The Broken Ones Read Free Page B

as it gets when it comes to compliments from Mum.
    “I’d best get to school,” I say. “There’s ham in the fridge for sandwiches and some chocolate in the cupboard. Help yourself to whatever you fancy.”
    “Have a good day,” Erin says. “Don’t work too hard. Oh, and make sure my nephew doesn’t give you any lip!”
    I laugh. “Oh, he’s cheeky, but sweet with it. But I’ll tell him that his Aunty will be having words if he goes too far.”
    Eddington is a small village where everyone knows everyone, and if you work at a school you get to know all the names and faces. It’s the kind of traditional place that still has a village fete at the school attended by everyone—part of the haemorrhaging English culture that everyone bemoans as it dies, but no one actually wants to revive. Erin’s nephew, Noah, is in my class. He’s a sweet kid, with the same blue eyes as Erin. But she’s right, he can be lippy. They all can, but I don’t mind. At ten years old, a little bit of cheek is expected from happy kids. It’s the quiet ones I worry about the most.
    I leave Mum and Erin and hop into my Fiesta, piling up the passenger seat with marking. At 7:45am I park the car, carry the pile of marking into my classroom, sit down in my chair behind the desk and breathe for the first time this morning. I fill up my lungs, close my eyes, and breathe. The place smells like whiteboard marker and glue, but I love it. This is my break from it all, and yes, it’s stressful, loud and chaotic, but it’s a part of my life that I control. This is mine .
    There’s work to be done. I have photocopying to do, posters to hang, notes to make, and a little extra marking to finish up, all before the kids get here. First things first: the photocopying. If I leave it too late, there’ll be a queue. I pick up my lesson plans and worksheets and head down to the teacher’s lounge. A cup of coffee would be good, too.
    “Soph!”
    I grin. “Morning, ’Lish. I see you got to the photocopier early this morning.”
    “Just avoiding the hoards.” Alisha exaggerates an eye-roll. We’ve worked together for almost ten years, after both starting within six months of completing teacher training. We were a crutch for each other, both completely in it up to our ears and struggling along. “Fucking thing. I’ve changed the toner twice and unjammed it already this morning.” She gives the ancient printer a little kick. “There’s fresh coffee if you want some.”
    “You’re a life saver. I had to peel myself out of bed this morning.”
    I head over to the small kitchen area to pour a cup into my favourite mug—one with a bust of Shakespeare on the front and the caption 2B or not 2B, that is the classroom —a present from Alisha when I first started teaching in 2B.
    “How is the old battle-axe?” Alisha’s posture changes when she mentions my mum. She folds her arms and narrows her eyes.
    Alisha has only met Mum once, when she picked us both up from a teacher’s convention in Nottingham. Unfortunately, Mum talked to Alisha like a child the whole way home, raising her voice and talking slowly, as though Alisha couldn’t understand English. Alisha, whose heritage is Indian but who was born and bred in Manchester, gritted her teeth and put on an over-the-top Indian accent to make light of the situation. But I know it annoyed her—rightly so—and she’s disliked Mum ever since.
    I’d never gone into a lot of detail about my childhood, but I think Alisha saw who Mum truly is. Though I already knew Mum’s true colours, I saw them reflected back to me from Alisha’s reaction. It unsettled me.
    After that incident, we almost drifted apart. It was around the same time that she became pregnant with her first child. As well as feeling incredibly awkward about how Mum had treated my best friend—and how I’d failed to stand up to Mum yet again—the sight of my best friend going through pregnancy was almost too hard to bear. It took me a