‘Hmmm. At three in the morning?’
‘Yes. We can’t jump to assumptions. It’s not as if we saw him standing in a doorway kissing someone.’
‘Like we were.’
They maintained eye contact as Kam spoke and she felt all the feels zing through her body. This was crazy. They were going to get caught before the register had been taken at this rate.
‘Stop and go and get your things! You’re so bad.’
Kam grinned naughtily – conspiratorially – at her as he left. She looked around the classroom, knowing it was only going to be empty for another thirty seconds, and breathed in a deep sigh of contentment. This really was her happy place: the bright colours, the effort she knew that had gone into every picture, every piece of work around the classroom, the laughter that fuelled the room, the hustle bustle of the children learning.
‘Hello, Miss Parkin. Is Kam about?’
‘Hello, Marion, he’ll be back in a minute. Can I help you with anything?’
‘No, I don’t think so, dear.’ Marion sniffed. She really was an arse. Pippa could not see why Rosy, Sylvie and Alice had so much time for her.
Pippa stood eyeing Marion and Marion stood doing the same right back, when Pippa decided to be the bigger person and break the spell.
‘Wasn’t the May Fayre a success? You must be so happy.’
‘Well, there was that dreadful woman.Shewon’t be allowed back. We can only have the most responsible parents on the PTA, not some half-drunk slattern who can’t behave in public. Imagine if she had acted like that when we were out with the school. What if she had had an outburst at Penmenna Hall when they were filming for the show?’
Pippa, and she suspected most of the other people in the hall that afternoon, felt that Marion had had it coming for quite some time, but because of the hazy afterglow from the weekend, or the excitement of working alongside Kam today, or maybe the promise she had made her mum before the half-term holiday, Pippa felt like trying again.
‘Did you have a good half term? Did the boys do anything nice?’
‘The boys had very full, very productive days. Rafe had drama school all week, very exclusive, and the others did a week-long surf school. Then in the evenings we had an intensive Latin course for all three of them.’
‘Latin? Rufus is only five.’
‘Never too early to start a classical education.’
Pippa felt herself about to say ‘Hmmm’, and stopped in time as she realised that was the Choudhury family’s phrase. ‘It was nice to see Richard at the fayre,’ Pippa said instead, as the children started to stream in.
‘Yes, lovely to have him back. He was here for the whole of half term, absolutely wonderful. We got to spend a lot of time together, although he did have to go and work briefly with a colleague who lives down here, same building as Kam I think. Lovely woman, hard worker. I did think she’d be a good fit for Alex actually, before he found Sylvie. Ooh, there’s Kam now. Of course, he must have opened the door to let the kids in. Walk, don’t run, young man.’ Marion tapped Billy on the head and turned her full headlamps beam onto Kam and stalked across the room towards the teacher, already deluged with small children clinging to him and telling him their tales of summer half term.
Pippa went to fetch her tablet so she could enter lunch numbers, and wondered if she was doing the right thing by not mentioning Richard sneaking out of that flat at daft o’clock, although from what Marion had said it was probably work related. Spotting Kam still talking with Marion, Pippa clapped her hands and lead the children to the carpet where they could all say good morning. Kam caught her eye – those eyes – and issued a silent thank you as he manoeuvred around Marion and towards the children.
‘Hello, Class, lovely to see you all back and well rested and ready to do tons of hard work, yes?’ He laughed as the class made faux groaning noises. Once they dispersed to their activities, Kam went over to a pile of papers and started to rifle through them. Pippa watched him (she hadn’t actually taken her eyes off him since he’d come back into the class). He seemed to have lost something, going through the pile and checking three times. He ran his fingers along the inside of his collar and brought his eyes up, flitting about the class, dwelling on window ledges and worktops to see if he could see what he had misplaced.
Pippa approached him, reminding herself to keep to the agreement whilst really wanting to say, ‘Oh my god, let’s spend every day and every night together.’ She definitely deserved a sainthood for this.
‘Everything okay?’
‘Um… yeah. Yes. Nothing to worry about. I had something to give you. I spent all of last night getting it right… um… but I must have carried it over to the office and left it on Sheila’s desk when I was photocopying on my way back from the car.’
‘Do I need it before breaktime?’
‘No. No, not at all.’
‘Then I’ll nip over and grab it at break time, if it’s nothing major.’ As she spoke Kam looked like he was about to argue but suddenly his focus switched.
‘Billy! What do you think you’re doing?’
Pippa turned to see what Kam was staring at. Billy, who was by the art supplies ready for his activity, was wearing a whole heap of paint. It was yellow and currently pouring down his head, onto his shoulders and over his aertex shirt. His classmates surrounded him, aghast and silent all apart from Ellie who had a very bad case of the giggles.
‘I’m Cornwall! I’m sand and sunshine and ice cream,’ Billy shouted, as Pippa dove across the classroom grabbing some green paper towels on the way. Kam raced her to it, both of them trying not to laugh as they attempted to wrap the child in aprons and lift him out of the classroom and into the shower they had installed for children with additional needs, and this sort of thing.
