‘She will be fucking sorry,’ Curly said, lowering his gun and stepping towards Annie.
‘Leave it,’ Larry said. ‘You, sit down.’ Annie gave him a long look that was almost a challenge before taking a seat close to Tom and Jess.
Donna watched the girl, trying to assess if she’d been harmed, but she was distracted. How could she think about Annie or any of the kids when her attention kept being drawn back to the man who’d just entered the room.
The man whose voice and eyes she knew as well as she knew her own reflection.
Andy.
Before
Cam had never seen Penny cry. If asked, even though they’d been seeing each other for a few weeks, he’d probably have said that she was a bit lacking in emotion. It didn’t really bother him though – he supposed that her lack of sentiment had made the transition from colleagues to friends to potential lovers easier for both of them. Cam had felt no pressure yet to declare his feelings and Penny had made no effort to talk about where she saw the relationship going in the weeks and months to come. Privately, Cam hoped that they were heading to bed – celibacy had seemed inevitable after Chrissie, but he was starting to feel ready to explore a physical relationship again. And he was starting to allow himself to acknowledge that he was falling for Penny in ways that could go much further than the physical.
‘You okay?’ he asked, closing Penny’s office door behind him and leaning against it. She wiped her eyes and gave him a half smile.
‘Yep. Nothing important.’
Cam scowled at her. ‘Penny, you’re crying at your desk. I doubt that it’s “nothing important”. Do you want to talk?’ He hoped she’d say no. Not because he wasn’t sympathetic, but Penny’s office was at the junction of two corridors on the school’s top floor and students could easily see in through the glass panel that ran down the middle of the door. This wasn’t the time for him to be seen hugging her – it wasn’t really a good idea for him to be seen in her office with the door closed. The staff would think that the head and deputy were plotting something, and the students would probably think the same. He didn’t want to have to face his feelings for Penny in an impromptu staff meeting.
Penny closed the lid of her laptop and leaned back in her chair, shaking her head. ‘I don’t think we’re there yet, Cam.’
‘What? Where?’
‘I don’t think we’re at the sharing our feelings stage. I’ve just had some bad news and I need to work out a way to cope with it. I’m used to working things out on my own – I just need to do what’s best for Annie.’
Her eyes were dark with smeared mascara and Cam could see the darker spots of tears on the front of her cream silk blouse. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a folded cotton handkerchief. He never used hankies, preferring tissues which could be used once and disposed of, but there was something classy, gentleman-like about always having a square of cotton on hand to offer to a damsel in distress. Not that Penny would have liked to be seen as weak.
‘Very gallant,’ she said, taking the handkerchief and wiping her eyes. She opened the top drawer of her desk and removed a small mirror which she tilted in various directions to check her appearance. Cam watched as the silver surface caught fragments of light and bounced them around the pale blue walls. He didn’t want to stare at Penny, and he didn’t want her to ask him how she looked. He couldn’t lie: she looked awful.
As though reading his thoughts, Penny retrieved a packet of wet wipes from the same drawer as she kept the mirror and swiped at her face.
‘I give enough of these to year ten,’ she said. ‘Didn’t think I’d ever need them myself though.’
There was something overly intimate about watching her remove her make-up, as if she were revealing herself to him by degrees, that made Cam uncomfortable. He turned away, allowing Penny some privacy, and stared out of the window. The deputy head’s office had one of the best views in the school and, on a summer afternoon like this one when the air was clear and the sky bright with high cloud, Cam wondered if it might be worth swapping with her. Here he’d be away from the front office, hidden in the labyrinthine corridors of the second floor, only contactable by phone or email. It was tempting. He couldn’t see Penny agreeing to move, though, and he couldn’t force her to change offices. The way he was starting to feel about her, the opposite was much more likely. If she asked him for anything, he’d find it hard to refuse.
‘Right,’ Penny said, slamming the desk drawer and reaching for the handbag that nestled next to her feet. ‘Time to rebuild my face.’
‘Shall I go?’ Cam asked. ‘I know we said we’d talk about the budget, but you look like you could do with a bit of time to…’
‘Get a grip?’ Penny asked. ‘Pull myself together?’
Cam looked around trying to work out an appropriate response. ‘I just…’
‘I’m fine,’ Penny said, staring into her mirror and applying lipstick. ‘Or I will be when I look like myself again. I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you.’
‘I’m not embarrassed, I’m concerned,’ Cam said. ‘This isn’t like you. I’ve never seen you upset before.’ He watched, fascinated, as Penny’s freshly lipsticked mouth changed shape as though the lower half of her face was melting. The lips seemed to curve downwards and then opened in a misshapen O of despair.
‘I’m sorry. I thought I was okay.’ Penny covered her face with her hands, leaving Cam bewildered.
‘Go home,’ he said. ‘You’re not teaching this afternoon and we can have our
