“I don’t suppose you’d consider…not? I mean, it’d save us both a lot of meetings.”
Jaz looked at me like I was the world’s least skibidi person.
Esther just laughed in a way I found reassuringly professional. “Thatispretty much the size of it. But”—she gave me a look that I found uncomfortably understanding—“has ‘Just don’t’ ever worked for you?”
“No,” I admitted. “Then again, I’ll go a very long way to getout of a meeting.”
Jaz was still ignoring us, so we just had time to lapse back into another awkward silence before the receptionist put down her phone and told us that Miss Collins was ready for us.
Esther, who had clearly worked with this school before, led me and Jasmine the short distance up the corridor to the deputy headmistress’s office, which, it seemed, was also the office of the school’s designated teacher for looked-after and previously-looked-after children. Presumably because they were in fact the same person.
I’d expected Miss Collins to look the way I remembered teachers looking when I was Jaz’s age, which was to say ancient, withered, and extremely unradical. When she turned out to be slightly younger than me, and probably less withered as well, I felt kind of personally attacked. Sitting beside her was a man of similar insultingly-my-agedness, who was not only wearing a grey cardigan but also seemed to be made entirely out of them.
“Mr. O’Donnell?” Miss Collins didn’t give me a hand to shake, but she indicated a chair for me to sit in. One of three currently unoccupied. “Jasmine? Do take a seat. Mr. O’Donnell, I don’t think you’ve met Mr. Lorimer. He’s Jasmine’s liaison with the virtual school.”
“Hi, Jaz,” said Mr. Lorimer in a voice like an overworked vicar.
Jaz grunted something that might have beenhiin return.
With all the introductions, I hadn’t quite got around to taking a seat yet, but Esther had taken hers comfortably enough and I followed suit. Jasmine stayed resolutely standing.
“You can sit down,” Miss Collins told her. “You’re part of this meeting too.”
Jaz looked at the chair like it was booby-trapped. “Where’ll Mum sit?”
Mr. Lorimer looked at Jaz with forlorn, slightly wet eyes, which might just have been the only eyes he had. “We’re not expecting her,I’m afraid.”
“She’ll be here,” Jaz insisted.
“None of us have heard from her,” explained Esther, gently. “We’ll find her a seat if she shows up, but it’s unlikely—”
“She’llbe here,” Jaz insisted again. “She knows about this. She’s been told.”
The briefing Oliver and I had been given about Jaz’s homelife had been highly detailed in some ways, infuriatingly vague in others. We knew that her mother was a single parent, that she had some kind of highly nonspecific mental health condition, and that Jaz had been put in the system forsevere neglectrather thanabuse. But a combination of confidentiality rules and the telephone game of institutions talking to institutions had left us otherwise in the dark. We’d been told rather more about the kinds of behaviours we could expect, although we’d also been warned that the thing we should expect the most wasthe unexpected.
“We could give her five minutes?” I suggested. The meeting was already due to start, but I was used to operating on CRAPP time and delays were well baked into my regular working practice.
Miss Collins looked disapproving. “I don’t think that would be appropriate. We have a lot to get through. Normally we’d want to start by looking at what’s been going well and what our challenges have been so far, but since Jasmine—”
“Jaz,” Jaz and I said simultaneously, and Jaz gave me a look of what I could only describe as grudging solidarity.
“Since Jaz is new to the school and I believe”—Miss Collins looked to me for confirmation—“new to your family as well, we should look instead at how things went at your previous school.”
This secondyourwas directed at Jaz, which I appreciated because it would have felt ick as fuck if this whole thing had been us talking about her as if she wasn’t in the room. Jaz, though, seemed to appreciate it a lot less. She slouched against the chair she wasreserving for her mother and said nothing.
Esther leaned over to her and said, very quietly, “This is your space. You can say anything you need to say.”
Jaz, as ever, wasn’t in much of a mood to say anything.
“Perhaps,” prompted Mr. Lorimer, “you could tell us something about your goals relating to attendance?”
We’d also been informed that Jaz’s attendance at her previous school had been dog shit. Obviously it hadn’t been put in those exact words. Nor did Jaz herself seem inclined to put it into those words. Or indeed any words.
“In your last term at Bellefield,” Miss Collins added, “you seem to have been going to far below eighty percent of your classes.”
“Eighty percent doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.
Except it was clearly the wrong thing to say because Miss Collins gave me a stern whose-side-are-you-on look that made me feel like I’d been caught passing notes in class. “It’s a day off a week,” she pointed out. “And I saidfar below.”
