Skeletal by Katherine Hayton Read Free Book Online Page B

and got the class under control. But that poor girl,’ she swallowed hard: once, twice, staring fixedly at the floor, ‘She was embarrassed in front of the whole class. It was an awful trick. Real bullying. I reported it to the headmaster straight after class, but he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do anything about it without definitive proof of who was responsible.’
    She trails off, and swallows hard again. I am quite touched. And quite relieved. It didn’t sound nearly as bad as it had been to live through. In fact, it sounded like a small thing. A trivial thing.
    ‘I left teaching at the end of that year. I was asked to reapply for my contract, but I couldn’t face it. That poor girl.’ Miss Jenner wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. Another trivial thing. Crying in a courtroom.
    The coroner clears his throat. ‘I realise this is an emotional event to recount, but would you be able to tell us what happened to Daina after that class?’
    Miss Jenner looks up startled, and considers. ‘She ran out,’ she says after a while. ‘I went after her once the class had settled, and found her in the cloakroom at the end of the hall. She looked really scared.’
    ‘Scared?’
    Miss Jenner nods. ‘She looked scared. I tapped her on the shoulder and when she turned around her face was white and she was shaking. It was awful. I’d thought I’d be able to comfort her, or something like that. Tell her it wasn’t as bad as it looked. But her expression…’
    She looks back down at the floor again, as though the memory was hidden in the grooves and channels of the boards. As though if she looks hard enough she would see through the years to where it was all still happening.
    ‘I couldn’t think of what to say. All my words just dried up in my mouth. She looked… she looked terrified .’ She turns to look at the coroner, shaking her head. ‘I just told her it was okay if she left for the day. She didn’t need to come back into class. I couldn’t…’
    Her throat works as she blinks hard, and then she coughs into her hand. ‘She turned back up at the next class, and I just pretended that everything was normal. I didn’t really know what to do. I’d hoped that the headmaster would come through and do something that would send a message, but he didn’t.
    ‘She attended my class each time until the end of term, and then I never saw her again.’
    The coroner rubs a finger along the side of his nose, pushing his glasses up and down, up and down. The papers in front of him must be going in and out of focus, but he doesn’t care or he wouldn’t do it, would he?
    ‘And how did she seem after that incident? In herself?’
    In herself. How I loathe that phrase.
    ‘I don’t know, really,’ she answers. ‘After that day I tried not to look at her. I’d failed her, you see.’
    She looks at Michelle again, seated in the room as though she belongs there. As though she’d earned her place.
    Miss Jenner, my newfound protector, my secret admirer, the failed heroine of my sad story, stares at her and this time Michelle has to turn away.
     
    ***
     
    Daina 2004
    Michelle turned around and smirked at me for the third time this period. I mugged back at her, but I was starting to think that something was up, something more serious than her usual hatred.
    Miss Jenner was droning on endlessly about the history of our fair lands, accompanied by some seriously dull portraits and still-lifes which managed to capture none of the supposed excitement of the time. Why did Victorian people always look as though the camera was about to kill them rather than just take their picture? Did that sometimes happen?
    I sketched out a quick pencil scene of the amazing exploding camera causing mayhem in Victorian Canterbury. It wasn’t enough to be in black and white. I pulled my battered pencil case towards me and hunted through for a red felt tip. Success! But it was dried to uselessness. I touched my tongue to the tip and managed to coax a