easier than banging on the living-room wall.

There’s a buttered crumpet here with your name on it, it reads.

I pull on a cardigan and climb over the lowest part of the garden fence, the way I have done since I was five years old.

I let myself in at the back door. Ronnie is sitting at the table, chuckling at his laptop.

“It’s there, isn’t it?” I ask. He nods and moves to turn the screen towards me, but I cover my face with my hands.

“It’s really not that bad,” he says, his eyes twinkling.

“Although you might want to get more of that hair dye you use next time you go shopping.”

For the first time in ages, I laugh out loud.

“Are you positive you don’t want to see?” Ronnie asks, as we sip hot chocolate and eat our crumpets.

I shake my head, although I have to admit I am a tiny bit curious.

“Has anyone commented?” I can’t help asking.

Ronnie smiles. “Someone called Bethany Parker doesn’t reckon much to your baking skills. Says you almost burned the school down making cupcakes.”

“Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

“I set the temperature too high on one of those portable ovens. The smoke alarm went off and we had to evacuate the building.”

Just remembering that makes me blush.

Ronnie almost chokes on his crumpet. He turns back to the screen.

“I bet lots of people have said bad stuff about me,” I say.

Ronnie scrolls down. “There are a couple of references to the time you locked the deputy head in the art stock cupboard.” “That was an accident! “Like the time I slipped into the water when we went pond dipping.

“And the time I left the lid off the stick insects’ cage over the weekend.”

“Yep. People remember those, too, by the looks of it.

“Someone called Erin Massey says one of the stick insects turned up in the head’s handbag.”

The head never was my biggest fan after that.

Ronnie squeezes my shoulder as he goes to put more crumpets under the grill.

I tell myself to stop being such a coward and start reading the comments for myself.

Every teaching disaster I ever had has been documented – including some I had almost forgotten.

Like the time we built a model of Stephenson’s Rocket for a display in the school hall, and I only realised too late that it was too big to get out of the classroom door.

“Well, at least I provided a bit of comic relief,” I say to myself.

The screen flashes up, informing me that someone is typing a comment.

Suddenly I find it difficult to swallow.

Kirsty Richards. The child who almost broke me; the one I failed to reach.

I remember the angry outbursts, the upturned tables, my desperate attempts to protect the other children as she kicked and pinched them and stole their property.

“You need to work on your behaviour management,” the head told me when she “popped in” to find Kirsty aiming pencils like darts.

Now I stare at Kirsty’s profile picture, and it occurs to me that this is the first time I have seen her smile. It suits her.

Miss Prescott never, ever

gave up on me, I read.

She said every day was a fresh start, and there was no such thing as a last chance. Only the next one.

That’s what I tell my own kids, and the ones I teach, every day.

Ronnie has come to read over my shoulder. He passes me a piece of kitchen roll and I blow my nose noisily.

“Still think you didn’t make a difference, Katie?”

Six months later my parents’ house is sold, and my tenants have moved on. I am going home.

“Will you go back to teaching?”

Ronnie has come to wave me off. I laugh and shake my head. I have been laughing a lot more lately.

“I think the world of education is safer without me,” I say.

To tell the truth, teaching was never really at the top of my list of ambitions.

It’s time for something new.

The future stretches ahead, sometimes scary, sometimes exciting.

I’m off to take my next chance, whatever it may be. ■