Chapter Two
What Eddie couldn’t possibly have known as he stood in the car park watching Rachel drive away, was that she too was left reeling by their kiss. Yes, she had instigated the charade, but she had acted on impulse, she hadn’t exactly thought it through.
She had spent the whole night replaying the moment; cursing herself for letting it happen; cursing herself for letting it stop. She had found herself falling for Eddie barely weeks into her first term at Waterloo Road, but she had convinced herself that she had to ignore her feelings. And until last night she had been managing to do that. Now though she was finding it difficult to think about anything else.
When she arrived at school the next morning, there weren’t many people in the playground; mainly just the conscientious ones, or those who were going to Breakfast Club. She smiled pleasantly to each one as she passed them, and, despite her mental distraction, she couldn’t fail to notice that, although they smiled back, they immediately turned to each other and started giggling. The first couple of times she put it down to the fact that children can be very strange, but when it happened a further four times she began to grow suspicious.
Walking through the front doors, she found herself face to face with Ralph Mellor, though barely had time to register that fact as she was momentarily distracted by a peal of laughter from a nearby group of Year Ten students. Now definitely intrigued, she turned back to the school Governor.
“Good morning, Ralph,” she said, trying not to sound as unenthusiastic as she felt. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“My daughter received a disturbing text message this morning,” he replied in his usual serious tone, which seemed to hint that everything was Rachel’s fault.
“And it’s from someone at the school?” Rachel asked, concerned now if they had a cyber-bullying problem on their hands.
“It’s not who it’s from that concerns me,” Ralph said, cryptically, “It’s what it says. Perhaps we could discuss this in your office?”
“Of course,” Rachel agreed, cursing the fates for bringing her Ralph-related problems so soon in the day.
The walk to the office took them past another group of pupils, this time including Year Eight pupil, Sally James. Whilst the others turned away giggling and whispering as Rachel now expected, Sally blushed bright red, dropped her eyes from Rachel’s and then turned her back.
Rachel frowned. That was unusual. Sally was a very quiet member of the school community, never any trouble. Her reaction was as if she thought she had done something wrong, and Rachel very much doubted that could be the case. She made a mental note to speak to Eddie about it, seeing as he had met with Sally’s mother yesterday about an incident in which Sally had been bullied. In fact it was Sally’s mother that had led to their… encounter on the car park –
Suddenly it all fell into place; the whispering and giggling, and Ralph’s early morning visit. Inwardly sighing, Rachel led Ralph into her office and moved behind her desk, needing to exude the role of Head Teacher as much as possible during this conversation.
She took a deep breath, forced a smile and, even though she knew what the answer would be, she asked, “So, what did the message say?”
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Eddie arrived at Rachel’s office just as Rachel was escorting Ralph Mellor out. She managed to catch his eye to stop him from asking what was going on, and ushered Ralph out as quickly as possible. She asked Joyce to walk him out of school, citing a meeting with Eddie as her reason.
She closed the door behind them and leant against it.
Eddie raised an eyebrow in question and Rachel rolled her eyes and pushed away from the door.
“If there’s ever an emergency,” she said, “This school has quite the phone tree.” She walked into her office and he followed.
“Flick Mellor received a text message this morning to tell her that you and I are having an affair,” she explained as she sat down on the sofa under the window.
Eddie’s eyes widened. “Well that explains the whispering and giggling.”
Rachel nodded. “If it reached Flick, then it reached all of them.”
“I meant in the staffroom,” Eddie clarified, “I just popped in there. I thought I was getting some funny looks.”
“No doubt Tom and Steph heard it from Chlo and Maxine.”
“What did you tell Ralph?”
Rachel smiled. “Well I didn’t tell him what really happened. The secret of Ms James’ advances is safe with me… He asked if I was having an affair with you. So I said no.”
“He just asked?” Eddie seemed surprised as he sat down on the other sofa.
“He did. I made sure to ask if he always believed everything Flick was told by other students at school,” she smirked, “But I answered the question.”
“And did he believe you?”
Rachel shrugged. “He seemed to. And I assured him that the students will have moved on to another topic of gossip by the end of the day… And told him I look forward to seeing him in the morning to talk about whatever that may be.”
Eddie’s eyes sparkled with amusement as he shook his head. “You just love winding him up.”
Rachel grinned. “He’s constantly trying to prove I’m incompetent, I should at least be allowed a little fun while he does it.”
Eddie laughed and Rachel cursed her memory, for about the thousandth time that morning, for reminding her what happened last night. She was determined not to think about it, but so far the record time she had managed was about three consecutive minutes. She didn’t even know how she had made it through the rest of their conversation last night when all she had actually wanted to do was lean forward and kiss him again.
She was brought out of her thoughts when she realised Eddie was looking at her as if wondering what she was thinking.
“We should go do the morning briefing,” she said, standing up.
Eddie stood at the same time, bringing them both into the same space, mere centimetres between them. Instantly Rachel’s heart skipped a beat and then began fluttering rapidly. Their eyes met and Rachel prayed that what was going on inside her was not showing in her face. She had to get some control over this.
“What do we tell them?” Eddie asked, but Rachel only caught the end of the sentence, concentrating as she was on regaining some sort of composure.
“Huh?” Oh yes, perfect. That definitely wouldn’t give away her reaction to his proximity.
“The staff. What do we say to them about the rumour?” Eddie clarified, his eyes narrowed slightly, obviously curious about her odd behaviour.
“Oh, I don’t think we need to tell them anything. If they have the audacity to ask, then we’ll tell the truth.”
Eddie’s eyes widened in momentary panic and Rachel couldn’t help but smile.
“Not the truth about Ms James, Eddie…”
His face relaxed.
“… The truth about us. There’s nothing going on,” she shrugged, ignoring the rush of warmth that swept her as she relived their kiss once more, “So we’ve no need to lie.” She tried to take no notice of the part of her brain telling her that that, in itself, was a lie, but, realising she needed to escape his personal space quickly, she stepped away. “Let’s go,” she smiled.
They didn’t speak much on the way to the staff room – much to Rachel’s relief! Her mind was far too occupied with making sure her thoughts weren’t causing her to blush or appear flustered. All she needed on top of the rumours was for her to look guilty. Certain members of staff would immediately know there was some truth to what they had heard.
A hush fell over the staff as she and Eddie entered. She told herself that happened every day, but the paranoid side of her insisted it had happened a lot faster than usual.
“Good morning,” she said, forcing confident brightness into her voice. “I don’t have many messages this morning, just a reminder that tonight is the staff conference. Please try to leave here as soon as possible after the bell, to avoid traffic. The first meeting is at five. Just a short one ’til six, and then you’ve a couple of hours to yourselves before dinner at eight. Now, Bob and Leanna, I have it noted that neither of you will be staying over night, everyone else, Eddie will be in charge of room allocation…” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught him look at her as she said that. “… Please see him if you have any questions or problems. That’s it. Have a good day everyone.”
Rachel turned to leave, but didn’t miss Steph’s whispered, “I wonder who’ll have to share a room,” and she didn’t need to see Steph to know exactly where her smirk was directed.
Turning back, smile in place, Rachel calmly said, “Oh no one will need to share, Steph. Don’t worry. There’s a room each for everyone.”
With that Rachel did leave the staff room, not tempting fate by hanging around long enough for someone to notice her distracted state.
She had taken only three steps along the corridor when Eddie’s voice came from behind her. “You were serious about the room allocation thing?” he asked, and she stopped and turned to look at him.
She hadn’t been serious last night, and in truth she wasn’t entirely serious in the staff room either; she had given in to the impulse to tease Eddie – another sign that she was doing very badly at pushing her feelings back to where she used to keep them.
“Were you not serious about your concerns?” she asked him, resisting the traitorous urge to smirk flirtatiously.
He appeared to hesitate before answering, and Rachel regarded him with a curious frown.
“Well… partly,” he admitted.
Rachel allowed an amused smile to surface on her face as worry surfaced on Eddie’s.
“Relax, Eddie. I don’t expect you to put a lot of thought into it. I just need a list of room numbers with staff names next to them… It would save me a job,” she told him, knowing full well that Joyce would willingly have done that for her, but to admit that would make him question why she had told the staff that he was in charge.
“Oh it won’t be that simple now, Rachel. They’ll be tracking me down all day to give me their requests.”
Rachel’s frown was amused this time. “You really think they’re that bothered which room they have?”
“Oh yeah. It’ll be ‘Make sure my room’s closest to the bar so I won’t have to stumble too far at the end of the night’…”
Rachel could actually hear hints of Steph’s accent in Eddie’s “quote”.
“… and ‘Don’t put me in a room adjoining Steph’s! She could snore for England!’”
Rachel laughed at Eddie’s overactive imagination. “See, clearly you have a better idea than I do about how important this is. I would have just gone alphabetically.”
“I told you, Rachel,” Eddie said in all seriousness, “you will come to regret making this conference residential.”
For a brief moment, Rachel allowed herself to wonder if Eddie’s concern over the conference was rooted in the same thing as her apprehension; if, perhaps, he felt he couldn’t trust himself to be with her. But then she reprimanded herself for her absurd wishful thinking.
“I’m sure it will all be fine, Eddie,” she assured him, the churning in her stomach reminding her she needed to assure herself.
Eddie started to lean towards her, as if to speak to her conspiratorially, and then seemed to reconsider, stopping. Once more Rachel wondered if his behaviour really was as awkward as it seemed, or if she was just imagining it; willing last night to have had the same effect on him as it continued to have on her.
“We’ll see,” he said, snapping her out of her thoughts again.
He moved away now, and, unable to think of a suitable response to that, she watched him go.
Pupils passed her on the corridor, but she barely acknowledged them. She had to get her feelings under control or else Eddie would be right: She would end up regretting the staff conference… She just wasn’t sure which she would regret more: letting her guard down and seeing what would happen; or not doing so.
TBC…