The School Gates Read Free Page A

classes, with a Headmistress, seven teachers and four teaching assistants.
    As well as the spacious teaching areas, the school housed a multi-purpose dining area, a large assembly/sports hall and a quiet/play room for the little ones. Sport was high on the agenda, and as well as the indoor sports hall, there was also a playground/netball court and two large fields for other outdoor sports. Plus, after many successful fund-raising efforts by the active Parent Teacher Association, the children were also lucky enough to have use of a swimming pool in the summer.
    It was as good as any private school in the area, and everyone who lived in Denbury wanted their children to go there.
    One minute to spare before assembly, and there was the commotion of the Brown family arriving. Joan cycled as fast as she could up the drive with her boys pedalling furiously behind her.
    ‘Quick! Helmets off, boys, and bikes in rack. Here are your bags. We’ll be in trouble if we have to sign the late book again. Skye, just look at your face.’ She spat on a tissue and wiped remnants of breakfast from her daughter’s chin. ‘Rosie, you OK?’ Rosie nodded. In lifting the tiny girl off her seat, Joan noticed her badly scuffed shoes. Cissy, a shock of fair hair poking out of her blue beanie hat, snored in the customised cat basket. All four children ran to their respective classes.
    ‘Love you all. Be good!’ Joan shouted after them.
    Rosie smiled and felt warm inside. She loved being ensconced in the family madness that was the Browns.
    Joan got on her bike as Dana and Tommy Knight were pelting towards her.
    ‘Makes a change for me not to be the last,’ she said, cycling gently past.
    ‘I know. Hopefully I can sneak him in the back door,’ Dana panted.
    ‘Glad it’s a school day. They’ll all be going crazy in this wind,’ Joan added and sped off, leaving the pretty Czech completely perplexed.
    Then, all of a sudden, as if she had broken free from greyhound traps, Eliska Murray was running as fast as her little legs would carry her, back out of school and back down the school drive. Luckily, with Inga being such a bad driver, she was still trying to do a U-turn in the road outside. She looked in horror at Eliska tearing out of the school gates, with Miss Bradshaw, one of the teaching assistants, in hot pursuit.
    The panicked au pair hurriedly got out of the car.
    ‘Eliska, are you OK? Did you forget something?’
    ‘Yes,’ Eliska puffed. ‘Can I have a pound, please?’
    Alana sat at the boardroom table in Stephen McNair’s spacious, bright office overlooking Chiswick High Road. He was looking particularly sexy today, in a sky-blue shirt and grey suit.
    When all six-feet-four of him got up to go and fetch a cup of coffee, she suddenly had a clear vision of him ripping her clothes off all those years ago in that fancy London hotel.
    It had been a typical one-night stand, if ever a one-night stand can be classed as ‘typical’. It had happened like this:
    Company Christmas party
    Invite the PR agency along
    Drink too much
    Hotel bar closes
    ‘Come to my room for a night-cap from the mini-bar?’
    Drinks in – wits out
    Wake up in the morning, regretting mixing rum with vodka and also business with pleasure
    However, the untypical thing about this one-night stand was that Stephen McNair wasn’t normally a philanderer, and even Alana, with her insatiable desire for sex, realised that he was actually a decent bloke.
    In her alluring black dress and high heels, the attractive blonde fox had lured the prey back to her lair and a full mini-bar, and then pounced.
    Yes, he had shown weakness, but if Stephen McNair hadn’t been such a nice person, he actually could have won a case of rape against her.
    They had met a week later at this very office and she solemnly promised him that nothing would ever be said about the matter. She realised just how much he loved his wife and that was it. The case of Murray v. McNair – CLOSED.
    One sip of