I’m seeing Grace.
She’s already in her office and there is a rich smell of coffee from the machine she uses.
‘Jo!’ She gets up, gives me a quick hug and offers me coffee, which I accept.
‘Any news?’ she says, pouring it, adding milk.
‘No. So we’re going out there, Tom and I, to help with the search.’
She nods. Puts the cup in front of me and goes to sit at the other side of the desk.
‘We leave Thursday,’ I say, ‘if everything goes smoothly.’
‘Oh, Jo, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine…’
‘I know. It still feels unreal.’ As if I’m in a play that I never auditioned for and I’m making up my lines as I go along, waiting for somebody to clap their hands together and tell us the performance is done, and we can all go now and resume our real lives. ‘And then you read about the girls missing in Nigeria.’ Over two hundred of them abducted from a school by a militant group called Boko Haram.
‘God, yes,’ she says, ‘and no one seems to be doing anything about it.’
I take a breath. ‘We do know that Lori hasn’t left the country. It doesn’t narrow it down much, though, the size of the place.’
Grace runs her fingers over the folder on her desk. I drink some coffee. Feel a rush of nausea.
‘We’ve booked for three weeks,’ I say.
‘As long as it takes, and don’t worry. We’ve sorted out cover – Andrea. A lot to learn but she’s quick on the uptake.’
‘How’s everyone else?’ I ask.
She blinks quickly, and her hand stills on the folder.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Zoë,’ she says. ‘She’s just been diagnosed.’
‘Oh, no.’ On top of the miscarriage.
‘Bowel cancer,’ Grace says. ‘She should hear about the treatment plan tomorrow.’
‘Oh, God,’ I say, ‘you should have told me.’
She throws me a look. Don’t be daft. ‘On a brighter note, I’m going to be a grandma. Patsy’s pregnant.’
‘Really! Brilliant.’
‘Twins, actually.’
‘No! Grace, how amazing. When are they due?’ Suddenly I feel like crying, so I force myself to drink more coffee and concentrate on that.
‘November, but they’ll probably induce her a few weeks early – it reduces the risks apparently.’
‘We didn’t make parents’ evening,’ I say.
‘You got their reports?’
‘Yes, Finn’s was fine but Isaac’s…’
‘Not found his niche yet,’ Grace says. ‘Give him time.’
‘But the biting, the tantrums.’
‘We’ve a strategy, and I’ve told Sunita to come to me if she needs more backup. We’ve dealt with much, much worse,’ she says darkly, making me laugh.
It’s true. There have been some seriously disturbed children in school over the years, children with challenging behaviour, needing one-to-one care to cope with the school environment.
