He takes out his phone, hovers his thumb over Anna’s number. It’d feel so good to call her and scare her, to tell her how small and pathetic she is, but talking to Anna would be like trying to unpick a hook from his own kidney. It would be agonizing and only make everything worse.
He scrolls down to Rosie’s name; he’d love to hear her voice. She must have seen the petition. But what if she hasn’t seen it, what if there is still a chance that he could keep it from her?
He presses the call button, and she picks up immediately. She’s walking somewhere fast, slightly out of breath. ‘Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse!’ she says without greeting, and his heart sinks. She’s seen it.
‘It’s Anna,’ he says, his voice heavy.
‘Of course it’s Anna,’ she snaps back. ‘I thought you were going to talk to Eddy, get him to calm her down.’
‘Yeah, that didn’t go so well.’
‘Evidently.’
He hates how they sound more like Eddy and Anna than themselves. They’d listen to their friends argue like this, Seb raising an eyebrow at Rosie, Rosie smiling back, both feeling smug because they weren’t slowly destroying each other, their relationship was better. Steadier. That’s what he always believed. On the other end of the line Rosie sighs.
‘You OK?’ he asks, worried, and she snaps again, ‘Of course I’m not fucking OK! I’ve just had Lotte and Vita calling, both telling me how worried they are, that they’re here for me, and then digging, trying to find out what it is you’ve done. They’re both secretly delighted, of course.’
‘Shit.’
‘Well, what do you expect? It won’t take them long to figure out it was Anna who wrote the thing, and she’ll buckle and tell them as soon as they put any kind of pressure on.’
She pauses, sniffs, before adding, ‘She’s got a point, of course. After all, you were using school property to book whores. It’s a total ticking time bomb. I started looking up flights to Australia this morning right after reading the petition.’
Seb holds his breath and waits for Rosie to clarify, which she does, ‘For me and the kids, I mean, obviously.’
He doesn’t say anything.
The pause turns into silence. Wherever she is, she’s stopped walking. She sighs again before she asks, ‘Do the students know?’
Seb clears his throat to cut the vision of his kids boarding a plane to the other side of the world without him and manages to say, ‘Not yet. There’s a part in the email where she advises parents to keep their kids out of it until a “resolution” is reached, but it won’t be long until someone lets it slip.’
He wonders if Rosie, like him, is thinking about Abi, about Lily, but neither of them mentions their names.
Instead, Rosie asks, ‘What does she mean, “resolution”?’
‘The only one she suggests is my resignation.’
Rosie sighs again.
‘Do you think that’s what I should do? Resign today?’
‘I don’t think you have any choice, and if the students are about to find out, well, you’ll have hell to pay … I’m thinking about Sylvie, mostly.’
Sylvie is supposed to be joining the school next September. There’s a brief silence, both trying to imagine their daughter starting secondary school with everyone knowing about Seb. It would be impossible. He won’t let it happen. Rosie is right: there is no choice.
‘I’ll write to the governors and resign today.’
‘Fine,’ she says wearily. ‘Anything else?’ She asks like they’re writing their weekly shopping list.
‘No. I guess I might be back earlier today.’
‘Go to your mum’s,’ she says sharply before hanging up.
This is it. Forced to give up everything that he’s worked for for over twenty years. The job he adores, the work he is good at, the kids he’s watched grow, the kids he believes in. He kicks the base of the tree with the toe of his shoe before sitting on the grass, his elbows resting on his splayed knees. He holds his head and cries until his throat is raw and he feels his scar beating with blood. He stops, and is about to get ready to go again when he hears muffled laughter coming from the other side of the pavilion. He walks slowly around and watches Ethan and a couple of other kids whose backs he doesn’t recognize running away, across the playing field, back to school.
Back in his office, he opens a new document on his computer and, eyes still stinging, he types:
To: Chair of Governors
Dear Harriet Carvin,
I am writing to formally announce my resignation as head teacher at Waverly …
There’s a knock at the door. Seb considers pretending he’s not in; he can’t take another confrontation. All he wants is to write this shitty thing and go back to Eva’s, lock the door and never unlock it again.
‘Mr Kent?’
Seb looks up from his computer. Mrs Greene has opened the door and pushed her grave face into the gap. ‘Can I come in?’
Seb desperately doesn’t want anyone near him, but it’s Mrs Greene and the school, he knows, means everything to her. He suspects she’d be lost without it. She deserves an apology if not an explanation. Seb lifts his hands away from the keyboard. ‘Of course.’