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Oh Lord – I’ve no evidence, none, of any pitying or slamming phrase.

“… less than a month till summer holidays – horrors! Although I guess Rachel will be glad. Her free season starts when mine finishes. But I have to admit the kids are pretty good generally these days – the boys already making plans for putting up tent in back yard and sleeping there – mighty woodsmen and all that – perfectly safe, Mother, so don’t panic –”

Stacey always rattles on in this way. It is nice for Mother to get news of the grandchildren, of course. Stacey flutters around those children such a lot. Every time one of them has a cold or a sore throat, we hear about it. She’d learn not to fuss if she had thirty to cope with every weekday. Four on her hands for only two months, and in summer, doesn’t seem such a terrible prospect to me. But she worries all the time about them. She’s not doing them any favour, hovering over them like that, especially the boys.

Is it true, what she said that time, and I can’t understand? When I said why not stay longer, and she said that about Mac, then she told me she couldn’t be away from the children any longer, either. “I know they’re quite okay, and safe, but I don’t feel sure unless I’m there, and even then I never feel sure – I don’t think I can explain – it’s just something you feel about your own kids, and you can’t help it.”

She didn’t think I could see that, or know at all. She’s so positive she understands everything. She doesn’t give anyone else credit for having the slightest degree of –

Damn. I’ve slopped my coffee on to my saucer and it’s burned my hand.

“Well, I’m surprised she’d let the boys sleep out in the yard. She’s so everlastingly particular with them.”

“I wouldn’t have said that,” Mother fences, offended. “She takes decent care of them. That’s hardly a fault. But I wouldn’t have said she was too particular.”

League of matriarchs. Mothers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your children. Then they wonder why people want to leave home. Stacey’s will do just as she did, quite likely, and she’ll never know why.

Willard is waiting for me in my classroom. He’s standing there with his back to me. Although he’s short, he looms against the light from the window. His back is hunched, like a picture of a vulture in a geography book, and then I see it is only because he is stooping to look at something on my desk. What is he looking for? What has he found? Have I done something? He straightens and wheels and faces me.

“Morning, Rachel,” he says, pleasantly enough. “I was just having a look at your attendance sheet.”

“Oh –” I can feel my face becoming bleached, for absolutely no reason. “Why?”

“James Doherty’s been away quite a lot recently, I see.”

“He’s had tonsillitis.” Why should Willard pry? He has no right to open my desk.

“He was away most of this week, I see.”

“Yes. It was the same trouble. Sore throat and fever. I phoned his mother.”

Willard frowns. “You did?”

He makes it sound such a curious thing to have done, and now I see that perhaps it was. I needn’t have phoned his mother. It isn’t usual.

“He’d been having so many bouts of tonsillitis, I just wondered – and I thought maybe I should – so I just, I mean, gave her a ring –”

Worse. I’ve made it worse. I can see myself stumbling and floundering through the words, like wading through deep snow.

“Did he bring a note when he came back yesterday?” Willard asks.

“Oh yes. Of course. Here, I’ve got it somewhere. It must be somewhere in my desk. I generally keep them for a month, you see, in case –”

“It’s all right,” Willard is saying, quite gently. “I’ll take your word for it.”

He sighs and takes his glasses off to clean them, breathing on them noisily and then polishing with his handkerchief.

“I’m reluctant to bring this up, Rachel,” he says ponderously, “and you may certainly rest assured that I am not in any way blaming you for it. But I’m afraid you may have to have a word with the boy’s mother. Angela paints, as you know