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© Casey Watson 2014
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Ebook Edition © December 2014 ISBN: 9780007543106
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Contents
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‘Aha!’ a strange little voice said from behind me. ‘Mish Mannypenny, I preshume?’
I was sitting at the desk in the corner of my classroom at the time, so I spun around in my swivel chair (a recent and welcome addition) to see a young boy I didn’t recognise standing in the doorway. He looked to be about 11, with bushy black hair. The sort of hair that always looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in some time, even if it had. Judging by the rest of him, however, I decided it probably hadn’t. Way-too-short trousers (so often a give-away) and a shirt that, though clearly once white, was an unpleasant shade of ‘old washing-up water’ beigey-yellow.
I stood up and extended a hand, happy to play along with his air of formality. ‘Well, hello,’ I said. ‘I’m Mrs Watson. Who are you?’
‘The name’s Bond,’ he replied, giving my hand a gentle shake. ‘Jamesh Bond.’
Ah, I thought, Sean Connery – that explains the strange attempt at a Scottish accent. ‘Okay, James,’ I replied, ‘it’s very nice to meet you, but do you have a school name that I could use?’
He seemed to consider this for a minute, inspecting the hand I’d just shaken. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘I’m called Nathan as well and I’m 11 but I have a birthday soon and then I will be 12.’ He smiled proudly at me. ‘Are you my new teacher, Miss?’
‘Indeed I am,’ I confirmed, ushering my new recruit in properly. The deputy head, Donald, had already told me he’d be sending a boy called Nathan down after lunch, and by the looks of this little lad, I had the correct one. I also noted that his Scottish accent had now disappeared, to be replaced by a slightly high-pitched, excitable chatter. ‘That’s a lovely name, Nathan,’ I told him, having sat him down. ‘And, as I say,’ I added, pulling out the chair opposite to make it better to chat to him, ‘I am going to be looking after you for a bit, though not in the same way as a regular class teacher. I’m going to be looking after you because you have been getting into quite a bit of trouble lately, haven’t you? That’s why you’re here.’
I’d been running the Unit for just over a year now, so I already knew a fair few of the more ‘memorable’ kids, but with Nathan only being 11, and it only being late September – just a few weeks into the autumn term – he was a boy I hadn’t come across before. All I knew so far was that he’d already managed to get a bit of a name for himself as a troublemaker. A boy who kept getting into fights, even though he didn’t look the type, he had also variously been described as ‘a bit odd’, as having learning difficulties and, most damningly, as a child who threw the most outrageous tantrums and was in danger of permanent exclusion.
And all this in a matter of less than a month, I thought grimly. His reputation must have preceded him and then some.
He lowered his gaze to the floor in recognition of his misdemeanours. ‘But I’m going to try to help you be a good boy now,’ I added. ‘That’s the plan. Are you going to try your best for me?’
‘OK, Miss,’ he said, brightening, ‘I’ll be good for you, I promise. I think you’re gonna like me, too, because I like you.’
Running the Unit, as it was called, in our local comprehensive school, was something of a dream job for me. I’d been in youth work for some time and was very experienced, but applying to manage it – ‘it’ being the place where kids were contained when they couldn’t be in mainstream school, for whatever reason – had been something of a long shot for me. I had no education background or formal teaching qualifications, so no one was more surprised than me when I got the call after the interview to tell me the job was mine if I wanted it. They even told me I could work towards whatever qualifications they or I thought might be useful ‘on the job’.
And the Unit soon became an integral part of the fabric of the school. Indeed, within just two terms, the head had realised that it was becoming a victim of its own success, the numbers slowly and surely increasing to a point where it would soon risk getting out of control. And perhaps that was inevitable; once the teachers realised I was happy for them to hand me their most disruptive children, they were understandably eager to refer them to the Unit rather