I snorted. The last thing I’d have pictured him with was a beard. Jack would come in and help Mick on his days off school. As a teenager, helping involved not a lot more than supervising some quiet reading time, or re-enacting a Shakespearean scene to give Mick another ten minutes on lunch break. He was quite the rock star to the small handful of pre-pubescent girls in our class. I wondered if Mick ever understood that. Probably. It’s not as if twelve-year-old girls were renowned for their subtlety, after all.
‘I’ll make sure to tell him you’re here. He’d probably be keen for a catch-up.’
‘If he remembers me,’ I noted, looking around the table. ‘Now, does anyone need anything else from me?’
Silence. One by one, they shook their heads in turn. Only the scrawled lists I’d been given? Nothing more than pencils and glue? Good.
‘No … oh, wait. Yes.’ Marcus peered up at me, brow knitted. ‘I’d like to change my library session. I want a morning, preferably Monday. Could you make sure that happens?’
I blinked twice and stared hard at he who would be Clark Kent. ‘No.’
‘No? Is there a reason for the no?’ He rested his chin in the palm of his hand. I’ll bet that look worked on all the ladies.
‘I’ve been here not quite a day, and I have zero desire to turn this place into a snow globe just yet. I would like the opportunity and support of my colleagues as I settle in. I’m sure at the start of the new year, we’ll look at changing time slots.’
Tony snorted, then hid his mouth behind his hand quickly. My heart gave a bass drum thud, and annoyance prickled at the back of my eyes.
‘I’d really love a morning session though. Do you think you could get another class to shift?’ Marcus pressed on. It didn’t at all surprise me that he didn’t understand the word ‘no’.
‘You can try if you want, see if someone wants to swap,’ I said.
The office was so quiet you could hear my heart using my ribs as a xylophone if you concentrated hard enough. Please, do not put me in this situation, I thought. Not on day one. Yet, there was always one, wasn’t there?
‘Could you? Please?’ he asked. ‘I’ll be so busy with curriculum all day. It’s not like it’s a difficult request.’
I recoiled a little. Did anyone just see my shoulders curling in on each other? The words were so bloody familiar that it made me think the universe was just laughing at me. It was every night I’d ever tried to get Dean out of his office. Often, I was greeted with a combination of, ‘Can’t you see how busy I am?’, followed with a chaser of, ‘And what are you doing all day while I’m working?’ Anything further was met with, ‘Whatever.’ I wanted to turn around and walk out. Except I couldn’t do that here without looking like a total strop and not the team player that I’d prattled on about in my job interview.
‘Funny about that, so will I.’ I gathered my pile from the table. Papers slipped from my fingers and out onto the table. It felt like I spent the next few moments grabbing at air before Marcus took pity and handed them back. ‘If there’s someone you’d like to swap with, you’re welcome to ask them. If they say yes, you can have your morning. Otherwise, no.’
‘Ha!’ Roger clapped his hands in delight. ‘Boy Wonder doesn’t often hear that.’
‘Is everyone else done?’ I asked. ‘I also have work to do.’
Marcus huffed, hands clasped in his lap. Far from the polite and confident look he carried this morning, he’d now shown me an entirely different person. I stepped into the corridor, took a steadying breath and thought about tearing back in there and giving him a piece of my mind. But what would that prove? I decided to get on with my day. It was day one, something like this was bound to happen. Attitude clashes were the stumbling block of any new job, and he appeared to be a Lego in the middle of the night.
I shuffled back to my office to find a password tacked to the top of the computer screen. That was nice. Exactly where was I supposed to begin? I imagined my inbox would be backing up quicker than a toilet stuffed with paper and cherry bombs. I pushed my planner to the side for a moment to try and tidy the room.
As I moved about, familiarising myself with everything, my brain threw out questions. Was I supposed to fire up the borrowing system and run a report for overdue books? Maybe I needed to do a complete stocktake before doing that, just in case. But school wasn’t back yet, so it was kind of pointless. I thought back to what I’d done previously and decided I would do that tomorrow, once students were back and the school was alive again. Curriculum first, got it.
It was amazing how quickly things began snapping back into shape. Still, with each email I deleted, ten more popped up in their place. I almost wanted to kiss Grace when it turned out her four o’clock email was nothing more than a ladies’ lunch invite because, by that time, I’d started to reconsider every life choice that had brought me here.
I reached for Cathy’s reference guide and paced the office while I read. I scribbled notes and re-stuck Post-it notes, jammed a pen behind my ear, and repeated things aloud as if that would jog my memory. And that was how I spent the few hours I had left, quietly on my own – and not changing the library roster.
* * *
‘Okay, I’ll admit it.’ I pulled the last of the steak from the barbecue and slapped it down on Penny’s plate. ‘I’m curious.’
All the way home, I could smell the last of the school holiday barbecues. The only way to stop my mouth watering was to have my own cook-up. It was never going to be as elaborate as the ones we had on the beach as kids, around a hastily fashioned driftwood fire where everyone brought a plate, but with a supermarket coleslaw and pasta salad, we had Prosecco tastes on a Passion Pop budget.
Penny popped her last two bottles of beer and slid one across the outdoor table to me. Leaning back, she peered at me curiously, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. ‘About? Boys? Sex? Women? You should definitely try women.’
‘Marcus,’ I said. ‘What’s his story?’
She took a swig and gave her head a delighted shake. ‘He doesn’t really have one. He’s just one of those impossibly lovely people.’
‘You’re not giving me a lot to run on.’ I peered down my nose at her as I tipped my head back. ‘He can’t be all sunshine, rainbows and kittens.’
‘All I know is he keeps to himself a lot. He’s not a bragger, he’s super passionate about his job, and is delightful to look at.’ She peered at me through narrowed eyes and an accusatory look.
I mimicked her look and gave my head a little shake. ‘Not really.’
‘He’s kind of that …’ she flourished her hands ‘… he’s a bit of an everyman. Men want to be him; women want to be with him.’
‘And I suppose you’re of that opinion, too?’ I asked.
I’d stayed back at work later than Penny. There were just too many loose ends for me to leave, and I didn’t want to risk the dreaded 3 a.m. wake up, eyes pinging open like a dancer at a rave while my brain worked overtime to process the list of what I hadn’t done. Just as I was packing up for the evening, blinds pulled low in the office, and lights switched off, a small dusting of women appeared from Marcus’s office. I’m sure he was somewhere in the middle of the cloud, his name held aloft on a palanquin.
She shrugged in defence. ‘I would not kick him out of bed.’
‘You sound like Nanna.’
‘And she was a smart lady.’ Penny pointed at me with her fork. ‘I loved her wardrobe.’