They passed the animal feed store, the post office, the bank and the police station, none of the buildings showing any signs of life yet, but at the primary school gate there was a figure unlocking the Perspex door on the notice board by the gate.
Roz recognised the woman immediately as her old boss, Mrs Hoolit, the headmistress. She had worked at the school forever and, given that she was at work before half-seven on a Monday morning, she was showing no signs of slacking off any time soon.
Roz didn’t like to think it, but Mrs Hoolit was white-haired now, when before she’d boasted the thick auburn brush of so many highlanders. Where there had once been freckles on her cheeks there was now a papery coolness, but she seemed just as sprightly and busily efficient as she’d always been.
They greeted one another in their usual friendly way, and Wayward, who Mrs Hoolit hadn’t yet had the pleasure of being mauled by, immediately set about putting ladders in her tights. The head teacher didn’t seem to mind and fussed the dog anyway.
After asking how each other’s families were doing, Roz couldn’t help mentioning the notice newly posted to the board. A job advertisement.
‘The school’s hiring?’ she asked. ‘A one-to-one? What’s that?’
‘We’ve a wee boy starting in Primary One come August,’ Mrs Hoolit said, locking the notice board shut. ‘And he’ll have a teaching assistant of his own.’
‘Are you talking about Jolly? I mean, Jolyon Sears?’
‘That’s the lad. You know him?’
‘He and his mum, Mhairi, are repair shop regulars, and they come to the garden project on Sundays. Jolly loves it.’
‘Ah, well, you’ll know he’s deferred starting school for a year already, so he’ll be a bit older than most of the class?’
Mhairi Sears and Roz’s twins had gone to school together, so they all went way back, and it wasn’t unusual that Mhairi had told Roz all about her decision to keep Jolyon in nursery for another year. That was when they’d been finishing off work on the repair shed garden project’s polytunnel back in February. The new term had seemed a long way off then.
‘Time’s going in fast,’ Roz observed.
‘Not too fast, I hope. I have to get interviews started and someone in post before we break up for the summer holidays.’ Mrs Hoolit had no sooner said this than her expression changed to something enquiring, and a little bit cunning. ‘You’re not considering getting back into the classroom, are you, Rosalyn?’
‘Me?’ Roz wanted to laugh at the very thought, but it came out more as a spluttering refusal to even entertain the idea. ‘Not at all.’
‘You were always wonderful with the pupils. I often get parents telling me how they remember you teaching them. They’re grown up with bairns of their own at the school now, but they haven’t forgotten you.’
‘Oh my goodness!’ Roz didn’t think she liked the idea of this very much.
‘As you say,’ Mrs Hoolit went on with a shrewd smile, ‘time flies fast. Applications close at the end of the month, for anyone considering it.’
Roz knew the woman too well to miss her meaning. ‘Mrs H, you know I’m needed at the repair shop, and at the garden project on Sundays…’ She had been about to say she was busy with the house and the twins too, but that wasn’t true. ‘And Charlie’s winding things down a bit… hopefully.’
This was met with a pointed look that made Roz feel like the most awful liar.
‘Well, I mean, he will be, when the repair shed quietens down again.’
‘Hmm.’ The older woman let herself back inside the school gate, still smiling knowingly.
‘How could I work in a school again?’ Roz appealed, increasingly panicked, even though Mrs Hoolit wasn’t saying a word. ‘It’s been twenty-eight years. Times have changed. Schools have changed. I’m out of touch.’
The head teacher made a little shrug like these were minor details. ‘You could take a refresher course… and in the meantime pick up some volunteer hours to reorientate you.’
‘I’m not registered any more.’
‘One online form would see to that.’
‘A refresher course would cost money, wouldn’t it?’
‘There’d be a salary, come August. And this’ – Mrs Hoolit tapped the edge of the notice board – ‘is a permanent post, for as long as Jolyon is on the school roll.’
The promise of a regular pay cheque certainly had more appeal than the idea of going back to teacher school and everything that would entail. They’d managed this far on McIntyre’s redundancy payout from the tractor factory and the last of their savings, but there were bills coming in soon that they’d struggle to pay.
‘But I’d need references,’ Roz protested. ‘No one on the school board will remember me.’
