Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck fuck. We were definitely going to get arrested. For trespassing at a school for five-to-eleven-year-olds. Fuck.
Saint was already striding onto school property, with Jaz watching him over the wall. And from the look on her face, yeah, I definitely didn’t have to worry about him being an undue influence on her.
Although I did have to worry about the fact that I was now effectively supervising two children, one of whom was in his sixties and both of whom I really needed to keep eyes on. “Jaz,” I called out, “once Spud has finished, you’re going to need to come with us.”
Jaz dutifully sauntered in the vague direction of the school building, Spud skipping merrily behind her. She was givingwhatevervibes, but I had a feeling she did in fact want to see how this would play out. Not in a good way, but I’d take what I could get.
By the time I caught up with Saint, he was standing at the reception desk. Behind the desk sat the receptionist: a youngish man wearing a grey jumper and an expression of mild panic.
“Sir,” the receptionist was saying, “I don’t know who that is, and I’m going to have to ask you not to swear.”
“MagiMix,” Saint repeated. “FuckingMagiMix. He works here.” Then he turned to me. “Tell this dickless sellout to get MagiMix.”
Desperately wishing Saint had kept me out of this, I tried to smooth things over with the dickless sellout. “We’re looking for Michael Giffard.”
With the kind of relief that comes from dealing with somebody slightly less awful than the person you’ve just been dealing with, the receptionist nodded. “He’s the deputy head.”
“Tell him Saint’s here to see him,” said Saint.
Deciding that just-going-along-with-it was the better part of valour, the receptionist picked up the phone, dialled an internal number, and waited. After long enough that Saint had begun to get visibly impatient, which, honestly, wasn’t that long at all, we heard the click of someone picking up. And then, “Mr. Giffard? Sorry to bother you, there’s a Mr. Saint here for you.”
“Just Saint.”
The receptionist listened to the other end of the phone for a couple of seconds, then put his hand over the receiver. “He says he can’t see you today.”
“Tell him that’s bollocks.”
The receptionist’s eyes widened. “I will no—hang on, I think he heard you.”
“Tell him to come out here.” Having realised that the primary school deputy headteacher formerly known as MagiMix could hear him over the phone, Saint had raised his voice into a natural posh-person bellow. “And look me in the eye like a man.”
“Girls’ve got eyes too,” Jaz pointed out, but Saint either didn’t hear or didn’t care.
Setting the handset down, the receptionist looked up at Saint as pleasantly as he could manage. “I think he’s on his way.”
“See,” Saint told me, or possibly the receptionist, or possibly fate itself. “That wasn’t hard, was it?”
“Mruff,” replied Spud.
Which meant the receptionist noticed him through theSaint-field for the first time. “I’m afraid you’ll need to take the dog outside.”
“That’s nice of you,” Jaz replied at once. “But he’s already had a piss, thanks.”
Before that conversation could go anywhere worse than it had already gone, a man who I assumed must be MagiMix appeared. He did not, by any stretch of the imagination, look like a MagiMix. He looked like a Mr. Giffard, deputy headteacher of Celvestune Primary School. I mean, yes, he still had a pierced ear, just about visible after decades, but otherwise he was small, slim, balding, and wearing glasses chosen for practicality rather than fashion.
“Saint,” he said in clipped, polite tones that implied a way posher background than you’d expect from somebody co-running a state primary. “What are you doing here?”
And yet again, Saint pulled down his shades. “We’re getting the band back together.”
MagiMix—who, thinking about it, I should probably have been calling Michael or perhaps Mr. Giffard—peered at me and Jaz in a very, very headteacherly way. “Is thiswe?”
“No,” said Jaz emphatically.
“Not exactly,” I half agreed.
“Ruff,” explained Spud.
Saint put his hand between my shoulder blades in a way that felt way more invasive than it probably should have. “My friend Luc here—LucFleming—”
