The Waffle House on the Pier - Tilly Tennant Page 0,34

toilets to check them out, what harm could it do?

‘Yes, please…’

‘Tristan.’

‘Yes, thank you Tristan.’ Sadie looked at the others. ‘The rest of you can go back to your desks.’

Nobody moved but when Sadie marched towards them with her fiercest glare they shuffled as slowly as they could get away with back into the classroom. She couldn’t have them all gathered out there, drawing unwanted attention to the situation. She closed the door of the room and went back to her desk.

‘Right.’ She took up the textbook again and flicked to the right page. ‘We’re going to talk about Hitler today if it kills me.’

And it probably will…

‘Miss!’

Little-Miss-the-books-are-in-the-cupboard had her hand up again. Sadie let out a long sigh. ‘Yes?’

‘Miss, Tristan’s gone home too.’

‘What?’

‘He said he was going to do it when you went out to look for Bobby.’

‘And nobody thought to tell me!’ Sadie cried.

At this, some of the class at least had the decency to look a little sheepish.

‘This is ridiculous!’ By now Sadie’s voice was so strangled she was certain it would never go back to normal again. Her first instinct was to go and see if Tristan really had disappeared from the toilets and made a bid for freedom, but she was afraid that she might return to find her entire class had disappeared.

‘Want me to go and see if he’s in the bogs?’ Another boy leapt out of his seat.

‘No!’ Sadie shouted. ‘Don’t you dare! Nobody else leaves this room, not even if the four horsemen of the apocalypse come riding through with ice cream for all! Understand?’

‘Who?’ someone asked.

Sadie shook her head, fighting to regain some semblance of calm. ‘Never mind. Turn to page eighty-five and read through the first four paragraphs. When you’re done we’ll talk about them.’

For the first time that day, the room was silent as heads went down to books. But Sadie didn’t see much actual reading going on. There was a lot of doodling, note passing, eraser destroying, boob inspection and gum chewing. By this point she was past caring. They could be constructing a long-range cruise missile and she wouldn’t have given a fig. The main thing was it was quiet so that if the head came past on one of her random corridor inspections (and where had she been when two of her pupils had escaped?) she’d at least give the illusion of having everything under control.

Sadie rested her head in her hands and closed her eyes for a moment. Before the accident with the boat out at sea with Kat, Sadie had wanted to discuss the waffle house with her. She’d been so full of uncertainty, so torn, and though she valued the opinions of Georgia and Natalie, she didn’t trust that they were necessarily the right people to give her the sound advice she so badly needed. Good solid advice always came from Kat. But the accident had put all of that out of Sadie’s mind (not that it would have been possible to talk about it anyway with all the chaos that followed) and there hadn’t been another chance to bring it up. Even though Sadie had felt torn over the decision, she’d wondered whether the pull to take over the waffle house was for the wrong (though emotionally right) reasons. It was for Gammy more than anything else, because Sadie hated to think of her as a sad, directionless, useless old lady sitting in a retirement village. Twenty years previously, if anyone had asked April what she feared the most in her future, it would have been that. And because Sadie was certain that Gammy would feel the loss of her livelihood and independence so keenly on top of the loss of Gampy, it might just be the end of her.

On the other hand, it wasn’t the future Sadie had mapped out for herself, the one she’d sacrificed so much for. That was here, represented by this classroom, though today, she wasn’t sure if that future was the right one either. Had it ever been the right one? But if it wasn’t, then what was?

‘Miss!’

Sadie was dragged from her musings by a voice from the front row of desks. Little-Miss-the-books-are-in-the-cupboard was off again. Sadie looked up.

‘Miss… is it true you nearly drowned?’

‘Who told you that?’ Sadie asked, her heart thumping in her chest now. The school wasn’t in Sea Salt Bay, but in a neighbouring, much bigger town. She would have expected that sort of news to travel round the bay (and it had,