What Happens Now

‘Well I’ve never heard of him,’ said Jess. ‘But he’s hot. Lil, this is amazing. I’m going to google him.’ She picked up her phone. ‘OK, M… A… X… Rushbrooke,’ she said as she tapped. ‘Fuck! He’s got his own Wikipedia page. Lil, you’ve shagged someone with a Wikipedia page!’

‘Modern romance,’ I said, getting up to peer over her shoulder. Annoyingly, a little part of me was pleased by this, but there was no way in hell I would openly admit that. ‘Let’s have a look.’

‘“Max Rushbrooke is an English mountaineer and guide,”’ Jess read. ‘“He is one of Britain’s leading high-altitude climbers and has summited Mount Everest ten times. He was born in 1985” – so he’s…’

‘Thirty-four,’ I said. ‘I knew that already. It said that on his profile.’

‘Went to Eton College then… Er, didn’t go to uni. Went to Sandhurst. Oh my God, with Prince William. Then it just lists loads of expeditions.’

‘There was some Everest disaster a few years back,’ said Clem authoritatively from the other side of the table. ‘Bad weather and they got stuck. He might have nearly died. I think they all nearly died.’

‘Shhhhh, Clem,’ Jess went on, flapping her hand at him. ‘Lil, listen to this bit. “His older brother Arundel died in a skiing accident in France in 2002…”’

‘Oh shit, he didn’t mention anything.’

‘But listen to this,’ went on Jess, still staring at the computer screen. ‘“His older brother Arundel died in a skiing accident in France in 2002, which makes Max the heir to his father, the 17th Viscount Rushbrooke. The family seat is Little Clench Hall in Suffolk and their estimated wealth is around £135 million.”’ She looked up at me. ‘Lil, he’s a trillionaire! Did he not mention any of this?’

‘No, course not! What would he have said? “Hello, Lil, nice to meet you. I’m Max. My brother died when I was younger which makes me a viscount as well as a famous mountaineer and, oh, did I mention I am also very rich?” I paused. ‘I think I like him more because he didn’t talk about it.’

‘Technically, he’s not a viscount yet,’ said Jess. ‘But he will be.’ And then she added, quickly, as if all her words were trying to overtake one another, ‘Oh my God, imagine, you could be a viscountess.’

‘Jess, come onnnnnnn. We haven’t even sent that message,’ I said, reaching for my own phone to look Max up on Instagram. Bingo. There he was. Blue tick, 64.2k followers. I scrolled through his photos. Mostly him on mountains – in France, in Canada, in Switzerland. Max on the top of Everest last August, shards of ice in his beard.

‘There’s some stuff here about his ex-girlfriend,’ went on Jess, and then she put on a high-pitched posh voice. ‘Lady Primrose Percy and Max Rushbrooke are believed to have dated for several years.’ She looked up at me. ‘Did he talk about her?’

‘Briefly, only when we discussed exes.’

‘Look, here’s a picture of them,’ said Jess, squinting at her screen. ‘She’s got quite a long nose. And a big forehead. I don’t think we have to worry about her.’

‘Show me.’

She held up her phone. Lady Primrose was pretty. Jess was exaggerating about the nose. And blonde and smiley. It was a picture of them taken at a party. Max had his arm around her waist, she was tanned and wearing a strapless top that showed her collarbones. She looked quite thin, irritatingly.

‘Mmm,’ I said, as Jess lowered her phone again. ‘He didn’t actually mention her by name but she must have been the one he was talking about. But then he said our date wasn’t a therapy session and we had to discuss something else.’

‘We need to compose that message right now,’ said Jess, firmly. ‘Clem, do the plates. Lil and I really need to think about this. Oh this is thrilling. Imagine how furious Jake would be if he knew.’

Jake. I hadn’t thought about him since the day before, which meant he hadn’t taken up any head space for nearly twenty-four hours. Practically a record.

Jess insisted that she take my phone back again and concentrated on the message while I sat at the table, still reeling from this discovery, and Clem wearily picked up our plates and slid them into the sink. The news shouldn’t change how I felt about Max, I knew, but part of me couldn’t help but feel even more impressed by him. Why was sleeping with someone even slightly famous such a thrill? Did that make me a bad person?

Jess was quiet for a few moments while tapping.

‘What are you saying? Jess?’

She ignored me.

‘JESS?’

She looked up. ‘Cool it. All I’ve said is “Gorgeous Max, what a night. Looking forward to the next one. Dot, dot, dot.” And then two kisses. Little ones. Bit more casual than one big kiss. Less premeditated.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not saying that, give it back. I can’t say “looking forward to the next one”. It makes me sound mad. Even more psycho than calling him “gorgeous Max”. I hate the word gorgeous. Come on, give it back.’

Jess sighed. ‘Here you go. But it’s too late. I’ve sent it.’

‘WHAT? Jess, you promised.’

‘I did no such thing. And come on, Lil, men need encouragement like that. They can be very slow otherwise.’

‘Oh, thank you very much,’ interjected Clem, from the sink.

I checked my phone. Two grey WhatsApp ticks. She had sent it.

‘Fuck. Jess. That isn’t cool. Clem, what do you think about that message?’

He turned his head to look at us. ‘Honestly, girls, Churchill wrote some of his greatest speeches with less fuss than this. I’m sure it’s fine.’

I winced with embarrassment and stared at my phone screen, willing the message to come back. Could I send another message to him, explaining the first to lessen this intense embarrassment? Or did that look even weirder? Was it even possible to sound weirder? I wasn’t sure.

‘I wish you hadn’t,’ I muttered. But I could never get cross at Jess.

‘What were you going to tell me about Walt anyway?’ I asked her, deciding to change the subject and remembering what Jess had said earlier.

She frowned at me.

‘You know. You said you’d tell me something. About Walt. About yesterday.’

‘Ohhhh.’ She nodded in recognition. ‘Yes. He said he’d bought us tickets for a weekend in Paris.’

‘That’s sweet of him. Isn’t it?’

‘Incredibly sweet, that’s the trouble.’ Jess bit her lip and looked guilty. ‘A man tells you he’s bought tickets for a romantic weekend in Paris and your heart should leap right out of your chest. I should be rushing off to buy sexy knickers and thinking about all the oysters and the shagging.’

‘And you’re not?’

She shook her head. ‘Not really. Not at all, in fact. My first thought was “Ooooh, Paris. I wonder if I’ll meet any hot men.”’

‘Not ideal,’ I agreed.

‘Anyway, it’s not for a few weeks. So I was sort of noncommittal about it. But I felt so guilty I said I’d go to this exhibition opening at his gallery on Friday. You free? Will you come with me? Then we can stand in a corner and get pissed and decide what I should do.’

‘Think so,’ I said, looking at my calendar on my phone. ‘Yup, I am.’ My week looked bare, but I was hoping that one of the nights might be a second date with Max. Or at least I’d been hoping that before Jess sent the world’s most embarrassing message.

I didn’t get home until about nineish and the ticks beside the message were still grey. I was trying to stay breezy but that clearly meant he was ignoring it. Who didn’t check their phone for seven hours? Even Mum looked at hers more often than that. Max had definitely seen it. I just had to hope that they’d go blue and he’d send something back later that evening. I imagined he would, he didn’t seem like the kind of guy to just ignore a message, however embarrassing it was. Good manners to reply, right?

I found Grace and Riley doing yoga in the living room on their mats, laid out in front of the TV.

‘Hi, guys,’ I said, dropping my bag on the kitchen counter.

‘What time d’you call this, missy?’ said Riley, remaining twisted in his pose, his head hanging down between his legs.

‘D’you shag him?’ added Grace, in the same position.

I paused and then laughed. ‘Yes.’

They both cheered from their mats.

‘Good work,’ said Riley, admiringly. ‘Grace only gave me a gobby on our first date.’

Grace reached out and smacked him on the leg. ‘You’re a pig.’

‘What’s a gob— actually, do you know what? Never mind,’ I said, knowing that I’d regret asking him.

‘It’s a blowie,’ clarified Riley.

‘Mmmm. I guessed,’ I said, opening the fridge to see if it had anything promising in it. I’d been eating biscuits all day at Jess and Clem’s but I still had a little gap for a snack. A piece of toast, maybe. My forty-seventh cup of sugary tea that day.

‘Oh, darl, you seen the Sky remote?’ said Grace, standing up on her mat and frowning. ‘We can’t find it anywhere.’

I felt a stab of guilt, knowing it was in my bedside drawer, lying next to my vibrator. But shook my head and reminded myself to smuggle it back into the living room.

‘Sorry,’ I said, trying to look innocent, before excusing myself for a bath, saying I was desperate for an early night.

I left my phone on the bath mat so I could see if it blinked with a message. It didn’t. But just after 10 p.m., I got an alarming email from my boss, Miss Montague, St Lancelot’s headmistress.

Dear Miss Bailey, started the email. There was a school rule that all staff call one another by their surnames, which most of us ignored so long as we weren’t within earshot of Miss Montague. Please could you come to my office at 7.30 a.m. tomorrow morning for a meeting.

I felt instantly guilty. One week into the school year and I’d already done something wrong. What could it be? Mothers were always emailing the school on Sunday evenings having spent all weekend brooding over something spectacularly minor – a lost sock, a quibble about the school’s internet policy, was the cottage pie served at lunch last Thursday made with antibiotic-free beef? There was no matter too trivial for a St Lancelot mother. I set my alarm for 6.15 a.m. and went to sleep with my phone on vibrate on my other pillow. But by the time I drifted off, Max still hadn’t messaged.

Chapter Two

THE SITUATION ON MONDAY morning remained unchanged. The ticks were still grey, two little daggers beside that preposterous message. But I forced myself out of bed and tried to summon up some optimism in the shower. Dating had changed since I’d started going out with Jake, I knew. People didn’t reply immediately any more. Probably I’d get a message that day. And if not that day, because he might be busy doing whatever explorers did during office hours, then I’d hear from him that evening. I was sure of it. Nobody left a message unread for longer than that. It was rude. I elbowed my way on to the Tube at Brixton feeling hopeful about Max, but slightly less so about my meeting with Miss Montague.

I knocked on her door at precisely 7.29 a.m. She was a woman who appreciated punctuality and the school ran as if it were a military academy.

‘Come in,’ came the crisp, English voice.

She was sitting at her desk looking as she did every day – stern, in a blue skirt suit, collared shirt, a pearl in each ear sitting underneath a rigid hairstyle which I’d always figured was inspired by that unlikely style icon, Princess Anne.

‘Morning,’ I said, hovering just inside the door. Pasta, Miss Montague’s dachshund, lay dozing on his side in a patch of early sun beaming through the window.

‘Miss Bailey, good morning. Do have a seat.’

I sat. She looked over her glasses at me from behind her desk and leant forward, the chair creaking as she did. ‘It’s a sensitive situation, which is why I’m telling you now before I mention it to the other members of staff.’

I raised my eyebrows at her and spoke slowly. ‘O-O-O-K-K-K-K.’

‘It’s a late entry to the school year. Coming into your class. Roman Walker.’ She paused and looked at me expectantly.

‘O-O-O-K-K-K-K,’ I said again. It sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place him. St Lancelot’s had various celebrity sons – of royalty, of musicians, of artists, of tech billionaires, of politicians. Who’d called their son Roman?

‘As in, Luke Walker’s son, Roman.’

‘Oh. Right.’ The mists cleared and I realized who she was talking about. Luke Walker, the premiership footballer. His son. This was a huge deal. No wonder Miss Montague had called it sensitive. There had been a rumour that we’d get Prince George a few years ago, an exhausting period of time when Miss Montague was especially warlike and had made all members of staff practise their curtsy or bow ahead of the anticipated Royal visit. But then they’d picked Thomas’s in Clapham and we’d all calmed down again.

‘Probably a blessing,’ my favourite colleague Steph had said in the playground shortly afterwards. ‘Imagine what the mothers would wear if he was here, poor little bugger.’

‘Why’s Roman coming here now?’ I asked Miss Montague. Term had already started. It didn’t make sense.

Miss Montague opened her mouth but remained silent for a few moments as if working out how to explain. ‘Spot of trouble at Holland Gate. I gather there was a… dalliance between Mr Walker and a teacher. And apparently the governors there felt it best that Roman be moved.’

‘To here?’

‘Well, to somewhere different,’ said Miss Montague, smoothly. ‘It’s all extremely last-minute and I’ve spent the weekend arranging it. But he’ll be joining your class this morning, so could you make sure everyone welcomes him and be aware of the… sensitivity?’

‘Yes, course.’

‘No need to do anything differently. Do reading this morning and see how he gets on. If there are any problems, please inform me.’

‘Sure,’ I nodded. ‘And should I, er, meet the, er, Walkers at any point this week? Like the others…’ All class teachers had met their new parents just before the new school year had started, to talk them through the syllabus and what would be expected of their sons. I’d spent an evening in August shaking hands with my new parents and lecturing them about mobile phone policy.

This year, I had eight boys in my class, including the son of a Tory MP, the son of a Russian steel magnate (the father had the menacing air of a man who ate his victims for breakfast; the mother looked eleven years old); a Greek prince, and a sweetheart called Vikram whose family had just moved from Delhi to London. His mother was so concerned about Vikram settling in that she’d asked if they could send his nanny to sit at the back of the classroom, so I’d had to say gently she couldn’t.

Miss Montague shook her head, the helmet of hair unmoving. ‘The Walkers aren’t coming in for now. I’m going to liaise with them directly. It does of course mean there may be more media interest in us. But the usual rules apply – nobody is to talk to any press and if anyone approaches you please direct them to me.’ Her eyes burned into me like a female huntress on safari.

‘OK, no problem,’ I said.

‘Marvellous, I’ll see you for staff meeting in a second then,’ said Miss Montague.

I nodded and stood up, relieved I wasn’t in trouble.

Because I’d come in so early, the staffroom was empty when I arrived, so I dropped my bag on a chair and went straight for the coffee machine in the corner. I liked being in early. It gave me time to swallow at least two coffees before the kids started sliding up to the school gates on their scooters.

St Lancelot’s wasn’t huge compared to some of its rivals in Knightsbridge and Battersea, but it was generally considered the most exclusive boys’ school in London (as Miss Montague told us almost daily), with just over five hundred boys aged from four to thirteen. It occupied the site of a Gothic red-brick building between Chelsea and Pimlico which had once been a hospital but was converted into the school after the Second World War by a zealous army captain. Captain Bower, he was called. I had a sip of coffee and glanced at the portrait of him in army khakis hanging up in the staffroom. He had a moustache and was covered in medals. He had also studied Classics at Oxford and so the school motto – moniti meliora sequamur – was engraved in stone over the main entrance.

During my interview for the job five years earlier, Miss Montague, Captain Bower’s granddaughter, had begun by asking whether I knew what the motto meant. Hadn’t a clue.

She’d peered at me over her desk and replied: ‘After instruction, let us move on to pursue higher things.’

‘Oh I see,’ I’d answered politely.

‘It’s a line from Virgil’s Aeniad. I expect you’ve read it,’ she said, and I’d nodded vaguely into my coffee cup.

I hadn’t.

‘It’s fitting,’ went on Miss Montague, ‘because we teach a great many pupils who are destined for public life. Both here and abroad. Do you feel capable of shaping these young minds, Miss Bailey?’

I’d said yes, obviously, but five years on, I sometimes wondered whether these young minds should be destined for public life. Just ahead of the last general election, a Year 2 called Theodore had marched up to me in the playground during lunch and asked who I’d be voting for.

‘Errr,’ I’d started, unsure what to reply. We weren’t supposed to foist our own politics on the pupils. ‘The thing is, Theodore, some people think it’s rude to ask that question.’

Theodore had looked nonplussed at this. ‘My daddy says everyone who doesn’t vote Conservative is an idiot.’

I was so surprised I didn’t have time to answer before Theodore had turned round and swaggered off to canvass elsewhere in the playground.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Steph, standing next to me and keeping an eye on the future prime ministers and despots pushing one another off the climbing frame. ‘His dad’s a minister. Minister for sheep or something.’

Being a teacher at school is much the same as being a kid at school. You need mates. Allies. Steph was one of my closest allies. She taught Year 8, the 12-year-olds, and I loved her for her no-nonsense attitude – she didn’t take lip from the kids or grumbles from the parents. Outspoken and somewhere in her mid-forties (I’d never dared ask), she lived in Surbiton where her own kids were at the local school and where her husband, Tim, worked as a GP.

‘Morning, love,’ she said, coming through the staffroom door laden with bags, red in the face and with wisps of hair sticking to her forehead.

‘Hiya. Coffee?’ I replied, still hovering beside the kettle.

‘Mmm, please,’ said Steph. ‘Victoria was a fucking nightmare this morning.’

I spooned some Nescafé into the least grimy cup I could find on the tray and poured hot water over the top. It often sounded more like a working men’s club than a staffroom in here, although Miss Montague took a dim view of swearing among her staff. She took a dim view of many things – beards, the internet, staff on their mobile phones, parents who picked their boys up late, parents who dropped their boys off too early, parents who took their boys out of school before the holidays for skiing in Val d’Isère, and parents who threw their son’s birthday party at Claridge’s.

‘Fuck knows where all my lesson plans are this morning. I thought I had them but couldn’t find them anywhere on the train so I’m going to have to print them all off again,’ added Steph, collapsing on a chair next to her bags and bending down to take off her trainers. ‘I hate the bastard Anglo-Saxons.’

I put the coffee on the table next to her.

‘Ta, love. How was your weekend?’

‘Good.’ Then I paused and lowered my voice. ‘I had that date on Saturday night.’

‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ said Steph, looking up from untying her trainers, cheeks puce from the effort. ‘Tell me everything.’

Other staff members were drifting in and hanging their coats up. ‘Morning, Renée,’ I said, waving at the art teacher, then I lowered my voice again. ‘It was… nice.’

‘Nice?’ shrieked Steph. ‘Lilian, love, I’m an old married woman who gets her leg over once a year. You’ve got to do better than nice.’

‘All right all right. It was better than nice. Lovely. Will that do?’

‘So you shagged him?’ she said, narrowing her eyes at me. ‘A proper shag?’

‘Shhhh!’ I inclined my head towards the door, which Miss Montague had just drifted through, like a battleship coming into port.

‘Hiya, Mrs M,’ said Steph, who’d taught at St Lancelot’s for over a decade and was one of the few members of staff who could get away with referring to her as such.

‘Good morning,’ said Miss Montague, loudly, so everyone heard.

We dutifully murmured mornings back and looked round the room for seats. Every Monday morning we had a staff meeting. Sometimes the meetings were five minutes; sometimes they were twenty. The trick was to grab a seat as fast as possible, because if you had to stand throughout the meeting the chances were Miss Montague would catch your eye when she was after a volunteer for something – cleaning out the guinea pig cage or taking that week’s Lego Club.

As Miss Montague made her way to the front of the room, colleagues parting for her and Pasta to waddle their way through, I reached into my pocket to check my phone – nope, still nothing from Max. And because I was momentarily distracted, I missed the spare seats, so I had to hover awkwardly behind Steph’s chair.

‘Undivided attention, please, everyone. There’s a serious matter I need to bring to your attention,’ said Miss Montague, standing underneath the painting of Captain Bower. He looked like he’d been a stern, imperial chap and I imagine that was where she’d inherited her authority from. If Stalin and Joan of Arc had had a lovechild, it would have been exactly like Miss Montague.

Her face darkened as if ahead of a storm. ‘Joel Glassman in Year 6 arrived at school in a Range Rover last week,’ she announced.

Steph glanced up at me and frowned. I shrugged. What was the problem? Most of the school arrived in a Range Rover every day. Dmitri, the Russian in my class, arrived in a blacked-out one each morning, and only jumped down, clutching his schoolbag, once a security guard from the front of the car had opened a back door for him. He had two security guards, actually, who he referred to as his uncles. ‘Uncle Boris’ and ‘Uncle Sasha’. Burly, with necks thicker than their heads, I still hadn’t worked out which was which but one of them had winked at me during the first week of term and I’m afraid to say I did feel a frisson of excitement.

‘I don’t mean a normal Range Rover,’ went on Miss Montague, her voice louder and more menacing, as if she was a party leader building to a crescendo. ‘What I am talking about is one of those electric, toy Range Rovers.’ She said the word ‘toy’ with absolute disgust. ‘Joel had been given it for his birthday and decided to drive it to school, accompanied by the nanny, but we simply don’t have room in the scooter park for electric vehicles. So I’ve had words with Mr and Mrs Glassman but I would like you all to keep a vigilant eye on the situation and alert me if you see this happening again.’

The toadiest teachers – mostly the language department – all nodded back dutifully before Miss Montague moved on.

‘I’ve also had an email from Lady Fitzalan over the weekend. She and her husband are divorcing so can whoever is little Rupert’s form teacher – ah, Miss Cookson, yes, there you are – can you keep an eye on him, please?’

Steph sighed heavily in her seat and I saw Mike slip through the staffroom door. He was our other ally. Head of music.

‘Good of you to join us, Mr Abbey,’ said Miss Montague.

‘Ah yes, um, sorry,’ he said. ‘Tube was terrible.’

‘But of course it was,’ she said, blinking at him with a deadpan expression. ‘And could I remind you all that it’s our Harvest Festival in few weeks so if you could talk to your forms about it that would be appreciated. An email will be going out to all parents this week.’ We all nodded dutifully while I caught Mike’s eye and smiled. He was always charged with assembly rehearsals for the Harvest Festival and, for several weeks last year, arrived at the pub after work humming songs with titles like ‘A Very Happy Vegetable’.