The Headmaster's Flame

Chapter 29: London's Calling

She'd just said yes to come to London, and now sat with the stare of twenty questions as Neill picked his mug up in a toast. 'Good! Brilliant!' as he chinked his cup with hers on a sceptically frail wrist, 'because this will be a much better Geography lesson than you could get upstairs!'

'Field trip?' she smiled, now sipping perfunctorily, for the tepid liquid could now be sewage for all her senses functioned at this moment.

'Are you... really serious about this?'

'Listen,' he leaned forward, 'when we went out in the i8 the other day, you were the red roar I was really test-driving.'

'Huh?'

'Testing whether you'd got any better in public since being all Pippy Long-Faced Stockings in Haworth -'

'What? That was the happiest day of my life!'

'Well clearly, because in the BMW you raised up a notch.'

'What? Jerking around in the back, spilling chocolate dishwater over my bobbly school tights?'

'It was too dark for Mr Jason to see that. Besides, he was busily blinded by commission pound signs that I was going to buy that garish thing on a budget earned from shepherding yob offenders, but upon driving right into an area prevailed by them, suddenly feared being blinded by a brick shattering the window instead. Anyway, the point is, you rose to the occasion when it was thrown at you.'

'How? I was pretty scared.'

'And like a good pretentious adult you masked it. You said the right things and made the right sounds that stupid pretentious adults have to make to other stupid pretentious adults. And so, you may come to London with me and meet the ones I call my friends.'

She laughed. 'But who do we say I am? Daughter, like you joked in the car? Who did Jason at the showroom think I was?'

'It was a toss up,' he squinted. 'But I can't suddenly introduce my friends to my new teenage daughter. You could only really be girlfriend or niece.'

'Niece?' she scorned. 'Niece works. Haven't you seen Pretty Woman?'

'I've seen it, but I don't remember.'

'Well basically it doesn't work.'

'Ok well, that leaves the other option.'

Silence.

'Girlfriend then,' she said with a smirk.

'Right,' he said nonchalantly. 'And you have to be at least 18. Your brain's fine, that's 20 years on. You just have to dress and look it. Do you think you can clear some kind of alibi with your mother?'

'I'll just say I'm seeing a friend? She'll be happy to know I finally got one!'

He laughed. 'More than one!'

'So none of your friends will, like, know I'm a pupil here?'

'Of course not.'

'I don't make up a name?'

'No, we do as little as we need to do. But we need a story about where we met. At university where you're doing English? Or at art college?'

'Art student.'

'You're at Leeds Art College.'

She nodded, then stared.

'What on earth am I doing?'

'Art obviously.'

'That's not what I meant and you know it.'

'Well at least I've made you smile again.'