Dead Romantic Read Free Page B

plate, giving an old-fashioned, dependable image like that of a country solicitor, bore the legend: ‘GARRETTWAY SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES. Principal: J.P.G. GARRETT, M.A.’
    Eschewing the worn patch on the door, Bernard Hopkins put his hand on the brass door-handle and walked inside.
    The hall had once been magnificent, but now its proportions were destroyed by the new walls which cut randomly through the fine cornices and bosses of the ceiling. The walls were painted institutional grey, marginally relieved by the darker grey on the flat boarded doors which fire regulations had demanded.
    The balance of the fine staircase up to the first floor had been upset by encroaching partitions and the one feature left untouched by ‘improvement’, the floor of black and white tiles, looked sadly diminished in this setting, like a monochrome television test-card.
    A couple of chipboard notice-boards by the front door were dotted with cards offering accommodation, coloured sheets advertising discotheques, plays, Indian takeaways and minicabs. But there were not many. Nor was there any evidence of students, except for one abandoned file lying on a table. It was one of the school’s slack periods; the busy time would come in the summer.
    In each of the fire-officer-approved doors was an eye-level window of wired glass, but through only one of the four did light shine. Bernard could not resist moving along the wall to peer into the classroom.
    The room was what the Garrettway brochure described as ‘one of our ultra-modern language laboratories, equipped with all of the latest electronic technology’. But Bernard did not see the person he hoped for behind the tutorial desk. Instead, there sat a grubby young man of about thirty, a member of the staff to whom Bernard had not yet been introduced. The young man was engaged in an exhaustive picking of his nose, eyes fixed on some abstract point in the ceiling. Three desks in the front row were occupied by sad Japanese businessmen who wore earphones and occasionally mouthed in tentative bewilderment.
    Bernard went upstairs.
    â€˜Good morning, Mrs Franklin,’ he said to the fifty-five- year-old trouser-suit behind the large manual typewriter in the outer office.
    â€˜Good morning, Mr Hopkins. Not so cold this morning.’
    â€˜No. We’re lucky. Bit of an Indian summer.’
    â€˜Yes.’ She composed her face into an expression of concern. ‘And how’s Shirley today?’
    Stella Franklin always made a point of finding out the details of people’s families and asking after them. She thought of this as solicitude; others had described it as nosiness.
    â€˜Much the same,’ Bernard replied.
    â€˜Change in the weather doesn’t make any difference to her?’
    â€˜Not really, no. I don’t know what does make any difference, I’m afraid. Some days she’s a lot better – it seems to be arrested – they do get these remissions, you know. Then, other days. . .’ He let the sentence trail away in a shrug.
    â€˜Still, she keeps cheerful,’ said Mrs Franklin in a way that was more of a statement than a question.
    â€˜Does her best. Not much alternative.’ Bernard seemed happy to leave the subject there. ‘Is Mr Garrett in?’
    â€˜Oh yes.’
    â€˜May I. . .?’
    â€˜Just go through. Liberty Hall here, Mr Hopkins. No one stands on ceremony. All open doors. No one bothers to knock.’
    In spite of this licence, Bernard did tap at the door and waited for an answering ‘Yeah’ before going into Julian Garrett’s office.
    Mrs Franklin watched him go. Nice man, she thought. Very shy and correct, but his eyes were kind. Nice brown eyes. Sort of defensive, though, as if he were afraid of being hurt. Probably had been hurt, thought Mrs Franklin, who (particularly since she had been widowed) prided herself on her knowledge of human psychology and enjoyed supplying imaginative